4 ms·

Is there any good argument against this JSM piece? I've heard folks say that he was just one philosopher and other philosophers thought differently, but I've ye

Is there any good argument against this JSM piece? I've heard folks say that he was just one philosopher and other philosophers thought differently, but I've yet to hear an argument against this that I've found compelling.

dvanduzer 9y ago
This is a complex philosophical essay, not a specific legal or political argument. What exactly would one be "for" or "against" in your mind? 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.
- Alex3917 9y ago
  I mean given that the concept of No Platforming people has become popular among leftist activists, presumably they have some reason for rejecting the ideas in the essay.
  - dvanduzer 9y ago
    I don't understand "No Platforming" as a verb here... I infer you mean something like calling for the removal of Nazis from Twitter? 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. This also comes after Mill has walked a fine line in section 38 describing how Christian morality must be both questioned, and augmented as some kind of intersectional morality along with other faiths. Whatever reading of Mill you have that makes you think leftists would disagree with it...
woodruffw 9y ago
I'm copying an observation I made on a similar thread about Mill a few weeks ago: --- [...] 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.
yesenadam 9y ago
Well, this 'piece' is one chapter of On Liberty (1859). There's a David Stove essay The Columbus Argument[0] (1987) - as always, funny, pungent and well-reasoned - reprinted in his book On Enlightenment, which is full of other taking-the-unfashionable-side-of-the-argument essays. Stove there calls (Virginia Woolf's uncle) J.F. Stephen's Liberty, Equality, Fraternity[1] (1873) the 'best reply' to Mill. [0] https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-columbus-argument/ https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-columbus-arg... [1] https://archive.org/details/libertyequality00stepgoog https://archive.org/details/libertyequality00stepgoog
- dvanduzer 9y ago
  Thanks, it was a very interesting journey reading over some of this. 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.)
  - yesenadam 9y ago
    Some context for some things Stove says in his essay: He'd just retired because he'd had enough of the craziness at Sydney Uni as Marxist/feminist/post-modernists tried to take over the arts/philosophy departments, which literally split the philosophy department into 2 departments for some years. See James Franklin's The Sydney Philosophy Disturbances[0] and Stove's funny/depressing A Farewell to Arts: Marxism, Semiotics and Feminism (1986) [1] featuring some examples of the kind of prose the new style of philosopher was producing. It starts with the memorable paragraph "THE FACULTY OF Arts at the University of Sydney is a disaster-area, and not of the merely passive kind, like a bombed building, or an area that has been flooded. It is the active kind, like a badly-leaking nuclear reactor, or an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in cattle." 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 http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/sydq.html [1] http://gerryonolan.com/public_html/stove/arts.html http://gerryonolan.com/public_html/stove/arts.html [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popper_and_After https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popper_and_After

dvanduzer 9y ago

This is a complex philosophical essay, not a specific legal or political argument. What exactly would one be "for" or "against" in your mind? 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.

Alex3917 9y ago
I mean given that the concept of No Platforming people has become popular among leftist activists, presumably they have some reason for rejecting the ideas in the essay.
- dvanduzer 9y ago
  I don't understand "No Platforming" as a verb here... I infer you mean something like calling for the removal of Nazis from Twitter? 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. This also comes after Mill has walked a fine line in section 38 describing how Christian morality must be both questioned, and augmented as some kind of intersectional morality along with other faiths. Whatever reading of Mill you have that makes you think leftists would disagree with it...

woodruffw 9y ago

I'm copying an observation I made on a similar thread about Mill a few weeks ago: --- [...] 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.

yesenadam 9y ago

Well, this 'piece' is one chapter of On Liberty (1859). There's a David Stove essay The Columbus Argument[0] (1987) - as always, funny, pungent and well-reasoned - reprinted in his book On Enlightenment, which is full of other taking-the-unfashionable-side-of-the-argument essays. Stove there calls (Virginia Woolf's uncle) J.F. Stephen's Liberty, Equality, Fraternity[1] (1873) the 'best reply' to Mill. [0] https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-columbus-argument/ https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-columbus-arg... [1] https://archive.org/details/libertyequality00stepgoog https://archive.org/details/libertyequality00stepgoog

dvanduzer 9y ago
Thanks, it was a very interesting journey reading over some of this. 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.)
- yesenadam 9y ago
  Some context for some things Stove says in his essay: He'd just retired because he'd had enough of the craziness at Sydney Uni as Marxist/feminist/post-modernists tried to take over the arts/philosophy departments, which literally split the philosophy department into 2 departments for some years. See James Franklin's The Sydney Philosophy Disturbances[0] and Stove's funny/depressing A Farewell to Arts: Marxism, Semiotics and Feminism (1986) [1] featuring some examples of the kind of prose the new style of philosopher was producing. It starts with the memorable paragraph "THE FACULTY OF Arts at the University of Sydney is a disaster-area, and not of the merely passive kind, like a bombed building, or an area that has been flooded. It is the active kind, like a badly-leaking nuclear reactor, or an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in cattle." 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 http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/sydq.html [1] http://gerryonolan.com/public_html/stove/arts.html http://gerryonolan.com/public_html/stove/arts.html [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popper_and_After https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popper_and_After