THE ACQUISITION OF KNOWLEDGE

Naturally there is more to personal development than truth discovery; even sticking within the realm of epistemic human goods, there are many valuable activities and practices that go into the acquisition of knowledge. This line of thought intertwines with the second key strand of Mill’s famous defense of free speech: namely, that even if the opinions being suppressed are wrong, members of the potential audience still ‘lose, what is almost as great a ben-efit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error’ (Mill [1859] 1972: 85). What Mill was getting at is the idea that there is something of inherent worth in the ‘manner’ in which our beliefs are held and not simply in the holding of true beliefs. This manner

involves acquiring knowledge or justified true belief (as it has come to be defined within epistemology). What is more, for Mill, epistemic justification is dependent upon on having been confronted with, and providing answers to, opposing opinions. In short, the legalistic suppression of false opinions reduces opportunities for a form of Socratic dialectic: coming to know that which is true by ‘exposing the contradictions and muddles of an opponent’s position’

(Blackburn 1996: 104). Or, as Mill puts it, in the absence of collision with error we cannot expect individuals to develop the enthusiasm necessary to ascend ‘to something of the dignity of thinking beings’ (Mill [1859] 1972: 102).

I am particularly interested in a general principle that is implied by the second key strand of Mill’s famous defense of free speech. According to what I shall call the Principle of Knowledge, legalistic constraints on speech or other expressive acts, including constraints on uses of hate speech, are (N-)unwarranted if they obstruct the acquisition of knowledge. Among other things, this means that even specious racist statements should not be suppressed if doing so would obstruct the acquisition of knowledge. Consider: “Every single one of the Jews living in this town is either directly involved or com-plicit in the widespread practice of kidnapping and murdering the children of Christians for the purposes of using their blood for Jewish rituals and holi-days.” It is not inconceivable that exposure to this defamatory rumor could encourage critical reflection on whether or not there are any hidden cases of child abuse in the town (whatever the background of the perpetrators) and on the values that Jews and Christians have in common when it comes to the importance of child protection. This might happen if the statement sparks an exchange of information and ideas between Jews and Christians that leads both communities to redouble their commitment to uncovering hidden cases of child abuse in the town and to clearly articulate their shared theological, cultural, and moral commitments to child protection. As Steven Shiffrin puts it, even racist speech ‘may contribute to “the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error”’ (Shiffrin [S.H.]

1999: 78). This means, for example, that criminal laws proscribing group defamation ( sensu stricto ) might be N-unwarranted under the Principle of Knowledge even though they are not ruled out by the Principle of Truth.

However, there is a well-known problem with Mill’s understanding of knowledge, which should not be ignored, since it has implications for what the Principle of Knowledge might say about hate speech law. As stated ear-lier, Mill appears to assume that a sort of dialectic is a necessary condition of knowledge. But that assumption is controversial. It is arguable that even if opposing opinions are suppressed, individuals can still manage to acquire justified true beliefs based upon either direct familiarity with the evidence or reasonable reliance on professionals who themselves have direct familiarity with the evidence, where the gathering and evaluation of evidence utilizes widely accepted norms or standards. As Geoffrey Marshall puts it, ‘[w]e have at the moment rational assurance that the earth is roundish in shape from photographs produced by astronauts, and we should still have it if

the Flat Earth Society were an illegal organization’ (Marshall [G.] 1971:

158). ¹⁶ Following this broader, evidence-based understanding of knowledge, it seems feasible that ordinary people could possess true beliefs about certain events, events that are the subject of denial by hate speakers (e.g., the Holo-caust), but do not need to be exposed to the contradictions and muddles of the hate speaker’s opposing position in order for these beliefs to reach a level of epistemic justification sufficient for knowledge. This is because ordinary people may have first-hand experience of the events in question or direct access to witness accounts of people with first-hand experience or access to evidence uncovered by well-respected historians. Knowledge that the Holo-caust occurred might well be of this order. If this rival account of knowl-edge is accurate, it means that Holocaust denial laws are not necessarily N-unwarranted by the Principle of Knowledge. Of course, the same goes for law proscribing group defamation ( sensu stricto ).

Having said that, it might be argued on Mill’s behalf that what really counts in favor of the right to freedom of expression is that people develop their epistemic virtues to the best of their ability, that they endeavor to rise to the dignity of thinking beings. Although there is a sense in which someone could acquire knowledge of the Holocaust without ever consulting radical, opposing opinions on the subject, if they did so, they would not be realizing the full extent of their powers of critical reflection. They would not have acted in an epistemically virtuous way, as a matter of personal epistemic justifica-tion. And so, for Mill, suppressing opinions might not hinder all aspects of epistemic personal development, but it will certainly hinder some aspects, and aspects that matter. As J.K. Miles puts it, ‘[c]ensorship prevents individuals from justifying their opinions precisely because it prevents them from apply-ing the practices of justification to the strongest arguments against their posi-tion’ (Miles 2012: 223). This line of reasoning may be applied not just to hate speakers but also to those wishing to respond to hate speech either on their own behalf or on behalf of others. Consider the words of Jeanne Craddock.

Through the active, engaging, and often relentless debate on issues of social and political concern, holders of minority opinions learn the strengths of their own arguments and the weaknesses of their oppo-nents’. With this knowledge, these groups are better able to strike at the heart of a bigoted argument with all of the fervor and force necessary to combat hateful ideas. (Craddock 1995: 1089)

However, can this argument be made to work for all hate speech, even hate speech composed of false statements of fact damaging to reputation?

It is worth delving a little deeper into the connection between the spreading of false rumors and the acquisition of knowledge. In the previous section I took into consideration the idea that group defamation ( sensu stricto ) could be a hindrance to the discovery of truth. Might the same be said for certain forms of hate speech and their relationship to the acquisition of knowledge, even on the broader, confronting-counter-evidence-based understanding of

knowledge? According to Schauer, a major part of Mill’s grounds for play-ing down the potential harmfulness of the free dissemination of false beliefs is his unbridled optimism or confidence that the collision of true belief with specious beliefs will invariably result in the triumph of truth over falsehood (Schauer 2012: 139). ¹⁷ Schauer regards this confidence with some incredulity—

describing it as ‘quaint’ (140). ‘[T]he persistence of so many so-called urban legends is a valuable caution against assuming too quickly that truth is a highly effective remedy against false belief’ (ibid.). For example, people who defend Holocaust denial law on the grounds of the harmful consequences of permitting the dissemination of Holocaust denial material (e.g., the argu-ment from a climate of hatred, the arguargu-ment from human dignity) do so precisely because they recognize the fact that ‘belief that the Holocaust never occurred persists in the face of overwhelming and widely accessible evidence to the contrary’ (142). Schauer seems to be assuming that the resistance of false beliefs to falsification involves a process by which people are confronted with widely accessible evidence to the contrary and continue to believe as they do. But this might not be an entirely accurate picture of the circum-stances surrounding belief in the non-existence of the Holocaust. It seems to me that the work of Sunstein (2007) offers a more plausible hypothesis: that people who believe that the Holocaust never occurred are often people who regularly and exclusively look at Holocaust denial and other hate group websites. They exist within these deliberative conclaves such that they sim-ply choose not to look at sites that present a more comprehensive range of evidence or present the evidence in a different light, and are not encour-aged to do so by the sites they do look at. What access they do have to evi-dence that could potentially contradict their beliefs is mediated by the sites they are familiar with—sites that partially select, edit, or omit evidence for the existence of the Holocaust in order to present the opposing position in its weakest possible light. The corollary of these observations is that some uses of hate speech involve the editing and repackaging of evidence such that the audience is unable to form justified true beliefs based on complete information.

Recall that the Principle of Knowledge states that legalistic constraints on free speech are (N-)unwarranted if they obstruct the acquisition of knowl-edge. It is not difficult to imagine a different knowledge-based principle that takes the current problem more seriously. According to what I shall call the Nuanced Principle of Knowledge, legalistic constraints on uses of hate speech are (N-)warranted if they target speech or other expressive conduct that sub-stantially obstructs the acquisition of knowledge, such as through the circula-tion of partial or misinformacircula-tion. I believe that this alternative principle might justify, in educational settings for example, rules governing the content of school curricula, the selection of teaching materials, and the presentation of facts and issues to students—rules designed to ensure that lessons always pro-vide students with a variety of viewpoints. Enforcement of these rules would prevent rogue teachers from exposing pupils to one-sided, biased agendas or ideologies in the teaching of the subject of the Holocaust, for example (e.g.,

Cohen-Almagor 2008). This principle may even justify internet regulators (independent internet regulators or regulators working at the behest of inter-net service providers) imposing special time, place, and manner restrictions on agents responsible for creating and maintaining Holocaust denial websites.

For example, regulators might force agents to place in prominent positions links to other websites detailing all of the available evidence supporting the existence of the Holocaust, or forcing them to declare whenever they have partially selected, edited, or omitted evidence. ¹⁸ This echoes calls made by some politicians, pressure groups, and scholars in the US for the reinstantia-tion of federal restricreinstantia-tions on the manner in which talk radio stareinstantia-tions may address controversial social issues, making it mandatory for any broadcasters who exploit hate speech to attack minority groups to also present opposing views (e.g., Delgado and Stefancic 2004: 159–170; Cortese 2006: 96–97).

Now it might be objected that defending the regulation of Holocaust denial websites based on the fact that some individuals may be deterred from gathering complete information as a result of being bound up in particular informational enclaves, is appealing to the lowest common denominator. Put-ting it another way, to allow the existence of a relatively small number of narrow-minded individuals to become a supporting premise in an argument that justifies censorship of false statements of fact or misleading presentations of evidence, despite the fact that these statements and presentations could help to bring about a clearer and livelier perception of the truth among a more enlightened, intellectually curious majority, is to embrace a numbskull’s veto . The Nuanced Principle of Knowledge need not concern itself with the knowledge acquisition of individuals who choose to look at Holocaust denial websites (so the objection runs) precisely because such individuals access these websites of their own volition, often because they are already minded to think that the Holocaust was probably a hoax, and are perfectly free to look at other, mainstream websites, on which can be found a comprehensive inventory of evidence clearly demonstrating that the Holocaust did in fact take place. However, it should not be overlooked that people responsible for Holocaust denial websites might exert an undue influence over users, even users who choose to enter these sites. For, those responsible for these sites could be undermining the integrity of users’ mental processes by exploiting false statements of fact or misleading presentations of evidence, or could be circumventing cognitive channels of persuasion by taking advantage of users’

emotional need to feel part of a group. These observations about autonomy—

see also Ch. 3 [3.2]—may render the point about volition moot.