The Ignorant Do Not Have a Right to an Audience
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Jordan Peterson, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, has complained that men can’t “control crazy women” because men “have absolutely no respect” for someone they cannot physically fight. Does this adolescent opinion deserve as much of an audience as the nuanced thoughts of Kate Manne, a professor of philosophy at Cornell University, about the role of “himpathy” in supporting misogyny?
We may feel certain that Coulter and Peterson are wrong, but some people feel the same way about Coates and Manne. And everyone once felt certain that the Earth was the center of the solar system. Even if Coulter and Peterson are wrong, won’t we have a deeper understanding of why racism and sexism are mistaken if we have to think for ourselves about their claims? And “who’s to say” that there isn’t some small fragment of truth in what they say?
If this specious line of thought seems at all plausible to you, it is because of the influence of “On Liberty,” published in 1859 by the English philosopher John Stuart Mill. Mill’s argument for near-absolute freedom of speech is seductively simple. Any given opinion that someone expresses is either wholly true, partly true or false.
To claim that an unpopular or offensive opinion cannot be true “is to assume our own infallibility.” And if an offensive opinion is true, to limit its expression is clearly bad for society. If an opinion is partly true, we should listen to it, because “it is only by the collision of adverse opinions, that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied.” And even if an opinion is false, society will benefit by examining the reasons it is false. Unless a true view is challenged, we will hold it merely “in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds.”
The problem with Mill’s argument is that he takes for granted a naïve conception of rationality that he inherited from Enlightenment thinkers like René Descartes. For such philosophers, there is one ahistorical rational method for discovering truth, and humans (properly educated) are approximately equal in their capacity for appreciating these truths. We know that “of all things, good sense is the most fairly distributed,” Descartes assures us, because “even those who are the hardest to satisfy in every other respect never desire more of it than they already have.”
Of course, Mill and Descartes disagreed fundamentally about what the one ahistorical rational method is — which is one of the reasons for doubting the Enlightenment dogma that there is such a method.
If you do have faith in a universal method of reasoning that everyone accepts, then the Millian defense of absolute free speech is sound. What harm is there in people hearing obvious falsehoods and specious argumentation if any sane and minimally educated person can see through them? The problem, though, is that humans are not rational in the way Mill assumes. I wish it were self-evident to everyone that we should not discriminate against people based on their sexual orientation, but the current vice president of the United States does not agree. I wish everyone knew that it is irrational to deny the evidence that there was a mass shooting in Sandy Hook, but a syndicated radio talk show host can make a career out of arguing for the contrary.
Historically, Millian arguments have had some good practical effects. Mill followed Alexis de Tocqueville in identifying “the tyranny of the majority” as an ever-present danger in democracies. As an advocate of women’s rights and an opponent of slavery, Mill knew that many people then regarded even the discussion of these issues as offensive. He hoped that by making freedom of speech a near absolute right he could guarantee a hearing for opinions that were true but unpopular among most of his contemporaries.
However, our situation is very different from that of Mill. We are seeing the worsening of a trend that the 20th century German-American philosopher Herbert Marcuse warned of back in 1965: “In endlessly dragging debates over the media, the stupid opinion is treated with the same respect as the intelligent one, the misinformed may talk as long as the informed, and propaganda rides along with education, truth with falsehood.” This form of “free speech,” ironically, supports the tyranny of the majority.
The media are motivated primarily by getting the largest audience possible. This leads to a skewed conception about which controversial perspectives deserve airtime, and what “both sides” of an issue are. How often do you see controversial but well-informed intellectuals like Noam Chomsky and Martha Nussbaum on television? Meanwhile, the former child-star Kirk Cameron appears on television to explain that we should not believe in evolutionary theory unless biologists can produce a “crocoduck” as evidence. No wonder we are experiencing what Marcuse described as “the systematic moronization of children and adults alike by publicity and propaganda.”
Marcuse was insightful in diagnosing the problems, but part of the solution he advocated was suppressing right-wing perspectives. I believe that this is immoral (in part because it would be impossible to do without the exercise of terror) and impractical (given that the internet was actually invented to provide an unblockable information network). Instead, I suggest that we could take a big step forward by distinguishing free speech from just access. Access to the general public, granted by institutions like television networks, newspapers, magazines, and university lectures, is a finite resource. Justice requires that, like any finite good, institutional access should be apportioned based on merit and on what benefits the community as a whole.
There is a clear line between censoring someone and refusing to provide them with institutional resources for disseminating their ideas. When Nathaniel Abraham was fired in 2004 from his position at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute because he admitted to his employer that he did not believe in evolution, it was not a case of censorship of an unpopular opinion. Abraham thinks that he knows better than other scientists (and better than other Christians, like Pope Francis, who reminded the faithful that God is not “a magician, with a magic wand”). Abraham has every right to express his ignorant opinion to any audience that is credulous enough to listen. However, Abraham does not have a right to a share of the intellectual capital that comes from being associated with a prestigious scientific institution like Woods Hole.
Similarly, the top colleges and universities that invite Charles Murray to share his junk science defenses of innate racial differences in intelligence (including Columbia and New York University) are not promoting fair and balanced discourse. For these prestigious institutions to deny Murray an audience would be for them to exercise their fiduciary responsibility as the gatekeepers of rational discourse. We have actually seen a good illustration of what I mean by “just access” in ABC’s courageous decision to cancel “Roseanne,” its highest-rated show. Starring on a television show is a privilege, not a right. Roseanne compared a black person to an ape. Allowing a show named after her to remain on the air would not be impartiality; it would be tacitly endorsing the racist fantasy that her views are part of reasonable mainstream debate.
Donald Trump, first as candidate and now as president, is such a significant news story that responsible journalists must report on him. But this does not mean that he should be allowed to set the terms of the debate. Research shows that repeatedly hearing assertions increases the likelihood of belief — even when the assertions are explicitly identified as false. Consequently, when journalists repeat Trump’s repeated lies, they are actually increasing the probability that people will believe them.
Even when journalistic responsibility requires reporting Trump’s views, this does not entail giving all of his spokespeople an audience. MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” set a good precedent for just access by banning from the show Kellyanne Conway for casually spouting “alternative facts.”
Marcuse also suggested, ominously, that we should not “renounce a priori violence against violence.” Like most Americans, I spontaneously cheered when I saw the white nationalist Richard Spencer punched in the face during an interview. However, as I have noted elsewhere, Mahatma Gandhi and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. showed us that nonviolent protest is not only a moral demand (although it is that too); it is the highest strategic cunning. Violence plays into the hands of our opponents, who relish the opportunity to play at being martyrs. Consequently, while it was wrong for Middlebury College to invite Murray to speak, it was even more wrong for students to assault Murray and a professor escorting him across campus. (Ironically, the professor who was injured in this incident is a critic of Murray who gave a Millian defense of allowing him to speak on campus.)
What just access means in terms of positive policy is that institutions that are the gatekeepers to the public have a fiduciary responsibility to award access based on the merit of ideas and thinkers. To award space in a campus lecture hall to someone like Peterson who says that feminists “have an unconscious wish for brutal male domination,” or to give time on a television news show to someone like Coulter who asserts that in an ideal world all Americans would convert to Christianity, or to interview a D-list actor like Jenny McCarthy about her view that actual scientists are wrong about the public health benefits of vaccines is not to display admirable intellectual open-mindedness. It is to take a positive stand that these views are within the realm of defensible rational discourse, and that these people are worth taking seriously as thinkers.
Neither is true: These views are specious, and those who espouse them are, at best, ignorant, at worst, sophists. The invincibly ignorant and the intellectual huckster have every right to express their opinions, but their right to free speech is not the right to an audience.
Bryan W. Van Norden is a professor of philosophy at Wuhan University, Yale-NUS College and Vassar College. He is the author, most recently, of “Taking Back Philosophy: A Multicultural Manifesto.”
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All ideas are NOT equal.
Some are stupid, some are crazy... and some are both. Stupid and/or crazy ideas do not deserve respect. They deserve the worst public disgracing we can give them.
That's fine. But you should demonstrate with facts and argument that the ideas are stupid or crazy. You don't get to just declare them to be so and expect intelligent people to accept it.
You should also be honest about context if you are going to present someone else's ideas and attack them lest you engage in a straw man tactic. For example, it's not to fair to state,
As you can see in this video , he expresses this thought in the context of brainstorming or speculation. He says multiple times he doesn't actually believe it. He's trying to work out the solution to the problem of why feminists rush to buy a book like "50 Shades of Grey" or why they make common cause with Arabian Muslims who abuse women.
I'm finding that is increasingly becoming true of what emanates from the left these days.
Good topic. The seeded article is a little too egg-heady for my taste though.
All ideas are not equal. The idea that Obama was born in Kenya should have had a shelf life of about an hour, instead it lasted for 5 or 6 years full blown and still trickles along today.
This is all on the internet. The internet has a way of making every thought "equal". I think it comes from the uniformity we see in the way the ideas are presented, and in the framework of the internet itself.
Just look at one of the "new words" in the past few years (went into the dictionary last year I believe) "fake news". Fake news is in popular opinion anything the designator wants it to be, which is a nonsensical conclusion itself.
Many opinions arent worth the energy it took to type them, but information flies by so fast that fewer and fewer people care. We are in a lot of trouble.
Exactly! False equivalencies are on their faces false. Some arguments are too dumb to have...
That doesn't mean we don't keep having them like Groundhog Day and Deja Vu all over again.
E.A Yes Brilliant, and who determines what is " False " Man will never fly, Earth is the Centre of the Solar System, Witches can not be drowned, etc:: Have Fun with the Bigotry!
Back in 1991 Obama had a bio drawn up where he claimed to have been born in Kenya. It's still available to view the cover if you do a little bit of searching. Once he became known, the lady publicist who composed it said she made a mistake about the country of birth. Yeah right!
It's incredible that you would by a typo as fact rather than the valid Birth Certificate that he provided.
It wasn't done intentionally.
E.A LOL Now YOU have to explain your THOUGHTS as to why YOU made the Typo "tpyo" But a WARNING:::
This SITE Fears WORDS, they DREAD them so use them sparingly or they be marked as " OFFF Topic "
Note: FFF not a Typo!!!
It wasn't a typo, it was written up as Obama instructed, then later had to be "corrected" when he became better known. The long form BC was also a photo-shopped fake...why would they put down "African" as a race, instead of the better known equivalent at that time.
Do the people in this thread realize that they are demonstrating the seed's thesis?
You are having a lengthy exchange about an idea that everyone knows is nonsense.
The Goebbels Philosophy endures. Fear, ignorance, suspicion and hate is the fuel. America has become a source of infinite supply.
i have to laugh at this. Putting aside the pathetic tactic of taking Peterson's mashed together of context that a high school debater would be embarrassed to stoop to, the author then holds up a disgraced propagandist for totalitarian regimes as the sort of expert we should be exposed to.
Its comical how easily you are manipulated by a writer who plays to your prejudices. I almost assume this is a cover right wing troll because no honest person would hold up Chomsky, the Iraqi propaganda minister's role model, as the ideal expert of anything other than selling how to sell your credibility is service of your ideology.
Simple question, Sean: IN YOUR OPINION, do all ideas deserve respect?
Bad ideas, such as the apologist for mass murderers Chomsky is the type of public intellectual we need to hear more from, are not worthy of respect.
But the New York Times has the right to share it's bad ideas with their readership.
I take note that you refuse to say, "Bad ideas do not deserve respect."
You are always too clever, Sean. I know you decided long ago on a strategy of never, ever actually addressing a topic, but rather nibbling at the edges, attacking details in the hope that no one will notice that you have no argument against the central thesis.
(In fact, I'd bet that you have been doing this for so long that it is now an unconscious reflex.)
The problem, Sean, is that by never, ever actually addressing the central tenet, you have become an intellectual wraith. A transparency floating about, without consequence...
You really should read the seed and the preceding Comments...
The question isn't "should an idea be considered". The question is "do all ideas deserve respect".
Racism should be considered. It should not be respected.
Birtherism should be considered... for about three seconds... and then should be laughed off the public scene.
Please enlighten me as to the substantive differences between "bad ideas do not deserve respect" and Bad ideas..are not worthy of respect, which is what I wrote.
Like I said, Sean... you're often too clever... you just cannot allow yourself to be simple and honest.
You didn't write "Bad ideas..are not worthy of respect". You wrote "Bad ideas, such as the apologist for mass murderers Chomsky is the type of public intellectual we need to hear more from, are not worthy of respect."
The boldface escape clause negates the basic idea. You're an intelligent person, so you know what you're doing here. You have intentionally chosen dishonesty, and that's a pity. You waste a good brain...
So Bob, what should be done when essentially entire mainstream media spends countless hours promoting a fake narrative, like "hands up, don't shoot."
What should be done when media companies and politicians go well beyond a single comment from a panelist and literally spend months promoting a made up story to fit their preferred narrative? Should CNN have lost their broadcast license?
Removed No Value "BF"