Mill §2 Pg 15-23
Conclusion:
People, whether on their own or through government intervention, should not be coerced or try to limit anyone's expression of opinion. Since by doing so is “robbing posterity as well as the existing generation” to include those who would have disagreed with said opinion. If the opinions are right it deprives people from disputing it, and if wrong it deprives what could have been learned from the error.
People, whether on their own or through government intervention, should not be coerced or try to limit anyone's expression of opinion. Since by doing so is “robbing posterity as well as the existing generation” to include those who would have disagreed with said opinion. If the opinions are right it deprives people from disputing it, and if wrong it deprives what could have been learned from the error.
“But the peculiar evil
of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the dissent
from the opinion, as well as the existing generation—those who dissent from the
opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are
deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; of wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit
the clearer perception and livelier
impression of truth produced by its collision with error.”
Premise:
1. What if the opinion is true, those who want to suppress it are not infallible and therefore “have no authority to decide for all mankind and exclude every other person from the means of judging” (pg 16).
a. All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility (pg17).
2. People are more happily situated, who sometimes hear their opinion disputed and are not wholly unused to be set right when they are wrong (pg 17).
3. To prohibit what they think pernicious is not claiming exemption from error, but fulfilling the duty incumbent on them… of acting on their conscious conviction (pg 18).
a. If we were never to act on our opinions, because those opinions may be wrong we should leave all
our interest uncared for, and all our duties unperformed (pg 18).
4. When opinion is true it is also our duty express it and the only way to know if said opinion is right is for it to be allowed to be disputed.
a. It is not conscientiousness but cowardice to shrink from acting on their opinion and allow doctrines
which they honestly think dangerous to the welfare of mankind (pg 18).
b. It is owning to the quantity of the human mind… that his errors are corrigible. He is capable of
rectifying his mistakes by discussion and experience. There must be discussion to show how experience
is to be interpreted (pg 19).
c. Wrong Opinions and practices gradually yield to fact and argument; but facts and argument, to
produce any effect on the mind, must be brought before it (pg 19).
5. When law or public feeling do not permit the truth of an opinion to be disputed, they are justly as little tolerant of a denial of its usefulness (pg 22).
a. The utmost they allow is an extenuation of its absolute necessity, or of the positive guilt of rejecting it
(pg 22).
Society is represented by the majority. If the majority wants to suppress a different opinion, it can do whatever it wants if there are no minority rights. “All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility.” If no one is infallible, the majority is not infallible. Thus, the majority has no right to suppress a different opinion. If they do suppress a different opinion, they act like what Mill claims them to be, “the tyranny of the majority.” Truth is most likely to emerge if there is a free market of ideas. Mill gives us two examples, Socrates and Jesus. These two examples prove that the majority is as fallible as any individual.
ReplyDeleteEven if the government didn't suppress opinions, opinions would still be suppressed in many social circles. For example, if a group of folks wanted to talk about ways to combat global warming, they wouldn't want a global warming denier in their discussion. If a christian group wanted to talk about the book of Genesis, they wouldn't want an Atheist in their discussion. Because we all have our own social circles that exclude certain people, the exchange and dialectic of ideas is not as easy as Mill would've hoped.
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ReplyDelete“…clearer perception and livelier impression of truth produced by its collision with error.”
ReplyDeleteThis phrase appears in the paragraph quoted from Mill. In your own words, the suppression of opinion “…deprives [us of] what could have been learned from the error.” I think this point might be made more explicit, especially because it is one of Mill’s more interesting insights.
Rather than “depriving what could have been learned from the error”, it might be better to say that a person or group is deprived of what could have been gained in virtue of having to truly believe, true belief being a condition which is brought out by being consciously aware of our choice of belief. In other words, when we are exposed to other opinions, even if our own be the truth, we are forced to consciously ascribe to the opinion we find most true, rather than simply adopting a truth as given. It is when we passively adopt a truth that it ceases to be as meaningful to us. In effect, we take this truth for granted, affirm it in speech and never think to act on it. We no longer feel the need to live by a truth when it is not contested.
Exposure to outside opinions prevents a truth from sinking into irrelevance by demanding that we not merely inherit the truth, but defend it as well. This act of constantly remaking the idea, or reinforcing it, in our minds, so as to fortify it against contrary opinions, makes this truth a more substantial part of our being. Mill uses the example of the contemporary and early Christians to illustrate this point. Far from their religious predecessors who were willing to die for the beliefs and ideals of Christianity, most contemporary churchgoers have adopted these beliefs in passing, accept them as undeniable truth, and go on to live lives guided solely by custom. The lack of a pressing demand to reaffirm these maxims of Christianity allows people to go through their lives without reflection on these principles. It is this lack of reflection and reaffirmation that has lead these truths to take on an shallow, illusory and tired quality in the contemporary mind, far from the energetic and lively place they used to hold when they were new and contested.