Now it seems to me there is a problem here. Is it wrong to restrict the exercise of linguistic capacity or another — or to seek to? Which is it? And how does he arrive at intention in the first place — it’s not very clear to me.
If a single act of exogenous restriction is sufficient to “undermine” their “capacity to be a rational and moral agent” then there pretty obviously couldn’t be anyone with such a capacity intact.
A well aimed response and critique, in my mind. Its a tough matter to discuss, and I think, honestly, it was discussed well on both accounts. That said, I can certainly align myself with some of the issues you take with Collins.
And indeed whilst I accept that the coercion of speech does *potentially* have the ability to cause a restriction of thought or rather a restriction in the development of thought, it isn’t ultimately clear that one necessarily follows the other
As I understand it, the "restriction of thought" and the "restriction in the development of thought" differ more in articulation than they do in signification - which is a matter largely confined to semantics. Although I think I understand, in that "thought" can refer to the product of the development of thought, and can thus be said to follow from it. However, is not the more important sequence that of expression following from thought? In any case, is our thought not restricted on an almost constant basis by negative feedback? How, then, should this negative feedback be expressed as censorship? Is that a good way of phrasing one of the central debates here?
edit: by constant negative feedback, I mean general environmental signals/cues, the bulk of which perhaps not even being received consciously.
Would you want to get into how exogenous coercion can potentially restrict speech by way of injecting a code of conduct, a code that the would-be speaker mulls over and may or may not feel obliged to uphold? That is, this coercion
can manage to preclude certain expressions, but this preclusion needs the consent of the speaker? If they don't consent, they disregard the censorship, no? Or perhaps this consent isn't consent
proper, but is some kind of superego mandate?
In any case, It seems like this coercion/censorship (if I understand you correctly) enters into the atmosphere of the mind of the speaker, in which there is being formulated a message to express, and this censorship manages to effect/alter this message in its formulation stage. However, this revisory code is received and ruminated to some degree, no? So successfully censoring someone requires that you successfully get them to censor themselves, seeing as you cannot implement such a censorship beyond their will. Maybe I'm dwelling on an inconsequential point, but it could be important.