Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion (1869)
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Or that it is a slippery slope to that condition?
As many people have pointed out, it's actually vanishingly rare for people to get punished for unpopular opinions. In general you only get there if you are sincerely promoting genocide (e.g., Spencer), suggesting that not all humans are fit for freedom. (e.g., Moldbug), or that existing cohorts of people who very clearly were offered fair standards of grading are inferior (as Damore did even though he can't seem to come to terms with the real implications of what he wrote).
And these are "opinions" many people have and never get any sort of actual punishment or damage to themselves so long as they don't bring it into professional or policy environments where we have agreed it leads to discriminatory practices.
It's interesting how the rhetoric about "liberal feels" is so strong online when it's only said "feels" that make most people feel oppressed anyways.
"If the opinion is right, they [the human race] are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error."
He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little
of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been
able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute
the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as
know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either
opinion. The rational position for him would be suspension
of judgment, and unless he contents himself with that,
he is either led by authority, or adopts, like the generality
of the world, the side to which he feels most inclination.
This is a pretty solid argument for freedom of speech in the sense in which it is generally protected: as something that contributes to public dialogue in politics, the sciences and the arts.
Many things seem to be this but aren’t. Hate speech is not an opinion in this sense: it is not something presented as an argument or topic for discussion. You are either with the haters, or you are against them. Whether something is political speech or not depends very much on how it is offered to the public. The same idea — memory safety is a recent, innocuous example from this forum — can be a rallying cry for some and a point of discussion for others.
According to J.S. Mill, free speech should only be constrained to the extent that it violates what he calls the harm principle:
"The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others."
He makes a distinction between causing harm and causing offense. Revulsion, disgust, psychologically upsetting speech, discriminatory speech, insults and so forth fall under the latter category. Free speech which merely causes offense should not be prohibited according to Mill however controversial or contrary to social norms such speech is.
But how strong the definition of the "harm principle" should be is subject to debate.
Contrast for instance, screaming "Fire!!" in a theater - which might cause injury and death from a crowd stampede - with "All <insert_ethnic_group> are inherently inferior to <insert_other_ethnic_group>".
The difference between causing harm and offense is that harm is universally injurious, whereas as what causes offense is only experienced subjectively.
Although I find blatant hate speech detestable, there is a worrying trend where a majority of people consider hate speech to mean "anything that we disagree with". In our times, it is difficult to speak frankly or be a contrarian without being demonized. And this is precisely what J.S. Mill calls "tyranny of the majority" and consequentially what leads to loss of individuality in society.
"All <insert_ethnic_group> are inherently inferior to <insert_other_ethnic_group>"
It seems you understand the correct answer in accordance with Mill, but then willfully choose to ignore that answer since it differs with your personal value system.
To be very direct, hate speech does not violate the harm principle in the same immediacy or capacity as does yelling FIRE! in a crowded theater.
If J.S. Mill were here right now, he might concede that it is hard to find philosophical justification to treat the crime of yelling "FIRE" in a crowded movie theater differently than the crime of yelling "FIRE" in a crowded movie theater with the intent of killing people of a specific ethnic background...
No writer in the 19th century could have conceived of what "speech" would mean 150 years later in the context of instant worldwide communication. But Mill would not have trouble classifying the expression of certain opinions in certain contexts as causing harm. There is no major logical twist required to "infringe" on liberty in the case of hate speech, and remain consistent with Mill's writings.
That completely ignores many of the concepts addressed in chapter 2. If you have to discern harm from context and then use that to classify speech in such a way that it can (or could be) silenced you are violating liberty, according to Mill. Harmful speech is not the same as offensive speech. The difference is the cause of injury. Does the speech itself produce the injury or does it manifest derivative responses that are injurious, such as a fist punch?
> If J.S. Mill were here right now, he might concede that it is hard to find philosophical justification to treat the crime of yelling "FIRE" in a crowded movie theater differently than the crime of yelling "FIRE" in a crowded movie theater with the intent of killing people of a specific ethnic background...
Not relevant. The intent is to kill people either way.
> But Mill would not have trouble classifying the expression of certain opinions in certain contexts as causing harm.
Mill's writing absolutely disagrees with this. Read chapter 4. He provides specific examples.
Exactly, when there was always intent to harm, it is easy to see how speech causes harm.
> The difference is the cause of injury. Does the speech itself produce the injury or does it manifest derivative responses that are injurious, such as a fist punch?
You are contradicting yourself. The word "FIRE" isn't causing direct injury, it manifests derivative responses that involve people getting hurt.
> Mill's writing absolutely disagrees with this. Read chapter 4. He provides specific examples.
Okay, I re-read chapter 4. None of the examples justify this reading. Mill is far more focused on private behavior than public speech in that chapter. He thinks polygamy is bad because it subjugates women, but at the time Mormons literally fled the country to the Utah desert, so he has a hard time justifying why an American would call for interference with the ostensibly consensual polygamy of the early Mormon Church.
Nowhere does Mill suggest that speech can't cause harm.
Fortunately, courts in the US do not have trouble discerning this difference.
We should also recognise that the reasonable apprehension of harm is often an allowable basis for an action in law. For example, to assault someone is to present them with a clear threat of harm, whereas battery is to actually carry through with the harm.
Defamation (libel, slander) is recognised to be a problem for a similar reason. If someone presents misleading and disparaging things about me to the public, of course people are free not to believe it and it may be that nothing will happen; but I very reasonably fear damage to my career and social status. We recognise defamation as a crime even when no harm has been demonstrated to occur.
Does hate speech cause harm? Not directly, since sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me. Like defamation, however, it can mislead to a point where people reasonably expect injury to their career or social standing; and like assault, it can constitute a threat of bodily or other harm. Many of the people who push agendas of hatred are little interested in the outcome of the democratic process or in dialogue with the people they hate — they just want those people excluded (or deported or worse).
We live in a time, unfortunately, where we aren’t all working together with a good solid understanding of “public dialogue”, “harm” and “the threat of harm”.
People feeling bad is not harm; but often that is close by. The absence of injury does not mean we can ignore the possibility of it.
On the other hand, though, if we can’t see a concrete harm that (a) has occurred or (b) is clearly in the offing — if all there is, is some hurt feelings — then a restriction of speech would constitute an offence against a person’s rights.
Does that claim apply to itself? I.e., what if I were to claim the negation of that?
I enjoyed this segment:
Do the fruits of conquest perish by the very completeness of the victory?
I affirm no such thing. As mankind improve, the number of doctrines which are no longer 32
disputed or doubted will be constantly on the increase: and the well-being of mankind may
almost be measured by the number and gravity of the truths which have reached the point
of being uncontested.I think there are some authoritarian leftist activists, but I doubt it's a particularly representative sample of the overall category you're thinking of when you mention leftist activists. I think you're just drawing the wrong conclusions from whatever you've read of Mill. Section 44 from the essay:
Undoubtedly the manner of asserting an opinion, even though it be a true one, may be
very objectionable, and may justly incur severe censure. But the principal offences of the
kind are such as it is mostly impossible, unless by accidental self-betrayal, to bring home
to conviction. The gravest of them is, to argue sophistically, to suppress facts or
arguments, to misstate the elements of the case, or misrepresent the opposite opinion.
---
[...] Mill should be taken holistically -- he's a Utilitarian[1], and is firmly committed to his version of the principle of utility (the "Greatest Happiness Principle"). Reading a practical prescription of free speech as a moral (or even lesser, legal) prescription would lead to a contradiction in any circumstance where the GHP says that restricting speech would promote happiness (e.g., where incitement leads to murder).
[1]: Specifically, on my interpretation, he's an act utilitarian. I've seen him read as an rule utilitarian (and parts 4 and on of his Utilitarianism can support that reading), but his first formulation of the GHP is pretty unambiguous:
> [...] actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness [...]
---
This is a tension that is frequently pointed out in academic philosophy in Mill's works -- he switches between principles and actions frequently, and contradicts himself by valuing free speech qua principle rather than means.
[0] https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-columbus-arg...
Stephen faults Mill's logic in talking about a turning point for pre-civil societies. "Until then, there is nothing for them but implicit obedience to an Akbar or a Charlemagne if they are so fortunate as to find one." But Stephen makes it pretty clear that he disagrees with every word of Mill's Subjection of Women. Page 217 where he articulates his belief that wives should defer to husbands in all family questions, like a lieutenant to the captain of the ship...
Stephen was writing 3 years after ratification of the 15th Amendment, and 47 years before ratification of the 19th Amendment. From 2017, it might not be clear what David Stove writing for Commentary in 1987 thought of as an unfashionable side of an argument, but... Stephen makes it pretty clear that his core disagreement with Mill, is about equality for women. (And what that meant in 1873.)
He also wrote a book, Popper and After: Four Modern Irrationalists[2], (i.e. Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend) reprinted as Anything Goes: Origins of the Cult of Scientific Irrationalism, about what he saw as perhaps a similar 20th C crazy free-for-all trend in philosophy of science.
[0] http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/sydq.html
This chapter was almost certainly posted in the context of Sam Altman's recent blog post[0], which itself echoes an essay Paul Graham wrote a decade or so ago.[1] But there's a more immediate connection between Sam Altman's essay and the essay James Damore circulated at Google.
I was very interested in reading Stephen's "contemporary conservative" reaction to Mill, and wanted to place it within the timeline of human culture that I could understand: just a few years after the abolition of slavery and recognition of voting rights for black men in the United States, but a couple of generations before voting rights for women.
So, Altman is writing about unpopular opinions a few months after Damore is fired from Google for circulating a set of opinions, emphasizing that men and women are fundamentally different. A century and a half ago, J.F. Stephen's most substantial disagreement with J.S. Mill's treatise on liberty is... Mill's advocacy to fundamentally alter society to treat men and women equally in the name of justice.
Despite what Professor Stove said in 1987, Mill's opinion was the unpopular one in 1873.
Yeah, I know that PG essay well - I'm a huge fan of his essays (especially the non-startup/programming ones).
Ohh of course - someone else tried to explain for the (U.S.) users why 1869 was so different from 1859 - I must remember tech people mostly live in the 21st C hehe. I seem to have more favourite writers from the 19th C than any other century, and have spent a lot of time living there and getting to know it (e.g. Hazlitt, Emerson, Ruskin, Nietzsche, Wilde, Stevenson, W James, Kierkegaard, Thoreau)
I'll have to read Stephen's book again, I read it about 25 years ago. Also, Mill worshipped his wife. I mean really worshipped her. Some of the things he said about her were pretty over-the-top, even for someone madly in love. From memory, didn't they co-write On Liberty? Maybe he got all his 'advanced' ideas from her. His Autobiography is fascinating.
Also, speaking of treatment of women, I can't read about 'experiments in living' without recalling the horrific chapter on Shelley in Paul Johnson's Intellectuals.
The interesting bit is that historically the strength of sainthood has been tied to the conviction of the advocate for the devil, not the quality of the advocate for the saint.
It's an excellent read, and is the foundation of a lot of quotes on philosophy of government that Americans will be familiar with, but perhaps unsure of the source. A really foundational book.