Mill's Argument for Free Speech: A

Guide

(Note to reader: These are lightly expanded notes for a class I

once gave on freedom of speech. The notes are intended to
explain the logic, structure and shortcomings of J.S. Mill’s
defence of free speech. They are my take on the argument, not a
definitive interpretation or analysis of Mill. Nevertheless, I hope
they explicate the structure of Mill’s argument a bit better than
some of the other online summaries. Suffice to say, all quotes in
the following text come directly from Mill.)

The most famous defence of free speech in the Western

philosophical canon is, undoubtedly, the argument from Chapter 2
of John Stuart Mill’s essay On Liberty. In recent debates about
freedom of expression on college campuses, it is amazing how
frequently the opponents of campus speech codes, trigger
warnings, no-platforming, de-platforming and other speech
regulations reach for Mill’s essay. One of the most prominent
recent examples of this is the publication of a lavish illustrated
edition of Chapter 2 of On Liberty by the Heterodox Academy, an
organisation dedicated to ensuring ‘viewpoint diversity’ on college
campuses. So enamoured are they by Mill’s argument that they
think it is important to make it accessible and attractive to a new
generation.

What is it about Mill’s argument that appeals more than 150 years
after it was first published? Well, Mill was undoubtedly a great
writer, particularly in his more polemical essays (I could take or
leave the Principles of Political Economy to be honest). On
Liberty crackles with passion and verve. You can’t help but get
swept up in Mill’s enthusiasm for liberty, and impatience with
censors and oppressors, when you read it. What’s more, many of
the issues and arguments raised still feel relevant today. For
better or worse, modern liberal democracies live in the shadow of
Mill’s reasoning. We still regularly debate issues around
censorship, regulatory interference and the 'Nanny' state in terms
that he first set down.

His argument for free speech is one of the best examples of this.
The basic thrust of the argument is set out in a remarkably
succinct form in the following passage:

..the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is

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 the opinion is right, they are
deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; 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.

Implied in this passage is the following general argument for

freedom of speech:

 (1) The truth (and a clear and lively impression thereof) is

valuable; we ought to allow/enable people to arrive at true
beliefs about the world.

 (2) Freedom of speech enables/allows people to arrive at a

clear and lively understanding of truths about the world (or, what
is the same thing, the silencing or censorship of expression
prevents people from arriving at a clear and lively understanding
of true beliefs about the world).

 (3) Therefore, we ought to promote freedom of speech (and

prevent the silencing or censorship of expression).

Most of Mill’s time and energy is dedicated to the defence of the

second premise of this argument. On a surface reading, he seems
to think that guaranteeing freedom of expression is a truth-and-
understanding generating mechanism. Or, to adopt the modern
idiom, he seems to think that if we allow the ‘marketplace of
ideas’ to unfold without interference, the truth will out. Of
course, it’s a little difficult for those of us standing here today —
in the post-truth, post-Trump era — to get fully onboard with this.
This might be one reason why modern commentators are quick to
reject Mill’s argument but I think they are wrong to do so on this
surface reading. It involves a partial distortion of Mill’s view. Mill
is not a rosy-eyed optimist about the marketplace of ideas. His
argument for free speech has something in common with the
Churchillian defence of democracy: it’s the worst system for
ensuring truth and understanding, bar all the others.
Let’s see how this works by going through the sub-arguments that
Mill provides in support of premise (2) of the main argument.
These arguments are essentially summarised in the quoted
passage above, and depending on who you ask, there are either
two or three of them. I think there are really two important sub-
arguments, with a third one that is kind of a mish-mash of the
first two. I’ll go through each in turn and then come back to
consider some general problems with Mill’s reasoning.

1. Mill’s First Argument: ‘If the opinion is right…’

Mill’s first argument in favour of free speech (and against
censorship) is very straightforward. It is this:

 (4) If we censor an expression, and if that expression is true,

then people are denied the opportunity to exchange truth for
error.

This directly supports premise (2) of the main argument. It is so

straightforward that surely no one could object? But, of course,
they do. The defender of censorship can respond to this point and
argue that we can trust censors to filter out the true expressions
from the false ones. That way we can have censorship, without
denying people access to the truth.

Mill scoffs at this because it presumes that the censor is infallible.

He says we have ample evidence (and common sense) to suggest
that people are not infallible and capable of weeding out the
truth from the falsehood. There is no perfect censor. History
teaches us this lesson. In past ages, opinions and ideas were
suppressed that we now know to be true (or, at least, accept as
true). As Mill puts it ‘ages are no more infallible than individuals’.

Mill goes even further. He argues that the only check against our
own fallibility is to promote the free expression of ideas. In other
words, he thinks that the only way we can have confidence in our
opinions and judgments is by testing them in the fire of free
expression. So censorship doesn’t merely assume an implausible
infallibility it also undermines the only means we have at our
disposal to overcome our fallibility:

The beliefs which we have most warrant for, have no safeguard

to rest on, but a standing invitation to the whole world to prove
them unfounded… This is the amount of certainty attainable by a
fallible being, and this is the sole way of attaining it.

Mill also dismisses, rightly in my view, the claim made by some

people that truth can triumph over persecution. There is no
guarantee of this. As Mill puts it:

Men are not more zealous for truth than they often are for error,
and a sufficient application of legal or even social penalties will
generally succeed in stopping the propagation of either.

I think this quote, in particular, highlights the point I made

earlier: that Mill is not naive about the prospects of truth winning
out in the marketplace of ideas. He recognises the fact that
people are fallible and sometimes biased against the truth. He
just thinks that adopting a censorious approach is worse than
allowing for the free exchange of ideas.

Let’s try to draw together the logical steps of this reasoning and
put it into an argument diagram. Here’s my interpretation of it
(all of these follow from and either support or contradict premise
(4)):

 (5) Objection to (4): Censorship does not necessarily

undermine the pursuit of truth: we could trust the censor to filter
out the untrue opinions and allow the true ones to get through.

 (6) Reply to (5): This assumes an infallible censor: we have

ample evidence from our own experiences and from history to
suggest that censors are not, and cannot be trusted to be,
infallible.
 (7) Reply to (5): The only check against infallibility (and the
only reason to feel confident in our grasp of the truth) is the
testing of our opinions in the fire of free expression.

 (8) Objection to (4): Even if we did censor the truth, the

truth will eventually win out over the censorship.

 (9) Reply to (9): There is no guarantee of this. We are not

more zealous for the truth than for error and if the social penalty
is sufficiently high the truth will be blocked.

2. Mill’s Second Argument: ‘If the opinion is false…’

Mill’s second argument is slightly more complex. He asks us to
imagine, if only for the sake of argument, a society in which all
received opinion is true. Hard though that may be, imagine
further that someone enters into this society and starts asserting
falsehoods that contradict these truths. Would it be okay to
censor that person? You might say ‘yes’ because it doesn’t deny
people access to the truth (ignoring, for now, Mill’s concerns
about our ability to tell the difference between truth and falsity).
But this is where Mill’s second sub-argument comes into play.
Recall from the main argument that it is not just about knowing
the truth; it is also about having a clear and lively understanding
of the truth. This is something we can only gain by considering
and debating the contrary point of view. Without this contest and
debate our beliefs will have the character of ‘dead dogmas’ and
not ‘living truths’:

 (10) If we censor expressions that are false, then our beliefs

will be ‘held as a dead dogma[s], not living truth[s]', i.e. we will
not have a clear and lively understanding of the truth.

Again, this reason is supposed to support premise (2) of the main

argument. For what it is worth, I find this to be a credible claim.
There are certain things I believe to be true (e.g. the theory of
evolution, the non-existence of God as traditionally conceived,
and the moral permissibility of homosexuality) that I really only
first appreciated by systematically engaging with contrary points
of view.

You might, however, disagree. You might argue that we can get a
perfectly good grasp of the truth by just looking at the arguments
in favour of the truth. Take for example, the truth of the
Pythagorean theorem. Surely we can understanding this truth just
by considering its proof? We don’t need to entertain the opinions
of radical anti-Pythagoreans. There is no fear of dead dogmas
here. The proof itself is all we need.

Mill accepts this counter-argument, but responds by pointing out

that it is only a very narrow range of truths that can be grasped in
this way. Mathematical truths are possibly the only example (and
this ignores the fact that some mathematical proofs work by
contradiction). In almost all other cases, particularly cases
involving moral and political truths, understanding and
appreciation is only possible if we entertain and engage with the
contrary point of view. As Mill puts it:

So essential is this discipline to a real understanding of moral and

human subjects, that if opponents of all important truths do not
exist, it is indispensable to imagine them, and supply them with
the strongest arguments which the most skilful devil’s advocate
can conjure up.

You might object that this still doesn’t make the case for free
expression. Maybe only some people need to have access to
contrary opinions (e.g. professors, politicians and other elites).
They can test ideas out, get a full and lively impression of the
truth, and then they can tell the rest of us about it.

Call these people the ‘epistemic elite’. In some of his writings Mill
was sympathetic to the idea of an epistemic elite, once going so
far as to suggest that the votes of the educated be given extra
weight in elections. For all his radicalism he was a man of his
times, and, as we saw above, he was sceptical about the cognitive
powers of the great mass of humanity. But he wasn’t a fan of
limiting freedom of expression (and note there would still need to
be some freedom of expression) to an epistemic elite.

He seems to have two reasons for this. The first is that he felt
that everyone needed the ongoing mental exercise to appreciate
the meaning and significance of the truth. -- that this was good
for their own self-actualisation The second is that he felt the
world would lose something by not allowing everyone to pursue
the truth in a vigorous and unencumbered way (I’m blurring
sections of Mill’s argument by quoting this next bit, but so be it):

Who can compute what the world loses in the multitude of

promising intellects combined with timid characters, who dare
not follow out any bold, vigorous, independent train of thought,
lest it should land them in something which would admit of being
considered irreligious or immoral?… Not that it is solely, or
chiefly, to form great thinkers, that freedom of thinking is
required. On the contrary, it is as much and even more
indispensable, to enable average human beings to attain the
mental stature which they are capable of.

Finally, even if you accept this you might worry that Mill’s
argument demands too much. He seems to be saying that we must
constantly and continually renew our conception of the truth
through engagement with gadflies and contrarians. Surely that
would be exhausting? Yes, but this is what the vigorous pursuit of
the truth requires.

Let’s now try draw together the logical steps of this chain of
reasoning:

 (11) Objection to (10): We can get a clear and lively

understanding of the truth by considering the arguments for the
truth by themselves (i.e. without considering contrary falsehoods)

 (12) Reply to (11): This is only possible in a narrow range of

cases; in the great majority of cases understanding is only possible
by considering and engaging with the contrary point of view.

 (13) Objection to (10): Even if we need to engage

falsehoods to grasp the truth, this does not support free
expression: an epistemic elite could be given the task of engaging
the falsehoods on our behalf.

 (14) Reply to (13): There would still need to be some

freedom of expression for this elite.

 (15) Reply to (13): We should not limit freedom of

expression to an epistemic elite: everyone should be allowed to
achieve the mental stature they are capable of; and we may be
depriving the world of something by not encouraging promising
intellects to vigorously pursue the truth.
3. Mill’s Third Argument: ‘If the opinion is partly true, partly
false…'
The two preceding arguments constitute the backbone of Mill’s
defence of free speech. However, Mill himself divides his
argument into three parts. This is because the two preceding
arguments presume the extreme — cases in which we are trying to
suppress/censor an opinion that is wholly true or wholly false —
and the reality is likely to be more nuanced. We are more likely to
encounter opinions that are partly true and partly false. What
should we do with them? Well, obviously we should allow for their
free expression. The reason for doing so is a mish-mash of the two
previous arguments: to do otherwise would deprive us of the
partial truth and engaging with the partial lie will help with
understanding.

I don’t think there is a distinctive argument here.

That said, in elaborating on this third possibility, Mill does more
clearly reveal his pessimism about the ‘marketplace of ideas’. And
this is where we get what I am calling the ‘Churchillian’ defence
of free speech: it's the best of the worst. First, Mill accepts that
free and open discussion may not lead to the truth but, rather, to
a more partisan entrenchment of conflicting opinions:

I acknowledge that the tendency of all opinions to become

sectarian is not cured by the freest expression but is often
heightened and exacerbated thereby; the truth which ought to
have been, but was not, seen, being rejected all the more
violently because proclaimed by persons regarded as opponents.

This speaks to the present era just as much as it did to Mill’s. But
then why favour free speech? Because the censorship of opinion
would be even worse. Some people do benefit from listening into
the partisan debates of the ideologues. They acquire a clearer and
livelier impression of the truth. To suppress or censor opinion
would deprive them of this benefit. In the overall balance, it is
better to give them this than to try to avoid the evil of excessive
partisanship:

… it is not on the impassioned partisan, it is on the calmer and

more disinterested bystander, that this collision of opinions
works its salutary effect. Not the violent conflict between parts
of the truth, but the quiet suppression of half of it, is the
formidable evil. There is always hope when people are forced to
listen to both sides; it is when they attend to only to one that
errors harden into prejudices.

In other words, freedom of speech is the lesser of two evils.

To summarise this chain of reasoning:

 (16) Objection to (2): Allowing free expression of partial

truths will simply lead to the polarisation and entrenchment of
opinion.
 (17) Reply to (16): This will only be true for certain
ideologues and is the lesser of two evils: there is more hope and
less chance of prejudice if people are forced to listen to both
sides.

4. Some Final Critical Thoughts on Mill’s Argument

So that’s Mill’s argument. As you can see, it is a reasonably
nuanced defence of the ideal of free speech. To reiterate what I
have said already, I don’t see Mill as a rosy-eyed optimist. He
doesn’t see free speech as a panacea for truth. He sees it as the
least worst option. But even with that more nuanced
understanding in place, there are many concerns one can have
about the argument. I can’t list all of them, but here are a few of
the more prominent criticisms.
First, one could question the value of truth. While I think most
people would agree that truth has some value, I doubt they think
it is the only thing of value. Individual welfare and well-being are
also valuable, as is respect for people from diverse backgrounds.
We may worry that prioritising the value of truth undermines
these other values, on at least some occasions. Indeed, this
perceived tension is, arguably, at the root of many contemporary
debates about free speech. There is a fear that allowing any and
every opinion to be expressed (even if true or partly true) has a
negative impact on individual well-being and inclusiveness.
Ironically, Mill himself grappled with this tension. He was a
utilitarian and so did worry about whether truth was compatible
with the principle of utility. He thought it was, but he may have
been too quick to believe this.

Second, one could be generally sceptical about the existence of

truth, at least in all domains of inquiry. Maybe there is no such
thing as the truth in moral and political debates? Maybe there is
only the endless back and forth of partisan opinion and what
matters is how it makes you feel not whether it is true? If you
believe this, you might be more open to censorship and Mill’s
argument might hold no sway. I, myself, would reject this
extreme form of scepticism. I’m more with Mill. I think there are
some truths in moral and political life and that the only check we
have against our own fallibility and prejudice is to engage with
conflicting opinion.

Third, one could be concerned about the practical impossibility of

Mill’s ideal. Some people interpret the ideal of free speech to
entail ‘viewpoint neutrality’ when it comes to the regulation of
speech, i.e. all views are to be treated equally and equally worthy
of debate and consideration. But it’s not possible to be
completely viewpoint neutral. As a society we are always,
implicitly or explicitly, censoring some views. We decide that
certain ideas and certain people are worth engaging with and
others are not. The decision to invite one person to speak at an
event is the decision to exclude another. The decision to include
some topics on a course curriculum is the decision not to include
others. And so on. We cannot stop this indirect censorship from
taking place. At best, following Mill, we can try to check ourselves
against narrow-mindedness.

Fourth, you might worry that even if we agree with Mill on the
value of free speech, there is some need for (relatively) content-
neutral rules to ensure that speech has its beneficial effects. If
you organise a debate, and everyone just shouts over one another
so that no opinion gets heard or properly evaluated, then it is
hard to see how that is in keeping with the Millian ideal. And, of
course, this is the big problem with speech in the modern era,
particularly algorithmically regulated speech that we see online
and in the media. As Brian Leiter points out in his essay ‘The Case
Against Free Speech’, we tolerate procedural rules on what gets
said and when in many domains of life (e.g. legal trials) and they
clearly have some benefit. Why couldn’t they have benefit
elsewhere? I have to say, I am a big fan of the idea of (relatively)
content-neutral rules — I say ‘relatively’ because nothing is
perfectly neutral — governing freedom of expression. But this idea
runs into an obvious obstacle: who (or what) do you trust to be
the speech-referee? We trust judges in legal trials, but then
subject them to scrutiny and review. Could we do something
similar in the public sphere or would it just slide into unwelcome
forms of censorship? (Obviously, this ignores the fact that we do
have many implicit speech referees in society already)

Fifth, and finally, it’s worth noting that Mill was not a ‘free
speech absolutist’ and, indeed, that the notion of free speech
absolutism does not make much sense. Mill thought that speech
that directly incited violence to others should be prevented. And
many other self-labelled ’absolutists’ accept similar restrictions.
They argue that fraudulent speech or speech that amounts to
common assault (i.e. causes fear of physical violence) should be
subject to some legal restriction (as they have been for
centuries). But once you allow for this you start to realise that the
borders between permissible and impermissible forms of speech
are highly contested. What counts as speech amounting to assault
or fraud? What kinds of speech cause real harm? People have
different opinions and different experiences. Perhaps that's the
real argument for free speech: to allow people to air their
different opinions about the value of free speech.