Open Debate as Scientific Morality

In the twin essays on “Coleridge” and “Bentham,”JSM (1838, 1840) stresses his con­viction that on every subject on which difference of opinion is possible, the truth usually depends on a balance to be struck between two sets of conflicting reasons.

Even in natural philosophy, there is always some other explanation possible of the same facts [...]. But when we turn to subjects infinitely more complicated, to morals, religion, politics, social relations, and the business of life, three-fourths of the arguments for every disputed opinion consist in dispelling the appearances which favour some opinion different from it. (OL, 244)

Thus, he holds in great esteem the methods of Socratic dialectics, or school disputations in the Middle Ages (another topic that features prominently in Roncaglia, 2005a).

He deems discussion so essential to a real understanding of moral and human sub­jects that if one had no opponents, it would be “indispensable to imagine them, and supply them with the strongest arguments which the most skillful devil’s advocate can conjure up” (OL, 245).⁷

Thus, a fair, rational and even moral approach to science is necessary. Open and free debate is a chief ingredient for it, but it also relies on the good faith of the debaters. While not neglecting his numerous scientific contributions, Roncaglia has always remem­bered with great emphasis the strong morality of his master and friend, Sylos Labini (see, for example, Roncaglia, 2006, 2008, 2016; Roncaglia and Corsi, 2007). Thus, we think it would be significant to report here JSM’s conclusions on the topic:

condemning every one, on whichever side of the argument he places himself, in whose mode of advocacy either want of candour, or malignity, bigotry, or intolerance of feeling manifest themselves; but not inferring these vices from the side which a person takes, though it be the contrary side of the question to our own: and giving merited honour to every one, whatever opinion he may hold, who has calmness to see and honesty to state what his opponents and their opinions really are, exaggerating nothing to their discredit, keeping nothing back which tells, or can be supposed to tell, in their favour.

It is straightforward to see how far from this standard of morality is the notion of the “mar­ketplace of ideas.” In fact, in OL, JSM discusses a similarly “evolutionist” theory, of the survival of the “fittest” ideas. He considers the radical argument of those who maintain that truth may justifiably be persecuted, because in the long run persecution cannot possi­bly have the best of it. (With reference to our own recent work, we can think of those who do not today see the current spread of biased research evaluation procedures as a great devil.) In principle, they cannot be charged with being intentionally hostile to the recep­tion of new truths, though “we cannot commend the[ir] generosity” (ibid., 237). However, according to JSM, this view of the subject is in fact “mostly confined to the sort of persons who think that new truths may have been desirable once, but that we had enough of them now” (ibid.). This is because “the dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution, is one of those pleasant falsehoods. [...] Persecution has always succeeded, save where the heretics were too strong a party to be effectually persecuted. [.] It is a piece of idle senti­mentality that truth, merely as truth, has any inherent power denied to error” (ibid., 238).

JSM talks, in general, of any sort of heretical ideas, including in matters of religion. Thus, he recognizes that the above argument is extreme, as capital and other penal punish­ments for heretics were by his time almost extinct. However, he notices that even if harsher punishments were still in place, “the chief mischief of the legal penalties is that they [would] strengthen the social stigma. It is the stigma which is really effective” (ibid., 241).

Mere social intolerance kills no one and does not completely root out any opinion, but induces men to disguise their opinions and/ or to abstain from active efforts for their dif­fusion. At best, it creates “a convenient plan for having peace in the intellectual world,” preserving a sphere of intellectual debate in which almost any opinion survives, though separate from the sphere of public debate in general, in which prevailing opinions remain undisturbed.

In accordance with the need to highlight the losses for the majority as well as the minority, JSM asks who can compute what the world loses in the multitude of promising intellects combined with timid characters (ibid., 242). He adds, even if the heretical view were completely wrong, since it does not have to stand a proper discussion, it is prevented from spreading too much, but it will never totally disappear either.

But social stigma has much more serious consequences, which seem to us reminiscent of the current predicament of many contemporary schools at the margins (or the fron­tiers) of the economic mainstream:

a state of things in which a large portion of the most active and inquiring intellects find it advisable to keep the general principles and grounds of their convictions within their own breasts, and attempt, in what they address to the public, to fit as much as they can of their own conclusions to premises which they have internally renounced, cannot send forth the open, fearless characters, and logical, consistent intellects who once adorned the thinking world. [.] Those who avoid this alternative, do so by narrowing their thoughts and interest to things which can be spoken of without venturing within the region of principles, that is, to small practical matters. (Ibid., 242)

We do not think that the epidemic of “economic” papers in top journals, dealing with the football World Cup, child obesity or dating partner choice (all relevant, though not really economic topics), deserves further comment.

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