The Suppression of Dissent From Truth

Have You Thanked a Disinformationist Today?

This is Part 3 in a four-part series on the suppression of speech in America. In Part 1, I argued that this previously unimaginable sea change in our national ethos has been largely predicated on the assertion that disinformation is endangering our society, and that the suppression of speech is therefore necessary for our safety. However, this assertion is refuted by John Stuart Mill’s defense of free speech in Chapter 2 of On Liberty, where he demonstrates that harm comes not from unfettered speech, but from the suppression of the same. In Part 2, we considered the suppression of a true opinion, i.e. a dissent from a received opinion that is false. In this post, we’ll look at Mill’s consideration of the opposite situation, the suppression of a viewpoint that is falsely impugning a received opinion that is in fact true.

This branch of his argument is perhaps not as intuitive as what we saw in Part 2. It’s one thing to argue that society is harmed by the suppression of truth, but can we argue just as strongly against the suppression of viewpoints that are false? Mill asserts exactly that, arguing that even the suppression of false opinions is harmful to society. In fact, he goes further, arguing that the publication of false opinions should not merely be tolerated, but that it is itself a positive good in a well-ordered society. Far from silencing people who promote false opinions, we should thank them for the valuable service they’re performing!

A Pyrrhic Victory

The essence of Mill’s argument is that in the absence of counter-arguments, true opinions can neither be properly argued nor sincerely held. Even if someone is “implacably convinced” of the truth of his opinion, if arguments against it are not “fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed” it will come to be held as a dead dogma. Through free and open questioning of a belief, one gains a firm grasp of the grounds for it, apart from which one is “unable to make a tenable defense of it against the most superficial objections.” The suppression of dissent may indeed prevent an opinion from being rejected. But it forestalls only such rejection that would come by means of a just and rational argument.

[It] may still be rejected rashly and ignorantly; for to shut out discussion entirely is seldom possible, and when it once gets in, beliefs not grounded on conviction are apt to give way before the slightest semblance of an argument.

To the extent the conviction remains, it exists only as a prejudice, a belief held apart from argument.

This is not the way in which truth ought to be held by a rational being. This is not knowing the truth. Truth, thus held, is but one superstition the more, accidentally clinging to the words which enunciate a truth.

If there is one thing more important than another in the cultivation of understanding, “it is learning the grounds for one’s own opinions.” He who knows only his side of a case does not know it as he ought. His reasoning may be sound, and it may be that no one is able to refute him. But if he cannot refute the reasons of those who argue against him, if he does not even know what they are, what ground does he have for asserting a belief on one side or the other? Nor is it enough to have a second-hand account of the arguments against his beliefs.

He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for them. He must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form; he must feel the whole force of the difficulty which the true view of the subject has to encounter and dispose of; else he will never really possess himself of the portion of truth which meets and removes that difficulty.

Mill thus exposes the facile and disingenuous argument of the censor, who would have us believe that truth must be protected by encasing it in armor through which logic and argument may not pass. Exposing true beliefs to free and open debate will strengthen and preserve them. Isolating them from challenge and dissent will drain the lifeblood from them, and they will eventually pass through neglect into irrelevance, if not outright rejection.

Fight or Fade Away

As bad as it is to lose our grasp of the grounds for truths asserted in the public square, this is not the extent of the harm done. Beyond the “intellectual evil” of losing our ability to articulate reasons for our beliefs, the substance of our beliefs is threatened as well.

The fact, however, is, that not only the grounds of the opinion are forgotten in the absence of discussion, but too often the meaning of the opinion itself. The words which convey it, cease to suggest ideas, or suggest only a small portion of those they were originally employed to communicate. Instead of a vivid conception and a living belief, there remain only a few phrases retained by rote.

Mill argues that there is a principal discoverable in the history of nearly all ethical doctrines and religious creeds, that the cessation of free and open challenging of a belief is an inflection point marking its decline and possibly its eventual extinction. The meaning and significance of a belief is held with undiminished strength so long as the struggle for its acceptance and dominance continues. But then at some point, the creed either prevails and takes its place as one of the general received opinions of a society, or its progress stops. As the need or desire to defend the belief slowly fades away, so does its power in the lives of its adherents. There comes a point when those who hold the belief have generally inherited it rather than adopted it. They are little concerned with arguments against it, nor with those who present them.

From this time may usually be dated the decline in the living power of the doctrine. We often hear the teachers of all creeds lamenting the difficulty of keeping up in the minds of believers a lively apprehension of the truth which they nominally recognise, so that it may penetrate the feelings, and acquire a real mastery over the conduct. No such difficulty is complained of while the creed is still fighting for its existence.

A hereditary creed, received passively and not actively, gradually ceases to exercise the mind, and it insensibly loses its power in the lives of those who profess to believe it. Holding on to its formularies, giving it a “dull and torpid assent”, and accepting it merely on trust from authority, they maintain it as a sinecure. They cling to it formally, perhaps even zealously. But it is largely disconnected from their inner life, the primary feature of their existence that distinguishes them from the animals.

Then are seen the cases, so frequent in this age of the world as almost to form the majority, in which the creed remains as it were outside the mind, encrusting and petrifying it against all other influences addressed to the higher parts of our nature; manifesting its power by not suffering any fresh and living conviction to get in, but itself doing nothing for the mind or heart, except standing sentinel over them to keep them vacant.

What is to be done?

“But what!” Mill exclaims in rhetorical alarm.

Is the absence of unanimity an indispensable condition of true knowledge? Is it necessary that some part of mankind should persist in error, to enable any to realise the truth? Does a belief cease to be real and vital as soon as it is generally received—and is a proposition never thoroughly understood and felt unless some doubt of it remains? As soon as mankind have unanimously accepted a truth, does the truth perish within them? The highest aim and best result of improved intelligence, it has hitherto been thought, is to unite mankind more and more in the acknowledgment of all important truths: and does the intelligence only last as long as it has not achieved its object? Do the fruits of conquest perish by the very completeness of the victory?

He affirms no such thing, he assures us.

As mankind improve, the number of doctrines which are no longer 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.

We can be thankful for the increasing number of relatively uncontested doctrines, but there is nevertheless something lost in the course of this increase. Although the loss does not outweigh the benefit, it is to be deplored nevertheless. And remedied, if possible.

Where this advantage can no longer be had, I confess I should like to see the teachers of mankind endeavouring to provide a substitute for it; some contrivance for making the difficulties of the question as present to the learner's consciousness, as if they were pressed upon him by a dissentient champion, eager for his conversion. But instead of seeking contrivances for this purpose, they have lost those they formerly had.

Mill is referring here to the Socratic dialogs of Plato, negative discussions, as it were, of the great questions of human life

…directed with consummate skill to the purpose of convincing any one who had merely adopted the commonplaces of received opinion, that he did not understand the subject—that he as yet attached no definite meaning to the doctrines he professed.

The disputations of the Scholastic philosophers during the Middle Ages constitute another example, “intended to make sure that the pupil understood his own opinion, and (by necessary correlation) the opinion opposed to it, and could enforce the grounds of the one and confute those of the other.”

Modern man has largely lost this ability, Mill asserts, and the current fashion is to disparage “negative logic”, the practice of pointing out weaknesses in opposing positions. Although this would not serve us well as en end in itself, it is indispensable as a means to better grasping and maintaining the positive beliefs we affirm.

We’ve lost the ability to see both sides of an argument, and—what is far more damaging—we’ve lost a sense of why this is even important or desirable. Having become blinded to the intellectual poverty we’ve brought on ourselves, we throw up our hands in exasperation and despair at the fragmentation of our political discourse and the accelerating disintegration of the institutions that once mediated and thereby defined our greatness. We fail to see that it is our narrow philosophical outlook and solipsistic manner of disputation that binds us ever more steadfastly to this state of affairs.

Not what we’re doing

It’s beyond the scope of this article to explore how we might re-capture this lost art of disputation, how we might learn once again to benefit from the thrust and parry of rigorous debate. At any rate, we’re not in a position to even contemplate such an advance, because we are still in headlong retreat. The censor does not merely veto our adoption of Socratic methods, he seeks to forcibly remove from us the very possibility of doing so.

Words are dangerous, we are told, and that is undoubtedly true. Those claiming to protect us from the harm they may do have based their assertions on false premises, as shown above. But with the help of Mill, we’ve seen that even if we accept their premise, that false opinions can be reliably identified, the suppression of the same does incalculable and lasting harm. Those claiming to protect us are not the shepherds they pretend to be, but wolves crouching at our door.

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We’ve considered now the first two of Mill’s three mutually exclusive premises, the suppression of true and of false opinions. In the final post of this series, we’ll examine the third of these premises, when the opinion to be suppressed is partially true and partially false.