John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

A. Chapter I: Introduction

1. The main questions clarified

2. The thesis: intellectual and moral autonomy

3. Argumentative strategy: utility vs. other defenses

B. Chapter II: Liberty of Thought and Discussion

1. Argument One: on the assumption that the opinion to be suppressed is true for all we know

2. Objections to Argument One

3. Argument Two: on the assumption that the opinion to be suppressed is false

4. Discussion of Argument Two

C. Chapter III: Individuality as a Virtue

1. The general thesis

2. Explication of individuality

3. An ambiguity: Two strains of individuality

• 1. The main questions clarified


• The Main Questions:
  
  
• What are the nature and limits of the power that can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual? [p. 1]


• What sort of individuals should a liberal democratic society aim at producing?



• Clarifications:


• Scope = the formation and expression of opinions, as well as action on those opinions (including plan of life)


• Society = government and, in democracies, prevailing opinion, which can often interfere with both moral and intellectual autonomy

• 2. The thesis: intellectual and moral autonomy
  
  
  • Thesis:
    
    Statement 1: "The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with liberty of expression or action is to prevent harm to others." [p. 9]
  
  Statement 2: A person ought to be subject to social coercion only to prevent the violation of a "distinct and assignable obligation to another person or persons."
  
  
  
  • General Thrust:
  
  
  • Defense of intellectual and moral autonomy against authority, custom, preponderance of public opinion, tradition, etc. [pp. 5-6]
  
  
  • Cartesian-like optimism about reason, given ideal social conditions (which Mill claims to obtain to a sufficient degree in western democracies [p. 10])
  
  
  • Democratized Cartesian standards for reasonable opinions -- each person has the obligation to become his or her own "philosophical expert" on disputed moral, political, and metaphysical beliefs, and not simply to follow his or her own preferences, however he or she might have come by those preferences  [pp. 5-6]
    
    
    
  • Obvious questions:
    
    
  • How, if at all, does the main question concern the family and voluntary organizations such as political parties, universities, scientific communities, professional organizations, churches, businesses based on moral or social premises, etc., where expertise and/or communally defined first principles come into play? Is there a distinction between expelling someone who fails to meet certain voluntarily adopted standards of belief and action and suppressing such a person? [p. 9-10] Is a complete society itself a sort of voluntary organization with its own standards of orthodox belief? Can it be? (This relates to the last point) in this series.
    
    
  • What, exactly, counts as harm to others?  Physical harm alone?  Psychological harm as well?  Suppose that I am deeply offended by your insensitive remarks, be they personal, political, religious, moral, metaphysical, scientific, etc.  Does this count as harm in the relevant sense?  Always?  Ever?
    
    
  • Why is it that moral, political, religious, and metaphysical beliefs are the ones that come to the fore here? Can't scientific beliefs also come under dispute?
    
    
  • Is Mill assuming that ideal social conditions will include an active indifference toward -- or at least the privatization of -- the claims of competing "thick" visions of human flourishing?  (More on this when we get to chapter 3.)
    
    
  
  
  • Background questions with which this course has been concerned: The relation between (a) intellectual virtue and truth and between (b) moral virtue and happiness

• 3. Argumentative strategy: utility vs. other defenses [p. 10]
  
  
  • Alternatives:
  
  
  • Freedom or liberty of the sort in question as an abstract right of all 'mature' human beings [from a theory of natural rights or (perhaps) natural law]
  
  
  • Freedom or liberty as a demand of charity, i.e., supernatural love of God and neighbor [from Christian ethics]
  
  
  • Freedom or liberty as a prerequisite for human flourishing [from some theory of the good for human beings and concomitant account of the necessary conditions for the development of moral and intellectual virtue]
  
  
  
  • Utility:
  
  
  • The nature of utility: Whatever is conducive to the greatest happiness of the greatest number
  
  
  • Utilitariansim as a moral theory: No inviolable or absolute moral prohibitions -- (How about the thesis that society should never interfere with people's freedom except to prevent harm to others?)
  
  
  • Two possibilities:
  
  
  • Liberty benefits everyone directly
  
  
  • Liberty benefits an elite directly and everyone else indirectly

• 1. Argument One: on the assumption that the opinion to be suppressed is true for all we know [pp. 16-17]


(1) We should do all we can to ensure that we have true opinions rather than false opinions [premise]

(2) So no authority (political or broadly social) should ever suppress an opinion which for all it knows may be true. [from (1)]

(3) But no authority is infallible, i.e., every opinion O is such that for any authority A, O may be true for all A knows. [premise]

Therefore, no authority should ever suppress any opinion. [from (2) and (3)]




• 2. Objections to Argument One


• Objection 1: Premise (3) is not evidently true. Christian churches, for example, claim infallibility for at least some doctrines on the basis of Sacred Scripture and/or Tradition.  Another example is the way in which scientific communities tend to enforce 'orthodoxy' during periods of what Thomas Kuhn calls 'normal' (vs. revolutionary) science; see, e.g., the complaints about enforced orthodoxy in current particle physics by Lee Smolin in The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next. 


• Reply: The Chinese gambit [p. 17]


Question: What are we to say of the following inferences?


• I accept proposition p in circumstances c, but if I had been in circumstances c* instead, I would have accepted not-p; therefore, I should not now firmly adhere to p. [Story: Chamberlain, North Dakota and deviant Euclidean geometry]


• I accept p but some (many) other seemingly intelligent people accept not-p and neither side has reasons that convince the other; therefore, I should not now firmly adhere to p.  [Working back to first principles]



• Objection 2: The inference from (1) to (2) is invalid. For some opinions are both dangerous to society and such that we have a high degree of certitude that they are false. So all that follows from (1) is:


(2*) So no authority should ever suppress an opinion O unless O is both dangerous to society and such that we have a high degree of certitude that O is false.


• Reply: We are not entitled to any such certitude unless O is questioned constantly and left open to debate. [p. 19]


Nagging question: Why think that this procedure of questioning is always compatible with the project of truth-seeking entailed by premise (1)? It seems that it is thus compatible only on the moot assumption that there has been uniform intellectual and moral progress through the centuries, at least in Western societies.

Also, is it really the case that each individual is obliged to examine his or her beliefs in the way Mill urges? Is each person obliged to be a philosopher? What of those incapable of it, or too busy with other important affairs, or in any other way not well-positioned to carry out such inquiry? (Does this last question remind you of anything we've looked at previously?) From Mill's perspective, these are all lame excuses for not being intellectually autonomous.




• Objection 3: Premise (1) cannot be established by appeal to utility. There are some moral beliefs (e.g., in the inviolable dignity of each human being, and in the immorality of gratuitous harm to others and of such actions as, say, the killing of the innocent, rape and sexual assault, and child molestation) which are, even if false, beneficial to human society as a whole.


• Reply: The truth of an opinion is part of its utility: "In the opinion of the best men, no belief which is contrary to truth can be really useful" [p. 21] -- but against this: the sad saga of Sam the solitary sot and utilitarian reasoning


Return of the nagging question: Is consensus a criterion for truth, even given that the consensus emerges from the sort of open debate Mill envisions?



• 3. Argument Two: on the assumption that the opinion to be suppressed is false [p. 33ff.]


(1) If authority A suppresses opinion not-O, then O will be held as a dead dogma. [premise]

(2) It is bad for any true opinion to be held as a dead dogma. [premise]

Therefore, A should not suppress not-O



• 4. Discussion of Argument Two


• Statement of the main objection:


There is an equivocation on the notion of a dead dogma:


• Sense One: Opinion O is a dead dogma for person S = S believes O but does not have compelling arguments for O and does not know the arguments against O. [p. 35]


• Sense Two: Opinion O is a dead dogma for person S = S believes O, but S's belief in O has little or no effect on S's action or on S's life in general. [pp. 37-38]


The objector's claim is that on sense one, premise (1) is true but premise (2) is false,
and that on sense two, premise (2) is true, but premise (1) is false.



• Some questions prompted by Sense One:
  
  
  • Does investigating an opinion require, as a demand of intellectual virtue, a willingness to give up that opinion?
  
  
  • Do we all have a general obligation to "follow arguments wherever they lead"?
  
  
  • Might it ever be wicked -- intellectually or morally -- to raise doubts about a given opinion?
  
  
  • Does everyone have a duty -- intellectual or moral -- to find out all sides of every crucial question? (A worry about democratized Cartesianism) [pp. 35 and 36-37]
  
  
  • Does accepting an opinion on authority always violate intellectual responsibility? Where, after all, do "rebellious" anti-authoritarian opinions come from? From the "authority of reason"? From public opinion? From "my own authority," i.e., from what is clear to me? But why think that I as a limited individual with a particular history am better positioned to see the truth than any authority I reject? Are we back to Kant's "think for yourself," with all its ambiguities? (One might compare what Mill says here with the relevant sections of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America.)
    
    


• Some questions about intellectual virtue:
  
  
  • What are the demands of intellectual virtue?
  
  
  • What are the social conditions under which intellectual virtue can be fostered?
  
  
  • What is the connection between intellectual virtue and truth?

• 1. The general thesis:


Individuality is a necessary condition for human happiness or flourishing. So it should be encouraged and not suppressed.

Questions:

What is individuality?

Is this a controversial thesis?

• 2. Explication of individuality


1. Choosing one's own plan of life [p. 56]


2. Possessing and developing strong impulses and creative energy [p. 57]


3. Being willing to go against and rise above the "mass of mediocrity" [pp. 58-59]


4. Not being motivated by authority, even the authority of God [p. 59]


5. Being original and creative ..... the creative genius as an ideal of human flourishing [p. 62]
   



• 3. An ambiguity: Two strains of individuality


• Strain One: Individuality entails a rejection of (or at least a deep suspicion of) any claim to moral or intellectual authority. [p. 59] ........ The creative genius vs. the saint. (Is Mill's individual only a tame -- all too tame -- version of Nietzsche's free spirit?)


• Strain Two: Individuality entails only a willingness to resist common opinion as an agent of mediocrity. [p. 63] ........ This dovetails with, and does not conflict with, De Tocqueville's own worry about the simultaneously anarchic and repressive aspect of democratic regimes. And yet the two authors are miles apart in their views on moral and epistemic authority, where De Tocqueville sounds more like Plato or Aristotle or (God forbid) even Aquinas.