A British woman, Ms. Vaughan-Spruce, has received 13,000 pounds in damages for wrongful arrest. She was charged with praying silently outside an abortion clinic which was closed. Had she committed a 'thought crime'? Was 'freedom of thought' no longer a fundamental right in the United Kingdom? The short answer is no. Parliament was seeking to prevent American style intimidation of those who work in, or use the services of, abortion clinic. The thing is a nuisance and should be curbed.
More broadly, is there any such thing as liberty of thought? No. It is like the liberty to dream or the freedom to imagine yourself as a leprechaun. Nobody can deprive you of it and pretending otherwise creates a nuisance.
John Stuart Mill wrote-
The disposition of mankind, whether as rulers or as fellow-citizens, to impose their own opinions and inclinations as a rule of conduct on others,
Mill is describing his own disposition. Plenty of rulers and fellow-citizens had no such desire.
is so energetically supported by some of the best and by some of the worst feelings incident to human nature, that it is hardly ever kept under restraint by anything but want of power; and as the power is not declining, but growing, unless a strong barrier of moral conviction can be raised against the mischief, we must expect, in the present circumstances of the world, to see it increase.
In other words, Mill was saying his contemporaries must expect him and his ilk to pose an increasing nuisance. But the barrier to this mounting nuisance wasn't 'moral conviction' or even convictions for gross immorality and indecency, it was ridicule or simply telling these cunts to fuck the fuck off.
It will be convenient for the argument, if, instead of at once entering upon the general thesis, we confine ourselves in the first instance to a single branch of it, on which the principle here stated is, if not fully, yet to a certain point, recognised by the current opinions.
In other words, after saying that what he was doing was a nuisance, Mill doubles down on committing that nuisance in an aggravated fashion.
This one branch is the Liberty of Thought: from which it is impossible to separate the cognate liberty of speaking and of writing.
Nobody knows what is going on in our minds though our employer may suspect we have let our thoughts wander rather than focus them on our work. We may be sacked if there is evidence that such is the case. Moreover, there are criminal offenses where evidence regarding our intention or frame of mind- albeit indirect and circumstantial- may yet secure our conviction. Speaking and writing are purposive and deliberate actions and may themselves be sufficient to convict us of wrongdoing.
It is only where nothing can be known about our thoughts and the context is not such that any law could be broken that we have an immunity. Otherwise, there is a test of 'reasonableness' absent which we may be convicted of a 'loitering with intent' type offense. In other words, the fact that we can think is enough by itself to reduce our immunity- id est liberty- in certain contexts and, moreover, there is an onus on us to be aware of this and to adjust our behaviour accordingly.
Although these liberties, to some considerable amount, form part of the political morality of all countries which profess religious toleration and free institutions,
political morality may condemn what is legally permissible and vice versa.
the grounds, both philosophical and practical, on which they rest, are perhaps not so familiar to the general mind, nor so thoroughly appreciated by many even of the leaders of opinion, as might have been expected.
Those grounds are familiar enough to us from early childhood. I may say 'you think I'm stupid!'. You reply 'I never said that. You did.' True, I may refuse to play with you but that is your look out. Neither jurisprudence nor political philosophy can further clarify matters.
Those grounds, when rightly understood, are of much wider application than to only one division of the subject, and a thorough consideration of this part of the question will be found the best introduction to the remainder.
Mill will pretend that intellectual creativity is linked to liberty of thought as though the vast majority of people weren't as stupid and boring as Mill himself. Moreover, intellectual creativity can find itself a market more particularly if it raises productivity. Otherwise, all that we have here is a nuisance.
Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion. The time, it is to be hoped, is gone by, when any defence would be necessary of the “liberty of the press” as one of the securities against corrupt or tyrannical government.
The time has indeed gone by when the press could be seen as anything but a prostitute. Almost a hundred years ago, Kipling supplied his cousin Baldwin with a line which went down in History- 'What the proprietorship of these papers is aiming at is power without responsibility—the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages'. As for tyrants, newspapers praise them to the skies if they genuinely are tyrants. It is only if they are no such thing that they will be termed so.
Let us suppose ...that the government is entirely at one with the people, and never thinks of exerting any power of coercion unless in agreement with what it conceives to be their voice. But I deny the right of the people to exercise such coercion, either by themselves or by their government.
Then you deny the people the right to defend and govern themselves. But if they already have it, your denial is ineffectual whereas if they don't have it, your denial is an endorsement of oppression.
The power itself is illegitimate.
Only in the sense that a fart is the bastard child of well-born fart connected to the Bishop of Bath & Wells on the distaff side.
The best government has no more title to it than the worst.
Unless such title is expressly supplied by a fart which is not illegitimately connected with at least one senior Anglican clergymen. The problem with ipse dixit assertions is that one is just as good as another.
It is as noxious, or more noxious,
than an illegitimate Anglican fart
when exerted in accordance with public opinion, than when in opposition to it.
Even if the whole world thinks raping babies is wrong, the worst possible crime would be to condemn the practice.
If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.
Except in the sense that the whole of mankind would be justified by the law, the justice system, and the proper working of political democracy whereas the guy who likes raping babies wouldn't be justified in any way. Also, his head would have been kicked in by his fellow convicts.
Were an opinion a personal possession of no value except to the owner; if to be obstructed in the enjoyment of it were simply a private injury, it would make some difference whether the injury was inflicted only on a few persons or on many. But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is,
the same as the peculiar evil of silencing my farts by ejecting me from the premises
that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it.
If only people could smell my farts, the tale of their smelliness would be passed down to posterity.
If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth:
No. If the thing has some intrinsic merit, somebody else will steal it or, in any case, it will be stumbled on by some one else.
If our real concern is truth and error, then we might want to subsidize bodies concerned with doing so. I suppose the patent office could work in this way as might the authorities concerned with licensing medicines or medical procedures and the like.
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.
It is enough to say 'this crazy dude has hit on something useful' for there to be an end to the matter. Utilitarianism can actually be a useful creed. It doesn't have to involve a noisome type of hysteria.
It is necessary to consider separately these two hypotheses, each of which has a distinct branch of the argument corresponding to it.
It is never necessary for us to waste our time.
We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavouring to stifle is a false opinion;
We can't be sure of that. It is a mere opinion.
and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.
But that evil may be a fairy who is secretly very good.
First: the opinion which it is attempted to suppress by authority may possibly be true.
Suppression may truly be possible if it is attempted by opinion. Alternatively, opinion truly may be possible suppression.
Those who desire to suppress it, of course deny its truth; but they are not infallible.
But those who desire its truth may deny it to suppress the not infallible.
They have no authority to decide the question for all mankind, and exclude every other person from the means of judging.
Nobody has the authority to make such a claim.
To refuse a hearing to an opinion, because they are sure that it is false, is to assume that their certainty is the same thing as absolute certainty.
No it isn't. It may merely be a case of having something better to do.
All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility.
Or just a case of wanting a bit of peace and quiet.
Its condemnation may be allowed to rest on this common argument, not the worse for being common. Unfortunately for the good sense of mankind, the fact of their fallibility is far from carrying the weight in their practical judgment which is always allowed to it in theory; for while every one well knows himself to be fallible, few think it necessary to take any precautions against their own fallibility, or admit the supposition that any opinion, of which they feel very certain, may be one of the examples of the error to which they acknowledge themselves to be liable.
Why entertain a proposition whose truth or falsity matters little to us? As for fallibility, that is no reason not to attempt to do what is useful.
Absolute princes, or others who are accustomed to unlimited deference, usually feel this complete confidence in their own opinions on nearly all subjects.
No. They consult experts or delegate matters if it is worth their while to do so.
People more happily situated, who sometimes hear their opinions disputed, and are not wholly unused to be set right when they are wrong, place the same unbounded reliance only on such of their opinions as are shared by all who surround them, or to whom they habitually defer; for in proportion to a man’s want of confidence in his own solitary judgment, does he usually repose, with implicit trust, on the infallibility of “the world” in general.
No. People don't give a fuck about stuff which does not concern them. They may indicate this by sticking with an opinion which annoys others to such an extent that they fuck the fuck off.
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