Mill On Dissent Opinions

Mill asserts that there exists a “peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion…, robbing the human race…[and] those who dissent from the [unpopular] opinion, still more than those who hold it.” Mill supports his assertion that silencing one individual is equivalent to silencing mankind itself by exploring the consequences to not only the dissent opinions, but also the prevailing majority beliefs, and ultimately society as a whole. Mills abstractly states that if the dissent opinion was in fact true, individuals who perpetuated the censorship lost “opportunity of exchanging error for truth,” and if the dissent opinion was false, the majority loses the ability to gain “the clearer perception and livelier impression of the truth, produced …show more content…
Mills states that by refusing to be receptive to an opinion, the perpetrators are deciding the question for all of mankind, espousing their “absolute certainty” in the matter. He continues by observing that these individuals who seek to suppress dissent opinions are often empowered by confidence in their own infallible worlds as opposed to ”the dissentient worlds of other people.” In their own righteousness, oblivious to the “mere accident that decided which...worlds” they reside in, opinions are silenced. Mills also responds to a possible criticism of his view, one that asserts individuals should prevent the “propagation of error” in opinions they find dangerous by acting on their “conscientious conviction”. This argument that individuals should act on their opinions can only be valid in an atmosphere of “complete liberty” of contradicting and disproving opinions, which can only thrive without suppression of opinions. Mills accentuates this refutation by stating that there exists a difference between presuming an opinion to be true due to nonexistent refutations and presuming an opinion to be true because such refutations were not