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Prof. Turner
Philosophy 338
12/7/2021
The extent of a government’s reach into private life has been debated and
philosophers ranging from the antiquities to the modern times. One of those
influential philosophers was John Stuart Mill whose “On Liberty” was a monumental
piece of literature which progressed the discussion on personal liberties and where
the limits for government influence lie. Through out “On Liberty” Mill seemed to
sphere and only exerting its influence whenever the actions of one caused a
In the second chapter of “On Liberty” titled “Of the Liberty of Thought and
Discussion”, John Stuart Mill held a clear and firm stance against the censorship of a
person’s thoughts and speech. Mill, a Utilitarian, believed that the morality of an
action depended on how much that action benefited towards the overall happiness.
Maintaining with his Liberty/Harm principle, which states that society has the right
to interfere only if actions cause harm to others, Mill argued that the harms of the
restricting free discussion within society would outweigh the benefits of censorship.
If an accepted opinion is false, then by censoring all other opinions causes us to lose
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the opportunity to replace the accepted, false opinion with a true opinion or at least
still cause overall harm in the long run. When opposition to a true opinion is
censored, then the legitimacy of the true opinion is lost. An opinion can be
considered true when it is able to withstand constant challenges of the contrary and
even then the opinion cannot be considered absolutely true, just more resilient to
challenge than any previous opinion before it. Mill also argued that if true opinions
are not challenged regularly enough, the logical rationality behind the opinions
begins to lose itself among the people and the effect that that opinion has also
becomes lost. Mill cited the Roman Catholic Church as an example; where the
followers of faith did what they were told without really understanding the
reasoning behind the various practices. This led to some member of the church to
Throughout “On Liberty,” Mill also championed for an open market place of
ideas where all kinds of ideas could be introduced and put up to the challenge of the
general public where they can weigh their options and decide the better idea for
themselves. Borrowing the idea from the Free Market approach towards economics,
Mill believed that people were rational enough to be able to decide which proposed
idea is the better one for themselves. Though Mill directly introduced the Open
Market of Ideas while arguing against censorship of speech and discussion, it can
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While making his basic case for the freedom of discussion and introducing
his concept of the open market of ideas, Mill also brought up another quite
interesting argument, his Assumption of Infallibility argument also known as the A/I
argument. The A/I argument says that when we attempt to silence opposing
that no one has a right to. So when ever one decides to censor any opposing views to
their view, he or she is automatically assuming that their view is infallible which
silences any legitimate attempt to reach closer to the actual truth as possible.
Another key argument that Mill had brought up can be found within the
introduction of his “On Liberty.” the Liberty/Harm principle. Mill states that in the
modern time and age the threat to civil liberties is not from tyrannical rulers
exerting their will upon their people; rather the tyranny of the majority currently
threatens the civil liberties of minorities. His liberty principle declared that the only
time society is allowed exercise its will upon its members is when such interference
pornography is that the requirements for society’s intervention are not met.
Pornography is watched within the privacy of one’s home and affecting only the
consenting adults that are implicit in the production, distribution and consumption
of the pornography. Since pornography does not cause harm onto any bystanders,
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There have been a great deal of great thinkers in the past one hundred years
trying to completely analyze and apply to the real world, the writings of John Stuart
Mill. One, David Dyzenhaus, was fairly successful at using the works of Mill to help
support his position in favor of censoring pornography. Dyzenhaus’ great and main
point was that women within society were socialized to accept that men were
superior to women and that it is the women’s role within a society to respect the
wishes of the men rather than attempt to pursue completely separate and
playing into the gender stereotypes currently existing in society, pornography helps
perpetuate the socialization that women are inferior to men. Dyzenhaus argues that
watching pornography actually does cause harm even to those that are not actively
participating in viewing it. The harm is, that pornography takes something
inherently bad – the inequality between men and women – and makes it seem
message and begin applying it in other instances and help perpetuate the gender
Dyzenhaus also challenges the amount of credibility that can be afforded for
pornographic material. He claims that due to the socialization that women have
experienced while growing up, they have come to see themselves not as
independent agents with self-will and self-control, but rather are socialized to
believe that what is expected of them in their nature is to serve others and place
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their husband and children as their first priority in life. If this is true, then it would
seem that any consent that women would provide is not really a product of the
woman’s desires but instead the product of what society deems the woman’s desires
should be. It definitely seems like Dyzenhaus has taken things to an extreme, but a
censorship, his points should not be used as complete justification for completely
censoring all forms of pornography. Dyzenhaus points out that pornography plays
into the social gender gaps existent between men and women; but what about gay
and lesbian pornography? In gay and lesbian pornography, there is no one gender
exerting domination over another. And since there is no gender domination with
gay and lesbian pornography, there is also a lack of harm. Employing his liberty
principle, Mill would argue that society has no business getting involved with the
completely dependent on the existence of a gender gap within society, but what
about societies with no gender gap? If a society can be found where both males and
females are found to be equal to each other, then there would be no perpetuation of
sexism within that society and the harm resulting from pornography would be
reduced to none; completely eliminating any justification for society to step-in and
Dyzenhaus seems to rely on the fact that watching pornography causes women to
think of themselves as an inferior gender. But contrary to the claim, there has been
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as interesting as Dyzenhaus’ first argument is, there really is nothing within the
argument that would demonstrate a significant level of harm so much so that Mill
quite interesting one though slightly flawed. A question that is raised is when can
desires? Ideally we would think that one’s consent is valid only when the person is
fully informed and knows full well all possible consequences of what they are
consenting for. But in reality this is quite unfeasible, if not impossible to accomplish.
In order to determine whether a desire if fully informed, one must assume a role of
authority deciding whether the person is fully informed or not. Secondly, we can
consider that autonomy is achieved when a person is able to fulfill decisions based
on their current desires. If that is the case then the question of whether or not an
individual is acting truly autonomous is an easy question to answer, but this also
introduces a worry that if you focus only on current desires then you may be
operating based off of biased and uninformed desires. Which approach would Mill
take? Mill stated earlier that people the way that they currently are at that time
should be able to make their own decision. Mill supports that autonomy is not about
being fully informed and then being able to decide based off of the fully informed
desires. Rather, Mill supports that the main focus of autonomy is the ability to
decide based on current desires. Whether these current desires are fully informed
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determined and in practical terms by the time you become fully informed, the
Stuart Mill, being the Utilitarian that he is – would most likely remain consistent
with his previous arguments and still insist that the censorship of expression, even
pornography, yields in more harms towards society than beneficial goods. Mill’s
liberty principle prevents society from directly interfering with the private lives of
its people unless to prevent harm. His assumption of infallibility states that when
you decide to censor opposing opinions you assume a role of infallibility, a role that
cannot be carried out properly. Even Mill’s open market place of ideas provides
abundant support for the anti-censorship position. Based on his essays in “On
Liberty,” it is very clear that John Stuart Mill would extend his opposition to