Debate Document Example
(Censorship)
Proposition
Censorship, meaning "any kind of suppression or regulation, by government
or other authority, of a writing or other means of expression, based on its
content" (Williams. p. 68), should not be allowed.
Refutation
1) Censorship protects people. Storck
writes,
Ideas lead to actions, and bad ideas often lead to bad acts,
bringing harm to individuals and possible ruin to societies. Just as the state
has the right to restrict and direct a person's actions when he is a physical
threat to the community, so also in the matter of intellectual or cultural
threats, the authorities have duties to protect the community. (Storck. "Censorship
Can Be Beneficial.")
Response: This claim makes an invalid connection between bad ideas
and bad acts. It is simply not the case that when one learns about a murder,
one is necessarily compelled to commit murder. Also, it is not evident that
authorities have a responsibility to protect communities from bad ideas in
the same manner that they have a responsibility to protect them from bad acts.
2) Censorship "suppresses error." Storck writes,
For even if it is the case that truth will always emerge from
the give and take of free debate (a questionable proposition), how can the
suppression of evident error harm that process? If a number of assertions
are competing for acceptance, and (let us say) we know that two of them are
false, how can removing those two from the debate make it harder for the truth
to be discerned among the rest? Surely by narrowing the field and leaving
us more time to examine those theories that might be true, we have made it
even more likely that the truth will be found in our free examination of conflicting
ideas. Moreover, most of those who make the claim that truth will always
emerge from totally free debate are not really interested in discovering
truths. They simply use this argument to foster a climate in which relativism
flourishes and mankind is perpetually in doubt about truth and error, right
and wrong. (Storck. "Censorship Can be Beneficial.")
Response: How can one know whether or not an idea is false in the
first place without discussing it? Storck writes that certain ideas can be
immediately discarded, but this reasoning avoids the central question by not
addressing how we are to sort false from true ideas.
3) Censorship is unavoidable. Because the means of propagating ideas
are usually privately held and funded (i.e. printing presses, television channels,
galleries, music labels, etc...), it is impossible that all expressions of
opinion will get equal "air time."
Which views get covered, and in what
way, depends mainly on the economic and political structure and context of
press institutions and the characteristics of the media themselves. (Lichtenberg.
p. 330)
Response: Although
it may be unrealistic to expect that all opinions can be equally and fairly
presented, free societies can work to develop methods for removing censorship
as much as possible.
Substantiation and Proof
1) In On Liberty, John Stuart Mill gives three reasons against censorship:
a) it denies our fallibility
To refuse a hearing to an opinion, because they are sure that
it is false, is to assume that their certainty is the same thing as absolute
certainty. All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility.
(Mill. p. 85)
b) some opinions may contain a "portion of truth"
...though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very
commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing
opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the
collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance
of being supplied. (Mill. p. 120)
c) dogma should be challenged by contrary opinion
so that it does not become prejudice
...even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole
truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly
contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the manner
of prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds.
(Mill. p. 120)
2) The political consequences of censorship are undesirable. If the
authority to determine which opinions may be silenced belongs to one specific
person or group, democratic political structure dissolves into a potentially
tyrannical autocracy or oligarchy.
3) Even if the content of certain opinions, books, or art can be considered
"evil," there is moral value to be gained by experiencing it. In Areopagitica:
Freedom of the Press, Milton writes,
...the knowledge and survey of vice is in this world so necessary
to the constituting of human virtue, and the scanning of error to the confirmation
of truth, how can we more safely, and with less danger, scout into the regions
of sin and falsity. than be reading all manner of tractates and hearing all
manner of reason? And this is the benefit which may be had of books promiscuously
read. (Milton. p. 20)
Bibiliography
Lichtenberg, Judith. "Foundations and Limits of Freedom of the Press" in
Philosophy and Public Affairs. Vol 16, No. 4. (Autumn, 1987): 329-355. JSTOR.
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0048-3915%28198723%2916%3A4%3C329%3AFALOFO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-L
Mill, John Stuart. Utilitarianism, On Liberty, Considerations on Representative
Government. Ed. H.B. Acton. London: Everyman's Library, 1972.
Milton, John. Areopagitica: Freedom of the Press. Santa Barbara:
Bandanna Books, 1992.
Storck, Thomas. "Censorship Can Be Beneficial" in Censorship. Ed.
Byron L. Stay. Opposing Viewpoints® Series. Greenhaven Press, 1997. Document
Number: X3010113213 2004http://80-galenet.galegroup.com.ezproxy.umuc.edu/servlet/OVRC.
Williams, Bernard. "Censorship" in A Companion to Aesthetics. Ed.
David Cooper. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1992.