MILL, JOHN STUART

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) was born in London on May 20. The son of the philosopher James Mill (1773–1836) and the godson of the philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832). John Stuart Mill was the most influential British philosopher of the nineteenth century, which saw science and technology transform society as significant contributions were made in metaphysics, logic, the philosophy of science, ethics, social and political philosophy, economics, the philosophy of religion, and the philosophy of education. The System of Logic(1843) and the Principles of Political Economy (1848) became canonical textbooks in their fields. Mill died on May 8 in Avignon, France.

Logic

Mill understood his work in technical philosophy as providing a foundation for his social and political philosophy. The purpose of the discussion of the origins of knowledge in the System of Logic is to prepare the ground for the social sciences, and the discussion of the social sciences provides the grounds for Mill's moral, political, and economic views.

The first five books of the Logic are largely polemical, attacking the philosophical position known as intuitionism, which in the nineteenth century had served as the basis for political conservatism. Intuitionism takes the view that there are innate truths, including moral truths. Innate truths can be known independent of experience, and thus custom and tradition were elevated to the status of timeless truth impervious to empirical refutation. In contrast, Mill wanted to argue that customary practice is often no more than a historical accident or that although it may have been justified in earlier social circumstances, it had outlived its usefulness, and all practice should be subject to revision in light of changing circumstances.

Mill argued that almost every general principle in any domain was the result of an inductive process that began with individual experiences, although Mill conceded a few exceptions. For example, the general principle that nature is uniform seems to be an assumption that people bring to their experience insofar as there are many things people do not understand as examples of uniformity or for which they have no experience, although they continue to subscribe to this belief. There are diseases for which the cause or cure is not known, yet it is presumed despite the failure of past research that the hidden uniformity behind them will be discovered eventually. Mill insisted that these few exceptions had no moral or political implications.

Mill engaged in a protracted controversy with William Whewell (1794–1866), professor of moral philosophy at Cambridge, who had published a History of the Inductive Sciences from the Earliest to the Present Time (1837). Whewell coined the term scientist in recognition of the idea that traditional "natural philosophy" had become a new form of knowledge. Whewell was a critic of the philosopher Francis Bacon's (1561–1626) conception of the process of induction and wanted to redefine induction as the process by which scientific hypotheses are formulated. He considered this process a creative act rooted in history but not amenable to strict rules. In this he was close to the Kantian view that the most general principles of knowledge were not based on experience but instead were presuppositions. A successful hypothesis starts as a happy guess and evolves over time into a larger structure of thought incorporating both empirical and nonempirical elements. Whewell insisted on the historically evolving nature of scientific hypotheses and laws.

Mill objected on the grounds that Whewell was conflating induction with hypothesis formation and that what mattered was not the original happy guess but the subsequent inductive process by which the guess is confirmed by empirical observation. At this level Mill's dispute with Whewell was merely semantic.

Social Sciences and Technology

Mill contended that there can be a science of human nature and that its basic laws are the psychological laws of association. Moreover, the basic truths about human affairs, including questions of ends, are not part of the content of the psychological laws of association. To explain the basic truths of human action it is necessary to supplement the psychological laws of association with information about the circumstances in which those laws operate.

Human action, unlike physical interaction, cannot be explained in terms of current circumstances. Actions of human beings are not solely the result of their current circumstances but are the joint result of those circumstances and the characters of the individuals; the agencies that determine human character are numerous and diversified. Is it possible to give a systematic account of the circumstances, past as well as present? Mill at one time thought this possible. The science needed to discover and formulate the hypothetical laws of the formation of character he termed ethology.

Mill's views on technology are embedded in his historical account of the stages of economic growth. His view owes much to Scottish Enlightenment thinkers such as David Hume (1711–1776), Adam Smith (1723–1790), and Adam Ferguson (1723–1816). Economic and social progress is marked by three stages: savagery, barbarism, and civilization. By civilization Mill meant a modern industrial and commercial society with a liberal culture such as Great Britain. The rise and development of civilization are dependent on "the natural laws of the progress of wealth, upon the diffusion of reading, and the increase of the facilities of human intercourse" ("Civilization," Collected Works, Vol. XVIII, p. 127).

The third stage of civilization, as described in Mill's essay of that title, is marked economically by industry, politically by limited government and the rule of law, and socially by liberty. Mill saw examples of these combined features in military operations, commerce and manufacturing, and the rise of joint-stock companies. The consequences of the rise of civilization are economic, political, social, and moral. Economically, there has been a vast increase in wealth in which the masses and the middle class have been the primary beneficiaries. Politically, power is shifting from a few individuals to the masses.

Science, Technology, and Politics

Socially, the most important consequence has been the decline of individuality. The future of civilization depends on the masses exercising power in ways that allow the benefits of civilization to continue. Mill did not believe this would happen on its own. The masses must understand and appreciate the moral foundations of liberal culture.

Unlike both classical liberals such as the Philosophic Radicals Jeremy Bentham, James Mill, and orthodox Marxists, Mill was not an economic determinist. The moral world was not a product only of material forces. The functioning of the economy presupposed certain virtues. This explains Mill's economic position in the later Principles of Political Economy, the germ of the recommendations in Representative Government (1861), and the project that On Liberty (1859) would address. The social crisis created by the industrial revolution was class conflict. This crisis was exacerbated in Mill's thinking by the perceived coming of an increasingly democratic society.

Participation in a market economy informed by an individualist moral culture promotes different forms of virtuous behavior. Nevertheless, Mill insisted that there had to be a moral purpose to the technological project. The desire to employ the whole surface of the earth for the production of the greatest possible quantity of food and the materials of manufacture he considered to be founded on a mischievously narrow conception of the requirements of human nature. Among the many things Mill and his father had objected to most vehemently about the new industrial economy was the spoiling of the countryside by the many new and often duplicative railway lines. As hikers, they were sensitive to the destruction of natural beauty and the disappearance of solitude.

Mill also addressed the issue of the stationary state: an economy that no longer grows (a concern for classical economists but not neoclassical economists). Mill did not think that society had arrived at that state, and so more growth was probable. However, he did not consider a stationary state necessarily bad. Wealth is not an end in itself but a means to human fulfillment and individual liberty. Even if there were a stationary state of zero growth, freedom would not necessarily be lost.

Mill was the last major British philosopher to present an integrated view of philosophy and relate the theoretical and normative dimensions of his thought in a direct fashion. Book VI of the Logic remains the classic statement of what human science modeled after physical science might be, its limitations and qualifications, and the extent to which it may be useful. As a statement of the aims of and obstacles to the creation of the human sciences, it is unsurpassed.

NICHOLAS CAPALDI

SEE ALSO Consequentialism;Liberalism;Locke, John;Scientific Ethics.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Capaldi, Nicholas. (2004). John Stuart Mill: A Life. New York: Cambridge University Press. This is the latest and only biography of Mill in print.

Cohen, Morris R. and Ernest Nagel. (1934). An Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company. The classic restatement of a Millian view.

Schwartz, Pedro. (1972). The New Political Economy of J. S. Mill. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. The best discussion of Mill's economics.

Skorupski, John. (1989). John Stuart Mill. London: Routledge. A good general discussion of the technical part of Mill's philosophy.

Skorupski, John, ed. (1998). The Cambridge Companion to Mill. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. A useful collection of secondary sources on Mill.

Wilson, Fred. (1990). Psychological Analysis and the Philosophy of John Stuart Mill. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Wilson takes seriously Mill's project in the Logic to explain human beings scientifically.