137 ideas
| 12223 | It is a fallacy to explain the obscure with the even more obscure [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: The fallacy of 'ad obscurum per obscurius' is to explain the obscure by appeal to what is more obscure. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §3) | |
| A reaction: Not strictly a fallacy, so much as an example of inadequate explanation, along with circularity and infinite regresses. |
| 9406 | A class is natural when everybody can spot further members of it [Quinton] |
| Full Idea: To say that a class is natural is to say that when some of its members are shown to people they pick out others without hesitation and in agreement. | |
| From: Anthony Quinton (The Nature of Things [1973], 9 'Nat') | |
| A reaction: He concedes a number of problems with his view, but I admire his attempt to at least begin to distinguish the natural (real!) classes from the ersatz ones. A mention of causal powers would greatly improve his story. |
| 8625 | What physical facts could underlie 0 or 1, or very large numbers? [Frege on Mill] |
| Full Idea: What in the world can be the observed fact, or the physical fact, which is asserted in the definition of the number 777864? ...What a pity that Mill did not also illustrate the physical facts underlying the numbers 0 and 1! | |
| From: comment on John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843]) by Gottlob Frege - Grundlagen der Arithmetik (Foundations) §7 | |
| A reaction: I still think patterns could be an empirical foundation for arithmetic, though you still have to grasp the abstract concept of the pattern. An innate capacity to spot resemblance gets you a long way. |
| 17895 | Combining two distinct assertions does not necessarily lead to a single 'complex proposition' [Mill] |
| Full Idea: In 'Caesar is dead, and Brutus is alive' ...there are here two distinct assertions; and we might as well call a street a complex house, as these two propositions a complex proposition. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 1.04.3) | |
| A reaction: Arthur Prior, in his article on 'tonk', cites this to claim that the mere account of the and-introduction rule does not guarantee the existence of any conjunctive proposition that can result from it. Mill says you are adding a third proposition. |
| 10427 | All names are names of something, real or imaginary [Mill] |
| Full Idea: All names are names of something, real or imaginary. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], p.32), quoted by Mark Sainsbury - The Essence of Reference 18.2 | |
| A reaction: Mill's example of of being like a chalk mark on a door, but Sainsbury points out that names can be detached from bearers in a way that chalk marks can't. |
| 4944 | Mill says names have denotation but not connotation [Mill, by Kripke] |
| Full Idea: It is a well known doctrine of Mill that names have denotation but not connotation. | |
| From: report of John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843]) by Saul A. Kripke - Naming and Necessity lectures Lecture 1 | |
| A reaction: A nice starting point for any discussion of the topic. The obvious response is that a name like 'Attila the Hun' seems to have a very vague denotation for most of us, but a rather powerful connotation. |
| 7762 | Proper names are just labels for persons or objects, and the meaning is the object [Mill, by Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Mill seemed to defend the view that proper names are merely labels for individual persons or objects, and contribute no more than those individuals themselves to the meanings of sentences in which they occur. | |
| From: report of John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843]) by William Lycan - Philosophy of Language | |
| A reaction: Identity statements can become trivial on this view ('Twain is Clemens'). Modern views have become more sympathetic to Mill, since externalism places meanings outside the head of the speaker. |
| 12230 | Singular terms refer if they make certain atomic statements true [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: Anyone should agree that a justification for regarding a singular term as having objectual reference is provided just as soon as one has justification for regarding as true certain atomic statements in which it functions as a singular term. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §9) | |
| A reaction: The meat of this idea is hidden in the word 'certain'. See Idea 10314 for Hale's explanation. Without that, the proposal strikes me as absurd. |
| 10631 | If 'x is heterological' iff it does not apply to itself, then 'heterological' is heterological if it isn't heterological [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: If we stipulate that 'x is heterological' iff it does not apply to itself, we speedily arrive at the contradiction that 'heterological' is itself heterological just in case it is not. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Intro to 'The Reason's Proper Study' [2001], 3.2) |
| 9801 | Numbers must be assumed to have identical units, as horses are equalised in 'horse-power' [Mill] |
| Full Idea: There is one hypothetical element in the basis of arithmetic, without which none of it would be true: all the numbers are numbers of the same or of equal units. When we talk of forty horse-power, we assume all horses are of equal strength. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 2.6.3) | |
| A reaction: Of course, horses are not all of equal strength, so there is a problem here for your hard-line empiricist. Mill needs processes of idealisation and abstraction before his empirical arithmetic can get off the ground. |
| 8742 | The only axioms needed are for equality, addition, and successive numbers [Mill, by Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: Mill says arithmetic has two axioms, that 'things which are equal to the same thing are equal to each other', and 'equals added to equals make equal sums', plus a definition for each numeral as 'formed by the addition of a unit to the previous number'. | |
| From: report of John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], p.610?) by Stewart Shapiro - Thinking About Mathematics 4.3 | |
| A reaction: The difficulty here seems to be the definition of 1, and (even worse for an empiricist), of 0. Then he may have a little trouble when he reaches infinity. |
| 10624 | The incompletability of formal arithmetic reveals that logic also cannot be completely characterized [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: The incompletability of formal arithmetic reveals, not arithmetical truths which are not truths of logic, but that logical truth likewise defies complete deductive characterization. ...Gödel's result has no specific bearing on the logicist project. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Intro to 'The Reason's Proper Study' [2001], §2 n5) | |
| A reaction: This is the key defence against the claim that Gödel's First Theorem demolished logicism. |
| 9800 | Arithmetic is based on definitions, and Sums of equals are equal, and Differences of equals are equal [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The inductions of arithmetic are based on so-called definitions (such as '2 and 1 are three'), and on two axioms: The sums of equals are equal, The differences of equals are equal. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 2.6.3) | |
| A reaction: These are axioms for arithmetical operations, rather than for numbers themselves (which, for Mill, do not require axioms as they are empirically derived). |
| 8784 | Neo-logicism founds arithmetic on Hume's Principle along with second-order logic [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: The result of joining Hume's Principle to second-order logic is a consistent system which is a foundation for arithmetic, in the sense that all the fundamental laws of arithmetic are derivable within it as theorems. This seems a vindication of logicism. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Logicism in the 21st Century [2007], 1) | |
| A reaction: The controversial part seems to be second-order logic, which Quine (for example) vigorously challenged. The contention against most attempts to improve Frege's logicism is that they thereby cease to be properly logical. |
| 8787 | The Julius Caesar problem asks for a criterion for the concept of a 'number' [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: The Julius Caesar problem is the problem of supplying a criterion of application for 'number', and thereby setting it up as the concept of a genuine sort of object. (Why is Julius Caesar not a number?) | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Logicism in the 21st Century [2007], 3) | |
| A reaction: One response would be to deny that numbers are objects. Another would be to derive numbers from their application in counting objects, rather than the other way round. I suspect that the problem only real bothers platonists. Serves them right. |
| 10629 | If structures are relative, this undermines truth-value and objectivity [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: The relativization of ontology to theory in structuralism can't avoid carrying with it a relativization of truth-value, which would compromise the objectivity which structuralists wish to claim for mathematics. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Intro to 'The Reason's Proper Study' [2001], 3.2 n26) | |
| A reaction: This is the attraction of structures which grow out of the physical world, where truth-value is presumably not in dispute. |
| 10628 | The structural view of numbers doesn't fit their usage outside arithmetical contexts [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: It is not clear how the view that natural numbers are purely intra-structural 'objects' can be squared with the widespread use of numerals outside purely arithmetical contexts. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Intro to 'The Reason's Proper Study' [2001], 3.2 n26) | |
| A reaction: I don't understand this objection. If they refer to quantity, they are implicitly cardinal. If they name things in a sequence they are implicitly ordinal. All users of numbers have a grasp of the basic structure. |
| 5201 | Mill says logic and maths is induction based on a very large number of instances [Mill, by Ayer] |
| Full Idea: Mill maintained that the truths of logic and mathematics are not necessary or certain, by saying these propositions are inductive generalisations based on an extremely large number of instances. | |
| From: report of John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843]) by A.J. Ayer - Language,Truth and Logic Ch.4 | |
| A reaction: Ayer asserts that they are necessary (but only because they are tautological). I like the idea that maths is the 'science of patterns', but that might lead from an empirical start to a rationalist belief in a priori synthetic truths. |
| 9360 | If two black and two white objects in practice produced five, what colour is the fifth one? [Lewis,CI on Mill] |
| Full Idea: If Mill has a demon who, every time two things are brought together with two other things, always introduces a fifth, then if two black marbles and two white ones are put in an urn, the demon could choose his color, but there would be more of one colour. | |
| From: comment on John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843]) by C.I. Lewis - A Pragmatic Conception of the A Priori p.367 | |
| A reaction: Nice to see philosophers fighting back against demons. This is a lovely argument against the absurdity of thinking that experience could ever controvert a priori knowledge (though Lewis is no great fan of the latter). |
| 9888 | Mill mistakes particular applications as integral to arithmetic, instead of general patterns [Dummett on Mill] |
| Full Idea: Mill's mistake is taking particular applications as integral to the sense of arithmetical propositions. But what is integral to arithmetic is the general principle that explains its applicability, and determines the pattern of particular applications. | |
| From: comment on John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 2.6) by Michael Dummett - Frege philosophy of mathematics Ch.20 | |
| A reaction: [Dummett is summarising Frege's view] Sounds like a tidy objection, but you still have to connect the general principles and patterns to the physical world. 'Structure' could be the magic word to achieve this. |
| 9794 | There are no such things as numbers in the abstract [Mill] |
| Full Idea: There are no such things as numbers in the abstract. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 2.6.2) | |
| A reaction: Depends. Would we want to say that 'horses don't exist' (although each individual horse does exist)? It sounds odd to say of an idea that it doesn't exist, when you are currently thinking about it. I am, however, sympathetic to Mill. |
| 9796 | Things possess the properties of numbers, as quantity, and as countable parts [Mill] |
| Full Idea: All things possess quantity; consist of parts which can be numbered; and in that character possess all the properties which are called properties of numbers. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 2.6.2) | |
| A reaction: Here Mill is skating on the very thinnest of ice, and I find myself reluctantly siding with Frege. It is a very optimistic empiricist who hopes to find the numbers actually occurring as properties of experienced objects. A pack of cards, for example. |
| 9795 | Numbers have generalised application to entities (such as bodies or sounds) [Mill] |
| Full Idea: 'Ten' must mean ten bodies, or ten sounds, or ten beatings of the pulse. But though numbers must be numbers of something, they may be numbers of anything. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 2.6.2) | |
| A reaction: Mill always prefers things in close proximity, in space or time. 'I've had ten headaches in the last year'. 'There are ten reasons for doubting p'. His second point puts him very close to Aristotle in his view. |
| 9798 | Different parcels made from three pebbles produce different actual sensations [Mill] |
| Full Idea: Three pebbles make different sense impressions in one parcel or in two. That the same pebbles by an alteration of place and arrangement may be made to produce either sensation is not the identical proposition. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 2.6.2) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Not quite clear, but Mill seems to be adamant that we really must experience the separation, and not just think what 'may' happen, so Frege is right that Mill is lucky that everything is not 'nailed down'. |
| 9797 | '2 pebbles and 1 pebble' and '3 pebbles' name the same aggregation, but different facts [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The expressions '2 pebbles and 1 pebble' and '3 pebbles' stand for the same aggregation of objects, but do not stand for the same physical fact. They name the same objects in different states, 'denoting' the same things, with different 'connotations'. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 2.6.2) | |
| A reaction: Nothing in this would convert me from the analytic view to the empirical view of simple arithmetic, if I were that way inclined. Personally I think of three pebbles as 4 minus 1, because I am haunted by the thought of a missing stone. |
| 9799 | 3=2+1 presupposes collections of objects ('Threes'), which may be divided thus [Mill] |
| Full Idea: 'Three is two and one' presupposes that collections of objects exist, which while they impress the senses thus, ¶¶¶, may be separated into two parts, thus, ¶¶ ¶. This being granted, we term all such parcels Threes. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 2.6.2) | |
| A reaction: Mill is clearly in trouble here because he sticks to simple arithmetic. He must deal with parcels too big for humans to count, and parcels so big that they could not naturally exist, and that is before you even reach infinite parcels. |
| 9802 | Numbers denote physical properties of physical phenomena [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The fact asserted in the definition of a number is a physical fact. Each of the numbers two, three, four denotes physical phenomena, and connotes a physical property of those phenomena. Two denotes all pairs of things, and twelve all dozens. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 3.24.5) | |
| A reaction: The least plausible part of Mill's thesis. Is the fact that a pair of things is fewer than five things also a property? You see two boots, or you see a pair of boots, depending partly on you. Is pure two a visible property? Courage and an onion? |
| 9803 | We can't easily distinguish 102 horses from 103, but we could arrange them to make it obvious [Mill] |
| Full Idea: 102 horses are not as easily distinguished from 103 as two are from three, yet the horses may be so placed that a difference will be perceptible. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 3.24.5) | |
| A reaction: More trouble for Mill. We are now moving from the claim that we actually perceive numbers to the claim that we could if we arranged things right. But we would still only see which group of horses was bigger by one, not how many horses there were. |
| 9804 | Arithmetical results give a mode of formation of a given number [Mill] |
| Full Idea: Every statement of the result of an arithmetical operation is a statement of one of the modes of formation of a given number. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 3.24.5) | |
| A reaction: Although Mill sticks cautiously to very simple arithmetic, inviting empirical accounts of much higher mathematics, I think the phrase 'modes of formation' of numbers is very helpful. It could take us either into structuralism, or into constructivism. |
| 9805 | 12 is the cube of 1728 means pebbles can be aggregated a certain way [Mill] |
| Full Idea: When we say 12 is the cube of 1728, we affirm that if we had sufficient pebbles, we put them into parcels or aggregates called twelves, and put those twelves into similar collections, and make twelve of these largests parcels, we have the aggregate 1728. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 3.24.5) | |
| A reaction: There is always hidden modal thinking in Mill's proposals, despite his longing to stick to actual experience. Imagination actually plays a much bigger role in his theory than sense experience does. |
| 8741 | Numbers must be of something; they don't exist as abstractions [Mill] |
| Full Idea: All numbers must be numbers of something: there are no such things as numbers in the abstract. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], p.245?), quoted by Stewart Shapiro - Thinking About Mathematics 4.3 | |
| A reaction: This shows why the concept of 'abstraction' is such a deep problem. Numbers can't be properties of objects, because two boots can become one boot without changing the surviving boot. But why should abstractions have to 'exist'? |
| 12411 | Mill is too imprecise, and is restricted to simple arithmetic [Kitcher on Mill] |
| Full Idea: The problem with Mill is that many of his formulations are imprecise, and he only considers the most rudimentary parts of arithmetic. | |
| From: comment on John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843]) by Philip Kitcher - The Nature of Mathematical Knowledge Intro | |
| A reaction: This is from a fan of Mill, trying to restore his approach in the face of the authoritative and crushing criticisms offered by Frege. I too am a fan of Mill's approach. Patterns can be discerned in arrangements of pebbles. Infinities are a problem. |
| 5656 | Empirical theories of arithmetic ignore zero, limit our maths, and need probability to get started [Frege on Mill] |
| Full Idea: Mill does not give us a clue as to how to understand the number zero, he limits our mathematical knowledge to the limits of our experience, ..and induction can only give you probability, but that presupposes arithmetical laws. | |
| From: comment on John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843]) by Gottlob Frege - Grundlagen der Arithmetik (Foundations) | |
| A reaction: This summarises Frege's criticisms of Mill's empirical account of maths. I like 'maths is the science of patterns', in which case zero is just a late-introduced trick (it is hardly a Platonic Form!), and induction is the wrong account to give. |
| 9624 | Numbers are a very general property of objects [Mill, by Brown,JR] |
| Full Idea: Mill held that numbers are a kind of very general property that objects possess. | |
| From: report of John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], Ch.4) by James Robert Brown - Philosophy of Mathematics | |
| A reaction: Intuitively this sounds hopeless, because if you place one apple next to another you introduce 'two', but which apple has changed its property? Both? It seems to be a Cambridge change. It isn't a change that would bother the apples. Kitcher pursues this. |
| 8788 | Logicism is only noteworthy if logic has a privileged position in our ontology and epistemology [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: It is only if logic is metaphysically and epistemologically privileged that a reduction of mathematical theories to logical ones can be philosophically any more noteworthy than a reduction of any mathematical theory to any other. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Logicism in the 21st Century [2007], 8) | |
| A reaction: It would be hard to demonstrate this privileged position, though intuitively there is nothing more basic in human rationality. That may be a fact about us, but it doesn't make logic basic to nature, which is where proper reduction should be heading. |
| 10622 | The neo-Fregean is more optimistic than Frege about contextual definitions of numbers [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: The neo-Fregean takes a more optimistic view than Frege of the prospects for the kind of contextual explanation of the fundamental concepts of arithmetic and analysis (cardinals and reals), which he rejected in 'Grundlagen' 60-68. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Intro to 'The Reason's Proper Study' [2001], §1) |
| 8783 | Logicism might also be revived with a quantificational approach, or an abstraction-free approach [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: Two modern approaches to logicism are the quantificational approach of David Bostock, and the abstraction-free approach of Neil Tennant. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Logicism in the 21st Century [2007], 1 n2) | |
| A reaction: Hale and Wright mention these as alternatives to their own view. I merely catalogue them for further examination. My immediate reaction is that Bostock sounds hopeless and Tennant sounds interesting. |
| 12225 | Neo-Fregeanism might be better with truth-makers, rather than quantifier commitment [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: A third way has been offered to 'make sense' of neo-Fregeanism: we should reject Quine's well-known criterion of ontological commitment in favour of one based on 'truth-maker theory'. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §4 n19) | |
| A reaction: [The cite Ross Cameron for this] They reject this proposal, on the grounds that truth-maker theory is not sufficient to fix the grounding truth-conditions of statements. |
| 12224 | Are neo-Fregeans 'maximalists' - that everything which can exist does exist? [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: It is claimed that neo-Fregeans are committed to 'maximalism' - that whatever can exist does. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §4) | |
| A reaction: [The cite Eklund] They observe that maximalism denies contingent non-existence (of the £20 note I haven't got). There seems to be the related problem of 'hyperinflation', that if abstract objects are generated logically, the process is unstoppable. |
| 12226 | The identity of Pegasus with Pegasus may be true, despite the non-existence [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: Identity is sometimes read so that 'Pegasus is Pegasus' expresses a truth, the non-existence of any winged horse notwithstanding. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §5) | |
| A reaction: This would give you ontological commitment to truth, without commitment to existence. It undercuts the use of identity statements as the basis of existence claims, which was Frege's strategy. |
| 15730 | Extreme nominalists say all classification is arbitrary convention [Quinton] |
| Full Idea: Pure, extreme nominalism sees all classification as the product of arbitrary convention. | |
| From: Anthony Quinton (The Nature of Things [1973], 9 'Nat') | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure what the word 'arbitrary' is doing there. Nominalists are not daft, and if they can classify any way they like, they are not likely to choose an 'arbitrary' system. Pragmatism tells the right story here. |
| 12229 | Maybe we have abundant properties for semantics, and sparse properties for ontology [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: There is a compatibilist view which says that it is for the abundant properties to play the role of 'bedeutungen' in semantic theory, and the sparse ones to address certain metaphysical concerns. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §9) | |
| A reaction: Only a philosopher could live with the word 'property' having utterly different extensions in different areas of discourse. They similarly bifurcate words like 'object' and 'exist'. Call properties 'quasi-properties' and I might join in. |
| 15728 | The naturalness of a class depends as much on the observers as on the objects [Quinton] |
| Full Idea: The naturalness of a class depends as essentially on the nature of the observers who classify as it does on the nature of the objects that they classify. ...It depends on our perceptual apparatus, and on our relatively mutable needs and interests. | |
| From: Anthony Quinton (The Nature of Things [1973], 9 'Nat') | |
| A reaction: This seems to translate 'natural' as 'natural for us', which is not much use to scientists, who spend quite a lot of effort combating folk wisdom. Do desirable sports cars constitute a natural class? |
| 9407 | Properties imply natural classes which can be picked out by everybody [Quinton] |
| Full Idea: To say there are properties is to say there are natural classes, classes introduction to some of whose members enables people to pick out others without hesitation and in agreement. | |
| From: Anthony Quinton (The Nature of Things [1973], 9 'Nat') | |
| A reaction: Aristotle would like this approach, but it doesn't find many friends among modern logician/philosophers. We should go on to ask why people agree on these things. Causal powers will then come into it. |
| 18443 | A successful predicate guarantees the existence of a property - the way of being it expresses [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: The good standing of a predicate is already trivially sufficient to ensure the existence of an associated property, a (perhaps complex) way of being which the predicate serves to express. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §9) | |
| A reaction: 'Way of being' is interesting. Is 'being near Trafalgar Sq' a way of being? I take properties to be 'features', which seems to give a clearer way of demarcating them. They say they are talking about 'abundant' (rather than 'sparse') properties. |
| 15729 | Uninstantiated properties must be defined using the instantiated ones [Quinton] |
| Full Idea: Properties that have no concrete instances must be defined in terms of those that have. | |
| From: Anthony Quinton (The Nature of Things [1973], 9 'Nat') | |
| A reaction: I wonder what the dodo used to smell like? |
| 10626 | Objects just are what singular terms refer to [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: Objects, as distinct from entities of other types (properties, relations or, more generally, functions of different types and levels), just are what (actual or possible) singular terms refer to. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Intro to 'The Reason's Proper Study' [2001], 3.1) | |
| A reaction: I find this view very bizarre and hard to cope with. It seems either to preposterously accept the implications of the way we speak into our ontology ('sakes'?), or preposterously bend the word 'object' away from its normal meaning. |
| 8520 | An individual is a union of a group of qualities and a position [Quinton, by Campbell,K] |
| Full Idea: Quinton proposes that an individual is a union of a group of qualities and a position. | |
| From: report of Anthony Quinton (The Nature of Things [1973], Pt I) by Keith Campbell - The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars §5 | |
| A reaction: This seems the obvious defence of a bundle account of objects against the charge that indiscernibles would have to be identical. It introduces, however, 'positions' into the ontology, but maybe that price must be paid. Materialism needs space. |
| 9806 | Whatever is made up of parts is made up of parts of those parts [Mill] |
| Full Idea: Whatever is made up of parts is made up of parts of those parts. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 3.24.5) | |
| A reaction: Mill considers this principle to be fundamental to the possibilities of arithmetic. Presumably he thought of it as an inductive inference from our dealings with physical objects. |
| 11156 | The essence is that without which a thing can neither be, nor be conceived to be [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The essence of a thing was said to be that without which the thing could neither be, nor be conceived to be. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 1.6.2) | |
| A reaction: Fine cites this as the 'modal' account of essence, as opposed to the 'definitional' account. |
| 12190 | Necessity is what will be, despite any alternative suppositions whatever [Mill] |
| Full Idea: That which is necessary, that which must be, means that which will be, whatever suppositions we may make in regard to all other things. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 3.06.6) | |
| A reaction: [Mill discusses causal necessity] This is quoted by McFetridge. This slightly firms up the definition as 'what has to be true', though it makes it dependent on our 'suppositions'. Presumably nothing beyond our powers of supposition could matter either. |
| 22623 | Necessity can only mean what must be, without conditions of any kind [Mill] |
| Full Idea: If there be any meaning which confessedly belongs to the term necessity, it is unconditionalness. That which is necessary, that which must be, means that which will be whatever supposition we make with regard to other things. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], p.339 [1974 ed]), quoted by R.D. Ingthorsson - A Powerful Particulars View of Causation 5.3 | |
| A reaction: 'It is necessary to leave now, if you want to catch the train' is a genuine type of necessity. Mill's type is probably Absolute necessity, to which nothing could make any difference. Or Metaphysical necessity, determined by all things. |
| 3583 | External objects are permanent possibilities of sensation [Mill] |
| Full Idea: External objects are permanent possibilities of sensation. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (Examination of Sir Wm Hamilton's Philosophy [1865]), quoted by Michael Williams - Problems of Knowledge Ch.9 |
| 16859 | Most perception is one-tenth observation and nine-tenths inference [Mill] |
| Full Idea: In almost every act of our perceiving faculties, observation and inference are intimately blended. What we are said to observe is usually a compound result, of which one-tenth may be observation, and the remaining nine-tenths inference. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 4.1.2), quoted by Peter Lipton - Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) 11 'The scientific' | |
| A reaction: We seem to think that his kind of observation is a great realisation of twentieth century thought, but thoughtful empiricists spotted it much earlier. |
| 9082 | Clear concepts result from good observation, extensive experience, and accurate memory [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The principle requisites of clear conceptions, are habits of attentive observation, an extensive experience, and a memory which receives and retains an exact image of what is observed. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 4.2.5) | |
| A reaction: Empiricists are always crying out for people to 'attend to the evidence', and this is the deeper reason why. Not only will one know the world better in a direct way, but one will actually think more clearly. Darwin is the perfect model for this. |
| 16860 | Inductive generalisation is more reliable than one of its instances; they can't all be wrong [Mill] |
| Full Idea: A general proposition collected from particulars is often more certainly true than any one of the particular propositions from which, by an act of induction, it was inferred. It might be erroneous in any instance, but cannot be erroneous in all of them. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 4.1.2), quoted by Peter Lipton - Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) 11 'The scientific' | |
| A reaction: One anomaly can be ignored, but several can't, especially if the anomalies agree. |
| 16845 | The whole theory of induction rests on causes [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The notion of cause is the root of the whole theory of induction. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 3.05.2), quoted by Peter Lipton - Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) 08 'From cause' | |
| A reaction: This sounds much better to me than the Humean view that it rests on the psychology of regularity and habit. However, maybe Hume describes induction, and Mill is adding abduction (inference to the best explanation). |
| 16843 | Mill's methods (Difference,Agreement,Residues,Concomitance,Hypothesis) don't nail induction [Mill, by Lipton] |
| Full Idea: The Method of Difference, and even the full four 'experimental methods' (Difference, Agreement, Residues and Concomitant Variations) are agreed on all sides to be incomplete accounts of inductive inference. Mill himself added the Method of Hypothesis. | |
| From: report of John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 3.14.4-5) by Peter Lipton - Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) 08 'Improved' | |
| A reaction: If induction is just 'learning from experience' (my preferred definition) then there is unlikely to be a precise account of its methods. Mill seems to have done a lovely job. |
| 17086 | Surprisingly, empiricists before Mill ignore explanation, which seems to transcend experience [Mill, by Ruben] |
| Full Idea: It is surprising that no empiricist philosopher before Mill turned in an explicit way to the scrutiny of the concept of explanation, which had …every appearance of being experience-transcendent. | |
| From: report of John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843]) by David-Hillel Ruben - Explaining Explanation Ch 4 | |
| A reaction: Yes indeed! This is why explanation is absolutely basic, to philosophy and to human understanding. The whole of philosophy is a quest for explanations, so to be strictly empirical about it strikes me as crazy. |
| 17091 | Explanation is fitting of facts into ever more general patterns of regularity [Mill, by Ruben] |
| Full Idea: For Mill, explanation was always the fitting of facts into ever more general patterns of regularity. | |
| From: report of John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843]) by David-Hillel Ruben - Explaining Explanation Ch 6 | |
| A reaction: This seems to nicely capture the standard empirical approach to explanation. If you say that this fitting in doesn't explain much, the answer (I think) is that this is the best we can do. |
| 16805 | Causal inference is by spotting either Agreements or Differences [Mill, by Lipton] |
| Full Idea: The best known account of causal inference is Mill's Method of Agreement (only one antecedent is shared by the effects), and the Method of Difference (there is only one difference prior to the effect occurring or not occurring). | |
| From: report of John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 3.07) by Peter Lipton - Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) 01 'Descr' | |
| A reaction: [my summary of Lipton's summary of Mill] |
| 16835 | The Methods of Difference and of Agreement are forms of inference to the best explanation [Mill, by Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Like Mill's Method of Difference, applications of the Method of Agreement are naturally construed as inferences to the best explanation. | |
| From: report of John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 3.07/8) by Peter Lipton - Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) 06 'The Method' | |
| A reaction: This sort of thoroughly sensible approach to understanding modes of investigation has been absurdly sidelined by the desire to 'deduce' observations from 'laws'. Scientific investigation is no different from enquiry in daily life. Where are my glasses? |
| 3537 | I judge others' feeling by analogy with my body and behaviour [Mill] |
| Full Idea: I conclude other humans have feelings like me because they have bodies like mine (which I know in my case to be antecedent to feelings), and because they exhibit acts and outwards signs which I know in my own case to be caused by feelings. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (Examination of Sir Wm Hamilton's Philosophy [1865], p.243), quoted by Keith T. Maslin - Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind 8.2 | |
| A reaction: It is hard to see anything further that can be added to the 'other minds' question. Behaviour is highly relevant (imagine meeting a human who talked like a robot), but so are bodies (imagine a tin box that talked like Marilyn Monroe). |
| 9079 | We can focus our minds on what is common to a whole class, neglecting other aspects [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The voluntary power which the mind has, of attending to one part of what is present at any moment, and neglecting another part, enables us to be unaffected by anything in the idea which is not really common to the whole class. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 4.2.1) | |
| A reaction: There is a question for empiricists of whether abstraction is a 'voluntary' power or a mechanical one. Associationism presents it as more mechanical. I would say, with Mill, that it is a least partly voluntary, and even rational. |
| 9081 | We don't recognise comparisons by something in our minds; the concepts result from the comparisons [Mill] |
| Full Idea: It is not a law of our intellect that in comparing things and noting their agreements we recognise as realized in the outward world something we already had in our minds. The conception found its way to us as the result of such a comparison. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 4.2.2) | |
| A reaction: He recognises, of course, that this gradually becomes a two-way process. In the physicalist view of things, it is not really of great importance which concepts are hard-wired, and which constructed culturally or through perception. |
| 9080 | General conceptions are a necessary preliminary to Induction [Mill] |
| Full Idea: Forming general conceptions is a necessary preliminary to Induction. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 4.2.1) | |
| A reaction: A key link in the framework of empirical philosophies, which gets us from experience to science. Induction is the very process of generalisation. We can't bring a concept like 'evolution' to preliminary observations, so it must be formulated inductively. |
| 9078 | The study of the nature of Abstract Ideas does not belong to logic, but to a different science [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The metaphysical inquiry into the nature and composition of what have been called Abstract Ideas, or in other words, of the notions which answer in the mind to classes and to general names, belongs not to Logic, but to a different science. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 4.2.1) | |
| A reaction: He doesn't name the science, but the point here seems to be precisely what Frege so vigorously disagreed with. I would say that the state of being 'abstract' has logical aspects, and can be partly described by logic, but that Mill is basically right. |
| 10630 | Abstracted objects are not mental creations, but depend on equivalence between given entities [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: The new kind of abstract objects are not creations of the human mind. ...The existence of such objects depends upon whether or not the relevant equivalence relation holds among the entities of the presupposed kind. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Intro to 'The Reason's Proper Study' [2001], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: It seems odd that we no longer have any choice about what abstract objects we use, and that we can't evade them if the objects exist, and can't have them if the objects don't exist - and presumably destruction of the objects kills the concept? |
| 8786 | One first-order abstraction principle is Frege's definition of 'direction' in terms of parallel lines [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: An example of a first-order abstraction principle is Frege's definition of 'direction' in terms of parallel lines; a higher-order example (which refers to first-order predicates) defines 'equinumeral' in terms of one-to-one correlation (Hume's Principle). | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Logicism in the 21st Century [2007], 1) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This is the way modern logicians now treat abstraction, but abstraction principles include the elusive concept of 'equivalence' of entities, which may be no more than that the same adjective ('parallel') can be applied to them. |
| 12227 | Abstractionism needs existential commitment and uniform truth-conditions [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: Abstractionism needs a face-value, existentially committed reading of the terms occurring on the left-hand sides together with sameness of truth-conditions across the biconditional. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §5) | |
| A reaction: They employ 'abstractionism' to mean their logical Fregean strategy for defining abstractions, not to mean the older psychological account. Thus the truth-conditions for being 'parallel' and for having the 'same direction' must be consistent. |
| 12228 | Equivalence abstraction refers to objects otherwise beyond our grasp [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: Abstraction principles purport to introduce fundamental means of reference to a range of objects, to which there is accordingly no presumption that we have any prior or independent means of reference. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §8) | |
| A reaction: There's the rub! They make it sound like a virtue, that we open up yet another heaven of abstract toys to play with. As fictions, they are indeed exciting new fun. As platonic discoveries they strike me as Cloud-Cuckoo Land. |
| 12231 | Reference needs truth as well as sense [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: It takes, over and above the possession of sense, the truth of relevant contexts to ensure reference. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §9) | |
| A reaction: Reference purely through sense was discredited by Kripke. The present idea challenges Kripke's baptismal realist approach. How do you 'baptise' an abstract object? But isn't reference needed prior to the establishment of truth? |
| 10627 | Many conceptual truths ('yellow is extended') are not analytic, as derived from logic and definitions [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: There are many statements which are plausibly viewed as conceptual truths (such as 'what is yellow is extended') which do not qualify as analytic under Frege's definition (as provable using only logical laws and definitions). | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Intro to 'The Reason's Proper Study' [2001], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: Presumably this is because the early assumptions of Frege were mathematical and logical, and he was trying to get away from Kant. That yellow is extended is a truth for non-linguistic beings. |
| 3772 | The will, in the beginning, is entirely produced by desire [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The will, in the beginning, is entirely produced by desire. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (Utilitarianism [1861], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: This is the sort of simplistic psychology that modern philosophers tend to avoid. Personally I am more Kantian. I will and desire that the answer to 3+2=? is 5, simply because it is true. Mill must realise we can will ourselves to desire something. |
| 7222 | It is a crime for someone with a violent disposition to get drunk [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The making himself drunk, in a person whom drunkenness excites to do harm to others, is a crime against others. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This principle (based on knowing your own dispositions) is a very good account of the ethics drunkenness. We have a moral duty to know and remember our own dispositions. Violent people should avoid arguments as well as alcohol. |
| 3769 | With early training, any absurdity or evil may be given the power of conscience [Mill] |
| Full Idea: There is hardly anything so absurd or so mischievous that it may not, by means of early sanctions and influence, be made to act on the human mind with all the influence of conscience. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (Utilitarianism [1861], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: Like this! Think of all the people who have had weird upbringings, and end up feeling guilty about absurd things. Conscience just summarise upbringing and social conventions. |
| 3767 | Motive shows the worth of the agent, but not of the action [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The motive has nothing to do with the morality of the action, though much with the worth of the agent. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (Utilitarianism [1861], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: I think it is an error to try to separate these too sharply. Morality can't be purely consequential, because it would make earthquakes immoral. Actions indicate the worth of agents. |
| 7076 | Mill wondered if he would be happy if all his aims were realised, and answered no [Mill, by Critchley] |
| Full Idea: Mill, in his crisis of 1827, asked himself whether he would be happy if all his objects in life were realised, and had to answer that he would not. | |
| From: report of John Stuart Mill (Autobiography [1870]) by Simon Critchley - Continental Philosophy - V. Short Intro Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: The reply is either that happiness is in the striving, or that his aims in life were wrong, or that happiness is impossible. It seems to contradict Kant's definition (Idea 1452). |
| 3771 | Virtues only have value because they achieve some further end [Mill] |
| Full Idea: Utilitarians believe that actions and dispositions are only virtuous because they promote another end than virtue. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (Utilitarianism [1861], Ch.4) |
| 3768 | Orthodox morality is the only one which feels obligatory [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The customary morality, that which education and opinion have consecrated, is the only one which presents itself to the mind with the feeling of being in itself obligatory. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (Utilitarianism [1861], Ch.3) |
| 3776 | Utilitarianism only works if everybody has a totally equal right to happiness [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The Greatest Happiness Principle is a mere form of empty words unless one person's happiness, supposed equal in degree, is counted for exactly as much as another's (Bentham's "everybody to count for one, nobody for more than one"). | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (Utilitarianism [1861], Ch.5) |
| 7214 | Ethics rests on utility, which is the permanent progressive interests of people [Mill] |
| Full Idea: I regard utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions; but it must be utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of a man as a progressive being. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: Mill, writing in praise of personal liberty, is desperate to introduce a paternalistic element into his politics, and the 'maximisation of happiness' will justify such paternalism, while his basic liberal principle (Idea 7211) won't. Mill's Dilemma. |
| 7202 | The English believe in the task of annihilating evil for the victory of good [Nietzsche on Mill] |
| Full Idea: One continues to believe in good and evil: in such a way that one feels the victory of good and the annihilation of evil to be a task (- this is English; a typical case is that shallow-headed John Stuart Mill). | |
| From: comment on John Stuart Mill (Utilitarianism [1861]) by Friedrich Nietzsche - Writings from Late Notebooks 11[148]e | |
| A reaction: The poor old English try very hard to be clear, sensible, practical and realistic, and get branded as 'shallow' for their pains. Nietzsche was a deeper thinker than Mill, but I would prefer Mill to Heidegger any day. |
| 5935 | Mill's qualities of pleasure is an admission that there are other good states of mind than pleasure [Ross on Mill] |
| Full Idea: Mill's introduction of quality of pleasures into the hedonistic calculus is an unconscious departure from hedonism and a half-hearted admission that there are other qualities than pleasantness in virtue of which states of mind are good. | |
| From: comment on John Stuart Mill (Utilitarianism [1861], Ch.2) by W. David Ross - The Right and the Good §VI | |
| A reaction: Mill argues that experienced people prefer some pleasures to others, but ducks the question of why they might prefer them. It can only be because they have some further desirable quality on top of the equal amount of pleasure. |
| 3764 | Actions are right if they promote pleasure, wrong if they promote pain [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The Greatest Happiness Principle holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (Utilitarianism [1861], Ch.2) |
| 3763 | Ultimate goods such as pleasure can never be proved to be good [Mill] |
| Full Idea: What can be proved good must be so by being shown to be a means to something admitted to be good without proof. Music is good because it produces pleasure, but what proof is it possible to give that pleasure is good? | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (Utilitarianism [1861], Ch.1) |
| 3765 | Only pleasure and freedom from pain are desirable as ends [Mill] |
| Full Idea: Pleasure and freedom from pain are the only things desirable as ends. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (Utilitarianism [1861], Ch.2) |
| 3766 | Better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied [Mill] |
| Full Idea: Better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (Utilitarianism [1861], Ch.2) |
| 3770 | General happiness is only desirable because individuals desire their own happiness [Mill] |
| Full Idea: No reason can be given why the general happiness is desirable, except that each person, so far as he believes it to be attainable, desires his own happiness. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (Utilitarianism [1861], Ch.4) |
| 6697 | Moral rules protecting human welfare are more vital than local maxims [Mill] |
| Full Idea: Moral rules which forbid mankind to hurt one another are more vital to human well-being than any maxims about some department of human affairs; ..though in particular cases a social duty is so important, as to overrule any general maxim of justice. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (Utilitarianism [1861]), quoted by Gordon Graham - Eight Theories of Ethics Ch.7 | |
| A reaction: The qualification is realistic, but raises the question of whether an 'act' calculation will always overrule any 'rule'. Maybe rule utilitirianism is just act utilitarianism, but ensuring that the calculations are long-term and extensive. (1871 edn) |
| 7212 | Individuals have sovereignty over their own bodies and minds [Mill] |
| Full Idea: Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: If I should not even think about evil deeds, then neither should you. I would prevent you if I could. I would prevent you from drinking yourself to death, if I could. It is just that intrusions into private lives leads to greater trouble. |
| 3773 | No individual has the right to receive our benevolence [Mill] |
| Full Idea: No one has a moral right to our generosity or beneficence, because we are not morally bound to practise those virtues towards any given individual. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (Utilitarianism [1861], Ch.5) |
| 3774 | Rights are a matter of justice, not of benevolence [Mill] |
| Full Idea: Wherever there is a right, the case is one of justice, and not of the virtue of benevolence. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (Utilitarianism [1861], Ch.5) |
| 7210 | The will of the people is that of the largest or most active part of the people [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The will of the people practically means the will of the most numerous or the most active part of the people. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: Hence the nicely coined modern phrase 'the silent majority', on whose behalf certain politicians, usually conservative, offer to speak. It is unlikely that the silent majority are actually deeply opposed to the views of the very active part. |
| 7227 | It is evil to give a government any more power than is necessary [Mill] |
| Full Idea: Government interference should be restricted because of the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This would need justification, because it might be replied that individuals should not have unnecessary power either. The main problem is that governments have armies, police and money. |
| 7228 | Individuals often do things better than governments [Mill] |
| Full Idea: Government power should be restricted because things are often done better by individuals. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This contains some truth, but it is obvious that innumerable things can be done better by governments, and also (and more importantly) that innumerable other good things might be done by governments which individuals can't be bothered to do. |
| 7230 | Aim for the maximum dissemination of power consistent with efficiency [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The safest practical ideal is to aim for the greatest dissemination of power consistent with efficiency. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This is a very nice principle, which I would think desirable within an institution as well as on the scale of the state. I am becoming a fan of Mill's politics. I still say that freedom is an overrated virtue, so efficiency must be underrated. |
| 20515 | Maximise happiness by an area of strict privacy, and an area of utilitarian interventions [Mill, by Wolff,J] |
| Full Idea: For Mill the greatest happiness will be achieved by giving people a private sphere of interests where no intervention is permitted, while allowing a public sphere where intervention is possible, but only on utilitarian grounds. | |
| From: report of John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857]) by Jonathan Wolff - An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Rev) 4 'Liberty' | |
| A reaction: This is probably standard liberal practice nowadays. Freely consenting adult sexual activity is agreed to be wholly private. At least some lip-service is paid to increasing happiness when government intervenes. |
| 7229 | People who transact their own business will also have the initiative to control their government [Mill] |
| Full Idea: A people accustomed to transacting their own business is certain to be free; it will never let itself be enslaved by any man or body of men because these are able to seize and pull the reins of the central administration. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: He makes reference to Americans. This is an important idea, because it shows that democratic control is not just a matter of elections (which can be abolished or suborned), but is also a characteristic of a certain way of life. |
| 20508 | How people vote should be on public record, so they can be held accountable [Mill, by Wolff,J] |
| Full Idea: Mill believed in an open vote. People should be held accountable for how they vote, and therefore it should be a matter of public record. | |
| From: report of John Stuart Mill (Representative Government [1861]) by Jonathan Wolff - An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Rev) 3 'Representative' | |
| A reaction: Nowadays it is a mantra that voting should be secret, because coercion is an obvious problem, but MPs vote publicly, and are held accountable for their voting records. People like the mafia seem to make open public voting impossible. |
| 20507 | Voting is a strict duty, like jury service, and must only be aimed at the public good [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The citizen's vote is not a thing in which he has an option; it has no more to do with his personal wishes than the verdict of a juryman. ...he is bound to give it according to his best and most conscientious opinion of the public good. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (Representative Government [1861], p.299), quoted by Jonathan Wolff - An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Rev) 3 'Representative' | |
| A reaction: Mill was also concerned that voters might pursue 'class interest' (which they currently do, big time). |
| 20505 | Direct democracy is inexperience judging experience, and ignorance judging knowledge [Mill] |
| Full Idea: At its best [direct democracy] is inexperience sitting in judgement on experience, ignorance on knowledge. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (Representative Government [1861], p.232), quoted by Jonathan Wolff - An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Rev) 4 'Representative' | |
| A reaction: Recent experiments have suggested that inexperienced people can become very good at making large decisions, if they are allowed to consult experts when they want to. See Van Reybrouck's 'Against Elections'. |
| 20504 | People can only participate in decisions in small communities, so representatives are needed [Mill] |
| Full Idea: Since all cannot, in a community exceeding a single small town, participate personally in any but some very minor portions of the public business, it follows that the ideal type of a perfect government must be representative. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (Representative Government [1861], p.217-8), quoted by Jonathan Wolff - An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Rev) 4 'Representative' | |
| A reaction: Wolff offers Mill as the principal spokesman for representative democracy. It is not only the difficulty of achieving participation, but also the slowness of decision-making. Modern technology may be changing all of this. |
| 7211 | Prevention of harm to others is the only justification for exercising power over people [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others; his own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This is the key idea in Mill's liberalism, though he goes on to offer some qualifications of this absolute prohibition. I don't disagree with this principle, but there may be a lot more indirect harm than we realise (eg. in allowing liberal sex or drugs). |
| 7231 | The worth of a State, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The worth of a State, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This is a key idea of liberalism, opposed to any idea that we should abandon our own value to that of our state. I agree, but communitarians can subscribe to this too, while disagreeing that maximum freedom is the strategy to follow. |
| 7217 | The main argument for freedom is that interference with it is usually misguided [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The strongest of all the arguments against the interference of the public with purely personal conduct is that, when it does interfere, the odds are that it interferes wrongly, and in the wrong place. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: This is also a well known objection to capital punishment. Generalised, well established, legal interferences are perhaps more likely to get it right than ad hoc decisions about individuals by individual officials. |
| 7213 | Liberty arises at the point where people can freely and equally discuss things [Mill] |
| Full Idea: Liberty, as a principle, has no application to any state of things anterior to the time when mankind have become capable of being improved by free and equal discussion. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: There is a Victorian (and Enlightenment) optimism here which a glimpse of the freedoms of the early twenty-first century might dampen. I doubt if Mill expected British tabloid newspapers, or porn on cable TV. Education and freedom connect. |
| 20517 | Utilitarianism values liberty, but guides us on which ones we should have or not have [Mill, by Wolff,J] |
| Full Idea: Utilitarianism provides an account of what liberties we should and should not have. Mill argues we should be free to compete in trade, but not to use another's property without consent. Thus he sets limits to liberty, while paying it great respect. | |
| From: report of John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857]) by Jonathan Wolff - An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Rev) 4 'Intrinsic' |
| 20516 | Mill defends freedom as increasing happiness, but maybe it is an intrinsic good [Wolff,J on Mill] |
| Full Idea: Mill has presented liberty as instrumentally valuable, as a way of achieving the greatest possible happiness in society. But perhaps he should have argued that liberty is an intrinsic good, good in itself. | |
| From: comment on John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857]) by Jonathan Wolff - An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Rev) 4 'Intrinsic' | |
| A reaction: If freedom is intrinsically good, does this leave us (as Wolff warned earlier) unable to defend its value? Freedom isn't an intrinsic good for infants, so why should it be so for adults? Good because it brings happiness, or fulfils our nature? |
| 7215 | True freedom is pursuing our own good, while not impeding others [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This principle will probably lead up a Prisoner's Dilemma cul-de-sac. The only freedom which deserves the name is the collective agreed freedom of a whole community to live well, when citizens volunteer to restrict their individual freedoms. |
| 7218 | Individuals are not accountable for actions which only concern themselves [Mill] |
| Full Idea: My first maxim is that the individual is not accountable to society for his actions, in so far as these concern the interests of no person but himself. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This is a key idea of liberalism, and one which communitarians have doubts about (because it is almost impossible to perform an action which is of no interest, in the short or long term, to others). I share these doubts. |
| 7221 | Blocking entry to an unsafe bridge does not infringe liberty, since no one wants unsafe bridges [Mill] |
| Full Idea: An official could turn a person back from an unsafe bridge without infringeing their liberty; for liberty consists in doing what one desires, and he does not desire to fall into the river. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: Seems fair enough, but it justifies paternalist interference. The tricky one is where the official and the citizen disagree over what the citizen 'truly' desires. Asking people may involve too much time, but it could also involve too much effort. |
| 7223 | Pimping and running a gambling-house are on the border between toleration and restraint [Mill] |
| Full Idea: A person being free to be a pimp, or to keep a gambling-house, lies on the exact boundary line between two principles, of toleration and of restraint. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: Nothing illuminates a philosopher's principles more than for them to specify cases that lie on their borderlines. Both professions seem, unfortunately, to lead people into worse activities, such as violent bullying, or theft. Tricky.. |
| 7220 | Restraint for its own sake is an evil [Mill] |
| Full Idea: All restraint, qua restraint, is an evil. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: The ultimate justification for this is (presumably) utilitarian, but that would mean that there was nothing wrong with restraint if the person did not mind, or was not aware of the restraint. What is intrinsically wrong with restraint? |
| 3775 | A right is a valid claim to society's protection [Mill] |
| Full Idea: When we call anything a person's right, we mean that he has a valid claim on society to protect him in the possession of it. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (Utilitarianism [1861], Ch.5) |
| 7219 | Society can punish actions which it believes to be prejudicial to others [Mill] |
| Full Idea: My second maxim is that for actions that are prejudicial to the interests of others, the individual is accountable, and subject to social or legal punishment, if society believes that this is requisite for its protection. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: (wording compressed). The trouble with this would seem to be the possible disagreement between the individual and the society over whether the actions actually are prejudicial to others. It would justify a conservative society in being repressive. |
| 7226 | Benefits performed by individuals, not by government, help also to educate them [Mill] |
| Full Idea: It is often desirable that beneficial things should be done by individuals, rather than by the government, as a means to their own mental education. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This raises the important danger, which even those on the political left must acknowledge, of the 'nanny state'. It offers a nicely paternalistic, and even patronising reason for giving people freedom, just as a parent might to a child. |
| 7224 | We need individual opinions and conduct, and State education is a means to prevent that [Mill] |
| Full Idea: Individuality of character, and diversity in opinions and modes of conduct, involves diversity of education; a general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as being particularly true with the advent in Britain of the National Curriculum in the early 1990s. However, if there is a pressure towards conformity in state education, private education is dominated by class and money. |
| 7225 | It is a crime to create a being who lacks the ordinary chances of a desirable existence [Mill] |
| Full Idea: To bestow a life on someone which may be either a curse or a blessing, unless the being on whom it is to be bestowed will have at least the ordinary chances of a desirable existence, is a crime against that being. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This is the standard utilitarian attitude to engendering people. I think I have to agree. It is no argument against this to say that we value people with poor life prospects, once they have arrived. Altruism towards children may disguise selfish parents. |
| 8345 | A cause is the total of all the conditions which inevitably produce the result [Mill] |
| Full Idea: A cause is the sum total of the conditions positive and negative taken together ...which being realized, the consequent invariably follows. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843]), quoted by Donald Davidson - Causal Relations §1 | |
| A reaction: This has obvious problems. The absence of Napoleon was a cause of the English Civil War. The Big Bang was a cause of, well, every event. As Davidson notes, some narrowing down is needed. |
| 10391 | Causes and conditions are not distinct, because we select capriciously from among them [Mill] |
| Full Idea: Nothing can better show the absence of any scientific ground for the distinction between the cause of a phenomena and its conditions, than the capricious manner in which we select from among the conditions that which we choose to denominate the cause. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843]), quoted by Jonathan Schaffer - The Metaphysics of Causation 2.2 | |
| A reaction: [ref Mill p.196, 1846 edn] Schaffer gives this as the main argument for the 'no-basis' view of the selection of what causes an event. The usual thought is that it is entirely our immediate interests which make us select THE cause. Not convinced. |
| 14547 | The strict cause is the total positive and negative conditions which ensure the consequent [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The cause, philosophically speaking, is the sum total of the conditions, positive and negative taken together; the whole of the contigencies of every description, which being realized, the consequent invariably follows. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 3.05.3) | |
| A reaction: This somewhat notorious remark is not going to be much help in a law court or a laboratory. It is that view which says that the Big Bang must be included in every causal list ever compiled. Well, yes... |
| 8377 | Causation is just invariability of succession between every natural fact and a preceding fact [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The Law of Causation, the recognition of which is the main pillar of inductive science, is but the familiar truth, that invariability of succession is found by observation between every fact in nature and some other fact which has preceded it. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 3.5.2), quoted by Bertrand Russell - On the Notion of Cause p.178 | |
| A reaction: Note that Mill rests causation on 'facts'. In the empiricist Mill endorsing the views of Hume. Russell attacks the bogus claim that science rests on causation. Personally I think Mill's view is incorrect. |
| 14545 | A cause is an antecedent which invariably and unconditionally leads to a phenomenon [Mill] |
| Full Idea: We may define the cause of a phenomenon to be the antecedent, or the concurrence of the antecedents, on which it is invariably and unconditionally consequent. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 3.05.6) | |
| A reaction: This ignores the possibility of the world ending just before the effect occurs, the 'ceteris paribus' clause. If it only counts as a cause if the effect has actually occurred, we begin to suspect tautology. |
| 4773 | Mill's regularity theory of causation is based on an effect preceded by a conjunction of causes [Mill, by Psillos] |
| Full Idea: Millian causation is a version of the Regularity Theory, but with the addition that when claiming that an effect invariably follows from the cause, the cause is not a single factor, but a whole conjunction of necessary and sufficient conditions. | |
| From: report of John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], p.217) by Stathis Psillos - Causation and Explanation §2.2 | |
| A reaction: Psillos endorses this as an improvement on Hume. But while we may replicate one event preceding another to get regularity, groups of events are hardly ever identical, so no precise pattern will ever be seen. |
| 4775 | In Mill's 'Method of Agreement' cause is the common factor in a range of different cases [Mill, by Psillos] |
| Full Idea: In Mill's 'Method of Agreement' the cause is the common factor in a number of otherwise different cases in which the effect occurs. | |
| From: report of John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], p.255) by Stathis Psillos - Causation and Explanation §2.3 | |
| A reaction: This looks more likely to be good evidence for the cause of an event, rather than a definition of what a cause actually is. Suppose a footballer only scores if and only if I go to watch him? |
| 4776 | In Mill's 'Method of Difference' the cause is what stops the effect when it is removed [Mill, by Psillos] |
| Full Idea: In Mill's 'Method of Difference' the cause is the factor which is different in two cases which are similar, except that in one the effect occurs, and in the other it doesn't. | |
| From: report of John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], p.256) by Stathis Psillos - Causation and Explanation §2.3 | |
| A reaction: Like the Method of Agreement, this is a good test, but is unlikely to be a conclusive hallmark of causation. A footballer may never score unless I go to watch him. I become his lucky mascot… |
| 9417 | What are the fewest propositions from which all natural uniformities could be inferred? [Mill] |
| Full Idea: What are the fewest general propositions from which all the uniformities which exist in the universe might be deductively inferred? | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 3.4.1) | |
| A reaction: This is the germ of the Mill-Ramsey-Lewis view. |
| 21332 | We don't get a love of 'order' from nature - which is thoroughly chaotic [Mill] |
| Full Idea: Even the love of 'order' which is thought to be a following of the ways of nature is in fact a contradiction of them. All which people are accustomed to deprecate as 'disorder' is precisely a counterpart of nature's ways. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (Nature and Utility of Religion [1874], p.116) | |
| A reaction: The Greeks elevated the idea that the cosmos was orderly, but almost entirely based on the regular movement of the planets. They turned a blind eye to the messy bits of nature. As you magnify nature, order and chaos seem to alternate. |
| 7216 | The ethics of the Gospel has been supplemented by barbarous Old Testament values [Mill] |
| Full Idea: To extract from the Gospel a body of ethical doctrine, has never been possible withouth eking it out from the Old Testament, that is, from a system elaborate indeed, but in many respects barbarous, and intended only for a barbarous people. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: 'Barbarous' has a quaint Victorian ring to it, but his point is that the surviving teachings of Jesus are very thin and generalised. Christians would do better to expand their implications, than to borrow from the Old Testament. |
| 21333 | Evil comes from good just as often as good comes from evil [Mill] |
| Full Idea: If good frequently comes out of evil, the converse fact, evil coming out of good, is equally common. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (Nature and Utility of Religion [1874], p.117) | |
| A reaction: Mill surmises that on the whole good comes from good, and evil from evil, but the point is that the evidence doesn't favour the production of increased good. |
| 21335 | Belief that an afterlife is required for justice is an admission that this life is very unjust [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The necessity of redressing the balance [of injustice] is deemed one of the strongest arguments for another life after death, which amounts to an admission that the order of things in this life is often an example of injustice, not justice. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (Nature and Utility of Religion [1874]) | |
| A reaction: It certainly seems that an omnipotent God could administer swift justice in this life. If the whole point is that we need freedom of will, then why is justice administered at a much later date? The freedom seems to be illusory. |
| 21334 | No necessity ties an omnipotent Creator, so he evidently wills human misery [Mill] |
| Full Idea: If a Creator is assumed to be omnipotent, if he bends to a supposed necessity, he himself makes the necessity which he bends to. If the maker of the world can all that he will, he wills misery, and there is no escape from the conclusion. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (Nature and Utility of Religion [1874], p.119) | |
| A reaction: If you add that the Creator is supposed to be perfectly benevolent, you arrive at the paradox which Mackie spells out. Is the correct conclusion that God exists, and is malevolent? Mill doesn't take that option seriously. |
| 21329 | Nature dispenses cruelty with no concern for either mercy or justice [Mill] |
| Full Idea: All of this [cruel killing] nature does with the most supercilious disregard both of mercy and of justice, emptying her shafts upon the best and noblest indifferently with the meanest and worst | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (Nature and Utility of Religion [1874], p.115) | |
| A reaction: The existence of an afterlife at least offers an opportunity to rectify any injustice, but that hardly meets the question of why there was injustice in the first place. It would be odd if it actually is justice, but none of us can see why that is so. |
| 21328 | Killing is a human crime, but nature kills everyone, and often with great tortures [Mill] |
| Full Idea: Killing, the most criminal act recognised by human laws, nature does once to every being that lives, and frequently after protracted tortures such as the greatest know monsters purposely inflicted on their living fellow creatures | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (Nature and Utility of Religion [1874], p.115) | |
| A reaction: We certainly don't condemn lions for savaging gazelles, but the concept of a supreme mind controlling nature forces the question. Theology needs consistency between human and divine morality, and the supposed derivation of the former from the latter. |
| 21330 | Nature makes childbirth a miserable experience, often leading to the death of the mother [Mill] |
| Full Idea: In the clumsy provision which nature has made for the perpetual renewal of animal life, ...no human being ever comes into the world but another human being is literally stretched on the rack for hours or day, not unfrequently issuing in death. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (Nature and Utility of Religion [1874], p.116) | |
| A reaction: This is a very powerful example, which is rarely cited in modern discussions. |
| 21331 | Hurricanes, locusts, floods and blight can starve a million people to death [Mill] |
| Full Idea: Nature often takes the means by which we live. A single hurricane, a flight of locusts, or an inundation, or a trifling chemical change in an edible root, starve a million people. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (Nature and Utility of Religion [1874], p.116) | |
| A reaction: [second sentence compressed] The 'edible root' is an obvious reference to the Irish potato famine. Some desertification had human causes, but these are telling examples. |