Dmitriy Pilipenko

Prof. Turner
Philosophy 338
12/7/2021

Mill on Pornography Censorship

The extent of a government’s reach into private life has been debated and

discussed since prehistoric times when rudimentary forms of government were

slowly becoming developed. This topic has been brought up by handfuls of

philosophers ranging from the antiquities to the modern times. One of those

influential philosophers was John Stuart Mill whose “On Liberty” was a monumental

piece of literature which progressed the discussion on personal liberties and where

the limits for government influence lie. Through out “On Liberty” Mill seemed to

maintain an overall attitude of generally limiting government within the private

sphere and only exerting its influence whenever the actions of one caused a

sufficient level of harm to another.

In the second chapter of “On Liberty” titled “Of the Liberty of Thought and

Discussion”, John Stuart Mill held a clear and firm stance against the censorship of a

person’s thoughts and speech. Mill, a Utilitarian, believed that the morality of an

action depended on how much that action benefited towards the overall happiness.

Maintaining with his Liberty/Harm principle, which states that society has the right

to interfere only if actions cause harm to others, Mill argued that the harms of the

restricting free discussion within society would outweigh the benefits of censorship.

If an accepted opinion is false, then by censoring all other opinions causes us to lose

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the opportunity to replace the accepted, false opinion with a true opinion or at least

an opinion that is closer to the actual truth.

If the accepted opinion were true, censorship of competing opinions would

still cause overall harm in the long run. When opposition to a true opinion is

censored, then the legitimacy of the true opinion is lost. An opinion can be

considered true when it is able to withstand constant challenges of the contrary and

even then the opinion cannot be considered absolutely true, just more resilient to

challenge than any previous opinion before it. Mill also argued that if true opinions

are not challenged regularly enough, the logical rationality behind the opinions

begins to lose itself among the people and the effect that that opinion has also

becomes lost. Mill cited the Roman Catholic Church as an example; where the

followers of faith did what they were told without really understanding the

reasoning behind the various practices. This led to some member of the church to

commit big mistakes that went against their religious doctrines.

Throughout “On Liberty,” Mill also championed for an open market place of

ideas where all kinds of ideas could be introduced and put up to the challenge of the

general public where they can weigh their options and decide the better idea for

themselves. Borrowing the idea from the Free Market approach towards economics,

Mill believed that people were rational enough to be able to decide which proposed

idea is the better one for themselves. Though Mill directly introduced the Open

Market of Ideas while arguing against censorship of speech and discussion, it can

quite reasonably and easily be translated towards the freedom of personal

expression and choices of how to live one’s life.

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 While making his basic case for the freedom of discussion and introducing

his concept of the open market of ideas, Mill also brought up another quite

interesting argument, his Assumption of Infallibility argument also known as the A/I

argument. The A/I argument says that when we attempt to silence opposing

arguments, we assume our viewpoint is correct and we take on a role of infallibility

that no one has a right to. So when ever one decides to censor any opposing views to

their view, he or she is automatically assuming that their view is infallible which

silences any legitimate attempt to reach closer to the actual truth as possible.

Another key argument that Mill had brought up can be found within the

introduction of his “On Liberty.” the Liberty/Harm principle. Mill states that in the

modern time and age the threat to civil liberties is not from tyrannical rulers

exerting their will upon their people; rather the tyranny of the majority currently

threatens the civil liberties of minorities. His liberty principle declared that the only

time society is allowed exercise its will upon its members is when such interference

is necessary to prevent harm to others. The problem with censorship of

pornography is that the requirements for society’s intervention are not met.

Pornography is watched within the privacy of one’s home and affecting only the

consenting adults that are implicit in the production, distribution and consumption

of the pornography. Since pornography does not cause harm onto any bystanders,

there is little to none explanation of societies intervention.

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 There have been a great deal of great thinkers in the past one hundred years

trying to completely analyze and apply to the real world, the writings of John Stuart

Mill. One, David Dyzenhaus, was fairly successful at using the works of Mill to help

support his position in favor of censoring pornography. Dyzenhaus’ great and main

point was that women within society were socialized to accept that men were

superior to women and that it is the women’s role within a society to respect the

wishes of the men rather than attempt to pursue completely separate and

autonomous lives. Dyzenhaus claimed that the sexually stimulating part of

pornography is due in part to the eroticism of the gender gap inequalities. By

playing into the gender stereotypes currently existing in society, pornography helps

perpetuate the socialization that women are inferior to men. Dyzenhaus argues that

watching pornography actually does cause harm even to those that are not actively

participating in viewing it. The harm is, that pornography takes something

inherently bad – the inequality between men and women – and makes it seem

desirable. Consumers of pornographic material would then subconsciously take the

message and begin applying it in other instances and help perpetuate the gender

inequalities without realizing it.

Dyzenhaus also challenges the amount of credibility that can be afforded for

the consent that women provide in order to participate in the production of

pornographic material. He claims that due to the socialization that women have

experienced while growing up, they have come to see themselves not as

independent agents with self-will and self-control, but rather are socialized to

believe that what is expected of them in their nature is to serve others and place

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their husband and children as their first priority in life. If this is true, then it would

seem that any consent that women would provide is not really a product of the

woman’s desires but instead the product of what society deems the woman’s desires

should be. It definitely seems like Dyzenhaus has taken things to an extreme, but a

watered-down version of this argument may have some credibility to it.

Though Dyzenhaus does bring up several good arguments in favor of

censorship, his points should not be used as complete justification for completely

censoring all forms of pornography. Dyzenhaus points out that pornography plays

into the social gender gaps existent between men and women; but what about gay

and lesbian pornography? In gay and lesbian pornography, there is no one gender

exerting domination over another. And since there is no gender domination with

gay and lesbian pornography, there is also a lack of harm. Employing his liberty

principle, Mill would argue that society has no business getting involved with the

restriction of gay and lesbian pornography. Secondly, Dyzenhaus’ argument is

completely dependent on the existence of a gender gap within society, but what

about societies with no gender gap? If a society can be found where both males and

females are found to be equal to each other, then there would be no perpetuation of

sexism within that society and the harm resulting from pornography would be

reduced to none; completely eliminating any justification for society to step-in and

choosing to censor pornography. Thirdly and probably most importantly,

Dyzenhaus seems to rely on the fact that watching pornography causes women to

think of themselves as an inferior gender. But contrary to the claim, there has been

no clinical or experimental evidence that would corroborate such a claim. Therefore,

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as interesting as Dyzenhaus’ first argument is, there really is nothing within the

argument that would demonstrate a significant level of harm so much so that Mill

would justify society censoring pornography.

Dyzenhaus second argument, about the “false appearance of consent” is a

quite interesting one though slightly flawed. A question that is raised is when can

one’s consent be considered the product of one’s autonomous decision? Are

autonomous decisions, decisions based on current desires or on fully informed

desires? Ideally we would think that one’s consent is valid only when the person is

fully informed and knows full well all possible consequences of what they are

consenting for. But in reality this is quite unfeasible, if not impossible to accomplish.

In order to determine whether a desire if fully informed, one must assume a role of

authority deciding whether the person is fully informed or not. Secondly, we can

consider that autonomy is achieved when a person is able to fulfill decisions based

on their current desires. If that is the case then the question of whether or not an

individual is acting truly autonomous is an easy question to answer, but this also

introduces a worry that if you focus only on current desires then you may be

operating based off of biased and uninformed desires. Which approach would Mill

take? Mill stated earlier that people the way that they currently are at that time

should be able to make their own decision. Mill supports that autonomy is not about

being fully informed and then being able to decide based off of the fully informed

desires. Rather, Mill supports that the main focus of autonomy is the ability to

decide based on current desires. Whether these current desires are fully informed

or biased is not a significant issue because ultimately that question cannot be

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determined and in practical terms by the time you become fully informed, the

opportunity and/or desire passes.

If asked whether complete censorship of pornography is justified or not, John

Stuart Mill, being the Utilitarian that he is – would most likely remain consistent

with his previous arguments and still insist that the censorship of expression, even

pornography, yields in more harms towards society than beneficial goods. Mill’s

liberty principle prevents society from directly interfering with the private lives of

its people unless to prevent harm. His assumption of infallibility states that when

you decide to censor opposing opinions you assume a role of infallibility, a role that

cannot be carried out properly. Even Mill’s open market place of ideas provides

abundant support for the anti-censorship position. Based on his essays in “On

Liberty,” it is very clear that John Stuart Mill would extend his opposition to

censorship to include pornography as well.