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Just imagine a market place in which you cannot buy foods nor

all kinds of everything but only ideas, views, opinions.

What would make you buy one idea rather than another?

What makes one idea more attractive than another?

The sun it's praise its sizes?

So its width or its depth?

Its originality or it's idiosyncracies or it's usefulness for your purposes.

John Stuart Mill was a radical imperialist and his in his theoretical philosophy

he developed and defended phenomenalism in response to skepticism.

According to a phenomenalist, only phenomena or appearances exist.

When we talk loosely about objects like bananas what

we're really talking about collection of sensations.

However not only actual sensations.

Because that would mean that object cease to exist whenever they

are not perceived also possible sensations.

At the moment I'm not looking at a banana in my shopping bag.

But if I were to take the banana out of the bag and look at it,

I would have say a yellow sensation and a curve sensation.

And if I were to taste a banana I would have a sweet sensation.

So external objects are nothing more and

nothing less than such permanent possibilities of experience.

And everything I know about these objects

can be expressed in terms of counterfactual conditionals of the form.

If I were to do this or that, I would have such and such sensations.

Now what is appealing about Mill's phenomenalism?

Well, it says the possibility of empirical knowledge, since our sensations

are invaluable empirical knowledge even gets a very firm foundation.

So epitimologically phenomenalism offers everything we can dream

of in response to skepticism that is to epistemological skepticism.

However, there is also a price to be paid and

that's an orthnlogical or metaphysical prize.

Phenomenalism throws in the towel on the issue of the external world's skepticism.

The external world is nothing like what we usually think and say it is.

Rather it's the world of possible sensations

succeeding one another according to laws.

Phenomenalism reminds me of cricket school in Von Adens Little Yohannes.

The little crickets quotes, only knew 26 sand-hills at most and two ponds.

No one could know of anything beyond said the master, and

what was told of it was mere idle fancy.

With these conflicts with realistic intuitions about

the world beyond the cricket's possible experiences.

Given the importance of an infallible foundation of empirical knowledge,

in this theoretical philosophy it may seem somewhat surprising that

John Stewart Mill.

And reluctantly and even happily embraces fallibilism in his philosophy.

Fallibilism sincere, epistemological modesty.

The idea that we made are, that we may be mistaken.

That what we accept to be true may turn out to be false or

even worse that we will never really know what is true.

Is even the driving force behind Mills' argument for

freedom of both opinion and expression of opinion.

Just as phenomenalism is throwing in the towel

on the issue of external worlds skepticism, fallibilism

is throwing in the towel on the issue of the impossibility of knowledge.

The familiarist response to the skeptic okay, we never know for sure.

We can always be mistaken.

But that's only makes sense if it's also possible for us to be right.

Towards the end of the liberty of starting discussion chapter two of his on liberty,

Mill recapitulates the grounds of both opinion and expression of opinion.

There are three possibilities.

A differing view, an opinion that constitutes an alternative

to receive you may in fact be firstly completely true.

Secondary, partially true, and thirdly, it's also possible that a receive few is

completely true, and a different view, false.

In each of these two cases, freedom of opinion, and freedom of expression

of opinion are absolutely mandatory and of pivotal importance.

If the differing view is completely true allowing it to be freely

pressed on the marketplace of ideas and confronting it deliberately,

considering it carefully, can and will result, at east in the best case scenario,

in the rectification of the erroneous received few.

If however the differing view is partially true and quotes, since the general

prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth.

It's only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth

has any chance of being supplied, end quotes.

But even in the receive few is the whole truth,

according to fallibilism one never knows.

But we can and should take the possibility into account.

Even then confronting the correct few with differing views is still beneficial.

Because it adds up significantly to the comprehension of feeling of

the rational grounds of the view.

Even if it doesn’t lead to any adjustments whatsoever,

deliberately confronting and carefully considering alternative views,

as they’re freely expressed on the marketplace of ideas.

Always revitalizes and deepens the justification of one's views.

Now let us have a closer look at Mill's or liberty.

What is the criterion that Mill puts forward in Chapter 3 for

limiting individual freedom by law?

Could it also affect freedom of expression of opinion?

What is the ethics of public debates that Mill puts forward in Chapter 2?

Are debates on the contemporary marketplace of ideas for

instance on social media in line with it?

And can you think of contemporary echoes of Mills insistence on

the positive role that the expression of alternative views can play in

revitalizing the received opinion, even if it is the whole truth?

John Stuart Mill's argument for freedom of expression

The Politics of Skepticism

Meet the Instructors