EquALLity wrote:
That reaction was wrong, and the only reason why it perhaps should be legal is to prevent intentional provacation (like we discussed awhile back in that topic about gay people and cakes). Just because something should be legal doesn't make it moral.
How do you figure?
Some things should not be criminalized, because the act of criminalizing produces more harm -- like creating black markets, and begetting more crime.
Things like this aren't at all like that. The risk of being punched in the face (which means in actuality that people are sometimes punched in the face) is discouraging intentional provocation, thus an occasional punch in the face (in appropriate situations like this) may do more good than harm by discouraging that behavior.
It's the same thing we see with crime and punishment. IF the death penalty acted as a deterrent, then it could be argued to be a social good (even if in that particular case it's harmful).
EquALLity wrote:Hitting a person for accusing you of being a liar is violent vengeance. The person is just being rude; there's no actual physical threat, so self-defense is not an applicable justification.
When somebody calls you a liar to your face like that, or what teo did (which is distinct from somebody telling others that you are a liar, or shaming on a public stage), that is so unlikely to be productive in any way: ALL it is is provocation.
The public claim that somebody is a liar is free speech, to an extent. There is still libel and slander, and those are important laws which help keep people from lying about others to destroy their reputations (which are of moral significance).
Just provoking people probably holds little to no utility in terms of freedom of expression.
EquALLity wrote:All it is is assaulting a person for offending you... Aren't you anti-PC?
In a one on one conversation, there's a difference between disagreeing with a person's perspective or ideas, saying the person is mistaken, lying to his or herself/being intellectually dishonest/succumbing to bias or delusion, or offending an ideology, and outright saying that person specifically is being intentionally dishonest (to that person) which is one of the most useless things that can be said. If you think the person agrees with you and is just lying for some reason, why have the conversation? There's no reason other than provocation.
In a public context we can talk about the utility of shaming, and in those cases it's very possible people are lying -- and it can be useful if you catch somebody in a contradiction and can demonstrate it -- but one on one, calling somebody a liar has a very tenuous link to free speech, if any at all.
EquALLity wrote:I mean... You're literally advocating for unecessary violence here out of revenge.
You can't justify revenge morally.
It's not necessarily revenge, but revenge itself can be justified morally if it is proportional and serves social utility. As you said at the beginning: like to prevent deliberate provocation.
If you get punched in the face for behaving that badly, then perhaps it will discourage that unproductive behavior in the future.