Experimenting Diversity

According to JSM, a general trend of social development is the tendency to strengthen society and to diminish the power of the individual. This encroachment of individuality is supported “by some of the best and by some of the worst feelings incident in human nature” (OL, 227).

Among the former, JSM mentions people’s innate psychological tendency to seek agreement with each other. For example, “the religious belief [is] a case instructive in many ways [...]. So natural to mankind is intolerance in whatever they really care about, that [. w]herever the sentiment of the majority is still genuine and intense, it is found to have abated little of its claim to be obeyed” (ibid., 222).

Among the latter factors, JSM hints at social dynamics that will be taken up and dissected by another author to whom, incidentally, Roncaglia has not devoted many pages: Thorstein Veblen (1899). JSM notes that a “grand determining principle” of man’s conduct is their understanding of the “supposed preferences or aversions of their temporal masters, or of their gods” (OL, 221). As a consequence, “[w]herever there is an ascendant class, a large portion of the morality of the country emanates from its class interests, and its feelings of class superiority” (ibid.).

Against these tendencies, JSM articulates a rational answer in favor of pluralism. Coherently with his rule utilitarianism, he does not appeal to notions of “abstract right, as a thing independent of utility” (ibid., 224). Rather, his argument is that “[m]ankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest” (ibid., 226). This is shown by the argu­ment in favor of the liberty of thought and discussion (OL, chapter 2), from which the other liberties descend.

According to JSM, the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the entire human race: “those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it” (ibid., 229). Indeed, the peculiarity of JSM’s defense of free public discussion is that, by giving up the argument based on the absolute right of minorities, he has to show that freedom of discussion not only benefits those who hold a minority view but also is for the greatest advantage of the greatest number of people—that is, of those who hold the mainstream view too. Indeed, according to JSM, minorities are in a relatively better position in a debate: “[t]here are many reasons, doubtless, why doctrines which are the badge of a sect retain more of their vitality than those common to all [...]; but one reason certainly is, that the peculiar doctrines are more questioned, and have to be oftener defended” (OL, 249).

As he summarizes at the end of chapter2, the argument is divided into four steps:

1. Any silenced opinion may be true.

2. Even if an error, the silenced opinion may contain “a portion of truth.”

3. Even if, instead, the received opinion were the whole truth, unless it is contestable and actually contested, those who believe it will not fully understand it, and will not grasp the grounds on which it is based, and its significance.

4. All uncontested ideas become sterile and die out, preventing the development of their very doctrine.

To express the injustice of silencing other opinions,JSM recalls the Smithian image of “judges without hearing the other side” (ibid., 233). However, his argument (especially points 1. and 2. above) directly descend from his theory of logic and understanding (as laid out in his System of Logic: JSM, 1843). He departs from the obvious observation that all silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility (OL, 229). However, “it is not the feeling sure of a doctrine (be it what it may) which I call an assumption of infallibility.

With words that foreshadow aspects of Karl Popper’s approach, JSM stresses the need for any theory to be “contendible,” to use an economic term, if it is to be rationally— even though provisionally—relied upon:

Complete liberty of contradicting and disproving our opinion, is the very condition which justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of action; on no other terms can a being with human faculties have any rational assurance of being right [...]. The whole strength and value, then, of human judgment, depending on the one property, that it can be set right when it is wrong, reliance can be placed on it only when the means of setting it right are kept con­stantly at hand. [.] 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 the sole way of attaining it. (Ibid., 231-32)

It is noteworthy that JSM does not believe inference is a sufficient ground to bring an individual closer to the truth. He relies on an argument that more recently would be built on by the postmodern movement, especially in the economics field by McCloskey (1985):

A quality of the human mind, the source of everything respectable in man either as an intel­lectual or as a moral being [. is] that his errors are corrigible. He is capable of rectifying his mistakes, by discussion and experience. Not by experience alone. There must be discussion, to show how experience is to be interpreted. [...] Very few facts are able to tell their own story, without comments to bring out their meaning. (OL, 231)

According to JSM, the only way in which we can make some approach to knowing a sub­ject, is by hearing what can be said about it by persons of every variety of opinion and by studying “all modes in which it can be looked at by every character of mind” (ibid., 232). This argument is very close to that put forward, with respect to the economic debate, in chapter 1 of Roncaglia (2005a). Thus, it seems fit to analyze in greater depth the specific scope of liberty of scientific discussion in JSM’s approach.

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