JURiiiS!

Or… Why John Terry is accidentally right, but only because Robbie Savage says the same stupid thing all the time undermining his own ability to say manifestly true things!

That certain people are greater theoretical authorities on certain things is self-evident: one’s expertise makes it more credible that one’s statements will be true, although it does not of course determine their correctness, at least in general. However, the proposition that someone has less moral authority than others to make certain (true) statements appears on its face to be ridiculous. This is because it is ridiculous. It is, that is, unless the person making that statement has done something when has reduced or undermined their own moral authority to do so, regardless of whether what they say is true.

An interesting philosophical question was posed recently in the rather silly world of rent-a-quote football punditry. Robbie Savage is a retired player who once divided opinion but who was a phenomenally entertaining and committed player, particularly during his time at the heart of Martin O’Neill’s brilliant Leicester team of the late 1990s and early 2000s where he was, deservedly, a cult hero. His punditry, however, generally manages to be both abysmally un-insightful and surprisingly controversial, which is a particularly impressive combination when you think about it.

Now, whether you like football or not, you might be interested in how a recent controversy about some of his criticism of another controversial football figure raises interesting questions about who has the ‘right’ to say things which are true, and whether the identity of people saying things makes them true. These are things which, I would like to think, transcend football, while not quite being as important as football, as Bill Shankly would surely have said.

The basic issue is as follows (I oversimplify the details at times to demonstrate the problem, but, as they say in Jamaica, if it nah go so, it go near so): John Terry, former captain of England and Chelsea’s most successful, and arguably best, ever player and has been playing badly recently, as have Chelsea in general. The whole thing has been not exactly like a car crash, but more like the slow descent in reverse of a very expensive sports car which has had the handbrake left off while parked on a hill, the car being repeatedly bashed into worse and worse shape as it gently but firmly crashes into bins, other cars, lampposts, skips and other street furniture, leaving a once shiny, expensive specimen looking like an overpriced piece of junk damaged beyond repair. Now, this is not a secret. Everyone knows that Chelsea and John Terry have been terrible this season. They easily won the championship last year and are now only outside the relegation zone because of the combined efforts of Sunderland, Newcastle and Villa to be worse, which is impressive, and due to the fact that Bournemouth have clearly pissed of the Gods by wrecking their accumulator bet coupons in the first weeks of the season and have had all their best players struck down by basically the same ailment. In short, Chelsea and John Terry are playing crap.

Now, Robbie Savage is paid by several media outlets to provide what one might call ‘critique’ of recent football events. He has recently opined, in a rare instance of clarity, that John Terry has not been playing well. Everyone else has opined the same thing on other TV channels, on the radio and in all newspapers. They have opined it basically because it is true. Now, they may also have particularly enjoyed opining it, as there seems to be some animosity towards John Terry in the ‘football family’ on a personal level. I really have no idea why, unless you count that. Oh and that. And that. Anyway, John Terry, and this is the important bit, has been crap recently.

So there we have it. Something is true. A man who is paid to point out things of that nature points out that said thing is true. Not a controversial thing, right? Wrong. John Terry recently demonstrated rare philosophical depths by questioning the unproblematic nature of this seemingly uncontroversial set of linked facts and assertions.

John Terry’s response to Robbie Savage was not to say, for instance, ‘I don’t agree with Robbie Savage. His appraisal of my performances is inaccurate: it is the higher line which we have been playing in defence which has left us more exposed, in particular the slow players like me and Ivanovic. Although the team has played poorly, this is not down to me.’ This would probably have had an ounce of truth. He also did not say, ‘Savage is spot on. I have been poor recently on several levels and deserve particular criticism. During moments of collective failure, those of more experience and skill have to take more individual responsibility for everyone’s errors and, indeed, their own individual errors,’ which would have contained several tonnes of truth. Instead he tried to draw some complex distinctions, ingenious in their intricacies, between the truth of statements and the right of certain people to utter them. He said, and I paraphrase only very slightly, ‘It is true that I have been playing badly but Robbie Savage has no right to say it.’ Just to bring the point home, he then listed the people who did have the right to say it: Gary Neville, Jamie Carragher and Rio Ferdinand. I am not sure whether this is a finite list, or merely a list of examples of the type of person who is allowed to point out his recent crapness. The clear line between who does and who does not have this right is not clear. Robbie Savage is on the ‘does not’ side of the line, however.

The reason for this seems to be that Savage was not a good enough player to entitle him to make such a point: that only people in a certain exalted categories are somehow ‘allowed’ to address John Terry’s poor performance. In essence, because Robbie Savage was not an exceptional player, he has no right to point out that John Terry is not playing exceptionally. Now, the apparent logical errors in this statement are manifest of course. It is clear that anyone can point out anything, in particular if they are able to demonstrate, in some way, its manifest truth. This must surely be the case regardless of whether one is a leading exponent or expert in one’s field. This can be seen in philosophy when a young upstart demonstrates the clear flaws in a famous philosopher’s theories. When the famous philosopher responds by saying that the challenger does not possess the gravitas or authority to question his respected ideas, this is in fact a sign that the challenger has won, the old timer merely looking stupid. This is, of course, the great democratic and meritocratic nature of what we might call ‘science’ in the broadest sense: while knowledge is something which is collectively constructed, and thus shaped by power for good or bad, anyone can in theory add to it or challenge its assumptions if their ideas are clearly enough presented. Robbie Savage himself is in fact a perfect illustration of this in a very different context. When he was interviewed by one of my favourite journalists, Barney Ronay, Ronay quite patronisingly sought to belittle Robbie Savage’s assertion that he was against war by questioning Savage whether he knew what the causes of various wars over the past several centuries had been. When Savage replied that he did not, Ronay rather presumptuously asked whether Savage could legitimately therefore claim to be against war, if he did not even know the cause of, for instance, the Boer War. In the deftest of ripostes, Savage said, ‘Because my brother is in the army and he’s been in Afghanistan and he’s seen what’s happening out there. So I just think war is wrong.’ Take that, Ronay, and your Oxford degree.

Anyone would seem to possess the moral right to utter statements – their validity, as a general rule, does not depend on who utters them but on their content. The validity of the content of a statement, in general terms at least, is therefore what we might call ‘speaker-independent’. In particular, the truth of a statement does not generally depend on whether one embodies the same qualities which one expects of the object of discussion. When a quantum physicist points out the fact that the laws of subatomic physics mean that things can simultaneously be in two different states at once, it is not a valid rebuttal to point out that the scientist cannot make such a claim because she is not capable of being in two different states simultaneously.

This is not universally true, of course. In certain contexts, one does seem to have more legitimacy in making assertions. The sentence, ‘I have a headache’ is relatively uncontroversial. If I say that Robbie Savage has a headache, I cannot really know this as it is a statement about his physical experience which he has exclusive access to – unless I have very good reasons for thinking this, I have less prima facie legitimacy in saying it. Is Robbie Savage excluded from knowledge of Terry’s perfomances and their quality? Plainly not. The fact that John Terry does not think Robbie Savage was a very good player is irrelevant of course. José Mourinho was an even worse player, but one assumes that Terry has spent much of his career taking Mourinho seriously. It is important to realise what Terry was saying. He was absolutely not saying that we should not believe Savage because Savage is not a theoretical authority (ie expert) on this area and therefore he is likely to be wrong. It is not therefore equivalent to saying, for instance, that we should not listen to climate change denying scientists, because their scientific credentials, funding, motives and scientific methods are questionable. What he was saying was that Savage was saying something that was true, just that he did not have the moral authority to say it. It is therefore more equivalent to saying that scientists do not have the right to question climate change orthodoxy because they have not published as many brilliant papers in the past as some other scientists for example. The second position is clearly absurd on its face. In very simple terms, John Terry has said something quite plainly nonsensical.

And yet… Here is the twist: John Terry is right. Well, kind of. Robbie Savage does not have the right to say it, or at least, he might not have the right to say it, given certain statements he himself has made in the past. It is in fact true that one might have less moral authority than others to make certain statements which are identical in content and therefore equally ‘correct’. There are many circumstances in which we take umbrage at the moral right of one person to make a particular statement, and not because of the incorrectness of the statement, but precisely because of the identity of the speaker.

Here are some imaginary examples involving John Terry. Say Chelsea are playing against Leicester City and are under sustained pressure. Leicester get a corner and Terry is about to head it clear. ‘Keeper!’ comes the familiar call from Asmir Begovic, the Chelsea goalkeeper. Terry assumes that this means that Begovic is going to catch the ball and thus ducks out of the header. Instead, Begovic is beaten to the ball by Wes Morgan, the Leicester centreback, who heads into an empty net. Begovic shouts angrily at Terry, ‘You should have just f***ing headed that clear!’ Terry, understandably shoots Begovic an extremely dirty look. ‘F*** off. Why did you f***ing call for it then?’ Terry replies. It is an accurate statement to say that Terry should have headed the ball clear. Had he done so, Chelsea would have cleared the ball and Leicester would not have scored. You can take it from me that this is accurate, as I have invented all the happenings in this particular match. The point here of course is that Begovic has no real moral authority to tell Terry that he should have cleared the ball, although it is true in some sense. Because it was Begovic who directly and wilfully caused Terry not to do so. Who is he, therefore, as the saying goes, to tell Terry that he should have cleared the ball?

Leicester then go 2-0 up. Then, minutes later they are on the attack again. In a characteristic moment of incisive play, Riyad Mahrez drops deep from the number 10 role he is playing in to receive the ball, and John Terry, who is marking Mahrez, follows him. Exploiting the gap which Terry has left by following Mahrez towards midfield, the Leicester player quickly flicks the ball into the space previously occupied by Terry which he knows Jamie Vardy, the Leicester striker, will be moving into. Vardy collects the ball in space, exploiting the large gap now between the other centreback and the Chelsea fullback, heads towards goal and scores, putting Leicester 3-0 up. Terry’s centreback partner, Gary Cahill, angrily shouts at Terry, ‘You should not have followed Mahrez back into midfield, leaving that gap for Vardy to exploit.’ This is an accurate statement. Terry might reasonably have sought to pass the player onto a Chelsea midfielder. However, John Terry might reasonably respond, ‘F*** you Cahill. Who are you to tell me to hold my position when you were dragged right out of position in the same way for Leicester’s second goal?’ at which point Gary Cahill would probably have to shut up. Who is he indeed? Having made the same error so recently, he would have less moral authority to make the utterly correct statement than, say, pretty much anyone else in the stadium.

There are circumstances therefore where we reasonably feel that people have less of a right to say certain things, regardless of the statement’s objective truth. However, John Terry has made a category error it would seem in the case of Robbie Savage. It is not because one has more supposed expertise in one area that someone is else morally less entitled to point out your manifest lack of expertise or application thereof. Indeed, when the little boy in The Emperor’s New Clothes points out the King’s nakedness, it is precisely the lack of hierarchical status and lack of respect for such social conventions which allows the boy to see, and therefore express, the reality of the situation. But anyone had the moral right to point out he was naked. Well, anyone except the crooked tailors of course – they had reduced their moral authority to make such statements.

Why is John Terry right, therefore? He is right for the very same reason he is wrong, paradoxically enough – because the moral right to say something objectively true does not depend on who says it. Not, we have discovered here, unless that person has already undermined their moral authority for some other reason. It just so happens that Robbie Savage has spent much of his punditry career doing just this. Robbie Savage is the sometime host of a longstanding call-in radio show 6-0-6 on BBC Five Live. These days this once great and revolutionary show basically involves fans who have not yet discovered the internet getting angry about the performances of referees and players. Robbie Savage on occasion will tell callers that because they have not played the game to a high enough level they are not speaking from a position of authority and are therefore wrong and/or have no right to make the point they are making. Savage, on the other hand, has played football and therefore does possess this authority. This has even been called ‘Savage’s Law’ by one online wag.

Well, we have already demonstrated the general falsehood in Savage’s law: the validity of a statement is generally speaker-independent, and the moral authority to make such statements is equally speaker-independent, unless the speaker himself has done something to alter this basic starting point. It seems therefore that Robbie Savage has himself created one such situation: by claiming that people with an inferior level of football skill or professional achievement have less of a right to discuss footballing matters, independent of the truth of their assertions, he is creating the very situation which means that I, or anyone else, can say to Savage, who are you to tell John Terry that he is no good, when you yourself tell callers to your show that they are in no position to pass judgment on football players of superior skill. Maybe this is what John Terry meant, but was pushed for time. In addition he knows that great intellects such as Carra and Neville would never compromise their moral authority to make accurate statements of truth.

The ramifications and broader points for thought and contemplation.

The question of ‘who has the right’ to say certain things is in fact a very common question in public discourse and political debate. It arises in many circumstances and causes great consternation on a cultural, social, political and legal level. It is not simply limited to comments about the performance of over-sensitive footballers. The question often arises in terms of who has the moral right to use certain language, or to make certain comments or jokes about certain situations, people or events. The ostensible thesis in the first half of the piece here is that anyone has the ‘right’ to say things which are true. However, things are more complex once we scratch the surface, as we have seen here. This piece has suggested that people who change their own moral legitimacy to say certain things by prior action might have limited their moral ability to then say certain things, regardless of how true they are. However, there are several other factors which are often claimed to be relevant which go beyond the consequences of individuals’ action, an idea which then aggrieves certain people who feel that their right to say things they would like to say has been reduced for no discernible reason connected to their own behaviour. The obvious example here is the use of racially-charged language, which due to historical usage of the terminology coupled with historical societal injustices, makes the use of that language questionable regardless of the intention of the user. However, such terms of often, re-appropriated and used even as terms of empowerment.

However, in the famous and controversial case of what has ubiquitously become known as the n-word, the idea which is often put forward is that certain people have more right to use this term than others. For the precise contours of this debate, see the famous, and hilarious, Chris Rock take on things. But how can one person have more of a moral right than another to use certain language? Well, in very simple terms language is a cultural artefact which is uttered in a cultural context which gives that language meanings beyond those simply intended by the speaker. One might even say that this is the very basis of the comprehensibility of language. Of course, such boundaries and meanings are fluid and changing, and how much we should enforce these through law, for instance, is a further, and much more complex question. Nonetheless, we all use these kinds of trope on occasion: the idea that certain people who have gone through certain experiences or come from a certain background might have more of a ‘right’ to make jokes about those things than others who have not gone through them, at least certain types of joke, is asserted relatively often. Again we see the moral right to make identical statements seems to shift based on factors beyond the direct control of the individual herself. Who can make jokes about whose mum is also a common source of consternation.

What about the law in this area? The law in many legal systems protects people against slanderous, libellous or defamatory statements, but how should it distinguish between those statements which are permitted and those which are not? Is the truth of a statement the key thing? While the substantial truth of the content of what one says might be one key element in this regard in the law, it is not necessarily determinant in all circumstances. Some statements about people might incur legal liability regardless of their truth, seemingly reifying the idea that some people have less of a right to make statements whose content is identical to statements made by others which incur no such liability.

Question for discussion, therefore: Do certain people have less of a moral right to say certain things for reasons not connected to the ‘truth’ or validity of the statement?
Further reading:

Some of this area is connected to a discussion often referred to by the shorthand ‘tu quoque’ – the question of whether pointing out the hypocrisy of the speaker absolves you of moral blame or undermines the truth of the speaker’s statement or their right to say it. Of course, as the discussion above has shown, the question is in fact rather broader.

A more nuanced and contextualised version of this discussion, demonstrating its practical relevance can be found in:

Cohen G, ‘Casting the First Stone: Who Can, and Who Can’t, Condemn the Terrorists?’ (2006) 81 Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 113

This is a brilliant work of philosophy by the exceptional, exceptionally funny, and sadly missed Jerry Cohen.

Available online for free at: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/TerroristsCohenJerry.html
(This is also on a very emotive topic – reader beware)

See Cohen again, specifically on ‘tu quoque’, in ‘Ways of Silencing Critics’ in GA Cohen Finding Oneself in the Other (Princeton UP 2013)

On the law:
RA Duff, ‘Blame, Moral Standing and the Legitimacy of the Criminal Trial’ (2010) 23 Ratio 123

Some non-academic sources:

Gary Andrews, ‘You don’t need to have played football at the highest level to understand it’ The Guardian Online, 21 July 2013 http://gu.com/p/3gmeb/sbl

Chris Rock, ‘Can white people say n*****? And the correct answer is NOT REALLY,’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v56A46P93eg