Freedom of thought

Freedom of thought (also called freedom of conscience 'and freedom of ideas') is the freedom of an individual to hold or consider a fact, viewpoint, or thought, regardless of anyone else's view.

Explanation

The ability of human beings to think at a high level is what defines and seperates man from other animals. Thinking is what most makes human beings -human-. To deny persons freedom of thought is to deny them their humanity and their potential. The conflict of Galileo with the Roman Catholic Church is one example of the conflict of authority and freedom of thought in Western society, although numerous earlier examples may be found in the early world empires of human history, wherever one creed or state of mind was pitted against another.

Since the whole concept of 'freedom of thought' rests on the freedom of the individual to believe whatever one thinks is best (freedom of belief), the notion of 'freedom of religion' is closely related and inextricably bound up with these. While in many societies and forms of government, there has been effectively no freedom of religion or belief, this same freedom has been cherished and developed to a great extent in the modern western or Judaeo-Christian world, such that it is literally taken for granted.

This development was enshrined in words in the United States Constitution by the Bill of Rights, which contains the famous guarantee in the First Amendment that laws may not be made if they are interfering with religion "or prohibiting the free exercise thereof"; today nearly all Democratic nations around the world contain similar language within their respective Constitutions.

A US Supreme Court Justice later (1937) went on to reason in Palko v. Connecticut that:

"Freedom of thought... is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom. With rare aberrations a pervasive recognition of this truth can be traced in our history, political and legal."^*

In other words, without the right to freedom of thought, other rights such as the right to freedom of speech hold little meaning.

Such ideas regarding freedom of thought, as developed over time, ultimately became a vital part of international human rights law. In the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), it is listed under Article 18:

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

The Human Rights Committee states that this Article 18, which became legally binding on member states with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights;

"distinguishes the freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief from the freedom to manifest religion or belief. It does not permit any limitations whatsoever on the freedom of thought and conscience or on the freedom to have or adopt a religion or belief of one's choice. These freedoms are protected unconditionally."^*

Similarly, Article 19 of the UDHR guarantees that "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference..."

Drug prohibition

Despite the many laws concerning freedom of thought, amongst philosophers, there is no consensus on what thought itself actually is. However, the field of neurochemistry uses a pragmatic view in linking thoughts to patterns of brain activity - ‘almost everyone now agrees… that the subject of mental properties and events is a physical thing.’ ^*

Patterns of brain activity can be altered by taking psychoactive drugs – ranging from caffeine to Prozac to LSD. The United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime defines a psychoactive substance as "any substance that people take to change either the way they feel, think, or behave."^*

Authors such as Timothy Leary and Aldous Huxley argue that certain psychoactive drugs, or ‘entheogens’, alter the way we think. Religious groups have also traditionally used specific plants to alter thought, aiding members in worship or helping to put them in touch with God. Examples of this are the Rastafari movement’s use of marijuana, Native American use of peyote, and the chewing of qat, considered to be a "pipeline to Allah" among many Muslims in Eastern Africa.

Some non-governmental organizations, such as the Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics, argue that placing limits on the use of certain drugs is akin to placing a limit on thought itself – thus violating the right to cognitive liberty.

Constitutional rights-based arguments against blanket drug prohibition have featured in US legal history since the 1960s. The US Supreme Court recently upheld the right to religious drug use in the União do Vegetal case. This case now features in arguments for and against drug prohibition.

Suppression of freedom of thought

One obvious impediment to those who would suppress freedom of thought, is that no one human being can possibly even know what everyone else is really thinking — let alone successfully regulate it.

This impossibility of controlling thought is perhaps summarized in the Judaeo-Christian context nowhere more succinctly than in Ecclesiastes 8:8: "There is no man that hath power over the spirit, to retain it; neither hath he power in the day of death." A similar sentiment is expressed in the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament, where he seems to liken those who vainly attempt to control the emotions of their neighbours to "the children in the marketplace" who try to produce dancing with a happy song and mourning with a dirge, and then express frustration at their futility in trying to do so. (Matt. 11:16)

Laws that attempt to regulate what goes on inside a person’s head have long been regarded with suspicion. Queen Elizabeth I removed one such law, several hundred years ago, because, according to Sir Francis Bacon, ‘She would not make windows into men’s souls’. ^*

While freedom of thought is said to be one of the fundamental principles of most democracies, the attempted suppression of freedom of thought is a prominent characteristic of totalitarian and authoritarian regimes. Freedom of expression can be limited in several ways — through censorship, arrests, book burning, or propaganda, and this tends to discourage freedom of thought. Examples of effective campaigns against freedom of expression are the Soviet suppression of genetics research known as Lysenkoism, the book burning campaigns of Nazi Germany, and the radical anti-intellectualism enforced in Cambodia under Pol Pot.

Freedom of expression can also be stifled without institutional interference when the views of the majority become so widely accepted that other ways of expression are repressed. For this reason, some condemn "political correctness" as a form of limiting freedom of thought, although proponents of "political correctness" claim that it aims to give minority views an equal representation.

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which states that thought is inherently embedded in language, would support the claim that an effort to limit the use of words of language is actually a form of restricting freedom of thought.

A possible counter-point is that such efforts have increased the number of terms available for use in describing social groups and events, contributing to freedom of thought, rather than stifling it.

Internet Censorship and Freedom of Thought

A current example of propaganda, censorship and therefore suppression of freedom of thought, is the control of information on the world wide web. This can readily be seen by going to any of the (currently few) major search engines left now, such as the English Google, Yahoo, Answers or MSN. Search results for certain topics, such as religious texts, often have little to do with the keywords provided in the search. Although results on Google, for example, periodically change radically, it is often nigh on impossible to find actual quotes from the gospel books of the New Testament, for example. Instead, pages with ads for hotels, pages that seem to have little or nothing to do with the query or personal interpretations for Jesus' words come up in the results. Fascism and Communism are examples of states that stifle religious freedom, freedom of speech and thought, and that censor information concerning freedom of thought.

References

George Botterill and Peter Carruthers, ‘The Philosophy of Psychology’, Cambridge University Press (1999), p3
The Hon. Sir John Laws, ‘The Limitations of Human Rights’, ^* P.L. Summer, Sweet & Maxwell and Contributors, p260

External links

Freedom of Thought - Iranian Underground Art Movement
Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Academic Freedom
The Beckley Foundation - a charitable trust that promotes the investigation of consciousness
The Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics - a network of scholars elaborating the law, policy and ethics of freedom of thought
Information about Casey Hardison - the first individual in the UK to use an elaborate freedom of thought argument to challenge drug prohibition in court

Human rights

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