The distinctly contemporary proliferation of pornography and hate speech poses a challenge to liberalism's traditional ideal of a 'marketplace of ideas' facilitated by state neutrality about the content of speech. This new study argues that the liberal state ought to depart from neutrality to meet this challenge.

Pornographic speech harms women by playing a key role in sustaining the social conditions through which women's liberty and equality are undercut. Though there is a principled moral and constitutional basis for pursuing a legal strategy in fighting pornography, we should not overestimate the effectiveness of the law or underestimate its potential dangers. The struggle against pornography must be waged through education, expressive exploration, and protest, not through the law.

In this paper I briefly set out Susan Moller Okin’s liberal feminist position and then rehearse a number of criticisms of Okin which together suggest that dismantling the gender system and adopting the principle of androgyny would not be compatible with liberalism. This incompatibility appears to vindicate an extreme feminist critique of liberalism. I argue that nevertheless a liberal feminism is possible. The liberal feminist ought to adopt the principle of parity, that is, guaranteed equal representation of both sexes in (...) parliament, rather than the requirement of androgyny. Parity follows from a conception of procedural justice, for it provides a mechanism which guarantees that the interests of both sexes are fairly represented in the legislature. Parity may also go some way to alleviating the tensions which exist between feminism and multiculturalism. (shrink)

This article provides an overview of the key philosophical themes and debates in discussions of pornography. In particular, I consider the major positions on how pornography ought to be defined, when (and if ) it should be regulated, whether it is best understood as speech (or action), whether there is evidence that is it harmful. I argue in favor of what is known as the civil rights approach to pornography, as reflected in the work of Catharine MacKinnon.

The freedom to create and disseminate pornography has often been defended based on a liberal claim that the free speech of pornographers would be violated if pornography were censored. The classic defense of free speech, given by John Stuart Mill, is often invoked to defend this position. In opposition, many feminist theorists have advocated arguments for regulatory measures against pornography. Some of these authors have also utilized the writings of Mill. They have argued that, contrary to the liberal defense of (...) free speech, Mill’s arguments are compatible with, or even require, the forced regulation of pornography. Logically, unless Mill’s writings are contradictory, they should not be invoked to support diametrically opposed positions. This paper investigates this apparent dilemma and argues that, contrary to the antipornography feminist position, Mill’s writings do not support pornography regulation. In fact, in a surprising twist, the arguments of anti-pornography feminists can, using the writings of Mill, be seen as strongly supporting the liberal anti-censorship position. (shrink)

This paper analyses J.S. Mill's theory on the relationships between individual autonomy and State powers. It will be argued that there is a significant discrepancy between Mill's general liberal statements aimed to secure individual largest possible autonomy and the specific examples which provide the government with quite wide latitude for interference in the public and private spheres. The paper outlines the boundaries of government interference in the Millian theory. Subsequently it describes Mill's elastic paternalism designed to prevent people from inflicting (...) harm upon others as well as upon themselves, from soft paternalism on issues like compulsory education to hard paternalism on very private matters such as marriage, having children, and divorce by consent. (shrink)

Mill’s harm principle is commonly supposed to rest on a distinction between self-regarding conduct, which is not liable to interference, and other-regarding conduct, which is. As critics have noted, this distinction is difficult to draw. Furthermore, some of Mill’s own applications of the principle, such as his forbidding of slavery contracts, do not appear to fit with it. This article proposes that the self-regarding/other-regarding distinction is not in fact fundamental to Mill’s harm principle. The sphere of protected liberty includes not (...) only self-regarding conduct, but also actions that affect only consenting others. On the other hand, the occasional permissibility of interfering with self-regarding conduct can plausibly be explained by reference to the agent’s consent. Thus, the more important distinction appears to be that between consensual and non-consensual harm, rather than that between the self-regarding and non-self-regarding action. That is, interference can be justified in order to prevent non-consensual harms, but not to prevent consensual harms. It is argued that the harm principle, thus reformulated, both captures Mill’s intentions and is a substantively plausible position. (shrink)

The necessity of having effective and socially sound networks is trivial. It is clear that information technology is now a necessary tool that has well understood advantages. The same technology carries negative side-effects. It is our social and ethical duty to examine the possibly negative side effects of IT, especially as IT becomes prevalent in a conservative society such as Kuwait. In our research Kuwait forms a case study as we try to understand what ethical theories underlie the attitude toward (...) one problematic aspect of IT, online pornography, in Muslim/Arab societies. In this paper we review several ethical theories and then present the results of experimental research aimed at determining the concepts that underlie the Kuwaiti response to pornography online. (shrink)

This article addresses the long-standing problem of how to understand Mill’s famous harm principle in light of his failure to specify what counts as “harm” in On Liberty. I argue that standard accounts restricting “harm” to only certain negative consequences fail to do justice to the text, and that this fact forces us to rethink Mill’s defense of individual liberty. I then offer a new account of that defense in which “harm” is understood in an expansive sense, despite apparent problems (...) for such a view. (shrink)

In this paper I will argue that Mill employs a tacit concept of competence in On Liberty. I will focus on the role of truth and individuality in On Liberty. Competence is a precondition for individuality, and as such, it is a threshold concept: those above the threshold are sensitive to rational argument and should be free to pursue happiness in their own way (because they are guided by the truth), whereas those who fail to meet this threshold should be (...) educated and paternalistically be kept out of harm's way until they are able to find the truth for and by themselves. (edited). (shrink)

Mill advocated an unqualified defense of the liberty of conscience in the most comprehensive sense, which he understood to include not just the freedom to hold but also to express any opinion or sentiment. Yet considerable dispute persists about the nature of Mill’s argument for freedom of expression and whether his premises can support so strong a conclusion. Two prominent interpretations of Mill that threaten to undermine his uncompromising defense of free speech are considered and refuted. A better interpretation can (...) be founded on Mill’s claim that the liberties of conscience are inseparable in practice. This claim can be defended with modern psychological insight about the nature of cognitive bias, and epistemological insight about why justification of creedal beliefs requires the universal toleration of opinion, insights which are largely anticipated by Mill. This argument is especially vital because it highlights the divide between classical liberalism and progressivism that has become a flashpoint in the current political debate over free speech. (shrink)

Alessandra Tanesini’s insightful paper explores the moral and epistemic harms of arrogance, particularly in conversation. Of special interest to her is the phenomenon of arrogance-induced silencing, whereby one speaker’s arrogance either prevents another from speaking altogether or else undermines her capacity to produce certain speech acts such as assertions. I am broadly sympathetic to many of Tanesini’s claims about the harms associated with this sort of silencing. In this paper I propose to address what I see as a lacuna in (...) her account. I believe that the arrogant speaker can put those he silences in the morally outrageous position in which their own silence contributes to their oppression. While nothing in Tanesini’s account would predict or explain this, the wrinkle I propose will aim to do so in a way that is in the spirit of her account. To do so, I will need to expand the focus of discussion: instead of concentrating on silencing, I will consider the phenomenon of silence. When one is silent in the face of a mutually observed assertion, one’s silence will be interpreted by others. I argue that under certain widespread conditions, a hearer’s silence in the face of the arrogant speaker’s assertions is likely to be falsely interpreted as indicating her assent to the assertion, and such an interpretation of the hearer’s silence will bring new harms in its wake—in particular, harms to the hearer who was silenced, and also harms to the community at large. When we combine these new harms with the ones Tanesini identified in her paper, we reach the further conclusion that the harms of silencing are potentially far worse than many have imagined. (shrink)

Academic discussion of pornography is generally restricted to issues arising from the depiction of adults. I argue that child-pornography is a more complex matter, and that generally accepted moral judgements concerning pornography in general have to be revised when children are involved. I look at the question of harm to the children involved, the consumers, and society in general, at the question of blame, and at the possibility of a morally acceptable form of child-pornography. My approach involves an objectivist meta-ethics (...) and a utilitarian view of practical ethics, and I bring out the advantages of these theories to the consideration of moral issues such as this one. (shrink)

This paper is about the methodology of doing practical ethics. There is a variety of methods employed in ethics. One of them is the principle-based approach, which has an established place in ethical reasoning. In everyday life, we often judge the rightness and wrongness of actions by their conformity to principles, and the appeal to principles plays a significant role in practical ethics, too. In this paper, I try to provide a better understanding of the nature of principle-based reasoning. To (...) accomplish this, I show in the first section that these principles can be applied to cases in a meaningful and sufficiently precise way. The second section discusses the question how relevant applying principles is to the resolution of ethical issues. This depends on their nature. I argue that the principles under consideration in this paper should be interpreted as presumptive principles and I conclude that although they cannot be expected to bear the weight of definitely resolving ethical problems, these principles can nevertheless play a considerable role in ethical research. (shrink)

El objetivo de este artículo es proponer cuatro condiciones éticas para la regulación de la pornografía en un Estado con tendencia liberal democrática: las dos primeras se relacionan con la producción del material pornográfico, la tercera con el contenido de dicho material y la cuarta con su repercusión social. De acuerdo con ello, en primer lugar, se presenta una definición de pornografía que incluye las perspectivas de las feministas radicales y liberales. En segundo lugar, se desarrolla un marco normativo para (...) determinar cuándo un material pornográfico es éticamente permisible y cuándo no. Finalmente, se sugiere una recomendación en relación a lo que el Estado debería hacer en cada caso y se hace una distinción entre tres ámbitos: las condiciones bajo las cuales es producido el material pornográfico, el contenido de lo que representa o describe, y sus consecuencias sociales. Se concluye que el Estado no debería censurar todos los materiales pornográficos, como las feministas radicales insisten, sino sólo prohibir y castigar aquellos que no cumplan con las condiciones éticas que se proponen. (shrink)

Can rights constitutionalism operate as a social democratic restraint on private power? How should we assess this? Following renewed interest in social democratic legal theory, some propose developing more egalitarian forms of rights constitutionalism as a counterweight to overweening private power in the global economy. Such strategies follow a normative methodology, associated with liberal accounts of legality which emphasize the autonomy of law as an external means of social change. This can be contrasted with traditional social democratic accounts of law (...) as an artifact produced through and in political struggle. This shift of focus to normative argument is at the expense of contextual diagnosis, which remains valuable in questioning whether constitutional strategies can restrain private power in the name of substantive equality. Rights constitutionalism, reflecting its classical liberal roots, continues to protect private power in important ways.; Two strategies, based in innovations in North American and European constitutionalism respectively, have been proposed to overcome this default. First, the Application to State Institutions (ASI) model seeks to extend the reach of constitutional application to include private actors, and; second the Application to Law (LAW) model seeks to extend the scope of rights by requiring all law to conform to constitutional guarantees, including equality. A sociologically grounded analysis of the comparative jurisprudence shows these models retain key elements of the classical liberal framework, such as the state-civil society distinction, and which have in practice militated against any significant democratization of private power. (shrink)