Logic and categorisation

By the middle of the 20th century, “logic has become more mathematical and mathematics has become more logical”(1).

Logical analysis can converge things into a certain point where things are settled instead of being ambiguous, or chaotic. Wording is to converge things into certain point. Ambiguously uttering is somewhat limiting but not in narrower way.

This convergence into a point in logic is suitable to business in capitalism where a rapid cycle of decision-making and moving tasks forward is demanded rather than continuing to thinking about a certain decision whether it is truly the best answer or not. Even though business world also requires the meta thinking to make a correct decision, it is necessary to move tasks forward rapidly. The use of logic in business world associated with capitalism is different from works that are expected to last forever, logic converges things, there are things not included at the moment logic determines.

This characteristic of convergence is used to make the future converge in a hopeful way. The word “risk” is often paid attention to especially in late 20th century. It is described that “The notion of ‘risk’ is central to modern culture today precisely because so much of our thinking has to be ‘as-if’ kind”(2). Beforehand, they recognise the risks, they make the ways by which risks are minimised. However knowing the risks may makes people difficult to take action. After recognising them, we would choose whether we take action by accepting the risks or avoid taking action so that we will not face them.

In business world, they require the labourers to be logical. Logical thinking has been one of the capacities which is recognised as necessary for each. That is especially in the first quarter of 21st century onwards required.

Analysing the things that one face and identify what is known and not. To the questions that one cannot “here and now give definitive answers”(3), “a method has been discovered by which, as in science, we can make successive approximations to the truth, in which each new stage results from an improvement, not a rejection, of what has gone before”(4).

Logic is related to accountability. It is often seen that people involved ask its explanation which is convincing enough to be provided behind the proposition that one gave. Argument equipped with logic can convince people in front of oneself. Strong logic can make people not be able to respond.

In business world, answering to a question properly is often demanded. Sometimes see people not clearly answer question is that they have other things in mind and are captured by them.

Sharing the same logic with others leads them to work in the same logic in a certain domain. People of different background may indicate that “two individuals may agree on their computations in particular cases even though they are actually computing different functions”(5).

Temper is a large factor that decides whether it is going to be successful or not. If one is not motivated to move forward tasks in a project, it has to do with the outcome of to what extent successful it is going to be.

Given this nature of logic, does it have extensibility in its nature? The extensibility is whether it is opened to the further sphere. The logic often determines the scope before moving forward.

It is a type of categorisation that people judge others by their title as such that whether one is director or just a staff. Even if those who are in the rank of banality has greater capacity in some cases, one may not be regarded so by others.

Labeling doesn’t comprehend the entire aspects of a person, but it attempts to make easier to categorise. It sometimes goes to the end that it is condemned as prejudice. Labeling is to categorise by one or a few aspect of person, sometimes the impressive aspect of a person. People are frequently labelled some as liberal, conservative, or others. It seems that the labelling focuses on an opinion or the tendency that a person more frequently expresses. Presumably a person who is labelled as liberal also has conservative opinion in other topics given the complexity of human being. Even unconsciously people categorise as it is harder for them to recognise one by one, easier to group by similarity. This labeling has negative aspect too as it may group one which isn’t easy to be categorised in one group or another.

Bias is an exaggerated aspect of an object based on one’s past experience. Categorising and prejudice are related. Some fault images accentuating some aspect excessively create the prejudice.

Persons of logic should know what is not logical.

(1) Bertrand Russell, Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (London and New York: Routledge Classics, 2023), p.184.

(2) Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens, and Scott Lash, Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press,1994), p.vii.

(3) Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), p.744.

(4) Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), p.744.

(5) Saul A. Kripke, Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 1982), p.32.

3.2.7 On norm

People live in the narrow world. Norm is in ordinary state what people often are not aware of, or it is not what they take time and think about it carefully in their life. However, they sometimes notice that it was inconvenient, for example. In daily life, many citizens are not aware of the ceiling, some go beyond that framework, but those people described as some are limited in a few. In order to be against the stringent norm, to create a culture first with limited community towards their society is a way to spread their opinions. Historically, there are times in which people live in the world of narrow norm. Even one may live in the world of narrow norm at present. Some opinion suggests that over the centuries people come to live in the narrow norm, with things established as civilisation is built up. On the other hand, there are things that one cannot talk in one epoch, but later in another epoch those can be talked with less conflict. Even if it causes tension among people, there would be times in which for the progress of civilisation, one would have to claim for public benefit.

In the case of emergency in society, the pressure on the urgent needs narrows the sphere of tolerance. This sudden decreased tolerance often weeps out the existing values except the ones the society recognise as important at the moment. In other words, limited number of values comes to dominate society with the sphere of freedom narrow. Other values than a few of domination tend to be underestimated or ignored. It often has a force of excluding freedom and the number of people who care about freedom also decreases. If certain period of time, what has been unusual and unacceptable is forced to be put in practice, some may recognise that it is the ordinary. Not only the effect that changes are infiltrated into society consciously or unconsciously, people do forget what has been ordinary.

People sometimes say that if they get older it gets more difficult to develop their abilities than they were child. That is presumably because they become more established when getting old. Their personal norm is more established. They have a variety of factors surrounding them based on their history. If they can break the established factors apart, they can make their own way less restricted by their past establishment. They can develop their abilities unrestrictively, if without being surrounded by it. Sometimes, people are obsessed by the conventional knowledge that they got in the past. It may hider their progress.

The world history as a whole may have been on the path of progress, it is on the way of progress by breaking through the established history of themselves — in the meantime it also has been creating success on top of the wisdoms built up by the previous generations.

The divided preference, from which channel they get information, create different social groups. If people spend more in what they are interested in, they become more divided into specific domains. If society is divided and what their mainstream media covers is also divided, what people in the society believes in is also separate in two opposite positions. Americans’ trust towards media became lower as described that “Forty-five percent of Americans say there is a ‘a great deal’ of political bias in news coverage (up from 25 percent in 1989)”(1).

While maintaining the potential of diversity, it is beneficial to secure the places where people of different domains can interact. Diversity, in one sense, leads to the broader sphere in which people live in. The actual experiences that people regularly visit a place or are based on their custom create powerful intimacy which is more physical sense rather than theory.

Although it is important to have discussion in terms of whether hate speech should be regulated by law or not since legal aspect in society is one of the significant domains, discussion from other perspectives provides another insight on this issue and deepens discussion.

There’s been a discussion whether we should restrict certain kind of speech such as hate speech. Discussion on the policies is what is here regarded as environmental one. Considering the balancing of regulation in society, that is to what degree it implements regulation on expression, given the nature of contingency of freedom. This characteristic that freedom is not absolute makes it necessary to think about others in exercising freedom including freedom of expression. The necessity to care about others prevents the abuse of exercising one’s freedom and rights. Even though there’s a value that we should protect freedom and rights, it should not support that we can utter anything based on the freedom of expression we have. In order to balance this relationship between one’s freedom and its contingency upon others, the development of sentimentality is proposed. This development of sentiment underpins the part of oneself to think about others.

The way of governance is not limited to only law but also social norms exist in society. Beyond legal framework which is law, norm exists in a society. Regulation is not only laws, but also norms are. One doesn’t have to construct society only by the border between legal and illegal. Some sphere in between there, or other factors are to introduce flexibility to that regulation, norm is one besides law.

If societal norms are too restrictive, it has oppressive effect. In the meantime, the stability in a society comes from maintaining norm. Education has an effect in creating shared norm among citizens by which society maintains stability. However, it is a matter of balancing and it would be better not to leaning towards one end. For instance, securing the sphere of freedom absorbs the stresses among citizens, not always we should bind ourselves by norm. Additionally saying, norm doesn’t have to be the one which is standardised, it can be taken for granted that diverse standards coexist in a society.

Education is a type of activity that educator gives a framework to students. How students are evaluated is based on the frame of the previous generations. Evaluation in a educational course is just to look at a limited aspect of student. If students strive to get better grade, they get themselves adapted to the criteria, but not necessarily all people have to move that way. It often has potential in unevaluated areas. It may not be inevitable for evaluators to set the criteria, but sharing that the potential of each person is not limited to how they are judged by educational institution, exams, or company makes difference.

In the context of media, Japanese society (or at least those who are more in the position of activism) focused on the self-censorship of media in especially the second half of 2010s. The focus on media was partly from the aspect of freedom of the press. Through this period, the citizens in Japan on the Internet, came to recognise this media tradition and got frustrated. The traditional norm got influenced through the accumulation of voices among citizens feeling the negativeness of this situation. Since the voices among citizens were visible on the Internet, it was presumably sensed by those who work in media industry. Through not just media’s self-censorship topic but also other old structural topics in society, the norm slightly changed towards the first half or the middle of 2020s that people tend to more criticise, for example people inside the mass media such as newsreader speaks critical view towards their own company in news programme when their company was to blame.

The restrictiveness of norm depends on country. Where a country has more conservatively been built, it is narrower than other countries. Japan’s narrow norm puts people into a thin frame, compared with Europe which has wider norm. Japanese society is conservative, stable and so forth. Its norm is more shared within the entire society. That may be the cause of less progress of the country. Japanese society has been having 空気, and it has been recognised with importance at least among some people in the past(2).

The Japanese word “空気” isn’t what we can see, and the kinds of it aren’t distingushable clearly. It is what the places and persons there create, but not necessarily the contribution deriving from their positive actions but rather even passively created in some cases. That is to say, for instance, if people in a society don’t take action and stay calm for a while, that also becomes the norm.

(1) ‘Public trust in the media is at an all-time low. Results from a major new Knight-Gallup report can help us understand why‘, Knight Foundation, published 16 January 2018, accessed 4 February 2024, https://medium.com/trust-media-and-democracy/10-reasons-why-americans-dont-trust-the-media-d0630c125b9e. This sentence is also cited in Mark R. Levin, Unfreedom of the Press (New York: Threshold Editions, 2019), p.12. First Threshold Editions hardcover edition.

(2) One of the persons that focused on it is Shichihei Yamamoto. 山本七平, 「空気」の研究 (東京: 文春文庫, 2018). 新装版.

3.7 Information

The word information is frequently used in daily life. As a way of transmitting information from one to another, conversation is perceived as a type of activity. It can be conversation via speech as well as via written text to communicate with another. In communication, they use certain kind of expression such as sound and symbol. Commonly, information is recognised as what’s speeched out of one’s mouth or expressed in a written form, contrary to the background or context which is not included in those expressions. In thinking about expression, it is inevitable to care about not only what’s visible which appears in the form of expression but also what’s invisible, caring about the context of expression.

The definition of the word “Exformation is the discarded information, everything we do not actually say but have in our heads when or before we say anything at all”(1). In contrast with the concept of information which is what is communicated in the expression, exformation is what is not communicated in the expression. To recognise the concept simply, in the situation that two persons make a conversation, what they speech is the information and what they don’t speech is the exformation. The exformation could be the context in which those two persons converse, or, I would say, it is not necessarily be the communal, or shared, context. Exformation is the information discarded in the conversation among them.

On information, some knew that “information is closely related to entropy, which is a measure of disorder”(2). The concept of entropy came from thermodynamics to information theory(3). Even though “Information is something to be found in bulk in a state where entropy is great”(4) and “more information in disorder than in order”(5), far from Claude Shannon there were others headed to the idea of “Information is order”(6).

Look at speech, utterance of words out of one’s body is to convey just a tiny part of the information, there’s a vast amount of context discarded behind. Society would need to have the mutual understanding on the limitation or the fundamental of communication and symbols. One of the fundamental aspects regarding communicating via symbols is context.

When people converse, it is not guaranteed that the receiver has the enough background knowledge in their head to be able to be on the same conversation with the speaker. However, it may not be necessarily important to have the same background of conversation. What’s uttered by another could trigger the curiosities towards the world, which can be expressed that “The least interesting aspect of good conversation is what is actually said. What is more interesting is all the deliberations and emotions that take place simultaneously during conversation in the heads and bodies of the conversers”(7). In addition, even after the conversation ended, often the curious parts continue to influence them. The exformation is not what everyone can understand the same degree as their background cannot be totally same. Exformation attracts people. The background of a work is often curiously looked at such as the biography of the artist, the environment in which the work was created, what was the motivation which drove the author to create the work.

Besides the recognition that each person has different context in ultimate sense, the inspiration of ideas occurs when their context is different. This applies to reading book. It is not only to read what’s written in a book, but to think what’s not written in the book. What one expresses is interpreted in a number of ways which vary depending on its circumstance.

The statement of, for instance, saying that today is good weather as greeting to another can be interpreted in a variety of ways. When one spoke of that statement to another in a sunny day, it would be perceived as just a greeting. Another case is that one said that in a rainy day truly thinking that rainy day is good weather to another with speaker’s personal preference, however the receiver of that conversation is not aware of speaker’s rainy day preference and it may make him perceive that it is ironically said to him in the connotation with its history of whenever one meets him it rains.

Exformation at least somewhat contributes to the definition of information. Regarding the relationship between words and context, “Words are written in a context. If they have meaning, they have meaning because of that context”(8). The meaning of signs is decoded by surrounding.

Vast amount of information is discarded, compared with the information written in text. Having mutual understanding that there’s a vast amount of information discarded helps people avoid causing misunderstanding or miscommunication among them.

In the world where information can be spread rapidly, the pieces are read by peoples of different regions, contexts. Even before, many consumed information by reading newspapers, books, conversations, to name a few. Over the past years, new medium emerged. Weblog was a sphere where citizens can post what they would like to share, sometimes for changing their world better, in other times for leaving their comments as records. In the beginning of 2020s, the word influencer, a person who gains influence on the Internet and influence the world, got popular. However, it would be rather said that most of them don’t seem influencing for the public good, in some cases just for trying to gain profits for themselves. Their influence is visible in numbers, how many follows them, their posts are liked by their audience and so forth. Numbers are abundant in people’s life. Things are trying to be mathematised. It became in 2010s on the Internet that people are fanatic to get the numbers, or attentions from the Internet users. It went negative too that uploaders went quite extreme end, often, without having care about the public goods in their posts. People are not able to focus on things in the long run. Additionally, people call for particular movement which uses specific hashtag words or phrases to assemble people in support of their movement.

As technology developed, people came to be more near-sighted, this is what people are not able to think in the long run. Focusing too much on the present feels like people are floating on the waves created by themselves. Their feet are not on the ground and they are easily wavered. What enriches is the sight in the long term.

Even though the information that can be shared in language is limited in the first place, social media is more limited in sharing the context. Setting aside the question of whether people in general read long pieces of information in their life regularly in the first place, the tendency arising out of the beginning of 21^st century that by uploading posts of shorter passages or video clips, the uploaders intend to gain their profit and get the number of views.

(1) Tor Nørretranders, The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size (NewYork: Penguin Books, 1999), p.95.

(2) Tor Nørretranders, The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size (NewYork: Penguin Books, 1999), p.31.

(3) Tor Nørretranders, The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size (NewYork: Penguin Books, 1999), p.38.

(4) Tor Nørretranders, The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size (NewYork: Penguin Books, 1999), p.42.

(5) Tor Nørretranders, The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size (NewYork: Penguin Books, 1999), p.42.

(6) Tor Nørretranders, The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size (NewYork: Penguin Books, 1999), p.42.

(7) Tor Nørretranders, The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size (NewYork: Penguin Books, 1999), p.94.

(8) Lawrence Lessig, Fidelity & Constraint: How the Supreme Court Has Read the American Constitution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), p. 55.

4.2 Sentiment

What one perceives from the symbols of language needs to be focused, and it is how one’s mind recognise the expressions. Sentiment is related to how persons understand expressions. There would be necessity to care about the appearance and form of expression to be used among persons, but caring about the form of expression with excessive attention would put too much focus on it, and deploying only the care of appearance into society doesn’t solve the issues completely.

Over the history of language, it became less “passioned” and focused on “reason”, exactness, and clarity(1). The “progress” of “the lettered languages” results in the “progress” of “the grammar and the logic”, they also become “cold” and “monotone”(2).

From music to language, the former is more abstract and the latter focuses on the small meaning, the current human beings became able to identify the small parts. Abstractness has more adaptability. Music is more abstract than language. Music is abundance of information. It enriches the sentimentality. There are what are difficult to be speechable, but felt by persons.

The concept of sentiment becomes more important to think about the interaction with others. The globalised world enabled to interact with people of different backgrounds, and sometimes not necessarily we share each other the context of people we interact, which includes the custom, religion, ideology, and others. Sentiment is a concept worth discussing, in order to understand each other in our deeper part as I don’t think it is possible to understand enough the cases of different custom, religion, ideology, and so on to communicate with others given the limit of time in our life. That is to say that we need to cultivate the deeper sphere of ourselves that can go beyond the differences which could cause conflict among different groups of people. Sentiment is a primary aspect of human beings profoundly rooted in ourselves.

Apart from the environmental factors such as policies in society, I regard how one understands an expression and why one expresses hate speech as being related to one’s internal state within oneself. By cultivating the internal aspect of oneself, I try to tackle the problem of hate speech. This is the basis of referring to the concept of sentiment which is the internal aspect of oneself and if sentiment is developed I presume it is less likely for hate speech to occur as those who with the developed sentiment take into consideration within oneself what the receiver of the expression would feel.

Around 19^th and 20^th centuries “are most easily understood not as a period of deepening understanding of the nature of rationality or of morality, but rather as one in which there occurred an astonishingly rapid progress of sentiments, in which it has become much easier for us to be moved to action by sad and sentimental stories”(3). This sentiment lets people contemplate from others’ perspectives, and they think of others’ circumstances in their standpoints. As of the middle of 19^th century, “We are entering into an order of things in which justice will again be the primary virtue; grounded as before on equal, but now also on sympathetic association; having its root no longer in the instinct of equals for self-protection, but in a cultivated sympathy between them”(4).

The kind of sentimental education is as follows. This kind of education uses a story that puts a person to the situation of others and it lets them to imagine what others would feel in the circumstance. In his writing, Richard Rorty described that “to answer the much more frequently posed question ‘Why should I care about a stranger, a person who is no kin to me, a person whose habits I find disgusting?’”(5), “A better sort of answer is the sort of long, sad, sentimental story that begins, ‘Because this is what it is like to be in her situation – to be far from home, among strangers,’ or ‘Because she might become your daughter-in-law,’ or ‘Because her mother would grieve for her.’”(6). This type of sentimental stories puts the person, in the case above the person who asked the first question, into taking into account the situations of others. The importance of “sentimental education” is that it “gets people of different kinds sufficiently well acquainted with one another that they are less tempted to think of those different from themselves as only quasi-human”(7). The growth of sentiment is expected to be, for example, from watching films which nourish empathy among persons. Stories are often what different episode focuses on different person. It enables viewers to be in the different viewpoint which the featured person is put in. This letting people to be in the place of another is to lessen the solid standpoint of oneself.

Sentimental education is related to the development of persons in society whose life is too limited to understand the different cultures and customs of other groups of people. Even though persons are mortal, societal architecture which could foster the growing of persons could contribute to the better society where less expression of hatred occurs. Also having the viewpoints of different persons are useful to make a more sensible judgement than having only one. People’s sentiment plays a supplementary role to buffer the intensity of conflicts among people which unshared information causes. It is to lessen the tension among people.

One of the roles of arts is to develop sentimentality in oneself. At least a certain people need to have the grown sentimentality which makes enough to overcome the hardships. Anime or novels are type of works which foster the development of sentiment. The inward of oneself can surpass the reality, and brings benefits such as resilience to society.

With regard to the scale of population, sentiment works to maintain community. If the community gets larger and so do their population, the complexity increases. The intervention of sentimental education creates the core of compassion. In the larger society, people are not much aware of the detailed situations of some group as the number of groups in a community also increased. The intervention is more required in larger community than smaller where one’s ability to picture the situations of others works relatively easier since the difference of circumstances is more limited. The complexity is related to the number of agents in a community, and the community’s paths of information.

The form of language could exhibit its beauty to the world, however the phenomenon of promoting political correctness at the beginning of 21^st century seems that it is promoted to avoid the conflicts among people stemming from the appearance of words which is offensive. It narrows the sphere in which the kinds of words are acceptable. Not only abusive words, words of certain connotation which has possibility of being perceived as politically incorrect are also refrained from being used. How people perceive is related to how people use words including political correctness. Sentimentality is a way to expand the sphere of language to deal with the narrowness of the speech sphere.

Speaker needs to think of how it would be perceived by audience in the meantime audience think of the context in which speaker expressed that way. Sentimentality works towards both speaker and listener and other audience: the first mentioned is to imagine how one’s expression influences towards listener and other audience in society; the second is to understand the essential part of expression not being just influenced by the superficial meaning of the expression one is facing, what is the core of the expression; the third is related to how other people in the community react to a certain expression, which is a large part in how the expression is perceived by the community. What cultivation of sentimentality means is that it creates the soil on which one perceives things in the world, that is to say the preliminary attachment of information before one perceives symbols. When one sees the discriminatory expression by others, the preattached information which grows sentiment in oneself affects the position one takes to that behaviour. It is a perspective of what peoples have in common before seeing expression, and sentimentality could be the one. At the moment one sees the symbols written by others, the symbols themselves have vast amount of discarded information such as what factors led them to write those on the material. The viewers with enriched sentimentality perceive it with one’s sentimentality by referring to the present social situations or possible backgrounds.

Combined with the development of sentiment in oneself, the principle of the Golden Rule is worth looking at. The Rule suggests that one should “treat others as you would like to be treated”(8). The Rule encourages people to think about their own actions in the perspective of others. The Golden Rule has practical aspect which is closer to lives of persons. Apart from the theories which are abundant with jargon, the Golden Rule is closer with its practical aspect. Against this Rule, although one may claim that I don’t feel annoyed by the way I treat you, even if one doesn’t feel annoyed, one should take into consideration that another presumably would feel annoyed. Understanding the probability of others feeling offended is an element to keep in mind.

In terms of hate speech, understanding the position of persons who receive hate speech is necessary for people to understand its negativity. Even if we intensify the regulation in the public space, for example to implement the laws that are to give stricter penalties to those who did hate speech or erase more eagerly hate speech from the walls in public space as well as on online platforms while focusing on the regulation, this type of regulation doesn’t guarantee the disappearance of hate speech in society. It just tried to make it disappear from visible space, but hate would just move to different places and would remain in less visible places such less popular online sites. This signifies the importance of understanding the negativity of hate speech more profoundly in one’s mind. Given this nature, the importance of the development in one’s mind is emphasised.

If adding more words to the topic of hate speech, apart from the cases that it is obvious to everyone the speech is recognised as a hate to certain group of people, there would be cases that is not easy to recognise whether it is hate speech or not. Regarding expression, it is not always clear to distinguish it as hate or not. Cultivation of sentiment is to supplement the ambiguous nature of expression by nurturing the inner sphere in oneself.

Political correctness is a tendency that people are required to care about the form of language and use the correct words regarded by the world. If we look at the form of words, some words are not societally accepted at present though it was used decades ago.

(1) Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Essai sur l’origine des langues (Paris: GF Flammarion, 1993), p.68.

(2) Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Essai sur l’origine des langues (Paris: GF Flammarion, 1993), p.79.

(3) Richard Rorty, Truth and Progress (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p.185.

(4) John Stuart Mill, On Liberty and The Subjection of Women (London: Penguin, 2006), p.180.

(5) Richard Rorty, Truth and Progress (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p.185.

(6) Richard Rorty, Truth and Progress (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p.185.

(7) Richard Rorty, Truth and Progress (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 176.

(8) François Héran, Lettre aux professeurs sur la liberté d’expression, (Paris: La Découverte, 2021), p.171.

4.1 The inner

The following paragraphs focus on the inner part of human beings so that this writing emphasise the necessity to think about the development of the inner part of human beings, not just thinking about the policies or regulation implemented in society. In order to think about how we can deal with the problems around expression and the difference of context or background among peoples, the following writing gives us at least an idea to think about.

In the world at the beginning of 21^st century, when the topic of freedom of expression comes to the table of discussion, typically the left or human rights advocates raise their voice to claim the importance of freedom of expression. Although the right to speech and express opinions is fundamental one, it often deepens the tension between those who claim the importance of freedom of expression and those who are in the opposite position. This is particularly seen in Europe as well as Asia for example in 2010s. This type of cases may repeatedly occur, and it made me think about how we can alleviate the tension among people of different opinions. In the tense situations where two opposite parties have opposite opinions each other, it is not easy, or I would say difficult to soften the tension.

In order to cope with this kind of situation, I would like to focus on a concept that human beings can share in the deeper part of their mind. What I focus on in this part is the concept of sentiment. It is related to the inner part of human beings that triggers care about others. When it comes to freedom of expression, many debates tend to talk about policies and regulation such as improving the policies on online platforms or regulating hate speech by new policies. They are outside human beings and involved in the improvement of environment in which people live. However, I don’t think we only have to talk about the environmental policies, and I feel the necessity to talk about the inside of human beings as well, that is to say the inner part of human beings.

One of the concepts that is related to the inner aspect is thymos. It appears in The Republic by Plato(1). The concise explanation of thymos is that “Thymos is something like an innate human sense of justice: people believe that they have a certain worth, and when other people act as though they are worth less—when they do not recognize their worth at its correct value—then they become angry”(2) and it “refers to a part of the soul that invests objects with value”(3).

The sentences describe that thymos is “an innate human sense of justice”, which signifies that it is more related to human nature, and mentioned a certain relationship with anger. Additionally saying, another concept which is dignity, is often related to the discussion of expression. The dignity is related to the inner part of self and “‘Dignity’ refers to a person’s sense of self-worth; ‘in-dignation’ arises when something happens to offend that sense of worth”(4).

As regards this thymos, what should be kept in mind is that it applies not only to oneself, but also to others. This is to say that the former is the case when a person feels anger when another undertreats them, the latter is that a person feels anger when, for instance, their friend is undertreated by others.

When those who are believed by some persons are targeted by the expressions of others and those expressions are perceived as uncomfortable, there’s a tension between those who have beliefs and those who claim their right to express. Human nature of feeling anger if one is undertreated has been talked in a topic of Thymos, the anger arises in things related not only to oneself but also adaptable to others(5).

This adaptability towards others matters when those who or which have been receiving faith from the citizens are the target of expressions by others. As far as one’s dignity is maintained, one may not take action in seeking it. If not in the enough level one considers, one may further seek. Dignity applies to the ones who have respect in another, and another is irrespectfully treated by others, for example in religious context.

The topic of the inward in oneself has been profound in philosophy. Particularly, the link between the inwardness of oneself and freedom is not separable. The inner part of oneself is the unalienable sphere by the physical force. This topic triggers curiosity in looking at the perspective that “Ancient world alienation in all its varieties—from stoicism to epicureanism down to hedonism and cynicism—had been inspired by a deep mistrust of the word and moved by a vehement impulse to withdraw from worldly involvement, from the trouble and pain it inflicts, into the security of an inward realm in which the self is exposed to nothing but itself”(6). Rule and law put in place are outward factors surrounding persons. In order to have a better society for the public, the efforts of government are welcomed, but eventually “The care of Souls cannot belong to the Civil Magistrate, because his Power consists only in outward force”(7). The growth of the inward has to be the true contemplation by oneself, it hasn’t been done by coercion from outward. Coercion is often denounced, and freedom of conscience is protected in many countries. Even human’s mind has not been fully captured in details by science as of the beginning of 21^st century.

There are different types of thoughts. Some believe that “all aspects of mentality (including conscious awareness) are merely features of the computational activity of the brain”, that is why they believe that “electronic computers should also be capable of consciousness, and would conjure up this quality as soon as they acquire sufficient computational power and are programmed in an appropriate way”(8). What Penrose thinks about it is that “whatever consciousness is, it’s not a computation”(9).

If one spends some time in their life, one has felt a variety of sentiments in a variety of situations. The feeling of imagining the situation as I were in that circumstance is what I respect for human beings.

In the following part on sentiment, I put focus on how we cultivate the inside of human beings such as sentiment or mind as the inner part of human beings is related to the understanding of expression as well as of how others would feel from expression one makes. It is to talk about the sentiment of those who make expression and those who receive expression, and also others living in community.

(1) Francis Fukuyama, The end of history and the last man (New York: Free Press, 2006), p. 163.

(2) Francis Fukuyama, The end of history and the last man (New York: Free Press, 2006), p.165.

(3) Francis Fukuyama, The end of history and the last man (New York: Free Press, 2006), p.165.

(4) Francis Fukuyama, The end of history and the last man (New York: Free Press, 2006), p.165.

(5) Francis Fukuyama, The end of history and the last man (New York: Free Press, 2006), pp.171-172.

(6) Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2018), p.310.

(7) John Locke, Second Treatise of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), p.129.

(8) Roger Penrose, The Emperor’s New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and The Laws of Physics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), p.xv. Which Roger Penrose disbelieves in.

(9) ‘Roger Penrose: Physics of Consciousness and the Infinite Universe | Lex Fridman Podcast #85’, Lex Fridman, published 31 March 2020, accessed 27 July 2024, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orMtwOz6Db0. Around 40:20-.