Month March 2013

The Issue of Hate Speech: II. Mill’s ‘Harm Principle’

In the chapter following his famous defence, Mill does in fact suggest that there may be some limit to expression:

 

“An opinion that corn-dealers are starvers of the poor, or that private property is robbery, ought to be unmolested when simply circulated through the press, but may justly incur punishment when delivered orally to an excited mob assembled before the house of a corn-dealer, or when handed about among the same mob in the form of a placard. Acts of whatever kind, which, without justifiable cause, do harm to others, may be, and in the more important cases absolutely require to be, controlled by the unfavourable sentiments, and, when needful, by the active interference of mankind.”1

 

This has been seen to be a concession that if the expression of an opinion acts as an incitement to cause harm to others, then it should be restricted. The handing out of a placard may be restricted as it causes harm to others indirectly, in the same way as does a plot to cause death or destruction. It is not the expression of an opinion, but a deliberate attempt to cause harm to another that is the reason for the restriction. Jacobson has noted that this does not prohibit all harm, but only the harm done “specifically to those interests of others that ought to be considered as rights” (2000 pp. 309). The claim by those who believe that hate speech should be restricted is usually that hate speech causes indirect harm and thus, under Mill’s harm principle it is justifiable or desirable to restrict this kind of expression.

Making Sense of ‘Privilege’.

CRT’s illiberalism is unpalatable, and it appears to be rather dogmatic. Any critique is just a symptom of privilege-blindness made only by those who “don’t get it” betraying their biases. “Listen to the [minority]!”, we are told, as if the voices of all members of that minority are in perfect synchronisation with each other. What is really meant by this is that we should listen only to those who agree with CRT (and similar belief systems), and whatever we are told by them we should accept without question (including normative statements and moral pronouncements which require philosophical inquiry in addition to the empirical data we are too biased to observe for ourselves).

Down Syndrome and Prenatal Screening

Russell Blackford on The Hellfire Club has drawn our attention to calls for a professor of bioethics to resign on account of his views on screening for Down syndrome in the womb.

Russell’s main claim in his post is a fairly weak one – whatever your views on this, we should not call for the resignation of academics because of their professional opinions, especially when those opinions are considered respectable by their peers. I agree with that wholeheartedly, but I wanted to offer some of my own (poorly-researched) thoughts on this rather sensitive issue.