Logic and Reality in the Philosophy of John Stuart Mill'Nobody reads Mill today,' wrote a reviewer in Time magazine a few years ago. ! One could scarcely praise Mr Melvin Maddocks, who penned that remark, for his awareness of the present state of Mill studies, for of all nineteenth century philosophers who wrote in English, it is 1. S. Mill who remains the most read today. Yet it would not be so far from the truth to say that very few people pay much serious attention nowadays to Mill's writings about logic and metaphysics (as distinct from those on ethical and social issues), despite the fact that Mill put enormous effort into their composition and through them exerted a considerable influen ce on the course of European philosophy for the rest of his century. But the only sections of A System of Logic (1843) and An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy (1865) to which much reference is now made comprise only a small proportion of those very large books, and the prevailing assumption is that Mill's theories about logical and meta physical questions are, with few exceptions, of merely antiquarian in terest. Bertrand Russell once said that Mill's misfortune was to be born at the wrong time (Russell (1951), p. 2). It can certainly appear that Mill chose an inauspicious time to attempt a major work on logic. |
Contents
KNOWLEDGE BY INFERENCE | 15 |
PROBLEMS ABOUT PROOF AND IMPLICATION | 38 |
MILLS POSITIVE THEORIES OF INFERENCE AND THE SYLLOGISM | 65 |
THE POSSIBILITY OF INDUCTIVE REASONING | 80 |
LOGIC AND THE OBJECTIVE WORLD | 104 |
GLOBAL EMPIRICISM | 126 |
THE RELATIVITY OF KNOWLEDGE | 154 |
THE WORLD AND ITS SUBJECT | 171 |
MILLS INCONSISTENT EMPIRICISM | 204 |
NOTES | 221 |
| 233 | |
| 239 | |
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Common terms and phrases
accepted actual sensations argument ascribed assert associationism attributes axioms belief causal chapter claim conception conclusion deductive Dictum distinction Dummett empirical epistemic evidence existence experience explain external world fact global empiricism global empiricist Hamilton human Hume Hume's ibid idealism idealist ideas inductive inference inductive reasoning instance intuition justification kind law of causation law of contradiction law of identity laws of logic logical laws major premise major proposition meaning men are mortal mental metaphysical Mill Mill's theory Mill's view mind mortal notion noumena particulars to particulars permanent possibilities petitio phenomena phenomenalist philosophy of logic physical objects plausible possibilities of sensation possible sensations priori priorist problem problem of induction psychological question rational realist reality recognise relativity doctrine relativity of knowledge relativity principle sense Socrates Stewart suasive syllogism syllogistic syllogistic process things thinking thought tion true truth uniformity of nature uniformity principle universal proposition Whately