Should (intentionally) false speech be completely free? If so, on what basis? Such speech seems only to bring harm and spread misunderstanding.

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Intentionally false speech

Intentionally false speech isn't completely free. Lying under oath is against the law. So are slander and libel. So is providing false information on your tax forms. And so on. It would be odd to think these laws should be abandoned.

But not all deliberately false speech is illegal. If you tell me that my ridiculous new hat is just dandy because you don't want to hurt my feelings, it's legal and should be. Less happily, politicians can lie when they make campaign promises or stand up in the Senate and say that there's no such thing as global warming even when they know damn well that it's real.

Of course being legal isn't the same as being cost-free. If you come to be known as a liar, you're likely to pay a social price, and that seems more or less right. Politicians may also pay if they can't persuade voters to believe them or if they get caught in a lie. The justice is rough, but it's not nonexistent.

It's hard to say anything precise here. Wrongdoing shouldn't be cost-free, and deliberate lying is usually wrong. (Kant seemed to have thought that it's always wrong, but most of us would say that it's fine to lie to the Nazi at the door.) There's a point to reminding ourselves that we shouldn't become indifferent to bad acts, though we also shouldn't let ourselves become zealots. But these days is seems that truth is fighting a losing battle; the lies have been costly and they're getting costlier. This makes your question a timely one; a reason to remember that there's an election coming up.

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