JOHN STUART MILL

The Arguments of the Philosophers

EDITOR: TED HONDERICH

The purpose of this series is to provide a contemporary assessment and history of the entire
course of philosophical thought. Each book constitutes a detailed, critical introduction to the
work of a philosopher of major influence and significance.

Plato J.C.B.Gosling

Augustine Christopher Kirwan

The Presocratic Philosophers Jonathan Barnes

Plotinus Lloyd P.Gerson

The Sceptics R.J.Hankinson

Socrates Gerasimos Xenophon Santas

Berkeley George Pitcher

Descartes Margaret Dauler Wilson

Hobbes Tom Sorell

Locke Michael Ayers

Spinoza R.J.Delahunty

Bentham Ross Harrison

Hume Barry Stroud

Butler Terence Penelhum

John Stuart Mill John Skorupski

Thomas Reid Keith Lehrer

Kant Ralph C.S.Walker

Hegel M.J.Inwood

Schopenhauer D.W.Hamlyn

Kierkegaard Alastair Hannay

Nietzsche Richard Schacht

Karl Marx Allen W.Wood

Gottlob Frege Hans D.Sluga

Meinong Reinhardt Grossmann

Husserl David Bell

G.E.Moore Thomas Baldwin

Wittgenstein Robert J.Fogelin

Russell Mark Sainsbury

William James Graham Bird

Peirce Christopher Hookway

Santayana Timothy L.S.Sprigge

Dewey J.E.Tiles

Bergson A.R.Lacey

J.L.Austin G.J.Warnock

Karl Popper Anthony O’Hear

Ayer John Foster

Sartre Peter Caws

JOHN STUART MILL

The Arguments of the Philosophers

John Skorupski

London and New York

First published 1989 by Routledge

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FOR BARBARA
WITH LOVE
Contents

Preface xi

Abbreviations xv

1 THE MILLIAN PHILOSOPHY 1

1 Philosophy and its past 1

2 Logic and metaphysics 5

3 Ethics and politics 12

4 The school of experience and association 21

5 Naturalism and the criterion of general good 30

6 The dialectic of criticism and allegiance 35

7 Naturalism, objectivity, autonomy 38

8 Mill in the present 43

2 THE ANALYSIS OF LANGUAGE 48

1 ‘Of the necessity of commencing with an analysis of language’ 48

2 Propositions 49
3 Classification of names 51

4 Connotation and denotation 53

5 The import of propositions: Conceptualism and Nominalism 59

6 The import of propositions: Mill’s theory 63

7 Proper names 67

8 Predication, assertion, denial 69

9 Simple and compound propositions 71

10 Mill and Frege 74

3 VERBAL PROPOSITIONS AND APPARENT INFERENCE 78

1 Agenda 78

2 Real and verbal propositions 79

3 Non-connotative propositions are verbal 81

4 Real and apparent inference 83

5 Mill’s Verbal’ and Kant’s ‘analytic’ 85

6 Essence 87

7 Defining a name 90
8 The foundation of an attribute 92

9 ‘Nominalism’ and Mill’s nominalism 95

4 THE JUSTIFICATION OF DEDUCTION 99

1 Incroductory 99

2 Analysis of rules of deductive inference 100

3 Mill’s analysis of the syllogism 103

4 ‘Is the syllogism a petitio principii? 105

5 General propositions have no probative force of their own 108

6 Demystifying deduction 112

7 All inference is from particulars to particulars 117

8 The Logic of Consistency and the Logic of Truth’ 121

5 EMPIRICISM IN LOGIC AND MATHEMATICS 126

1 Reviewing the strategy 126

2 Geometry 128

3 Arithmetic: the refutation of ‘Nominalism’ 135

4 Numbers and aggregates 139

5 Arithmetic contains real propositions 143

6 The laws of thought 147

7 Perceptual imagination 152

8 Necessity, aprioricity and conceivability 155

9 The a priori in reasoning 160

Appendix: Mill’s ‘psychologism’ 164

6 INDUCTION AND INDUCTIVISM 167

1 Inductive logic 167

2 ‘The question of Inductive Logic stated’ 170

3 The Law of Universal Causation 175

4 The eliminative methods of induction (i) 178

5 The eliminative methods of induction (ii) 185

6 The place of the eliminative methods in Mill’s inductive logic 187

7 Inductive scepticism and the internal validation of induction 192

8 Hypotheses 197

7 INDUCTION, PERCEPTION AND CONSCIOUSNESS 203

1 The ‘phenomenal relativity of knowledge’ 203

2 Inductivism and the manifest image 206

3 Inductivism and inductive scepticism 212

4 Naturalism and the classical pre-understanding of meaning 216

5 The ‘interpretation of consciousness’ 220

6 The ‘introspective’ and the ‘psychological’ methods 225

7 Phenomenalism 229

8 Minds 236

9 Phenomenalism and naturalism 240

10 Subjective and objective 244

8 THE LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES 248

1 ‘Human conduct as a subject of science’ 248

2 Freedom as rational autonomy 250

3 Empirical and ultimate laws: explanation and reduction 255

4 The primacy of psychology: associationism 259

5 Ethology: the historicity of human nature 264

6 Sociology: the evolutionary science of society 267

7 The methods of social science 269

8 Methodological individualism 273

9 Can there be a ‘science of human nature’? 275

10 Interpretation 279

9 UTILITARIANISM 283

1 Introductory 283

2 The ‘proof of the Principle of Utility 285

3 The objectivity of ends: (i) Humean scepticism 288

4 The objectivity of ends: (ii) The desire-satisfaction model 290

5 Hedonism 295

6 The refutation of hedonism 299

7 Kinds of pleasure and categorial diversity of ends 303

8 Impartiality and agent-neutral reasons 308

9 Philosophical utilitarianism 310

10 Utilitarianism and the distinctness of individuals 313

11 Indirect utilitarianism 315

12 Bentham and Coleridge: conservative holism 321

13 Justice and rights 325

14 Autonomy and distribution 328

15 Reflective equilibrium 334

10 LIBERTY 337

1 The themes of On Liberty 337

2 The Liberty Principle 340

3 Foundations for liberty: utility, natural rights, scepticism 343

4 Individuality 347

5 Autonomy 354

6 Paternalism 359

7 Utility and ideals 360

8 Liberty, justice and the private domain 363

9 Liberty of expression: the dialogue model 369

10 Liberty of expression: fallibilism 376

11 Liberty of expression: truth, autonomy and the ideal of rationality 383

12 Towards liberalism 384

Notes 389

Bibliography 418

Index 426
Preface
John Stuart Mill looms in the central massif of nineteenth century thought; one of its highest
peaks, gaunt in appearance, cloud-capped, chilly. The outline casts its shadow on lower hills—it
is regularly used to take bearings on them—but climbers on its high ridges remain few.

The same could be said of other major nineteenth-century philosophers; we are only slowly
beginning to take stock of their legacy, and to locate ourselves, as the heroic phase of twentieth-
century philosophy recedes, in relation to it. But it is particularly true, I think in the case of Mill.
Though his reputation continues to revive, there is still no accurate revaluation of the most
fundamental points in his philosophy. Yet his questions, his answers, and their difficulties are all
readily understandable in today’s perspective. Not every vast nineteenth-century canvas repays
the painstaking work of restoration, but in this case the result is incisive and fresh.

This book traces Mill’s arguments, tests their strength and suggests alternatives. Some of it,
inevitably, enters into complicated detail, but I have tried to keep the larger picture in view. In
the first chapter I sketch out the main themes of Mill’s philosophical thought. There is an
impressive steadiness and scope in Mill’s vision; he tackles very big themes right out in the
open, for an audience of intelligent readers; he tries to bring pure philosophy into contact with
life and thought.

Anyone who does that runs the dangers of pontificating, spreading himself too thinly, hurrying
over difficult issues too quickly. Mill can be absolved of none of these things. And it must be
confessed that there is something glacial about the philosopher as public figure. Mill fits into no
cosy group, no shared esoteric language—but neither does he cast himself as the romantic
outsider, observing human society from the desert or the bush. His chosen role is to educate the
serious-minded; his philosophical stance is numbingly comprehensive, lucid and systematic. He
magisterially treats of mind, society, politics, economics, culture. If Bacon wrote philosophy like
a Lord Chancellor, Mill all too often writes it like a self-appointed Royal Commission.

The grand manner risks sounding hollow—especially when expressed in plain and sober prose
which mercilessly exposes bits of mere blur or filling. Some of Mill’s more substantive political
writings suffer badly from a lack of the nuance and self-irony which attractive political writing
needs. They generate ‘horror Victorianorum’. But his more purely philosophical works are saved
by their incisiveness and humanity. There is little pot-boiling in them; they are packed with crisp
argument. We can learn a great deal from these arguments, but it is from Mill’s strategic vision
that we have most to learn—expecially about the necessary relations between philosophy, culture
and politics.

Mill is very English. The English tradition of the philosopher and practical man of sense, and the
English paradox of the conservative radical, go far to explain the strengths and weaknesses of his
mind. Like Locke or Butler he values intelligibility above laboriously achieved precision. He is
humane and balanced rather than playful and ingenious, incisive and strategic rather than
carefully worked-over and exact. Another comparison would be with George Orwell: Mill has
the same conservative radicalism, centring on hatred of domination but fear of the atomised
human mass, the same liking for honest language, the same wistfully prosaic mind. He liked to
lecture his compatriots about the virtues of continental thought, but it was from the island of
Albion that he did so.

This is no provincialism: the resources of the English intellectual and moral tradition gave Mill
the strength and materials to write earnestly and simply and to encounter continental ideas on
equal terms. It was another Englishman, Bishop Butler, who spoke of the ‘uniformity of thought
and design, which will always be found in the writings of the same person, when he writes with
simplicity and in earnest’ (Butler 1970:16): that uniformity is found in Mill.

The layout of this book is determined by four of Mill’s works: the System of Logic, the
Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy, Utilitarianism and On Liberty. Many of
Mill’s other writings contain philosophical discussions of importance—I refer to some of them
when it is relevant to do so. But these are the four texts by which Mill’s more purely
philosophical reputation is likely to stand or fall, The most obvious omission from this canon is
his Three Essays on Religion’. I would have liked to have a chapter on Mill on religion—but
though the essays contain dispassionate and telling argument, they are not, I think,
philosophically creative. They fascinatingly display a major predicament of the Victorian mind,
but they do not break new paths in our understanding of what religion is. Nor are they essential
to Mill’s philosophy in the way that Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion are
essential to his.

I would also have liked to have a chapter on Mill on democracy. That chapter would have fitted
more easily into the plan of this book and the perspective on Mill it tries to present; the good and
bad in democracy were as much a part of Mill’s philosophical thinking as of Plato’s. The
difficulty here (apart from sheer exhaustion) was simply the extra length which would have been
added to an already long book.

The topics in Mill chosen, and the balance among them, are meant to give a picture of Mill
specifically as a philosopher. I have given a lot of space to the System of Logic, because it is
fundamental in Mill’s thought and because there is a desperate lack of up-to-date commentary on
it. Mill thought the two works by him which would survive longest were Liberty and the System.
He was not wrong to pick out these two. Understanding Mill’s project in the System of Logic, its
strength and historical standing, must be the basis for any full revaluation of Mill, so I have tried
to be comprehensive. I have less to say about Mill’s fine analysis of causation than about other
topics because this has already been well treated by the late J.L.Mackie. Mackie also analysed
Mill’s ‘eliminative methods of induction’ very fully; I have covered these in more detail because
they are needed for an overall picture of Mill’s view of the ‘inductive process’. The Examination
of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy is discussed in chapter 7, which extends the basic lines of
argument in the previous chapters—I concentrate on the tension between Mill’s naturalism, his
inductivism and his subjectivist epistemology.

On Mill as a liberal and utilitarian there is now a vast literature, much of it very elaborate, and a
lot of it very good. On these topics one can assume at least broad agreement about what Mill
actually said. In chapters 8, 9 and 10 I have stressed the distinctive quality of Mill’s liberalism—
the fact that it is founded on an appeal not to irreducible individual rights but to the general good.
To approach liberty and equality in this way places great weight on a substantive view of human
nature and a substantive analysis of human ends. In this respect Mill differs markedly from the
wanly formalistic and subjectivist strains of liberal philosophy in the present century. His is not a
defensive liberalism, desperately eliminating hostages to fortune, or a sleight-of-hand liberalism,
trying to conjure political principles out of tautologies. It makes deep assumptions about human
beings, their possibilities and their ends. Certainly the assumptions were not fully thought
through by Mill—they conflicted at many points with his associationist and hedonistic
Benthamite inheritance. That means that Mill leaves his followers with a lot of ground-clearing
to do. But I argue that there is no alternative foundation for liberalism; if I am right, then to
examine the prospects of rebuilding liberalism on cleared but essentially Millian ground is to ask
about the fortunes of liberalism itself.

I have been writing this book (though with many interruptions) for nine years. Intensive study of
any great philosopher must be simultaneously humbling and life-enhancing; I have certainly
found it to be so with Mill. I have come to appreciate the depth and difficulty of what he did, and
have found myself rethinking virtually every topic he touched.

Many friends have helped my thinking and writing. I thank particularly David A.Bell, Dudley
Knowles, Stephen Makin, Frank McDermott, Angus Mckay and Pat Shaw, all of whom read
various parts of the manuscript, improved by disagreement and sustained by encouragement. My
deepest debt is to my friend Flint Schier, who died in May 1988. The ideas about the nineteenth
century, about liberalism, naturalism, objectivity, human ends, ‘disenchantment’ and many other
things which enter into or lie behind this book were shaped over the years by innumerable
conversations with him. He will never read it in finished form but I like to think that he would
have found it to his taste.

Like any other author I have learned from books and articles too numerous to mention or even
remember. The notes and bibliography give an indication of some of them at least. I must
however take this opportunity of saluting a work which absorbs me every time I read it: Maurice
Mandelbaum’s History, Man and Reason. The few references to it in the notes do not adequately
convey how much I owe to it.
Abbreviations
Page references for quotations from Mill refer to the Collected Works, published by the
University of Toronto Press, Toronto, and Routledge & Kegan Paul, London. Thus (I 2) refers to
page 2 of volume I of the Collected Works. References to the System of Logic give book, chapter
and section number thus: i.i.1. When I refer to other works I sometimes give their title where it
seems appropriate to do so. In the case of Utilitarianism and Liberty—because of the number of
editions in which they are available—I give chapter and paragraph number. ‘U’ refers to
Utilitarianism, L to Liberty. Thus ‘UII5’ refers to chapter II, paragraph 5 of Utilitarianism. The
reference is completed by the number of the relevant volume of the Collected Works and the
number of the page of the volume on which the passage appears. Cross-references within the
book are by chapter and section number in arabic numerals.
1
The Millian Philosophy
Coleridge’s sayings about half-truths; and Goethe’s device, ‘many-sidedness, was one which I
would most willingly, at this period, have taken for mine…. (Autobiography I 171)

1 Philosophy and its past

One’s interest in a philosopher of the past may be mainly philosophical or mainly historical, but
the two kinds of interest cannot be divorced. To understand the historical origins and
consequences of philosophical ideas one must understand the ideas. And though the history of
philosophy is a living part of philosophy, it can contribute to it—by placing present reflection in
historical parameters, bringing home its historicity—only as serious history.

Tracing the story of a philosophical outlook is seeing how philosophy interacts with those
parameters—responding to its own necessities, generating new questions, slowly shifting the
parameters. Some past philosophies cease to be options for us. Others remain as earlier castings
of traditions which are still in play. Wherever there is philosophical thought of distinction there
is something to learn. The first case at the least gives us a view of ourselves from a diverging
path. In the latter we take stock in another way. We get a benchmark against which to measure
current philosophical assumptions, and an improved sense of what is transient in them and what
is more likely to endure.

The reasons for studying Mill’s philosophy are of the second kind. He is sufficiently distant to be
seen historically, but he speaks in familiar accents. Mill’s positions are live positions in current
philosophical thought. In fact they have not been more so at any time this century, or even since
his death. Philosophy has moved, across the whole range from logic and metaphysics to ethics
and politics, towards a state of debate which makes Mill easier to appreciate than at any time in
the last hundred years.

This striking fact is in the first place a matter of Mill’s particular interests. His range is wide, and
his subjects overlap very largely with topics—be it the analysis of language, the justification of
deduction, the nature of scientific reasoning, the epistemology of arithmetic and geometry, the
nature of human well-being or the foundations of political liberty—which are at the centre of
discussion today. On all of them Mill’s attitudes are challenging and fresh; his treatment of any
one of them repays study.

The overlap reflects a number of sea-changes in recent philosophy; but in particular it reflects the
resurgence of interest in a certain self-consciously liberal and naturalistic perspective. The
interest is hostile as well as friendly; however it is an interest in that perspective and its
consequences and coherence. But that perspective unifies Mill’s philosophy: the perspective, in
fact, of the enlightenment. Mill’s project, in most general terms, was to present the
enlightenment perspective in a way which would claim the allegiance and enthusiasm of thinking
men and women, and, through them, exercise a social authority for good. He wanted to rethink it
in detail and to show how it could incorporate and transcend the criticisms which had been made
of it in the age of early nineteenth-century romanticism, the age in which he grew to maturity.
Accordingly, the deepest criticisms of Mill are those which argue that he failed in just this
respect; that the enlightenment perspective as such is incoherent—in its metaphysics, or its
politics, or both. A full appreciation of Mill requires that one recognise what issues are at stake
here and why they are significant.

But it takes a certain philosophical setting to see things in this way. In this century English-
speaking philosophy at least has by and large had other paths to follow. And the liberal and
naturalistic perspective itself fell in esteem though certainly not in underlying influence. It has
often seemed threadbare and trite. It has been shrugged off with the more irritation by people
who have few genuinely penetrating points to make against it, and correspondingly lack a
dialectical sense of its real uncertainties. For the same reason Mill has passed as a philosopher
whose ideas—and their inadequacies—we know only too well. But that reputation is itself a
historical artefact. Let us trace how it emerged.

When Mill died in 1873 he already seemed to belong to an earlier intellectual epoch, across all
the subjects about which he thought — metaphysics and logic, moral and political philosophy,
political economy. The last three decades of the nineteenth century and the first decade or so of
this were a period of extraordinary fertility in all those subjects; those who created and
experienced its excitement saw Mill’s legacy as a citadel which had to be circumvented or
destroyed. His was the received position, the too easily achieved synthesis, stultifying in its
complacent finality.1

When a philosopher acquires the exceptional influence Mill achieved in his lifetime, a trough in
his reputation over the next few generations is inevitable. But as philosophy developed in this
century Mill’s reputation did not revive. Its questions were not Mill’s. For one thing, Mill’s
System of Logic preceded the developments in logic and set theory which date back to the 1870s,
and transformed twentieth-century ways of philosophising about language, logic and
mathematics. But something else went deeper than this. It was the reaction, in that modernist
period in which both analytic philosophy and phenomenology emerged, against nineteenth-
century modes of thought as such—in philosophy, against ‘historicism’, ‘psychologism’,
‘evolutionism’; against grand systems which fused philosophical doctrines with substantive
conceptions of history, man and reason. Philosophy was now understood as the analysis of
logical relations—and that meant (depending on one’s affiliation) of pure essences, or of
propositions and their internal relations, or of linguistic conventions. It was rigorously pure
inquiry, sharply distinguished from questions about what history or psychology in fact constrain
us to think.

These distinctions between logical and empirical, factual and evaluative, do of course contain an
important truth—the elementary truth expressed in the ‘is-ought’ distinction. However it was not
the elementary truth, but the single-minded modernist obsession with it, that made sympathetic
appreciation of nineteenth-century philosophy difficult. In itself, the elementary truth is perfectly
consistent with something taken for granted on all sides in the nineteenth century—that in
reflecting on what we have reason to believe or do our only ultimate appeal is to what we find
ourselves (after critical examination) constrained to think. But the modernist obsession with the
purity and autonomy of philosophy and logic transforms the elementary truth into a blinding
light: blinding the philosopher to the inescapable psychological or historical context of his
inquiry.

An example of a modernist philosopher misreading a nineteenth-century argument in just this

way is the ‘naturalistic fallacy’ of whichG. E.Moore accused Mill (see 9–2). When Mill argues
that happiness is desirable by appealing to the ‘evidence’ of what human beings reflectively
desire, he points out that he is not putting forward a deductive proof. So he does not sin against
the elementary truth. But Moore’s preoccupation with the purity of ethical analysis blinds him to
the very simple point Mill makes—and to the inescapability of his way of making it: deliberation
about ends can take no other form than appeal to what we discover by reflective analysis to be
our categorial ends.

Similar things can be said about Mill’s ultra-empiricism about logic and mathematics and about
his analysis of the grounds of inductive reasoning. Neither was destined to find a sympathetic
audience. Mill’s conception of logic and mathematics clashed with the fervent modernist
affirmation of their a priori purity, and the attempt to explain that purity in conventionalist or
platonist terms. And his grounding of the inductive principle on an appeal to spontaneous forms
of reasoning seemed no more than a failure to appreciate Hume’s problem of induction.

The reputation of his political philosophy was not in better shape, The most important cause here
is undoubtedly liberalism’s historic crisis of confidence in the first half of this century. But it is
also true, perhaps connectedly, that the intellectual climate was not favourable for political
philosophy, not, at least, for the tradition of disciplined reasoning about human nature and its
forms of political expression of which Mill is one of the supreme exponents. It was possible to
salute him as an eloquent spokesman for liberty, inspiring at least as much by saintly personal
example as by rigour of argument. That is the approach taken by Bertrand Russell and by Isaiah
Berlin. But to appreciate the true force of Mill’s liberalism, one has to accept that political
philosophy requires substantive conceptions of human nature, and substantive links with political
practice.

The modernist affirmation of philosophical purity allows neither. Philosophical conceptions of

human nature are consigned to the realm of undisciplined speculation. And a political philosophy
with practical implications disappears down the chasm between is and ought. It is not
unconnected that when Russell himself writes on ethics and politics the results are embarrassing
in just the respects in which Mill is impressive. Mill thinks soberly and hard about psychological
and historical constraints on ethical ideals. He often over-simplifies, often seems over-confident,
often blusters about ‘science’ as a way of whistling in the dark. But Russell sentimentalises. The
spirit of Russell’s time and milieu gave him little support for anything between rigorously
abstract inquiry and fine feelings: but it is on just that missing ground that worthwhile social and
political philosophy has to be anchored. Utilitarianism has been accused of lacking a politics and
a psychology. Levelled at Mill the accusation would be absurd. It does however have a proper
target: it is ethics in the modernist vein that lacks them.

I have said that Millian positions are now more in play than they have been for a very long time.
This is fairly obvious in moral and political philosophy, but it is also true in logic and
metaphysics, though less obviously so, because Mill’s writings on these subjects are much less
familiar. Yet it is remarkable how similar in spirit Mill’s outlook is to the Quinean naturalism
which has become so dominant in recent philosophy. There are fundamental philosophical
differences between Mill and Quine, and there also lies between them the technical development
of modern logic. But the latter point should not mislead us. The essence of Mill’s analysis of
language, and his empiricist view of logic and mathematics, can be stated as well in modern
logical as in syllogistic terms. In fact the language of modern logic makes it much easier to state
it with flexibility and precision. Philosophically, on the other hand, exactly the same questions
about the coherence of the naturalistic stance arise now as arose then. The central question
remains the tenability of naturalism in the face of Kantian critique.

The chapters which follow this one examine Mill’s philosophical doctrines in detail; it is
important however—more with Mill than with many other philosophers—not to lose sight of the
wood for the trees. So this introductory chapter sets out some of Mill’s larger themes and
problems, and estimates the present significance of his ideas. Of course a broad sketch of any
philosophical position can sink in fully only at the end of detailed analysis, and not in advance of
it, but it is still useful to have a rough map in hand.

2 Logic and metaphysics

The root of Mill’s philosophical thought is thoroughgoing naturalism. Human beings are entirely
a part of the natural causal order studied by science. They are causal systems within that larger
causal order. In this fundamental premise Mill was always a child of the enlightenment.

But the first decades of the nineteenth century saw a sharp reaction against enlightenment ideas
and values. Philosophically, that reaction was most fully worked through by German
philosophers, and it came to Mill through his ‘Germano-Coleridgean’ friends.2 Its starting point
was precisely the rejection of naturalism. This was the ‘Copernican revolution’ of which Kant
spoke in the Critique of Pure Reason—from which idealism in its distinctive nineteenth-century
meaning grew. The antagonism between naturalism and various forms of post-Kantian idealism
became the central philosophical debate of the nineteenth century. It is the constant background
of Mill’s philosophical writings.

The fully naturalistic view of human thought has an implication of which both Kant and Mill
were intensely aware. Both would have taken the following point as fundamental: if the mind is
simply and only a part of nature then no real knowledge of the natural world can be a priori.
Either all real knowledge is a posteriori, grounded in experience, or there is no real knowledge
—‘knowledge is impossible’. Any grounds for asserting a proposition that has real content must
be empirical grounds. Empiricism is then the thesis that there are such grounds, scepticism, that
there are none. The point on which Mill and Kant could have agreed is that naturalism entails
either scepticism or empiricism. Where they disagreed, of course, was on the question of which
disjunct was forced.

The inference from naturalism to the disjunction of empiricism and scepticism turns on a
distinction which is as central to the System of Logic as it is to the Critique of Pure Reason: that
between Kant’s ‘analytic’ and ‘synthetic’ judgements, or in Mill’s terms, between ‘verbal’ and
‘real’ propositions and, correspondingly, between ‘merely apparent’ and ‘real’ inferences (3.2–
4). But Mill’s use of the distinction differs in one crucial respect from Kant (3.5). Verbal
propositions and merely apparent inferences have no genuine cognitive content: in particular, a
merely apparent inference is merely apparent precisely in the sense that no real inferential move
has been made. The conclusion has literally been asserted in the premises. Since verbal
propositions and merely apparent inferences have no cognitive content there can be no
epistemological problem about the grounds which justify them—they need no grounds.

Similar points apply to Kant’s analytic judgements, when they are strictly understood as ‘adding
nothing through the predicate to the concept of the subject, but merely breaking it up into those
constituent concepts that have all along been thought in it’ (Kant 1929:A7B11). There is
however a broader conception of analyticity: it defines an analytic truth as one from whose
negation a contradiction can be deduced—with the help (if necessary) of definitional
transformations, and using principles of logic alone. Whether or not this ‘broad’ definition can be
read into Kant, it is a common one, and it differs importantly from the ‘narrow’ definition. In the
broad sense of ‘analytic’, it becomes of course a trivial truth that logical principles are analytic.
They are derivable from themselves using no principles that are not principles of logic. But what
is no longer trivial is what, for the purposes of an epistemological inquiry into logic, should be
trivial—viz. the crucial thesis that analytic judgements have no genuine cognitive content, and
hence pose no epistemological problem. That thesis is no longer trivial, and not true: for logic
itself contains, reverting to Mill’s terms, ‘real’ propositions and inferences, containing genuine
cognitive content. The clear recognition of this fact is one of the chief philosophical virtues of
the System of Logic. But it could not of course be seen as such so long as the thesis that logical
and mathematical propositions are empty of all real content—so important to philosophy in the
first half of this century—remained an orthodoxy.

Mill’s attempt to establish the fact, which involves him, in various places, in an analysis of the
meaning of sentences and terms, of syllogistic theory and of the so-called ‘Laws of Thought’, is
less than clear, and he never brings it together into a unified, perspicuous account. Nevertheless
he pushes through the definition of ‘verbal’ and ‘real’, and the analysis in these terms of logical
and mathematical propositions, far enough to show how radical the implications of naturalism
must be. If no real proposition is known a priori, then either logical and mathematical
knowledge turns out to be empirical or there can be no knowledge at all.

Why is it that no real proposition can be known a priori? According to Mill, when we hold a real
proposition to be true a priori our grounds for doing so in reality come down to psychological
facts about us—that we find its negation inconceivable, or that it is derived, by principles whose
unsoundness we find inconceivable, from premises whose negation we find inconceivable. Mill
is not offering a definition of what is meant by such terms as ‘a priori’ ‘necessary’, ‘self-
evident’. He is not saying that this is what we are daiming when we claim a proposition to be any
of these things—his point is that it is all that lends colour to our claim.

The natural facts on which claims to a priori knowledge must rest are facts about the limits, felt
by us ‘from the inside’, on what we are able to cognise or imagine. Inability to represent to
oneself any alternative to the truth of a proposition is the limiting case, in which one is most
confident of its truth. Mill thought he could explain these facts about unthinkability, or
imaginative unrepresentability, in associationist terms, and spent many pages claiming to do so.
They are not very convincing pages, but their implausibility does not affect his essential point,
which is that when the facts are conceived naturalistically the step from our inability to represent
to ourselves the negation of a proposition to acceptance of its truth calls for justification.
Moreover, the justification itself must be a priori if it is to show that the proposition is known a
priori. Mill is prepared to concede the reliability of geometrical intuition: but he stresses that its
reliability is an empirical fact.

How, on a rigorously naturalistic view of the mind as a natural process within a larger natural
order, could it be anything else? That is a point Mill never tires of hammering home. Once again,
Kant could agree: he holds, after all, that vindicating the possibility of synthetic a priori
knowledge calls for nothing less than the rejection of naturalism in favour of transcendental
idealism. But without synthetic a priori knowledge, according to Kant, scepticism is forced:
knowledge as such becomes impossible. The very possibility of knowledge requires that there be
a priori elements in our cognition, and their status can be vindicated only if we reject the thesis
that mind is nothing but a part of the causal order of nature.

The System of Logic in contrast sets out to vindicate in general terms the possibility of a scheme
of scientific knowledge which appeals at no point whatever to any kind of a priori principle. For
just that reason it became the focus of criticism for those who agreed with Kant in holding that
naturalism reduces to scepticism, and who argued on that basis that there could be no fully
natural science of man. To anyone who had imbibed the critical philosophy of Kant there would
have been something peculiarly provoking about the System of Logic. It ignores the sceptical
disjunct altogether—and hence from the ‘critical’ standpoint it misses out just about everything
that matters.

One might contrast Hume’s Treatise and Mill’s System by saying that Hume, taking deduction
for granted, raised questions about the justification of induction, while Mill, taking induction for
granted, raised questions about the justification of deduction. However Hume’s doubts about
induction are truly sceptical in that, taken at full strength, they leave no space for an account of
how induction can yield new knowledge, as against causing new beliefs. His own ‘sceptical
solution’ of these doubts does not, in fact, purport to give any such account. In contrast, Mill
never subjects deduction to a full-scale sceptical attack, any more than induction. He accepts that
deduction does yield genuinely new knowledge. The problem is to show how, within a
naturalistic framework which takes the rationality of simple inductive inference for granted. Mill
in the System of Logic is no less radical than Hume, but in a quite different way. He follows
through the implications of naturalism, for epistemology and the philosophy of logic, to
unprecedented lengths: he presents the first thoroughgoingly naturalistic analysis of deductive
reasoning. On the other hand he never considers sceptical arguments of the kind examined by
Hume: scepticism of this kind is something that Mill simply does not take seriously.

This is a conscious philosophical stance: the System of Logic is the first treatise on
epistemological matters which comprehensively treats them in what Quine has called a
‘naturalised’ way (Quine 1969)- For present purposes I take ‘naturalised epistemology’ to
comprise three ingredients: a refusal to reply to or even to consider pure sceptical arguments, an
appeal to a natural, or in Mill’s word ‘spontaneous’, agreement in propensities to reason, and
finally, what may be called an ‘internal’ vindication of these fundamental reasoning propensities.
All three ingredients are present in the System of Logic.

For Mill, the basic form of reasoning—speaking both epistemologically, and historically and
psychologically—is enumerative induction, simple generalisation from experience. We find
ourselves in spontaneous agreement in reasoning that way, and equally, in holding that way of
reasoning to be sound. In exactly analogous fashion, we find ourselves in spontaneous agreement
in desiring happiness, and in holding happiness to be desirable. The propositions ‘Happiness is
desirable’ or ‘Enumerative induction is rational’ are certainly not ‘merely verbal’ propositions.
But nor are they grounded on any kind of a priori intuition. All that Mill will say for them is that
people in general, and the reader in particular, in fact agree on reflection in accepting them. He
grants that spontaneous enumerative induction has some initial rational claim. What he tries to do
is to give a natural history of the ‘inductive process’ which shows how it is then internally
vindicated by its actual success in establishing regularities, how further enumerative induction on
these established regularities leads to the conclusion that all events are subject to regularity, and
how that conclusion in turn sustains the canons of eliminative inquiry. The strategy will be
considered in chapter 6. Its coherentist element is often explicit:

We are constantly told that the uniformity of the course of nature cannot itself be an induction,
since every inductive reasoning assumes it, and the premise must have been known before the
conclusion. Those who argue in this manner can never have directed their attention to the
continual process of giving and taking, in respect of certainty, which reciprocally goes on
between this great premise and the narrower truths of experience; the effect of which is, that,
though originally a generalization from the more obvious of the narrower truths, it ends by
having a fulness of certainty which overflows upon these, and raises the proof of them to a
higher level. (Examination IX 482, note)

We now have before us the broad framework of the System of Logic. No real proposition is a
priori. Logic and mathematics contain real propositions, and so cannot be a priori. The same of
course must apply to all canons of scientific reasoning, since these are not merely verbal either:

Principles of Evidence and Theories of Method are not to be constructed a priori. The laws of
our rational faculty, like those of every other natural agency, are only learnt by seeing the agent
at work. The earlier achievements of science were made without the conscious observance of any
Scientific Method; and we should never have known by what process truth is to be ascertained, if
we had not previously ascertained many truths…. We learn to do a thing in difficult
circumstances, by attending to the manner in which we have spontaneously done the same thing
in easier ones. (VIII 833)

This passage contains all the ingredients of naturalised epistemology which were mentioned
earlier. There is no attempt at a first philosophy which would answer scepticism on its own
grounds. Mill appeals to an examination of how we spontaneously reason in simple cases. He
proposes only to make the principles of reasoning involved perspicuous, to codify them
systematically, and in doing so, to raise our initial degree of confidence in them. On this
foundation he proceeds to his third, major and constructive step: to show how the system of
knowledge can be vindicated entirely on the ultimate foundation of simple enumerative
induction.

Thus ‘naturalised epistemology’ makes its case for the empiricist disjunct. But can it be taken
seriously as a philosophical position? Can the avoidance of sceptical arguments be anything
more than evasion? How can scepticism about methods of reasoning be avoided unless those
methods have an a priori guarantee? This was the central criticism of Mill’s philosophy in the
nineteenth century—not just from idealists, but from sympathisers like Sidgwick too (Sidgwick
1882). But before we consider it we must first consider another criticism, which is not directed at
Mill’s naturalism as such, but at his analysis of our spontaneous methods of reasoning.

It centres on his inductivism—his view that ‘enumerative’ induction, simple generalisation from
experience, is the only method of inference which puts us in possession of new truths. Mill—in
contrast to Whewell or Peirce—rejects hypotheses as means, in their own right, of achieving
attested knowledge; though he does not deny their heuristic value. Yet the fact is, contrary to
Mill, that enumerative induction cannot underpin all we claim to know. This is particularly
obvious in Mill’s discussion of mathematics. Mill’s case for empiricism about logic and
mathematics is extremely strong. In contrast, his attempt to show how our knowledge of basic
logical and mathematical principles derives directly from enumerative inductions seems
desperately weak. When Mill’s account of arithmetic and logic is criticised for its inductivism,
the critic is on unshakeable ground.

Can we not then keep Mill’s naturalistic framework, but enlarge it to take into account the
method of hypothesis, or of inference to the best explanation? That would certainly make
possible a very much more plausible empiricism about logic and mathematics than what Mill can
offer. What is more, it seems perfectly compatible with Mill’s own naturalistic appeal to the
methods of reasoning on which we spontaneously agree. The inference to the best explanation is
one of those methods of reasoning. Inferences to the best explanation are just as basic a feature
of ordinary and of scientific reasoning as enumerative inferences are, and should be recognised
as such in any naturalistic epistemology. Whewell’s History of the Inductive Sciences, which
Mill had studied, provided ample historical data to substantiate that.

If we could make this change to Mill’s framework, we would be left with a position which many
have recently found attractive: hypothetico-deductivist like Whewell’s, but Millian in being,
unlike Whewell, naturalistic and ultra-empiricist, and able to take his coherentist and fallibilist
side further than he did.

It would repair Mill’s position in an even deeper way. The central tension in Mill’s philosophy
emerges in the Examination. It results from the conflict between three of his firmest convictions:
his naturalism, his inductivism and his subjectivism: that is, his insistence on the primacy of
consciousness—both epistemologically, as constituting the ultimate baseline from which we
reason, and for psychology, as providing the data of that science. If one combines the last two of
these tenets (inductivism and the primacy of consciousness), some form of phenomenalism—
matter as the permanent possibility of sensation—is inevitable. Mill gets to that point in the
Examination, But how then can phenomenalism be squared with naturalism? There are various
ways of trying to do that, of course: but if one is convinced that they are unsuccessful, and
unwilling to give up naturalism, the next step will be to re-examine the other two assumptions.

Mill shows no sign of being aware of the difficulty of his own position or of the need to make
some sort of distinction between an empirical level at which sensations are in the world and a
transcendental level at which the world is a construct of sensations. One of the oddest things
about the Examination is the thoroughly naturalistic, non-transcendental tone in which it
advances its phenomenalism: at one moment it constructs the world out of sensations, at another
—without any sense of crossing into a different order of analysis—blandly envisages ‘what
physiology is rendering more and more probable’—that ‘our sensations, have for their physical
antecedents particular states of the nerves’ (IX 282). If the book had been less unremittingly
devoted to destructive criticism of Hamilton, some of these tensions might have been clearer to
Mill. But it would have been difficult if not impossible for him to have gone far in resolving
them. A consistent naturalism in fact requires one to give up both inductivism and subjectivism
(see chapter 7). But although naturalism was Mill’s basic tenet there was no obvious route
available to him for giving up either.

To be sure, Whewell had emphasised that science proceeds by ‘inductions’ to the best
explanation, and Comte had rejected the standpoint of consciousness, dismissing ‘psychology’ as
a pseudo-science —Mill had been deeply influenced by both thinkers, and had specifically
discussed both these views in various places. But the objections he made to them on these points
were good ones within the terms available to him. The full significance of such lines of thought,
when placed in a naturalistic context, only began to be explored at the end of the century —and
they are still sinking in now.

Consider the case of subjectivism. Here we have one of those parameters in which philosophy
has decisively changed since Mill’s time. To reject the standpoint of consciousness one must
reject the model of pure presentational states of experience, radically distinct from propositional
attitudes, as such; and the contemporary question is whether there can be any plausible way of
doing that. But the very possibility of raising that question could not have occurred to Mill —
questions of this kind about consciousness and materialism could not have been seriously stated
within philosophy’s then horizons.

What of hypothetico-deductivism? Once again the issues lead towards philosophical ideas which
only emerge in this century. Mill’s basic objection to the hypothetical method was that more than
one hypothesis is always available to explain the data. That objection is of course a very
powerful one. In chapter 7 I examine it in detail. I conclude that no defence against it is possible
so long as we accept a certain very plausible conception of what it is to understand the sentences
of a language. I call this conception the ‘classical pre-understanding of meaning’—because it is
not consciously formulated until it is identified and opposed. The conception which opposes it I
call the epistemic conception; and I argue that defence of inference to the best explanation as an
independent method of arriving at truth becomes possible only when the classical pre-
understanding is rejected in favour of the epistemic conception of meaning.

These issues remain very open. But they are crucial for understanding the Kantian critique of
naturalism and the possibility of a naturalistic response. The Kantian critics of Mill were right in
claiming that he had no satisfactory rationale for avoiding the sceptic’s challenge. But it may be
that they were wrong in thinking that no such rationale can be given in the context of naturalism.
That is still an open issue. It turns on the tenability of the epistemic conception of meaning. If
that conception is coherent, then it becomes possible to argue that it is not naturalism alone, but
naturalism in the presence of the classical pre-understanding of meaning that leads to the
sceptical impasse. But the epistemic conception itself can be presented as nothing more than the
consequence of a rigorously naturalistic analysis of thought—of understanding and inference. It
is in fact latent in Mill’s empiricist and functional treatment of syllogistic reasoning. Only latent;
nevertheless, the System of Logic can properly be seen as a step on the road towards pragmatist
and naturalistic conceptions of language and language-mastery.

3 Ethics and politics

If Mill’s epistemology and metaphysics are those of enlightenment humanism his ethics and
politics are even more obviously so. Value resides within individual human lives; the proper end
of human life is happiness. The interests of every individual make an equal claim on the
consideration of all; but general happiness is most effectively attained when society leaves
people free to pursue their own ends subject to rules established for the general good. A science
of man can ground rational policies for social improvement.

These honourable and down-to-earth doctrines are apt to seem thin. They have to be given
substance by a philosophically commanding conception of human ends, and of social and
political life. The lack of this in Benthamism was its crucial weakness, as Mill well knew. He
wanted to give enlightenment values depth and authority by giving them conceptions of human
nature and political life which neither shrivelled into philistinism nor vapourised into
metaphysical fog.3 He wanted to put them in touch with those themes of the early nineteenth
century which lay close to his own heart—the autonomy and progressiveness of the individual,
the historicity and interconnectedness of social institutions.

His grasp of this historicity and interconnectedness was always abstract and strategic—other
thinkers of the nineteenth century brought to the study of society a more concrete historical sense
or a more powerful sociological imagination. But none had a purer, more objective philosophic
vision. That crystalline vision was no doubt the true cause of Mill’s mental ‘crisis’;4 yet in the
end it equipped him to regenerate the enlightenment frame of mind without weakening its
essential strengths —simplicity, humanity, lack of humbug and self-delusion.

In his famous ‘proof’ of the Urility Principle Mill argues that happiness is the sole human good.
He claims that whenever we desire to do something for its own sake, we desire it under the idea
of it as enjoyable or pleasant. He thinks it a matter of ‘fact and experience’ that people ‘desire
nothing for itself but that which is a pleasure to them, or of which the absence is a pain’.

Just as we see on reflection that enumerative induction is an ultimate principle by which we

reason—and the only such ultimate principle—so we equally see on reflection that we desire a
thing for its own sake just in so far as ‘the idea of it is pleasant’ (UIV10, X 238), and that there is
no other idea under which a thing is desired. An ultimate fact about us —how we reason, what
we desire—grounds a rule of reasoning or a conclusion about the end of life.

One thing not wrong with this ‘proof’ is its method of establishing the content of human good—
the appeal to reflective agreement about what we desire. It does establish that happiness is an
ultimate categorial end, as Mill says. But happiness is not, contrary to Mill’s view, the only such
end—any more than enumerative induction is the only ultimate method of reasoning. There are
(I argue in chapter 9) other categorial ends—autonomy, knowledge. The fact of this categorial
plurality of ends is crucial, it is one of the central criticisms to be made of Mill’s ethical
foundations for liberalism that he never explicitly recognises it. Yet Mill’s defence of hedonism
has strength and subtlety; if we criticise it we must be sure that we are not underestimating its
depth.

In the chapter of Utilitarianism in which he gives his ‘proof’ Mill carefully makes two points of
great importance for his mature moral psychology. It is, he points out, no part of his argument
that every action flows ultimately from a desire. So one must not read Humean conceptions of
practical reasoning into Mill. We can will against inclination; ‘instead of willing the thing
because we desire it, we often desire it only because we will it’ (UIV11, X 238). That point Mill
fully concedes to his Kantian friends. He recognises the existence of purely conscientious action,
flowing not from any unmotivated desire but from acceptance of duty. What matters for his
argument is only that when we do unmotivatedly desire a thing we desire it under the idea of it as
pleasant.

A second carefully considered distinction is between desiring a thing as ‘part’ of our happiness
and desiring it as a means to our happiness. A similar point had been made by Bishop Butler; it is
curiously elusive, as Mill’s strained terminology shows. Yet it is critical for appreciating how the
virtues can be a part of happiness in a worthwhile life.

Consider the difference between a spontaneously generous man and a conscientious giver. The
first wants to give because he takes pleasure in giving. The second gives out of duty. If the
actions of the first did not spring precisely from the pleasure he finds in giving pleasure he
would not be a spontaneously generous man. Both dispositions have moral worth; the first—
spontaneous generosity—as well as the second— conscientiousness. It is a strength of Mill’s
moral psychology that he has room for both. The conscientious man acts not from spontaneous
desire but from a ‘confirmed will to do right’ (UIV11, X 238). The generous man acts from a
simple desire to give—and he desires to give because giving pleasure to another pleases him.

The spontaneously generous man pursues another’s happiness as part of his own. He is not
thereby pursuing the other’s happiness as a means to his own. That is, his motivating desire is
not that he himself should be happy, but that he should make the other happy by his gift.
Certainly he desires to do that because it is, for him, a pleasant thing to do. But that is not at all
to say that he conceives it as a means to his own pleasure.

Mill can therefore quite consistently hold that happiness is the only human good while
simultaneously acknowledging that other objects are desired for their own sake and arguing that
it is good that they should be so: The ingredients of happiness are very various, and each of them
is desirable in itself, and not merely when considered as swelling an aggregate’ (UIV5, X 235).
We pursue them for their own sake—but that is not to deny that we pursue them under the idea
of happiness. We do not, by and large, stand back to consider how far the pursuit of any
particular desire will contribute to our happiness in life taken as a whole, and it is unlikely that
our happiness would be greater if we very often did.5

The virtues can become a part of our happiness, and for Mill they ideally should be so. That ideal
state is not an unrealistic one, for the virtues have a natural basis: they are spontaneously
admired, or they can come by a natural process to be admired, as excellences intrinsically worth
having—and they are then desired as parts of happiness. Thus a man who admires generosity as
an excellence will take pleasure in generous acts. There is an element in his motive different
from that of either the spontaneously generous or the conscientious man. He takes pleasure in
generous acts inasmuch as he is conscious of them as generous acts. A man for whom the virtues
have become a part of happiness through becoming ideals of character takes pleasure in their
exercise: not only does he want to give to others, he also wants to be the kind of person who
wants to do that.

Mill’s case for hedonism is simply that whenever a person wants something he wants it either as
a means to or as a part of happiness. He can, with perfect consistency, accept that many of the
things which people pursue under the idea of happiness will not make them happy; or will not
make them as happy as things for which they have no desire, but which they could have come to
recognise as deeply satisfying, through education or experience. He can also hold, as of course
he does, that some forms of happiness are inherently preferred as finer, or more deeply
satisfying, by those able to experience them fully. To say that happiness is the only ultimate end
in life is not to say that all forms of happiness must be commensutable on a single scale (cf. 9.5,
9.7). The argument for hedonism simply appeals to the idea under which objects are ultimately
desired. What concrete objects actually make people happy, and how potentialities for happiness
can best develop and flourish, is a further question.

This hedonistic conception of the ends of human life does not in itself make Mill a utilitarian.
One’s analysis of human good, whatever it may be—whether one accepts that happiness is the
single end, or argues (as we shall argue) that there is a plurality of distinct categorial ends—does
not on its own either entail or exclude the utilitarian doctrine that puts the sum of all individuals’
good at the foundation of morality. To get to the ‘Greatest Happiness Principle’, Mill must make
the transition from happiness as the sole individual good to aggregate happiness as the criterion
of all conduct.

He transforms Benthamite notions of what utility is and what the springs of action are, but he
never questions the principle of aggregate utility as such. That part of his inheritance he leaves
unprobed: it remains an inert, uncriticised dogma in his thought. It does not follow that it is
wrong, of course, but it does follow that we cannot look to Mill for a penetrating defence of it.
Many questions are at stake in the transition from individual to general good, and Mill never
shows any detailed sense of the complexity involved.

One thing needed to make the transition is the principle that rules of conduct can be justified by
appeal to the good of individuals, and by appeal to nothing else; another is that the criterion of
conduct must appeal impartially to the good of all individuals. But even if we grant these
principles—as we should—they do not show that the ultimate test of conduct must be the
aggregate happiness of all. There are many ways of implementing the requirement of
impartiality, of which aggregate utilitarianism is only one.

The two principles do however get us to a position which has been illuminatingly called
‘philosophical utilitarianism’ (Scanlon 1982; cf. 9–9). Philosophical utilitarianism holds that
facts about individual well-being, about the good of particular individuals, are all the relevant
facts for ethical thought. There are, ultimately speaking, no others. The good, or well-being, of
individuals is the only ethical good. Further, philosophical utilitarianism holds that no
individual’s good counts for more than any other individual’s good. The ultimate criterion for
assessing any practice, precept, institution or disposition of character must be its effect on overall
utility or well-being, remembering that the well-being of each and every individual is to be taken
into account on some impartial principle.

This is a far from toothless position, for a variety of reasons; but it is much broader than the
classical utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill. It simply holds that the only ultimate criterion is the
good of all individuals impartially concerned. That in itself does not yield up any single criterion
of distributive justice. The philosophical utilitarian wishes to promote general good, but he must
still find some way of articulating the notion of general good in distributive terms. Classical
aggregate utilicatianism is one way of doing so. It requires that practices be assessed so far as
possible by their effect on aggregate utility. What matters on this view is the total sum of
welfare; it does not matter what the relative location and distribution across individuals of the
units of that total sum is: it is not, so to speak, its shape that matters but solely its size.

The difference between philosophical utilitarianism as a general position and classical

utilitarianism as a special case is very important in more ways than one. In particular, the fact
that Mill himself does not see it makes it much more difficult for him to say, with consistency,
the kinds of thing he wants to say about justice and freedom. We shall come back to this in a
moment and the point will be treated at length in chapters 9 and 10. Mill is not alone in failing to
pinpoint the difference. It pervades discussions of utilitarianism right up to the present, and
unclarity about it still weakens contemporary political philosophy. But before returning to it we
must consider Mill’s conception of the relationship between an ultimate principle of conduct and
the system of practices by which life in a concrete social environment is actually lived.

Whatever view one may take about what that ultimate criterion of conduct is, to hold that there is
such a thing at all is to face the question of how it relates to the actual practices by which we
live. Obviously there is a great distance between recognising such a criterion and arriving at any
concrete prescription of institutions for a society or conduct for an individual life. That truism,
however, conceals a variety of traps for the unwary. Mill’s feeling for the complex relationship
between a tradition of practices and the criterion of general good is one of the strongest points in
his social philosophy; with studied simplicity he avoids pitfalls which others have turgidly
laboured to escape.

One central point which he sees with complete clarity is that the utilitarian need not and cannot
require that ‘the test of conduct should also be the exclusive motive of it’. Confusing those two
things was, he thought, the error of Auguste Comte. He most decidedly does not share Comte’s
vision of a society permanently mobilised for general good:

Why is it necessary that all human life should point but to one object, and be cultivated into a
system of means to a single end? May it not be the fact that mankind, who after all are made up
of single human beings, obtain a greater sum of happiness when each pursues his own, under the
rules and conditions required by the good of the rest, than when each makes the good of the rest
his only object, and allows himself no personal pleasures not indispensable to the preservation of
his faculties? The regimen of a blockaded town should be cheerfully submitted to when high
purposes require it, but is it the ideal perfection of human existence? (Auguste Comte and
Positivism, X 337)

In itself the point could have been made by any sensible eighteenth-century liberal. Mill however
is a man of the nineteenth century; he has the nineteenth century’s acute feeling for the
historicity of attitudes and institutions. A system of requirements and restraints cannot be
designed into existence—a society’s practices at any given moment are a stage in an evolving
and constraining ethical tradition.

This complexity in Mill’s understanding of the relationship between abstract utility and the given
fabric of ethical life is one aspect of his general project, that of opening up philosophic
radicalism to the insights of the ‘Germano-Coleridgean’ school, which stood in all apparent
opposition to it. His most extended discussion of the two schools is in a pair of essays on
Bentham and Coleridge, the ‘two great seminal minds of England in their age’ (X 77). The
essays are central texts of the nineteenth century; they address, and attempt to resolve, a
philosophical opposition in politics and culture which was then first emerging clearly and still
remains acute.

In the essay on Coleridge, Mill’s criticism of Benthamite radicalism centres precisely on its lack
of historical and sociological sense. New models of society cannot be taken straight off the
political theorist’s drawing-board: in suggesting they could the philosophes of the eighteenth
century ‘threw away the shell without preserving the kernel; and attempting to new-model
society without the binding forces which hold society together, met with such success as might
have been expected’ (X 138).

Those binding forces are education which provides restraining social discipline, shared
allegiance to some enduring and unquestioned values, and ‘a strong and active principle of
cohesion’, or mutual sympathy, among ‘the members of the same community or state’. They
form the substance of a common ethical tradition. That can be perfectly well recognised by a
utilitarian: he does not have to be a foundationalist in any sense in which ‘foundationalism’
should be rejected as a rationalistic dream. One can believe that there are ultimate crtteria of the
good, without thinking that they should be applied to every action individually, or even that it
makes sense to do so—just as one can believe that there are criteria of truth—rules of evidence,
canons of good explanation—without thinking that they should be applied to every belief
individually, or even that it makes sense to do so.

This aspect of Mill’s utilitarianism is the key to understanding his way of founding the
institutions of justice and liberty on utility. A central problem here is that of the relationship
between utility and rights. Justice and liberty raise questions of individual right, and the relation
between them and utility turns on the analysis of rights. But can a utilitarian—not just an
aggregate utilitarian, but any kind of philosophical utilitarian—make anything of the notion of a
right?

He cannot make anything of a ‘natural’ right—a right existing independently of questions of

utility. We shall come to what can be said on the side of the utilitarian in that particular
argument. But it does not follow that he can find no employment for the notion of a moral right,
that is, a right existing otherwise than by custom or law. He can give an analysis of what it is for
a person to have a right to something—as Mill does. A person has a right to a thing, he holds, if
there is an obligation on society to protect him in his possession of that thing, or to guarantee the
resources which enable him to possess it. But that obligation itself must be grounded in general
utility.
The rights of justice, Mill holds, correspond to a class of exceptionally stringent obligations on
society. They are obligations to provide for each person ‘the essentials of human well-being’.
The claim of justice is the ‘claim we have on our fellow-creatures to join in making safe for us
the very groundwork of our existence’ (UV33, 25; X 255, 251). Because justice-rights prorect
those utilities which reach to the very groundwork of every person’s existence they acquire an
exceptional inviolability and over-ridingness. They take priority over the direct pursuit of general
utility as well as over the private pursuit of personal ends.

On the conception of justice which Mill sketches in chapter v of Utilitarianism the primary
utilities of individuals, those essentials — food, shelter, security, human solidarity and support—
which are requirements of a worthwhile human life, are guaranteed to them as of right.6 What the
primary utilities are will be to some extent relative: it will not be independent of the overall level
of welfare achieved in a society. Within this general conception, the important political
arguments will be about where that level of support is pitched. But the philosophical questions
about Mill’s position are whether this ‘baseline’ conception of justice is the right one and
whether it can be grounded, as Mill wishes to ground it, on aggregate utility.

Can the aggregate utilitarian recognise rights as trump cards within a system of practices which
he underwrites, as a whole, on grounds of aggregate utility? It is not in principle impossible. It
would be a special case of the fact that aggregate utility may often require moral agents and
policy-makers to guide their decisions by principles other than the direct appeal to aggregate
utility.

The question is considered in 9.13–15; but we must remember here the difference between
aggregate utility in particular and philosophical utilitarianism in general. A philosophical
utilitarian may structure his idea of general utility in a variety of distributive ways. His position
is defined solely by two tenets: the thesis that the only good is the good of individuals, together
with the principle of impartiality. A requirement that can plainly be extracted from these tenets is
‘Pareto-optimality’, or ‘efficiency’, where a distribution is not optimal or efficient unless it is
impossible to make any individual better off without worsening the position of any other. This
requirement alone is very weak; intuitively, impartiality is distinct from efficiency and goes
further—it excludes many merely efficient distributions (for example the efficient distribution in
which I have as much as possible and everyone else only has as much as is required for that). But
contrary to Bentham and Mill, it does not go so far as to select the criterion of aggregate utility.
Other criteria of distribution are equally impartial. For example John Rawls’s Difference
Principle (in its ‘lexical version’; Rawls 1972) is consistent with the philosophical utilitarian’s
two tenets: there is an intuitive and explicable sense in which its distributive rule weights all
individuals equally. Rawls rightly emphasises the difference between his principles of justice and
aggregate or average utilitarianism. Yet the Difference Principle is really the product of a
‘philosophical-utilitarian’ vision—its underlying rationale is quite distant from a truly
contractarian way of thinking about society.

A third position which is also impartial is the baseline conception. That is to say, the
philosophical utilitarian could advance the baseline conception as foundational: instead of
arguing for it on grounds of aggregate utility, he could present it as explicative of what he means
by general utility. General utility would be the good of all as structured by baseline constraints:
maximise aggregate utility subject to these. Unlike aggregate utilitarianism these other two
approaches in effect introduce justice-rights as trumps from the very start; they do not claim to
ground them on aggregate utility, but hold that they directly articulate the structure of the general
good.

Turning from justice to liberty we find again that Mill’s liberalism is grounded on a utilitarian
base. The famous Liberty Principle which Mill enunciates in the essay, On Liberty, is intended to
safeguard the individual’s freedom to pursue his goals in his private domain. To define the limits
of that private domain, or of liberty of expression, is of course not easy. The issues are discussed
in chapter 10. But it is clear that Mill defends individual liberties by appeal to the general good
—‘utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of man as a progressive
being’. In that respect, his liberalism stands opposed both to the classical liberalism of Locke,
and also to most forms of liberalism in the twentieth century—which have typically based
themselves on some form of Hobbesian or sceptical contractualism. It is this grounding in an
objective general good that gives Millian liberalism its republican or socialist tendency.

The social contract as a foundation for politics has appealed to those who seek to ground political
principles on something other than a criterion of the general good and an obligation to promote
it. That is not to say that every contract theorist has eschewed the general good— witness
Rousseau. But can liberal principles of politics be grounded on an appeal to the general good?
The question is broader than whether they can be grounded on the criterion of aggregate utility
in particular. It arises not only for an aggregate utilitarian but in general for anyone who wishes
to base liberalism on any kind of philosophical-utilitarian foundation.

The third chapter of Liberty, ‘Of Individuality, as One of the Elements of Well-Being’, is a
classical passage of liberal theory; among Mill’s writings it is, par excellence, the place to look
for an answer to our question. Mill defends the liberty principle—‘negative’ liberty—on two
grounds: that it enables individuals to realise their individual potentiality in their own way, and
that by liberating talents, creativity and dynamism, it sets up the essential precondition for reason
and progress against stagnation. Yet this chapter is also a place in which the limitations of his
Benthamite inheritance constrain him most clearly. He could have made his defence of a
liberalism founded on general good much stronger, if he had recognised explicitly that human
goals encompass autonomy and knowledge as well as happiness.

Autonomy—the freedom to make one’s own decisions in one’s private domain—is in its own
right a categorial human end, one of the essentials of a worthwhile human life. So it can, given
the baseline conception of justice-rights, be defended as of right; and the route to the Liberty
Principle is then short. For the aggregate utilitarian however the question next arises whether the
baseline conception of justice can itself be defended on grounds of aggregate utility. But that
question of course does not arise for a philosophical utilitarian who defines the distributive
structure of general good directly in terms of a baseline conception.

Such a position—which takes autonomy and knowledge to be ends co-ordinate with happiness,
and the baseline conception as basic, differs from Mill’s official commitments by rejecting
hedonism and the criterion of aggregate utility. But its substantive divergence from Mill’s
general emphases is in fact quite small. If we find no compelling reasons for hanging on to
aggregate utility and to the doctrine that all objects are desired under the idea of pleasure, we
should give them up. The result would be more complex and less tidy than Mill makes out: there
would be inevitable disagreement and indeterminacy in the balancing of categorial ends within a
life, and in the limitations placed on trade-offs of well-being across lives. But this plurality and
indeterminacy may, after all, be authentic features of the political problem as we find it.

4 The school of experience and association

We have now sketched Mill’s logic and metaphysics, and his ethics and politics. Do his views in
these apparently unrelated areas hang together in some underlying way? Do the naruralistic and
empiricist bases of Mill’s thought somehow shape his utilitarian liberalism? Mill certainly
thought that they did.

The conflict between what he saw as two great schools of philosophy was a constant theme of
his writings. There was what he variously called the ‘intuitional, ‘transcendental’, ‘a priori’, or
‘Germano-Coleridgean’ school, and there was ‘that of experience and association’.7 The debate
between them turned in the first place on questions of metaphysics and psychology. Mill’s
school, the school of experience and association, was naturalistic and radically empiricist in its
philosophy, and associationist in its psychology: it held that attitudes and beliefs were the
products of laws of association working on experience. But the significance of the debate went,
in Mill’s opinion, far beyond metaphysics and psychology. It was, he thought, no ‘mere matter of
abstract speculation’ but an issue ‘full of practical consequences’, lying ‘at the foundation of all
the greatest differences of practical opinion in an age of progress’ (Autobiography I 269–70). It
embraced the foundations of ethics, and underlay important differences among conceptions of
politics, society and culture. He identified it with the opposition between eighteenth-century
enlightenment and nineteenth-century reaction, and between philosophic radicalism and romantic
conservatism. In an essay on Alfred de Vigny he even sketches out a contrast, in these terms,
between the conservative and the radical poet.

Was he right to attach such importance to it? Can abstruse debates in metaphysics and
psychology acquire such large cultural and political significance? Mill was not one to underrate
philosophical ideas as final sources of legitimation:

speculative philosophy, which to the superficial appears a thing so remote from the business of
life and the outward interest of men, is in reality the thing on earth which most influences them,
and in the long run overbears every other influence save those which it must itself obey. (X 77)

The wider relevance of the debate between the two schools lay, he thought, in the importance for
radical politics of demystifying critique. The practical reformer finds himself repeatedly
questioning the origin of feelings, moral attitudes and beliefs, and seeking to explain how they
come to seem necessary and indefeasible:

There is therefore a natural hostility between him and a philosophy which discourages the
explanation of feelings and moral facts by circumstances and association, and prefers to treat
them as ultimate elements of human nature; a philosophy which is addicted to holding up
favourite doctrines as intuitive truths, and deems intuition to be the voice of Nature and of God,
speaking with an authority higher than that of our reason. (I 269–70)

The two essential tenets of the school of experience and association— empiricism in
epistemology and associationism in psychology8—were closely intertwined in Mill’s thought.
But we must disentangle them. Associationism played two important roles for Mill. Both were
too important—his philosophical argument would in the end have stood out more sharply if
associationism had been given a less starring part to play.

First of all associationism undermined, Mill thought, the notion that differences of character and
intelligence are fixed and indelible; it underpinned his belief in the historical mutability and—in
favourable social conditions—progressiveness of human nature. The difficulty here is that if
associationism is used to demonstrate the ‘malleability’ of human nature, it also threatens to
come into conflict with another important element in Mill’s thought—the idea that individuals
have determinate potentialities and that they flourish in so far as those determinate potentialities
are realised.

Second, associationism gave Mill a line of attack on the epistemology of the ‘a priori school’ of
philosophy which he was only too happy to use, and over-use. The a priori school held, first, that
fundamental principles in our reasoning and deliberation are innate, and second, that innate
principles are epistemologically a priori. Associationism provided Mill with an instrument which
he used with ingenuity to argue against the innateness of many of these principles—in logic and
mathematics, in our beliefs about the perceived world, in ethics. But in arguing with great
elaborateness against the first doctrine, Mill often seemed to be conceding its relation to the
second. The impression is misleading: Mill does not accept that the innateness of a belief would
guarantee its a priori truth. Yet he himself appeals to the fact that there is natural agreement on
certain principles. Is he not then committed to treating these principles as innate, and because
innate, effectively ‘a priori’? How does his appeal differ in principle from that of the school of
intuition? If, on the other hand, he denies these principles to be a priori, then what is the force of
an appeal to natural agreement? How can it ground our most basic patterns of thought?

We shall reserve this last question for 1.7 and in this section examine further the relationship
between associationism and the doctrine of the mutability of human nature.

That human nature is potentially progressive was one of Mill’s most passionately held
convictions. Associationism gave it a theoretical basis and carried a correspondingly heavy
emotional load. It provided the bridge between what Mill knew to be possible in the actual state
of society and human character, and what he thought could be achieved— if a means could be
found of triggering a virtuous spiral of interactions between improving states of society and
improving states of character.

On the other hand, the essential tenets of Mill’s social and political philosophy rest on the
assumption that human beings have determinate potentialities. It is implicit throughout that there
are real human interests; there are determinate forms of life and modes of social being which
produce deeper or finer forms of happiness because they permit natural dispositions of thought
and feeling to flourish. Human nature is a’tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all
sides, according to the inward forces which make it a living thing’ (LIII 4, XVIII 263). Such a
picture seems to require that human nature be acknowledged to have an ‘essence’—a determinate
‘species-being’, in Marx’s word—which grounds objective human interests and provides the
benchmark for ethical principles and political institutions. It presupposes a constant human core,
shared human dispositions of reasoning and feeling across a variety of social forms.
Any political philosophy which proposes that some forms of life are objectively better in that
they offer truer forms of happiness or more emancipated modes of existence—and which does
not ground that claim in something transcendental or revealed—must defend itself by appeal to
naturally shared human dispositions. We are not, for the moment, assessing the larger question of
what epistemological force such an appeal can have; we are noting that it is the only appeal that a
naturalistic approach can make. The point applies as much to Marx as to Mill; but Marx had the
advantage of the Aristotelian and Hegelian tradition, which offered an explicitly teleological
anthropology in which to cast it. Is this Aristotelian or Hegelian inheritance indispensable? What
irreducible minimum is needed to ground the notion of real interests?

Certain dispositions of feeling must be shared by humans in such a way as to define a normal
response. Not necessarily statistically normal; but one to which the organism when not impeded
from its natural path, or suffering from internal incapacity or disease, tends, and in which it finds
a resting point from which it does not wish to escape, which it reflectively prefers. Then to fail in
the response is to suffer from an incapacity which deprives one of access to a mode of
experience which, for human beings, is intrinsically worthwhile. By the same token, it must be
possible to distinguish between external conditions which impede or distort the natural flowering
of a human being’s dispositions, and those which facilitate it, A human being achieves fullest
satisfaction, the life of greatest well-being, when those natural dispositions are fully expressed. It
achieves a stable eudaemonic equilibrium—a mode of life it would reflectively prefer even with
an imaginative grasp of options. That is what Mill has in mind when he talks of

making human life happy; both in the comparatively humble sense, of pleasure and freedom
from pain, and in the higher meaning, of rendering life, not what it now is almost universally,
puerile and insignificant—but such as human beings with highly developed faculties can care to
have. (VIII 952)

The picture underlies Mill’s discussion of individuality in Liberty, and his account of the finer
pleasures in Utilitarianism; it can be found in many other places too. It is of course no part of
Mill’s view that there is one eudaemonic equilibrium for all—on the contrary he emphasises the
diversity of endowments and therefore the diversity of forms of good life. But there are common
features in the good life for all human beings. That is implicit for example in Mill’s conception
of the virtues as a part or ingredient of the truly happy life. We have seen that he belongs in a
tradition of ethical thought which sees virtuous dispositions as themselves ingredients of
achieved eudaemonic equilibrium. Generosity, nobility of feeling, honesty and humanity in
personal relations, moral courage, rationality are qualities which Mill admires and which build
on natural tendencies to act and natural propensities to admire. The virtues are outgrowths of
natural human propensities—they appear in thought and feeling as natural ideals—and a normal
human being who lacks them senses their lack and feels the poorer for it. That optimistic theme
is an important part of Mill’s construction of liberalism on a utilitarian base.

But one might expect an associationist to deny that there are eudaemonic equilibria. Should he
not hold that human nature is educable into whatever dispositions general utility requires? A
small initial class of actions is instinctively pleasant or painful, but there is no limit to what can
be associated with pleasure or pain from that narrow base. This malleability of human character
means that characters, as well as institutions and means of production, are variables in the
equation which the utilitarian policy-maker tries to solve for greatest utility against a resource
constraint. In that case the Millian insistence on liberty has no obvious role.

This is one prima facie tension between associationism and the positive philosophical doctrines
Mill wants to advance, but there is also a deeper one. For on what does the authority of Mill’s
basic principles of practical and theoretical reasoning—the utility principle and enumerative
induction—rest? We have said that the appeal has to be to human nature; to what ultimate
criteria human beings converge on.

Associationism does leave in place certain inbuilt mental dispositions: the human organism
innately forms beliefs by associative principles, pursues pleasure and avoids pain. So that
suggests that enumerative induction and hedonistic egoism should be the ultimate principles
respectively of theoretical and practical reason.

This is indeed Mill’s final position in relation to enumerative induction. But it cannot be his
position in ethics. He is not a formal egoist in his account of the ultimate criterion of right and
wrong action. Formal egoism can be attributed to Bentham; formal in the sense that it is perfectly
compatible with it that an appropriate course of association may implant dispositions to other-
directed, and not merely selfish, pleasures. The sole ultimate principle of practical reason for an
individual would still be the pursuit of his own happiness. But a utilitarian who adopts formal
egoism as the basic principle of practical reason cuts away the ground from under his own feet.
On what basis can he recommend general utility as the ultimate test of right and wrong, and to
whom?9

However Mill does not make formal egoism the axiom of all practical reasoning. On the
contrary, the axiom is the principle of utility, and prudence is only one department of practical
reasoning which must find its ultimate justification by derivation from that axiom. But how can
he vindicate aggregate utility as his basic axiom? It can only be on the basis of an appeal to
natural propensities to reason, and if aggregate utility is the ultimate criterion it must correspond
to an ultimate human disposition to take the general interest into account, a spontaneous sense
that the interests of all others have a claim on me equal to my own.

In his 1833 essay, ‘Remarks on Bentham’s Philosophy’, Mill considers the response ‘believers in
other moral principles than that of utility’ would make to the characteristic allegation he quotes
from Bentham — that their principles were mere ‘contrivances for avoiding the obligation of
appealing to any external standard, and for prevailing upon the reader to accept the author’s
sentiment or opinion as a reason for itself’. They would reply, he thinks,

that by an inductive and analytical examination of the human mind, they had satisfied
themselves, that what we call our moral sentiments …are as much part of the original
constitution of man’s nature as the desire of happiness and the fear of suffering: That those
sentiments do not indeed attach themselves to the same actions under all circumstances, but
neither do they, in attaching themselves to actions, follow the law of utility, but certain other
general laws, which are the same in all mankind naturally; though education or external
circumstances may counteract them, by creating artificial associations stronger than they. No
proof can indeed be given that we ought to abide by these laws; but neither can any proof be
given, that we ought to regulate our conduct by utility. All that can be said is, that the pursuit of
happiness is natural to us; and so it is contended, is the reverence for, and the inclination to
square our actions by, certain general laws of morality….

These views of the origin of moral distinctions are not’, Mill goes on,

what he [Bentham] says all such views are, destitute of any precise and tangible meaning; nor
chargeable with setting up as a standard the feelings of the particular person. They set up as a
standard what are assumed (on grounds which are considered to be sufficient) to be the instincts
of the species, or principles of our common nature as universal and inexplicable as instincts. (X
5–6)

So Mill does not respond by dismissing all appeals to ‘principles of our common nature’, or
contrasts between them and ‘artificial associations’, as irrelevant. Nor could he—his only
possible reply is that an ‘inductive and analytical examination of the human mind’ in fact reveals
none of the irreducible principles to which critics of utilitarianism need to appeal. But does it
then reveal a natural disposition to accept the principle of aggregate utility? And if it does not, on
what can the utilitarian build?

A vital weakness in Mill’s position re-emerges here. We have seen that in his ‘proof’ of the
Utility Principle, Mill shows no sense of the assumptions needed to step from the individual
good to utilitarianism. He needed at this point to appeal to an analysis of common moral
consciousness; to show that there was implicit in it a recognition that every individual’s well-
being has in the end an equal claim on every other. He does not do so; that line of argument had
to wait for Sidgwick.

The closest Mill comes to discussing the relevant issue is in chapter III of Utilitarianism, which
precedes the chapter on the ‘proof’, and supplies a psychological analysis of conscience. Mill’s
aim is to assuage an important worry. It is that the very process of rethinking entrenched and
inherited duties and obligations on a utilitarian foundation saps their strength—without putting
anything which will command equal allegiance in their place. He concedes that ‘every attempt to
analyse morality and reduce it to principles…unless the principle is already in men’s minds
invested with as much sacredness as any of its applications, always seems to divest them of a
part of their sanctity’ (X 227–8); and he proceeds to ask what psychological factors will give the
Utility Principle ‘binding force’.

The ‘moral feelings are not innate, but acquired’ but ‘they are not for that reason the less
natural’ (my emphasis). They

are not indeed a part of our nature, in the sense of being in any perceptible degree present in all
of us…[yet] the moral faculty, if not a part of our nature, is a natural outgrowth from it;
capable… in a certain small degree, of springing up spontaneously; and susceptible of being
brought by cultivation to a high degree of development. Unhappily it is also susceptible, by a
sufficient use of the external sanctions and of the force of early impressions, of being cultivated
in almost any direction: so that there is hardly anything so absurd or so mischievous that it may
not, by means of these influences, be made to act on the human mind with all the authority of
conscience.

But moral associations which are wholly of artificial creation, when intellectual culture goes on,
yield by degrees to the dissolving force of analysis: and if the feeling of duty, when associated
with utility, would appear equally arbitrary; if there were no leading department of our nature, no
powerful class of sentiments, with which that association would harmonize, which would make
us feel it congenial…if there were not, in short, a natural basis of sentiment for utilitarian
morality, it might well happen that this association also, even after it had been implanted by
education, might be analysed away.

But there is this basis of natural sentiment; and this it is which, when once the general happiness
is recognised as the ethical standard, will constitute the strength of the utilitarian morality. This
firm foundation is that of the social feelings of mankind; the desire to be in unity with our fellow
creatures, which is already a powerful principle in human nature, and happily one of those which
tend to become stronger, even without express inculcation, from the influences of advancing
civilization. (UIII8–10, X 230–1)

Mill proceeds to give a sociological explanation of how the social feelings become stronger: the
evolution of societies from conditions of ‘savage independence’ to those of advanced civilisation
involves progressively greater interdependence between ever larger numbers of human beings,
increasingly on terms of equality.

He is not at this point presenting an argument for the Utility Principle—he is examining the basis
of natural sentiment by which the sanction of conscience can become attached to it.
Consideration ‘of what sort of proof the principle of utility is susceptible’ is reserved for the next
chapter. However a naturalistic defence of the Utility Principle must appeal to its psychological
groundings, and what Mill says in his analysis of conscience is directly relevant to the question
whether there is a psychological ground on which the principle can be anchored—any natural
disposition of moral consciousness which it expresses.

One thing at least is clear. ‘Natural’ is not equated by Mill with ‘innate’, ‘not acquired by
association’. It is opposed to ‘artificial’: natural dispositions are those which survive critical
sifting, do not yield to ‘the dissolving force of analysis’, can be reflectively acknowledged. Mill
does appeal to such natural dispositions as the bedrock on which ultimate principles of thought
and action stand. But he does not assume that the distinction between the artificial and the
natural can be identified with the distinction between what is produced by associations and what
is innate. There is no simple relationship between these pairs of contrasts— between, as one
might say, philosophical anthropology and scientific psychology.

Associationism in itself gives a very thin account of human nature. But that does not entail that
no thicker conceptions can be arrived at. It remains possible that early or inevitable experience
cements certain dispositions of feeling in every human being; it remains possible that particular
configurations of feeling demonstrate, in the long run, greater stability under critical pressure
than do others. So Mill can appeal to the naturalness of certain dispositions without directly
considering whether they are acquired or innate. The anthropological ground for the Utility
Principle is not automatically removed by associationist theory as such. But this point has a
reverse side. Associationist theory cannot directly entail an anthropological thesis—namely, the
radical malleability of human character to which Mill was prone to appeal in his fervently
progressivist moods.

Whatever their origins, Mill can plausibly argue that the sentiment of duty and the desire to be in
unity with our fellow creatures on equal terms provide the basis for the ethical requirement of
impartiality. But of course he then has the further difficulty, which we have already noted, in
getting to classical utilitarianism: impartiality as such gives no specific grounds for the criterion
of aggregate utility. Here lies the real difficulty in bringing together Mill’s ethics and his moral
psychology. The natural feelings which he postulates ground philosophical utilitarianism but do
not ground aggregate utility as such. Appropriate education could mobilise them to sustain the
aggregate utility criterion and give it psychological force, but it could equally mobilise them to
fortify various other ethical principles, whose only common theme is an impartial regard for the
interests of others. So if Mill has exhaustively listed the natural dispositions in this area he has
left the aggregate Utility Principle with no distinctive psychological ground to call its own.

Let us move on to the second way in which Mill uses associationism— as a tool of demystifying
analysis. It demystifies by showing that beliefs or attitudes thought to be ‘original’ or ‘innate’ are
in fact not so. And the significance of that, it seems, is that it shows they are not a priori truths,
intuitions speaking ‘with an authority higher than that of our reason’.

If a belief is the product of association working on experience then it has not been arrived at a
priori. That is a point which Mill repeatedly exploits. On the other hand he is well aware that
even if it is innate, and not a product of association, it still does not follow that it is a priori. The
innateness of a belief gives no a priori guarantee of its truth:

a conviction might be really innate, i.e. prior to individual experience, and yet not be true, since
the inherited tendency to accept it may have been originally the result of other causes than its
truth. (VII 276; cf. 5.8)

That gets it right: a belief’s credentials do indeed turn on its pedigree— but what matters is not
whether it is the product of association or inheritance but whether it is reliably caused by its
truth. A psychological theory may underwrite a particular class of beliefs by showing that the
aetiology which produces them does reliably track the truth—but such a vindication is internal
and a posteriori, Psychology cannot give any belief an a priori authority. That is the underlying
epistemological point.

It is an abstract and elusive point; associationism provides a more immediately effective way of
arguing against those who consecrate received doctrines as ‘original intuitions’. But in this case
good tactics are bad strategy. They put out a hostage to fortune by concealing an essential
epistemological point behind a contingent psychological doctrine. And they prevent Mill from
thinking through really carefully the epistemological bases of his own position.

The epistemological issue is not whether convictions are innate or acquired by association. What
matters, again, is whether they survive critical reflection in reflective equilibrium. Are they in
that sense natural? In this sense a principle of reasoning, or a desire, a feeling or ideal can be
natural, but nevertheless acquired rather than innate.

The appeal to ideal consensus, reflective equilibrium, requires subversive critique of false
consensus or equilibrium. Philosophical analysis, associationist psychology, sociological self-
consciousness all have their part to play. Part of the point is that knowledge is belief acquired by
a reliable method. Some convictions have inappropriate causal antecedents to count as
knowledge: ideology, distortion, mere tradition. To become aware of their causes is therefore to
subvert their rational claim. This is negative critique. On its positive side criticism seeks to arrive
at purified and stable propensities to reason. It sweeps away the accumulated debris of mere
custom and prejudice, leaving only those standards of knowledge and conduct which would be
agreed, in an undistorted consensus, to be rational. It is the quest for purely rational legitimation.

Its importance for the rational reformer—the ‘philosophical radical’— is obvious. But we have
not seen why it should lead on to larger metaphysical questions. If rational reformers can agree
that some standards of inquiry or conduct have a claim on us in the simple sense that they strike
us on reflection as reasonable, and are not displaced by further reflection, do they need to go any
further? Why should they consider whether these principles are known a priori, or indeed
whether ‘knowledge’ is the appropriate concept here? They do not have to enter into the purely
metaphysical dispute between naturalistic empiricism and Kantian critical philosophy.

5 Naturalism and the criterion of general good

Such appealing modesty would not have satisfied Mill. The purely philosophical conflict
mattered to him, not only for itself but because he thought it to have profound importance for
one’s vision of ethical and political life. The System of Logic was composed as a ‘textbook’ of
the a posteriori doctrine; it was needed because the school of intuition underpinned reaction:

The notion that truths external to the human mind may be known by intuition or consciousness,
independently of observation and experience, is, I am persuaded, in these times, the great
intellectual support of false doctrines and bad institutions. By the aid of this theory, every
inveterate belief and every intense feeling, of which the origin is not remembered, is enabled to
dispense with the obligation of justifying itself by reason, and is erected into its own all-
sufficient voucher and justification. There never was such an instrument devised for consecrating
all deep-seated prejudices. And the chief strength of this false philosophy in morals, politics, and
religion, lies in the appeal which it is accustomed to make to the evidence of mathematics and of
the cognate branches of physical science. To expel it from these, is to drive it from its
stronghold;… In attempting to clear up the real nature of the evidence of mathematical and
physical truths, the System of Logic met the intuition philosophers on ground on which they had
previously been deemed unassailable…. (Autobiography I 233–5)

Certainly, the supposedly a priori nature of mathematics has been used in the history of
philosophy as a model for aprioristic conceptions of moral knowledge. But why should the
doctrine that ethics contains a priori principles fortify conservatism? Radicals too can draw
conclusions from what they take to be a priori foundations. The question whether ethics has a
priori foundations concerns the status of moral principles; whereas the issue at stake between
conservative and radical—if it centres ultimately on a moral dispute at all—centres on their
content.

Mill only says ‘in these times’, ‘in an age of progress’ (I 269). So we cannot attribute to him a
general claim, but only one that is relative to the situation and context of his time. Those times
were in Mill’s opinion times in which transcendental philosophy was being exploited by the
conservative to stamp existing practices with a philosophic seal of approval. So naturalistic
empiricism had a progressive social role. It exposed the philosophical conservative’s mode of
legitimating his principles as empty.

However there are deeper connections linking naturalism in metaphysics with philosophical
utilitarianism in ethics. They do not provide an immediate link with political radicalism, because
philosophical utilitarianism does not automatically underwrite any particular political view.
Nevertheless, in politics the terms of debate are all-important. By inserting as a last court of
appeal the general good of all individuals equally considered, philosophical utilitarianism
expresses the confluence of humanism and rationalism which was at the heart of Mill’s outlook
and which makes him uncongenial to a truly conservative philosophy.

We have examined the inference from naturalism to the disjunction of empiricism or scepticism
in epistemology. There is a strikingly analogous inference in the case of ethics. It is from
naturalism to the disjunction of philosophical utilitarianism or moral scepticism.

Philosophical utilitarianism centres on the concept of a perfectly impartial concern for the good
of all individuals. The good, or well-being, of individuals is the sole source of ultimate value.
One consequence of naturalism is to rule out the possibility that anything else should be the
ultimate source of value: it demolishes all psychologically attractive candidates. Naturalism
insists that there is no supra-individual point of view: no ‘beyond’, in Nietzsche’s word. There is
no absolute source of legitimation which sets purposes or lays down standards of right and
wrong. There is no transcendental domain of pure practical reason. We are not part of some
larger whole with its own telos, within which we discover our station and its duties.

However this in itself does not force us to philosophical utilitarianism. The obvious alternative
comes from the contractualist, who traces the ultimate basis of moral and political obligation to
what rational individuals would agree to. Is contractualism not an equally natural outgrowth of
the naturalistic stance?

It cannot be a contractualism framed in terms of the doctrine of natural rights, for these are also
ruled out by a thought-through naturalism. Natural rights were assaulted by Bentham as
involving a confusion of ‘is’ and ‘ought’. He was not objecting to the language of rights as such;
we have seen that he and Mill both make room for the notion of a moral right, existing otherwise
than by custom or law. But his attack on natural rights is justified, because something more is
involved in the idea of a natural right. To say that there is a natural right is to say more than that
there exists an appropriate prohibition or obligation. It promises a particular sort of explanation
of why the prohibition or obligation exists, a reason for its existence. An explanation of this sort
can be given unproblematically in the case of a positive right, which exists by authoritative
institution or by prescription. But when it comes to ‘natural’ rights, the implied explanation can
seem to be intelligible only against the background of certain sorts of world-picture.

One rests on the primitive idea of a moral order which is simultaneously a cosmic order. Against
that picture Bentham’s claim that natural rights confuse ‘is’ and ‘ought’ is justified. In such a
way of thinking there is, precisely, no clear-cut distinction between the prescriptive and the
descriptive notions of law. It is a mode of thought in which the distinction has not been brought
forward and irreversibly spotlighted in the way that is characteristic of modernity. However the
true background of modern natural rights liberalism is other than this. It is the individualist
Protestant conscience of the seventeenth century: the Lockean conception of natural rights,
which goes with faith in a God who confers them on each individual by a decree which no
earthly power can rescind. It is not surprising that the recent resurgence of natural rights theory
should come from America; natural rights are part of the American foundational myth and that
myth was first told in the seventeenth century.

Despite these sparks of animation, life will not be breathed into natural rights so long as
naturalism dominates. The authentic concept of a natural right cannot survive in a thoroughly
secular, anthropological view of human beings and societies. But if there are no ‘natural’ rights,
then saying that an individual has a moral right requires further moral grounding, and the only
grounding to give is in terms of his interests or the general interest. Rights are based on interests.
That in turn requires a consequentialist framework, utilitarian or other, which allows one to move
from the notion of interests to the notion of rights, and which does not simply postulate the
notion of rights as primitive.10

The thesis that naturalism forces philosophical utilitarianism will be contested by many, even
among those who grant that it rules out, as metaphysical, the notion of natural rights. They are
likely to argue that naturalism forces not philosophical utilitarianism but something else, namely,
a Humean (or Hobbesian) scepticism about practical reason. This position is examined in 9.3.
The Humean sceptic holds that there are no categorical principles or criteria of conduct, which
must be simply registered as objective requirements, or rational constraints, on action. When this
argument is combined with some obvious facts about human motives it yields a foundation for
ethics and politics which is not utilitarian but contractualist. I call this ‘sceptical contractualism’.
It rejects the assumption which both the Lockean natural rights theorist and the Millian utilitarian
share—that there are objective principles of conduct whose validity must be recognised as
ultimate.

On this analysis of practical reason a person can only be said to have reason to act relative to an
objective. People have a variety of goals. They have self-interested attitudes, and of course they
also have ideals, commitments to others and so on. I give a person reason to do something if I
point out that doing it will promote one of his objectives. I can get him to endorse an objective
by pointing out that it conduces to an objective which he already has. But no requirement or
prohibition is categorically laid on him: laid, that is to say, irrespective of his actual objectives.
No imperatives are categorical: they are all hypothetical.

Politics come into the picture in the following way. Human beings, having limited powers and
deeply social needs, want, by and large, to live together in peace and to co-operate to mutual
advantage. To do so they must find rules, rules which will be generally agreed to without
coercion. Thus we can assume a desire to be able to justify one’s actions by reference to
principles which would meet general agreement. To justify a moral or political framework
therefore is to show that it could be arrived at in a free discussion among informed and
reasonable men.

In our century utilitarianism on the one hand and sceptical contractualism on the other have
dominated politics and political economy. The reasons for this trace back in turn to the
increasingly entrenched and dominant position of philosophical naturalism. In the political
theory of liberalism, however, it is the sceptical model which has had the greater influence: to the
point where it often comes to be identified with liberalism as such.11 This results partly from the
influence of subjectivist views of ethics and partly from the feeling that whatever the
consequences of utilitarianism may be, they are not liberal.

Sceptical liberalism is a potent package because it invites an intertwining of epistemology and

ideology. The ideology comes if one attempts to define justice as whatever results from peaceful
agreement. For in real life individuals are not symmetrically placed. Some have an advantage
over others and in these circumstances the outcome of a peaceful agreement cannot be assumed
to be just because it is peaceful. The strong may be able to manoeuvre into a position of power
from which they can make an offer which the weak cannot peacefully refuse, or even reasonably
refuse, given the costs of resistance. It certainly does not follow that the offer is a just one.

Of course a philosopher who accepts the Humean analysis of practical reason is not thereby
compelled to give this ideological account of justice. He too could treat the sentiment of justice
as a natural outgrowth of human beings’ social feelings. If people have feelings which repel them
from an oppressive contract between powerful and weak then those feelings will be included
among the sentiments and goals which they bring to the contract, and will in that way influence
its content. But he cannot make justice a categorical constraint on the legitimacy of agreements,
because he cannot treat these feelings as our response to something we recognise as an objective
moral requirement, anteceding any peaceful agreement, and placing limits on what peaceful
agreements can be accepted as just.

However the essential point for a refutation of sceptical concractualism must be epistemological.
It must be argued that the sceptical, or Humean, response to naturalism embodies a philosophical
error. Of course naturalism does have consequences for epistemology—it forces a reassessment
of the relation between objectivity and ideal convergence— whether in the case of theoretical or
of practical reason. But the reassessment leads us to a sceptical response only if we have
accepted a very tempting philosophical picture of objectivity—one which construes responding
to a purely rational requirement as a matter of relating in some way to a non-natural realm. If we
regard that model as inherent in the very idea of objectivity, we shall think that naturalism
undercuts the objectivity or impersonality of reasoning as such. We will then be tempted to
replace the idea of an objective requirement of reason by that of a convention or contract.

But the threads linking our idea of objectivity with the regulative ideal of consensus can, and
must, be accommodated without treating morality (or mathematics, or induction) as though it
rested on some kind of contract or convention. Objectivising talk is—it is true—empty where
there does not exist a potential for unforced (and always defeasible) agreement of judgements
and reactions. But the agreement is one of reactions, not decisions. We find that we agree in
feeling constrained to think or react on a certain pattern; we do not experience it as a matter for
decision or choice. The common nature of our reactions cements our confidence in treating them
as the recognition of an objective principle.

The tenability of this naturalistic analysis of objectivity is a central issue of modern philosophy
(it is for example a central preoccupation in Wittgenstein’s later work). If it can be made out then
we can also argue that sceptical contractualism rests on philosophical confusion. Remove the
confusion and you are left with the question of what reflective moral dialogue, the common
pursuit of right reason, ideally converges on. At this point the connection between naturalism and
philosophical utilitarianism can be seen. It is simply that the ideal point of convergence within a
naturalistic world-view is philosophical utilitarianism. A thing matters only if it matters for
someone’s well-being—what else could matter? The ultimate test of conduct is the general good
of all individuals. We are brought back to Millian foundations: the criterion of general good (but
it may not be aggregate good) is what survives in reflective equilibrium, when naturalistic
critique clears our reflection of religious and metaphysical illusions.

6 The dialectic of criticism and allegiance

The argument we have been considering, from the naturalistic perspective to philosophical
utilitarianism, contains two crucial claims. The first is anthropological—that impersonal
benevolence does have a grounding in natural dispositions. The second is epistemological—that
the rational authority of principles of right reason and feeling can be grounded, and can only be
grounded, on such natural dispositions.

The sceptic who disputes the second does so on epistemological grounds. He requires a
transcendental guarantee and bases his scepticism on its unavailability. Like the Kantian critic of
Mill, he insists on the need for the a priori, and agrees that naturalism cannot provide it. The
difference is that he can see no credible alternative to the naturalistic perspective.

This is a fully general difficulty which applies as much to Mill’s treatment of induction as to his
treatment of practical reason. Anyone who wishes to defend Millian positions must respond that
the objectivity of rational requirements does not require a transcendental guarantee— that it is
the sceptic who is trapped in a mistaken assumption. We have just been outlining that response,
and will return to it in the next section.

But it is also possible, of course, to dispute the first claim, the claim that there is an impulse of
impersonal or rational benevolence which we respond to and on reflective analysis defer to as
authoritative. It is more clearly made by Butler or by Sidgwick than by Mill—we have seen, in
Mill’s account of conscience, the nearest he gets to making it. But Mill’s ambiguity on this issue
reflects his greater preoccupation with psychological self-analysis—in this as in a number of
other respects he appears a more modern figure than Sidgwick, even though Sidgwick analysed
the logic of utilitarianism more deeply.

Can we take seriously this first claim? Does any such impersonal sentiment survive clear-sighted
self-analysis? This was the corrosive question which the ‘self-consciousness’ of the nineteenth
century introduced onto the placid scene of eighteenth-century philosophical moralism. Does
critique, taken to its fullest extent, demystify impersonal benevolence too?

Criticism of both the claims is powerfully fused in Nietzsche. In fact Nietzsche and Mill
represent the two poles of naturalism in the nineteenth century. The question of the cultural and
ethical consequences of naturalism is the question of which of them is right. In both of them
philosophical and anthropological considerations are intertwined. Nietzsche insists on the
absence of a ‘beyond’, taking it to undermine objectivity as such. And he considers impersonal
benevolence to be the servile hangover of Christianity. It reflects no authentic human disposition:
to achieve clarity is to see that Christian ethics is a defensive ideology of the weak. A man’s
commitment to it cannot survive a firm understanding of that: any belief in it, or in surrogates
like utilitarianism or Kant’s ‘respect for persons’, testifies only that his mind remains in shackles.
No wonder Nietzsche found Mill smug.12

In our century mistrust of every appeal to conscious motive or natural reaction has coarsened
into an unthinking reflex. Yet demystifying critique has to find its proper limits. If it oversteps
them, it becomes empty, self-destructive negation. The question must be asked—in the last
analysis, who fails to see things as they are; who draws out hollow fantasies from a thwarted
need for faith, transcendence, grandeur— Nietzsche or Mill? Philosophical clarity is a chilly
experience, as both of them found. It presents human sentiments, goals and institutions from a
perspective which is external but is not a mythical, meaning-conferring, ‘beyond’. It is almost
impossible to take that perspective without feeling those human concerns diminished. Yet that is
itself a human feeling, which rests on a perspectival fallacy. It does not reckon with the
spontaneous resilience and regenerative capacity of those concerns. Human beings do have
natural ties of fellow-feeling, and natural allegiance to groundrules of conduct—potentially, to
the principle that every man has a claim for assistance on every other. The Nietzsche/Mill
polarity goes to the anthropological root of ethical and political life; its charge has the power to
disorientate and disturb all but the most dogmatically entrenched on either side. Yet when resting
point is reached, Mill’s belief that there are such ethical dispositions in human beings, that they
need not depend on noble or ignoble myths, that they can be stunted, or on the contrary drawn
out patiently towards greater confidence and generosity, appears perhaps not as complacency or
‘niaiserie anglaise but as unhysterical realism.

The complacency would lie in trusting in them too much, as Mill thought the philosophers of the
eighteenth century did: they

believed them to be more deeply rooted in human nature than they are; to be not so dependent, as
in fact they are, upon collateral influences. They thought them the natural and spontaneous
growth of the human heart; so firmly fixed in it, that they would subsist unimpaired, nay
invigorated, when the whole system of opinions and observances with which they were
habitually intertwined was violently torn away. (X 131)

He is not denying that they are ‘rooted in human nature’. He must himself accept that they are
‘the natural and spontaneous growth of the human heart’—they survive critical reflection and
dialogue, the ‘dissolving influence of analysis’. But that does not mean that they survive every
kind of buffeting, social dislocation, or corrupting influence. He learnt from conservative
historicism the importance of allegiance to a tradition and a community. But mere conservatism,
conservatism which appeals to traditional legitimation alone, shrinks from dialogue and critique
for the wrong reasons. There is a dialectic between criticism and allegiance, which Mill tried to
register. Among its ingredients are Bentham’s demystifying critique, Coleridge’s grasp of the
significance of allegiance and legitimacy, Comte’s insistence that intellectual authority should
carry sufficient social weight. No doubt Mill had difficulties in finding the balance. His views on
liberty of expression and on representative government crystallise them. He believed in public
questioning of received opinion, and in the importance of ‘antagonist modes of thought’ in
bringing out the many-sidedness of truth (X 122), but he worried that it might enfeeble ‘the
authority of the cultivated over the ignorant’ (‘Bailey on Berkeley’ XI 248). Thus he advocated
universal suffrage for literate taxpayers—an advanced position for his time; but he wanted to
weight it by giving plural votes to the educated. But readings which present Mill either as an
intellectual authoritarian, or as a shallow debunker of precedent and convention, do not recognise
the difficulty of this dialectic, or the importance it had in Mill’s mind.

One of the essential conditions of ‘permanent political society’ which Mill mentions in his
criticism of the philosophes is ‘the existence, in some form or other, of the feeling of allegiance,
or loyalty’. It may ‘vary in its objects’ but ‘its essence is always the same; viz. that there be in
the constitution of the state something which is settled, something permanent, and not to be
called in question; something which, by general agreement, has a right to be where it is…’. He
sees the problem that this is likely to pose for a liberal society open to unlimited criticism but
anticipates that the unquestioned source of legitimacy in such a society may come to be the
liberal order itself: ‘the principles of individual freedom and political and social equality, as
realized in institutions which as yet exist nowhere, or exist only in a rudimentary state’ (X 133–
4).

One can well ask, of course, whether those ideals—the ideals of a democratic and equal as
against an aristocratic ethos—can ever acquire the weight and conviction they need to have to
command support in times of internal or external crisis. A society of citizens of unequal wisdom
and ability, but in which everyone has unrestricted access to democratic process, is stable only if
its central ideals can accumulate sufficient authority to resist and override turbulent divisions. To
believe that liberal institutions can be stable is, therefore, to take a view, explicitly or implicitly,
on just these questions—about maintaining legitimacy and authority in a democratic state. No
one can pretend to have answers to them which amount to more than thoughtful conjecture. Mill
makes them explicit, and his reflections on them carry weight.

7 Naturalism, objectivity, autonomy

At a number of points in previous sections we have referred to an issue which is central to the
tenability of naturalism: the question whether it can consistently allow any principle of reasoning
to have an objective rational claim on us. For if it cannot, then it must indeed, as is alleged by its
Kantian critics, slide into scepticism; and if naturalism removes reasons for holding any belief
about the world at all then it removes reasons for accepting naturalism itself.

The response outlined in 1.5 appeals to habits of reasoning to which we are naturally disposed.
Mill regularly assumes that rules which authentically express such dispositions of reasoning have
an objective claim on our reasoning. But he also insists that no proposition or principle is a
priori. The question is how these two claims can be reconciled. If a general rule has an objective
claim on our reasoning, it must either be a prior claim or a claim derived a posteriori. If it is a
prior claim, how can it be other than a priori? If it is not, then its claim must have been indirectly
made out by the use of principles which themselves have a prior rational claim.

The appeal to the naturalness of dispositions of reasoning can be refined. A natural rule of
reasoning is one that compels reflective assent, appearing as a constraint on one’s thinking, not
as something that one chooses; even when critique has stripped irrelevant compulsions—merely
traditional, or deferential, or paranoid, etc.— away. Of course we cannot guarantee that a rule
which survives criticism at a given time survives it in the long run—in open reflective
discussion, and as our knowledge expands. So when we appeal at any point to a principle as
natural in this sense we necessarily commit ourselves forward to the view that it will survive
future criticism, even as we recognise the blank possibility that it may not. We are appealing to a
notion of naturalness which refers, not backwards to what is ‘original but forward to what
survives in reflective equilibrium. There may be schemas of reasoning which are natural in the
sense of being original but which do not survive in reflective equilibrium. For as knowledge
grows, those original and spontaneous reasoning principles which have brought about its growth
also grow in cognitive prestige, and subdue others which come to be seen as inconsistent with
them, or with the world-view they have produced. The latter still exert some of their spontaneous
hold, but they only survive in a twilight world deprived of legitimacy (consider magical modes
of thought). Mill’s natural history of induction is a model of that process. Natural inductive
propensities are placed under the cultivation of rules, accentuating and bringing forward some
dispositions, inhibiting and restraining others.

The substance of our notion of objective validity is given by some such Ideal as this: what a
normally constituted human thinker and feeler - whose thinking is not irrelevantly distorted or
screened, and who explores his own most basic reasoning dispositions philosophically—
continues in the long run to experience as a requirement on his thinking. Not everyone is an
equally good index of that ideal. We can introduce the idea of good judges without circularity (as
Mill does when he talks about higher pleasures—cf. 7.4). Good judges are people we recognise
as registering more sensitively, or in the light of better information or greater reflection, natural
responses which we also have. They are better attuned to the common voice.

But what of cases in which our philosophical explorations of basic reasoning principles do not
produce agreement? The ideal of a convergence of good judges leaves plenty of scope for
explaining that away—but it is not always convincing to do so. The more we are inclined to
think that disagreement on a particular principle is primitive, incapable of being removed by
dialogue, the more we give up the idea that there is a right answer. If more than one set of
principles in a domain survives criticism we tend to take these as irreducible options. For to
claim objective validity for any one of them we must be able to explain plausibly why our
opponents have not reached our better perspective. It may be that the question of what principle
of distributive justice should be built into philosophical utilitarianism is precisely an example of
this—many principles may easily be seen to be obviously absurd or unjust, but perhaps no single
one could hope to command general agreement.

The fact of agreement does not entail the truth of what is agreed. At any point we can only
appeal to what at that point appears as a reflective equilibrium. There is no vantage point from
which we can see what would be the result in an indefinitely extended long run; yet our
regulative ideal is what would survive criticism in that indefinitely long run. So agreement at no
point becomes indefeasible, however long it has persisted and even where we can form no
picture of what new information or further reflection would undermine it. These points about
undistorted dialogue, and the defeasibility of the most stable consensus, are the deepest level of
philosophical argument for liberty of expression (cf. 10.10). They are another point at which
Mill’s philosophical naturalism links with his political liberalism.

Still, while the appeal to natural dispositions of thought and feeling can be elaborated along these
lines, the crucial point that natural principles of reasoning are not a priori remains. Mill’s
naturalistic argument for it is unshakeable. We have yet to address the Kantian critique directly.
The inductive process produces a great expansion of generality and coherence in our beliefs
about the world; but we only have grounds to say so if we can buy into it in the first place. We
have no good currency for buying in unless some principles have a prior rational value. So how
can there be knowledge without a priori elements? On this vital point Mill, like Quine, keeps a
baffling silence.

To find our way through it we must make a sharp distinction between indefeasibility and prior
rationality (cf. 5.9). The classical concept of the a priori combines both: an a priori principle is
one which it is rational to accept prior to (independently of) evidence and which no evidence
could give us reason to reject. The two features very naturally seem to be linked: how could it be
rational to accept a principle prior to evidence unless no evidence could defeat it? But a
naturalistic epistemology must insist on keeping them separate. Naturalism entails that no
proposition or principle is indefeasible by evidence. This is what Mill’s arguments really do
show. On the other hand naturalism can be defended only if some propositions have a prior
rational claim. For otherwise the whole coherentist structure of Mill’s inductive process
collapses. So we must defend a weak a priori’. according to which some propositions and
principles have a prior rational claim, though none is indefeasible. The weak a priori principles
are those which appeal to a natural, in the sense of spontaneous, response; but they are not
indefeasible because we have seen that not all spontaneous responses survive the long run.

To elaborate this defence of Mill’s naturalism more fully would lead us to questions which go
well beyond Mill—eventually into some of the deepest themes of philosophy in this century. In
particular, we would have to explore the implications of the epistemic conception of language-
mastery which was referred to in 1.2. On that conception, language learning takes place in the
context of natural cognitive dispositions which shape the language’s content. So it becomes
easier to see how the statements which express those dispositions can have a prior rational claim
—it is an integral part of the use of sentences in the language that they should have it. But further
questions immediately arise. If the epistemic conception is produced to vindicate the coherence
of naturalism, then it must itself be coherent and it must also be consistent with naturalism. The
problem is that the epistemic conception is rather powerful medicine—it seems to force us
towards giving up a certain very intuitive realism, though it is hard to pin down exactly what has
to be given up. Even if this intuitive realism can be given up coherently, it is still open to the
critic of naturalism to argue that the resulting position is itself a concealed form of Kantian
idealism.

We cannot broach these difficult and open questions here. The defender of naturalism will argue
that the epistemic conception is, on the contrary, precisely what distinguishes him from the
Kantian: incoherence arises from combining naturalism with a certain very plausible conception
of what constitutes language-mastery—but he, unlike the Kantian, rejects the very plausible
conception, not the naturalism (see 7.4).

What is at stake is no merely esoteric issue in the philosophy of language. For Millian naturalism
and Kantian idealism differ enormously in their larger philosophical significance, however much
the logic of each is refined to take into account the strong points of the other. Naturalism does
not put any aspect of the mind and its perceptual and cognitive capacities beyond the limit of
natural, scientific explanation. Transcen-dental idealism does—and thus opens up the possibility
of mystical or religious attitudes to the world which the former forecloses. The deepest
differences between the ‘transcendental’, ‘Germano-Coleridgean’ school, and the ‘school of
experience and association’ still turn on these ultimate metaphysical issues.

We can approach the same ultimate arguments between the two schools from another angle—
that of free will. For when we ask whether naturalism can make sense of the notion of objective
rational validity we are also indirectly asking whether it can make sense of the notion of rational
autonomy. The two are intertwined: to see a person as rationally autonomous is to see him as
having the power to recognise and conform to objective requirements of reason. Rational
autonomy is the central concept in our interpretative, or ‘hermeneutic’, understanding of
ourselves and each other (cf. 8.10). But can naturalistic and hermeneutic self-images be
reconciled? Can we see ourselves both as natural entities and as autonomous reasoners and
doers?

It was very important for Mill to reconcile free agency with causal determination—if that were to
turn out to be impossible then the fracture line would go right through his philosophy. For on the
one hand he rested the potential progressiveness of human nature on the doctrine of the
‘formation of character by circumstances’. But on the other hand the ideals of rational autonomy
and self-culture—the formation of the self by the self—were central values of his ethical and
political thought.

The apparent irreconcilability of the two particularly oppressed him during the mental crisis he
experienced in the course of his reaction against the teachings of his youth—as he reports in the
Autobiography,

during the later returns of my dejection, the doctrine of what is called Philosophical Necessity
weighed on my existence like an incubus. I felt as if I was scientifically proved to be the helpless
slave of antecedent circumstances; and as if my character and that of all others had been formed
for us by agencies beyond our control, and was wholly out of our power. I often said to myself,
what a relief it would be if I could disbelieve the doctrine of the formation of character by
circumstances; and… I said that it would be a blessing if the doctrine of necessity could be
believed by all quoad the characters of others, and disbelieved in regard to their own. I pondered
painfully on the subject till gradually I saw light through it.

He saw that

what is really inspiriting and ennobling in the doctrine of freewill, is the conviction that we have
real power over the formation of our own character; that our will, by influencing some of our
circumstances, can modify our future habits or capabilities of willing. All this was entirely
consistent with the doctrine of circumstances, or rather, was that doctrine itself, properly
understood, From that time I drew, in my own mind, a clear distinction between the doctrine of
circumstances, and Fatalism…. (Autobiography I 175–7)

The details of the solution he worked out for himself are spelt out in the chapter ‘Of Liberty and
Necessity’ in the System of Logic (vi.ii); a very brief chapter which obviously condensed a great
deal of thought (see 8.2).13 Mill points out that we distinguish between resistible and irresistible
causes. This applies in physics as much as in psychology; specifically, however, motives which
are not manias are resistible causes - to be free is to have the power of resisting a motive which
one feels. ‘A person feels morally free who feels that his habits or his temptations are not his
masters but he theirs: who even in yielding to them knows that he could resist…’ (VIII 841).

I am free to the extent that I can resist desires when there is reason to do so—moral freedom is
rational autonomy. It is not too much to say that Mill’s position is Kant’s without the
transcendentalism. In both, the notion of rational autonomy is central. But is it possible to retain
the notion of rational autonomy in a naturalistic framework? Consider an example. If I turn down
a whisky because I know from experience that whisky gives me terrible hangovers, I resist a
strong desire for good reasons. My abstention is certainly caused—by the memory of bad
hangovers. It is also the paradigm of an autonomous act: the experience of bad hangovers gives
me good reason to abstain, and autonomy is nothing but the capacity to respond to good reasons.
If I knew a way of having the whisky without the hangover I would have it; since I do not, I
abstain. Or I do not: my appetite masters my perception of what I should do; to that extent I fall
short of autonomy. If I could find a method of strengthening the causal power of that perception,
I would gain in moral freedom.

It is essential in this account that my action should be describable as recognising and responding
to a reason: the memory of bad hangovers causes me to abstain because it gives me a reason to
abstain and I act on that reason. So the reconcilability of hermeneutic and naturalistic self-images
lies at the bottom of the problem of free will and determinism, Mill, in whose philosophy
naturalism and the ideal of rational autonomy are the two deepest convictions, is particularly
committed to the assumption that they are indeed reconcilable.

8 Mill in the present

Mill’s philosophy wears well. It has a basic strength and soundness of design. Parts need
replacing, yet it keeps on going, rather quaintly upright, but solid and steady, when more
fashionable products disappear from the road.

In his treatment of logic and mathematics—based on an insightful and still interesting analysis of
language—Mill gives the first full statement of a position which seems more convincing the
more carefully it is worked through. On the essential point, that principles of logic or
mathematics cannot be insulated from empirical evidence, he was on the right track and the
analytic tradition in the first half of this century was on the wrong one. His nominalist account of
geometry and of arithmetic still repays study. He sees the need to explain what deduction is: he
raises profound questions about how deductive reasoning can yield new knowledge; chough his
answers, understandably, given the sheer difficulty of the issues, have something to teach us
mainly through their inadequacies. Nevertheless, these questions about reasoning, pushed further
through, lead straight into what now seem absolutely fundamental inquiries about the nature of
inference, generality and understanding.

The proper plan’ for the subject of inductive or ‘human’ logic, according to Frank Ramsey, ‘is to
be found in Mill’— in his ‘way of treating the subject as a body of inductions about inductions,
the Law of Causality governing lesser laws, and being itself proved by induction by simple
enumeration’. Mill’s inductivism is the central weakness of the plan—he did not analyse the
relation between theory and observation with the rigour applied by later philosophers of science.
He never appreciated how great the ‘creative’ ingredient in the whole fabric of our common
sense and scientific beliefs is, and therefore how radically instrumental our view of it would have
to be if we held to a strict inductivism.

But if we insert the method of inference to the best explanation into our inductive logic it will
still remain Millian in important respects. It will remain true, in Ramsey’s phrase, that it ‘can
only be distinguished from the natural sciences by the greater generality of its problems’. Mill’s
appeal is to what human reasoners do. This is not psychologism in any of the obvious senses
(chapter 5, appendix). But in a larger sense, the anti-psychologism of the analytic tradition—the
strict insistence on the purity and autonomy of logic and ethics which it inherits from Frege, the
early Wittgenstein and Moore—is really anti-naturalism. This was never wholly clear in analytic
philosophy’s modernist heyday, because of the influence exerted in that period by the doctrine
that philosophy, logic and mathematics consist exclusively either of pseudo-questions or of a
priori truths empty of content and determined solely by linguistic convention. With the passing
of that doctrine, we come back to the basic nineteenth-century debates between naturalism and
some form of Kantian idealism or Platonistic realism. But of course not in any simple way: one
major new element on the scene is the epistemic conception of meaning, which, I have
suggested, opens up the possibility of answering the Kantian critique without Kantian idealism.
If that conception can be seen as growing out of questions about inference and generality which
are already raised in the System of Logic, then here too we see the continuity of philosophy.

One of the most effective parts of Mill’s thought is his treatment of the logic of the ‘moral’—that
is the social or interpretative—sciences. As ever, he tried to assimilate critically the romantic
reaction against the eighteenth century—in this case romantic historicism. His feeling for
historical sociology as the strategic discipline of the social sciences, and his demonstration of its
compatibility with an individualist stance, make Book vi of the System of Logic a classic in the
philosophy of social science. For the issues at stake are not solely methodological: they merge
into a broader stream, in which metaphysical questions about mind and society flow into moral
and political questions about the foundations of liberal individualism.

There is in fact a tension in Mill’s treatment of the moral sciences which can be seen much more
clearly with the wisdom of hindsight. In some aspects—its emphasis on the historical and social
malleability of character, and its utopianism about the prospects for associationist psychology—
it seems to offer a charter for scientistic social engineering in a post-liberal age. In many ways
Mill’s methodology anticipates Max Weber; but the vital difference is that the Kantian and
hermeneutic legacy of German philosophy gave Weber a much better feeling for the distance
between scientific psychology and interpretative theory than Mill had. Yet in practice Mill is
perfectly clear about the political theorist’s need of an interpretative conception of human nature.
His liberalism rests firmly on a substantive view of human powers and human ends.

In Mill as in Kant the fundamental condition for a worthwhile life is rational autonomy. That sits
uneasily with his hedonism, but we have seen that Mill’s hedonism is a rather formal thing.
Another legacy of Bentham is more serious—it is Mill’s failure to appreciate the real difficulties
involved in showing aggregate utility to be the ultimate test of conduct: the sheer unobviousness
of that as a test. Yet if we move away from aggregate utility only as far as the more general
position of philosophical utilitarianism, we do not yet go beyond an essentially Millian
liberalism. We still base liberty on the general good instead of on a contract between
instrumentally rational individuals, or on natural rights.

Here is the crucial thing about Millian liberalism: it is a liberalism based on the general good.
The fallacies of sceptical contractualism are not the fallacies of liberalism as such—unless
liberalism is inseparable from the sceptical contractualist’s stance. In this century it has too often
been assumed that it is inseparable, by both the friends and enemies of liberalism. But what is
true is that liberalism can only be based on the general good if autonomy is as important an end
for human beings as Mill in practice takes it to be. Since autonomy is only one ingredient of
well-being it has opportunity costs; and it is no doubt more desired by some people than by
others. These facts make a liberalism based on general good inherently more open to argument
than one which simply postulates liberal freedoms as axiomatic.

Among those who doubt whether liberalism can be founded on the general good are its
‘republican’ critics (see for example the introduction to Sandel 1984; and Guttman 1985). The
debate between liberal and republican would not have been unfamiliar to Mill, who made
himself an expert on the French Revolution, and who at the age of 15 could conceive no more
‘transcendent glory’ than ‘that of figuring, successful or unsuccessful, as a Girondist in an
English Convention’ (I 67). Indeed Mill exemplifies how hard it is to define the terms of that
debate, or set up any clear-cut contrast. The pursuit of virtue and civic spirit was for him a prime
social good; the ideal of the virtues as part of happiness puts him in a tradition which goes back
to Aristotle’s image of the good life as participation in the polis.14 There is also in him a
vinegary strain of ascetic rationalism which blends well with the headmasterly side of the
republican spirit. But this was an element in his make-up which Mill himself reacted against.
Community values never dominate in his thinking over the values of individual and private life.
He was too open to a Hellenic mood which above all valued ‘spontaneity of consciousness’, in
Matthew Arnold’s phrase—and its endless varieties in different individuals—and too fearful of
engulfing that individual spontaneity in the conformist pressure of the group. In so far as any
marked opposition emerges between liberal and communitarian, this puts Mill decidedly on the
liberal side.

At the most general level, the reservations about Mill as a philosopher which one comes away
with all turn on various appearances of dogmatism. There is in the first place his over-extended
and over-probative idea of science. He makes jarringly confident use of terms like ‘scientific’,
‘proof’, ‘complete induction’, ‘certainty’ and the like, in contexts where they have no proper
place. No doubt this is a rhetorical emphasis: fallibilism about all scientific theory is a central
consequence of his epistemological views, and from time to time he points that out. His jargon is
the jargon of an age in which science was assertively invoked—in part because its authority was
still not secure—but it was leading thinkers like Mill who popularised the jargon and they cannot
be absolved of its consequences.

Nor can one fully absolve Mill of a certain shallow rationalism: in particular, of the ‘rationalistic
conception of rationality’ which assumes that ‘two considerations cannot be rationally weighed
against each other unless there is a common consideration in terms of which they can be
compared’ (Williams 1985:17–18). For example, he certainly does claim, by way of arguing for
the Utility Principle, that a single criterion must be available to settle all conflicts between
middle-range ethical principles. This weakness in Mill’s thinking goes deep and causes much
damage. It is quite possible to hold that there are fundamental canons of rationality—in science
or in ethics—and at the same time to acknowledge that they are plural and that they are
incomplete. They require judgement and cannot be consolidated into a single criterion which
gives answers to all questions. Mill’s political philosophy would have gained greatly if he had
been able to take full account of that.

Beneath these two forms of dogmatism, the scientistic and the rationalistic, lies a third: at the
deepest level, Mill is dogmatic in his naturalism. He does not sufficiently see its epistemological
difficulties. In highlighting these difficulties we are not rejecting it; but naturalism becomes
over-confident and uncritical when the sense of it as a deeply contestable and problematic
doctrine is lost.

Let us not however over-state these limiting dogmatisms in Mill’s thought. He had to struggle to
achieve ‘many-sidedness’, nor is his the only great liberal voice whose overtones are sometimes
over-insistent and shrill. Those overtones are not the essential things about him: the best in him
is more genuinely, more dialectically, confident and human.

To rethink the coherence and resilience of Mill’s philosophy is to rethink the sustainability of
‘enlightenment’: its capacity to convince and to inspire. The dialectic of enlightenment, and
romantic reaction against enlightenment, took place in Mill’s thought: in his astringent but
eloquent way, he saw as deeply into these tensions as anyone. He pushed forward—even though
he did not secure—its metaphysical foundations; he purged it of much, if not all, of its
superficiality but still achieved its lucid serenity. It is ‘Mill’s humanity, simplicity and
perceptiveness’ (Feyerabend 1981:141) which come through most memorably in the end.
2
The Analysis of Language
Whatever can be an object of belief, or even of disbelief, must, when put in words, assume the
form of a proposition. All truth and all error lie in propositions. What, by a convenient
misapplication of an abstract term, we call a truth, means simply a True Proposition; and errors
are false propositions. (VII 20)

1 ’Of the necessity of commencing with an analysis of language’

The first Book of the System of Logic is called ‘Of Names and Propositions’, and contains Mill’s
analysis of language.1 He breaks propositions down into what he calls ‘names’, distinguishes
their connotation from their denotation, discusses the copula and the connectives (‘and’, ‘or’,
‘if…then’). He separates propositions into types by their structure and explains how the meaning
of each type is determined by the connotation, or in certain cases the denotation, of the names
which make it up.

He was not developing an independent subject for its own sake. He wrote Book I as a
preliminary to the arguments and theses which are developed in subsequent Books of the System.
In its first chapter, he explains ‘the Necessity of commencing with an analysis of language’. He
gives a conventional reason for doing so—logic is ‘a portion of the Art of Thinking’, language
the main instrument of thought, so it is sensible to begin with an examination of the instrument
and its mode of operation. But he thinks there is another, ‘still more fundamental’ reason ‘why
the import of words should be the earliest subject of the logician’s consideration: because
without it he cannot examine into the import of propositions’ (VII 20). Later on he remarks that
‘the analysis of the import conveyed’ by propositions ‘is the real subject and purpose of this
preliminary book’ (VII 78).

Why is the import of propositions important? Knowledge is of propositions, so an analysis of

what propositions mean is an analysis of what kinds of knowledge there can be—what kind of
thing one can know. That is interesting; however, it does not reveal Mill’s main objective. He
wants to analyse the notion of propositional meaning, and the ways in which propositional
meaning is determined by the denotation and connotation of the constituent names of
propositions, because he intends to define a distinction between ‘verbal’ and ‘real propositions’,
and needs clear methods for determining whether a proposition is ‘verbal’ or ‘real’. That
distinction in turn is needed to express the master-thesis of the System: that no real proposition is
a priori —the great bellows which will dispel essentialism from its heartlands in mathematics
and logic.

2 Propositions
From the general tenor of his discussion it is plain that Mill takes a proposition to be a concrete
linguistic entity.2 But of what kind? A token sentence? Or the linguistic act of assertively
uttering a token sentence? He is ambiguous between the two: he talks of ‘a Proposition, or
Assertion’ (VII 20), characterises a proposition as ‘a portion of discourse in which the predicate
is affirmed or denied of a subject’ (VII 78), but in other contexts clearly intends the word
‘proposition’ to denote the indicative sentences ‘uttered’ in acts of assertion, rather than the acts
themselves. The ambiguity matters because it allows Mill to conflate assertion and predication—
an important failing, as we shall see. In what follows I shall take ‘proposition’ to mean ‘token
assertoric sentence’.

At any rate he firmly insists that talk of propositions is talk of something concrete and linguistic.
In his treatment of language, logic and mathematics, Mill distinguishes his own philosophical
view from three others which he rejects, and which he terms ‘Realism’, ‘Conceptualism’ and
‘Nominalism’. We shall have more to say about them in 2.5 and 3.9. ‘Realism’ postulates that
one or another kind of ‘abstraction’— real essences, or universals—exists outside the mind and
answers in some way to the signification of general terms. Mill does not consider the
distinctively modern kind of logical realism which postulates abstract particulars—classes,
geometrical objects, numbers. Still less does the possibility of treating propositions as abstract
particulars occur to him. He does not take Realism at all seriously: he obviously thought it a dead
duck.

In that respect his thinking registers the limitations set by its time. He did not appreciate the
potential power of logical realism, and the level of ingenuity needed to counter it in a plausible
way; this limits the strength and depth of a number of positions he takes up in the System of
Logic. On the other hand, given the generally ‘anthropological’ temper of his naturalism, it is
hardly believable that he could have taken logical realism, however sophisticated, seriously:
Millian naturalism is nominalistic (in the modern sense) through and through.

He was far more concerned with ‘Conceptualism’ and ‘Nominalism’— the two doctrines
between which the System of Logic is meant to steer. ‘Conceptualism’ is Mill’s name for the
view which treats propositions, the objects studied by logic, as psychological states or acts
(‘judgements’), and takes the terms which make up sentences as standing for the ‘ideas’ which
make up judgements. Against this doctrine Mill insists on the distinction between propositions
and judgements with just as much vigour as Frege or Russell did later, and for just the same
reason: he wanted to block the psychologistic route to idealism.

His opposition to ‘Nominalism’ may come as a surprise in view of what I have just said in the
last paragraph but one. But ‘Nominalism’ as he uses the term is not to be identified with
nominalism as it is understood today—the rejection of abstract entities. We shall be considering
what the doctrine is, and why Mill rejects it, later. But we must first spell out some of the details
of Mill’s analysis.

Mill’s account of propositions is based on the syntax required for syllogistic logical theory. So he
considers the following sentential structures:

S is P

S is not P

All S is/are P
No S is/are P

Some S is/are P

Some S is/are not P

Any word or phrase which can be fitted grammatically into S or P position Mill calls a ‘name’.
Names can be single words (‘Gold’, ‘Socrates’, ‘white’) or ‘many-worded’ (‘the earth’,
‘members of Parliament’, ‘born in England’). The name which appears in S position is the
subject, that which appears in P position is the predicate. ‘Every proposition consists of three
parts, the Subject, the Predicate, and the Copula’ (VII 21). Mill does not consider how to apply
this dictum to sentences in which the copula does not occur as a separate word—‘Theaetetus
flies’; he would no doubt take them to have a logically tripartite structure despite their
misleading grammatical form.

Unlike structural words such as ‘all, ‘some’, ‘is’, ‘is not’, names denote.3 This is clear enough for
terms in subject position. But what for example, does ‘born in England’ denote? Mill’s answer is
that it denotes anything born in England; or as he would be prepared equivalently to say,
anything of which the name ‘born in England’ can be truly predicated. Notice that what is
denoted is not the class of things born in England. Each thing born in England is separately
denoted by the name ‘born in England’. The relation of denotation holds between the name, and
each and every such thing. Mill’s ‘denote’ is equivalent to ‘is true of’, or ‘is truly
predicable/affirmable of’. His discussion often alternates these phrases. Thus if nothing is born in
England, the name ‘born in England’ has no denotation.

3 Classification of names
He proceeds to make two cross-cutting divisions among names, One is between ‘singular’ and
‘general’ names. (Mill also refers to singular names as ‘individual names’.) The other is between
names which are ‘concrete’ and names which are ‘abstract’. The first distinction he defines as
follows:

A general name is familiarly defined, a name which is capable of being truly affirmed, in the
same sense, of each of an indefinite number of things. An individual or singular name is a name
which is only capable of being truly affirmed, in the same sense, of one thing. (VII 28)

The intention is clear enough.4 But he notes a difficulty: a proper name, say ‘John’, is singular,
and yet can truly be predicated of more than one person. Because he holds that proper names
have no connotation—we shall come to this—Mill does not want to say what others might say:
that John’ is truly predicated of each person but in different senses. Yet he denies that it is
predicated of them in the same sense—

For, although there are many persons who bear that name, it is not conferred upon them to
indicate any qualities, or anything which belongs to them in common; and cannot be said to be
affirmed of them in any sense at all, consequently not in the same sense. (VII 28)
This is ingenious but unconvincing. In the first place, proper names with multiple denotation can
only, on this account, be distinguished from general names if every general name is required to
have a connotation. Mill does think that every general name has what he calls connotation, and
therefore has sense or meaning, but he gives no argument to show that this must be so. We shall
consider what reason can be given; it is certainly not a matter of definitional fiat. In any case,
though Mill is right in saying that proper names in one sense have no meaning—they do not have
‘connotation’, do not appear in dictionaries - there is another sense in which they must have
meaning: they have semantic content, inasmuch as they make a contribution to the truth-
conditions of sentences in which they occur. ‘Aristotle likes fish’ has different truth-conditions
according to whether the intended denotation of ‘Aristotle’ is the Greek shipping magnate or my
cat. These matters will be considered further when we come to Mill’s doctrine of connotarion.

Mill’s other division among names is between concrete and abstract. ‘A concrete name is a name
which stands for a thing; an abstract name is a name which stands for an attribute of a thing’ (VII
29). The division applies to all names, not just to singular ones. Thus Mill’s examples mix
singular and general. Concrete: John’, ‘the sea’, ‘this table’, ‘white’, ‘man’, ‘old’; abstract:
‘whiteness’, ‘humanity’, ‘old age’, ‘colour’, ‘attribute’. A concrete name, whether singular or
general, is predicable of particulars; an abstract name, singular or general, is predicable of
attributes.

Consider the name ‘white’. It is a general name: it denotes any white thing. It is a concrete name,
since it denotes white things. But what of ‘whiteness’? It is an abstract name, because it denotes
an attribute not a thing. Is it then singular or general? It might be held to be general, Mill
unconvincingly thinks, ‘in respect of the different shades of whiteness to which it is applied in
common’ (VII 30). But on the other hand, there are abstract names which are unquestionably not
general: ‘visibleness; tangibleness; equality; squareness; milkwhiteness’. ‘To avoid needless
logomachies, the best course would probably be to consider these names as neither general nor
individual, and to place them in a class apart’ (VII 30).

But having thrown out this no-nonsense comment Mill in fact does proceed to treat all non-
general abstract names as singular. We therefore get the classification of names shown in Figure
2.1.

Singular (or: individual) General

John white

Concrete the sea man

this table old

visibleness colour
Abstract equality magnitude

old age attribute

Figure 2.1 Classification of names

Finally a remark is necessary about Mill’s notion of an attribute. Although he follows the
schoolmen in calling names which denote attributes ‘abstract’, Mill does not think attributes are
‘abstract universals’, and would not accept that in introducing talk of attributes he has introduced
an ontology of abstract entities. Nor are attributes to be thought of as ‘concepts’ or ‘ideas’ in the
mind. Attributes, for him, are the natural features of things—their properties in the sense in
which properties of things are studied by science. For reasons to be considered in 2.6, this view
of attributes considered as theoretical entities of semantics is impossible to defend: the
‘attributes’ of semantics and the ‘attributes’ of science cannot be the same. But whether or not
Mill’s notion of an attribute is coherent, he cannot be accused of the Conceptualism or the
Realism which he explicitly opposed.

4 Connotation and denotation

We come to the most important distinction Mill makes among names: between those which
connote and those which do not. Mill introduces it with something of a flourish: he calls it ‘one
of the most important distinctions which we shall have occasion to point out, and one of those
which go deepest into the nature of language’ (VII 31). And he later comments:

it is hardly an exaggeration to say, that some of the most prevalent of the errors with which logic
has been infected, and a large part of the cloudiness and confusion which have enveloped it,
would in all probability, have been avoided, if a term had been in common use to express exactly
what I have signified by the term to connote. (VII 40–1, footnote)

He was right to rate the distinction so highly. His account in terms of it of the various categories
of names, and in particular his analysis of sentence-meaning—‘the import of propositions’ is the
outstanding insight of his analysis of language. The account of deductive inference which he
builds on it amply demonstrates its clarifying power, as we shall see in the next three chapters.
But let us first bring together the main points he makes about it.

Connotation is a relation between a name and one or more attributes. Thus for example ‘red’
denotes red things and connotes the attribute of redness; ‘widow’ denotes widows and connotes
the attributes of being female, and of having been married to someone now dead. Mill stresses
that connotation is usually vague.

In the case of connotative names, connotation determines denotation. Where a name connotes
attributes it denotes anything which has those attributes. ‘Virtuous’, for example,

is a name applied to [virtuous individuals] in consequence of an attribute which they are

supposed to possess in common, the attribute which has received the name of virtue. It is applied
to all beings which are considered to possess this attribute; and to none which are not so
considered. (VII 31)

In contrast, denotation does not determine connotation: because a name may have denotation but
no connotation, and because names which have the same denotation may differ in connotation.

Not all names connote. Most individual concrete names are connotative; but some—namely,
proper names—are not (VII 33–5). ‘It may be part of the meaning of the connotative name itself,
that there can exist but one individual possessing the attribute which it connotes.’ Or, Mill says,
context may indicate that to be so. His examples: ‘the only son of John Stiles’, ‘the first emperor
of Rome’, ‘the father of Socrates’, ‘the author of the Iliad’, ‘the murderer of Henri Quatre’,
‘Caesar’s army’, ‘the present prime minister of England’. But

Proper names are not connotative: they denote the individuals who are called by them; but they
do not indicate or imply any attributes as belonging to those individuals. When we name a child
by the name Paul, or a dog by the name Caesar, these names are simply marks used to enable
those individuals to be made subjects of discourse. It may be said, indeed, that we must have had
some reason for giving them those names rather than any others; and this is true; but the name,
once given, is independent of the reason. (VII 33)

Dartmouth may originally have been so named because situated at the mouth of the Dart. But

if sand should choke up the mouth of the river, or an earthquake change its course, and remove it
to a distance from the town, the name of the town would not necessarily be changed. That fact,
therefore, can form no part of the signification of the word; for otherwise, when the fact
confessedly ceased to be true, no one would any longer think of applying the name. Proper
names are attached to the objects themselves, and are not dependent on the continuance of any
attribute of the object. (VII 33)

We return to the thesis that proper names have no connotation in 2.7.

Some individual abstract names are connotative; but some are not: ‘attributes themselves may
have attributes ascribed to them; and a word which denotes attributes may connote an attribute of
those attributes’ (VII 32). But some individual abstract names are non-connotative. Mill gives
the example of nominalisations of adjectives: ‘whiteness’, ‘wisdom’. They denote what is
connoted by the adjective, but they do not, according to Mill, connote anything themselves.

All general names are connotative. Mill makes the point explicitly only of concrete general
names (VII 31); but it seems clear that the general point is intended. In general then, the
denotation of every general name is determined by the attribute or attributes it connotes.

A name can have connotation but no denotation. The possibility that a connotative name may not
in fact denote anything, and the fact that Mill envisaged it, is clear from a number of his remarks;
but he has nothing to say of its implications. He does not for example consider what truth-value,
if any, a proposition containing a denotationless singular name has. He is, it is true, mainly
interested in giving an account of the import of propositions in terms of the connotation of
names. But in the case of a proper name it is the denotation which contributes to sentence-
meaning; so here Mill should have had something to say about the implication, for sentence-
meaning, of the fact that a proper name may fail to denote.

We now turn to the relation between Mill’s technical terms and the informal notion of meaning.

The meaning of a connotative name is its connotation. This again is a generalisation of what Mill
actually says, but seems plainly to fit his intentions. Mill makes the claim only of connotative
concrete names, not of connotative abstract ones:

Whenever the names given to objects convey any information, that is, whenever they have
properly any meaning, the meaning resides not in what they denote, but in what they connote.
(VII 34)

a connotative name ought to be considered a name of all the various individuals which it is
predicable of, or in other words denotes, and not of what it connotes. But by learning what things
it is a name of, we do not learn the meaning of the name: for to the same thing we may, with
equal propriety, apply many names, not equivalent in meaning. Thus, I call a certain man by the
name Sophronismus: I call him by another name, The father of Socrates. Both these are names of
the same individual, but their meaning is altogether different…. It is even possible that I might
know every single individual of whom a given name could be with truth affirmed, and yet could
not be said to know the meaning of the name. A child knows who are its brothers and sisters,
long before it has any definite conception of the nature of the facts which are involved in the
signification of these words. (VII 36)

Proper names have no meaning: The only names of objects which connote nothing are proper
names; and these have, strictly speaking, no signification’ (VII 34). A name can properly be said
to have meaning only if predicating it of an object conveys information about that object.

Proper names connote no attributes; predicating a proper name of an object can therefore convey
no information about it.

The meaning of a non-connotative abstract name is its denotation:

The distinction between an abstract term and its corresponding concrete, does not turn upon any
difference in what they are appointed to signify; for the real significance of a concrete general
name is…its connotation; and what the concrete term connotes, forms the entire meaning of the
abstract name. (VII 105)

The abstract names Mill has in mind are nominalised adverbs or adjectives. Such names have no
connotation: but unlike proper names they do have meaning. ‘Whiteness’, for example, has the
‘same meaning’ as ‘white’. To know the meaning of White’ is to know that it connotes
whiteness, to know the meaning of ‘whiteness’ is to know that it denotes whiteness.

Some non-connotative names, then, have a meaning. Mill is simply responding to what it would
be natural to say. Like ‘Socrates’, ‘whiteness’ does not pick out the item it denotes, in this case
an attribute, by means of (second-order) attributes. But unlike a proper name, it appears in
dictionaries: predicating the name ‘whiteness’ of an attribute gives us information about the
attribute. It seems therefore that the smooth identification of the pre-theoretical notion of
meaning with the technical notion of connotation breaks down.

But this may be misleading. An abstract singular name formed by nominalising an adverb or
adjective has meaning by denoting what the adverb or adjective connotes: the fact may be taken
as evidence that sentences in which connotationless abstract names occur can be paraphrased
into sentences in which only the adjectives or adverbs of which they are nominalisations occur.
Mill suggests as much (i.v.7, ‘Propositions of which the terms are abstract’):

Since there is nothing in the import of an abstract name which is not in the import of the
corresponding concrete, it is natural to suppose that neither can there be anything in the import of
a proposition of which the terms are abstract, but what there is in some proposition which can be
framed of concrete terms.

And this presumption a closer examination will confirm…. (VII 105)

If the programme of paraphrasis could be carried through, abstract terms with meaning but no
connotation would disappear at the deeper syntactic level, and meaning could be uniformly
identified with connotation.5

We have now laid out the claims Mill makes about the connotation and denotation of names. But
before we consider how he uses the distinction in his account of the import of propositions, let us
return to the thesis that all general names are connotative. Must this be so? The question may
seem a strange one, but it raises interesting and deep issues.

As we have seen, Mill thinks a proper name, like ‘Paul’, or ‘Caesar’, simply serves as a ‘mark’
of the individual named. (‘When we impose a proper name, we perform an operation in some
degree analogous to what the robber intended in chalking the house’ VII 35.) I give a proper
name a use in the language by fixing its denotation—which I can do by pointing, or by
specifying (by means of describing it) the object I intend the name to denote. But the method by
which I fix the denotation forms ‘no part of the signification’ of the name.6

Why should it be impossible to give a general name a use in the language by fixing its
denotation in similar fashion? For example, I fix the denotation of the word ‘Brod’ by pointing in
turn to Tom, Dick and Harry, and stipulating that each is denoted by ‘Brod’; and I treat ‘Brod’
grammatically as a common noun, so that we can talk about ‘a Brod’, ‘Brods’, the Brod who…’.
(‘Were there any Brods at the party?’) Have I not ipso facto given the word a use? It can be truly
predicated, without ambiguity, of more than one thing—to that extent it passes the Millian test
for a general name. But, going by analogy with the singular proper name, we ought not say that
‘Brod’ has a connotation.

Two points must be distinguished. First, the method by which ‘Brod’ is given a use in the
language does not leave it an open question how many Brods there are. Because the denotation
of ‘Brod’ is fixed by enumerating the objects it denotes, the number of Brods is simultaneously
determined. Let us say that the denotation of ‘Brod’ is enumeratively fixed. So it is not true that
‘Brod’ can be predicated ‘of each of an indefinite number of things’. But to take this as a reason
for denying that ‘Brod’ is a general name would make for pointless complication. It is not a
singular name either, and so one would have to have a third class of names, neither singular nor
general.

A second point is that no criterion for satisfying ‘Brod’ is given. As with a singular proper name,
knowing how to use ‘Brod’ does not involve getting hold of a way of telling, for any given
object, whether ‘Brod’ denotes that object, a way of telling which constitutes its meaning.
Consider, in contrast, ‘white’, or ‘round’. To know the meaning of a general name like ‘white’ or
‘round’ is to know how to tell whether a thing is white or round. ‘White’ and ‘round’ are given a
use in the language by being associated with criteria. Grasping the meaning of such a name, at
least in the primitive case, is grasping what facts about an object would warrant predicating the
name of it. Let us call such names criterial.

These points are separate. There may be general names whose denotation is not enumeratively
fixed, but which are not criterial either. ‘Tiger’ can plausibly be argued to be such a name. On
this view, ‘tiger’ is given a use in the language by fixing its denotation—let us say, by pointing
out a sample of animals, with the intention that ‘tiger’ should denote any animal which is of the
same kind as those particular animals there. But this act does not in itself establish any way of
telling whether a given animal is a tiger: it may be an unresolved scientific question what the
distinguishing characteristics of animals of that kind are. (Some animals which do not look very
much like the ones in the sample may turn out to be tigers, and some which do, may turn out not
to be.) Thus the use of ‘tiger’ in the language is determined not by giving a criterion for telling
(even in principle) whether a given object is a tiger; but directly by fixing the denotation of
‘tiger’. But the denotation is not fixed enumeratively, by an exhaustive identification of the
objects which are tigers.

Once the distinctions are clear, there remains the question of how to use the word ‘connote’, and
along with that, the word ‘attribute’. The answer cannot be simple, because we have three cases.

(a) A name like ‘Brod’: following the analogy with singular proper names, let us call such names
‘general proper names’.

(b) Criterial general names, like ‘white’, ‘round’ (and semantically complex ones, like ‘widow’).

(c) General names like ‘tiger’: which are neither criterial nor proper. Their use is given in the
language by directly fixing their denotation, but the method of fixing it is not enumerative.

To call ‘Brod’ connotative would certainly distort the insight into the workings of language
which—as Mill says—the notion of connotation provides. The essential insight, as we shall see,
is that grasping the meaning of a connotative name is grasping a condition which any object must
satisfy to be an object denoted by that name. Forcing ‘Brod’ into this model is quite artificial—
no light is shed by saying that ‘Brod’ denotes in virtue of connoting an attribute, Brodhood.
Should we then reserve the notion of connotation for criterial general names? The two theses,
that connotation is to be identified with meaning, and that meaning is information content,
combine to pull us in that direction. After all, the natural model for understanding a content word
—a name - is: knowing the criterion for telling whether an object is denoted by the name. But in
the case of non-criterial names, this model cannot apply. So it is natural to say that there is no
connotation to grasp.

One might reply that grasping a condition is a wider and less epistemic notion than grasping a
criterion. I grasp the connotation of ‘tiger’ simply in grasping that ‘tiger’ denotes x if and only if
x is a tiger. Certainly there is a real problem here. What is it to know that? The problem arises
precisely because the name has no cognitive content: its meaning is not constituted criterially. So
the same problem arises for proper names. (What is it to know that ‘Cicero’ denotes Cicero?)

The question, in short, is how to classify (c)—type names. If we take them as connotative, we are
saying that their denotation is determined conditionally (see 2.6). Yet (c)—type names have an
important point in common with proper names: they lack the information content that criterial
names have.

5 The import of propositions: Conceptualism and Nominalism

Only when Mill turns to analysing the meaning of sentences in terms of the connotation, and, in
some cases, denotation of names does the full point of the distinction between connotation and
denotation come into view. This he does in i.v, ‘Of the Import of Propositions’. But before
giving his own account, Mill begins by criticising two views with which he disagrees. They are
those of the Conceptualist and the Nominalist.

Conceptualism we have considered briefly already. It holds that names ‘stand for’ ideas, and that
‘a proposition is the expression of a relation between two ideas’. Mill accepts that ‘in any case of
judgement…a process takes place in our minds’ (VII 87), but points out that that process must
involve more than connecting two ideas, ‘for we may put two ideas together without any act of
belief; as when we merely imagine something, such as a golden mountain; or when we actually
disbelieve…’ (VII 88). Furthermore, belief also involves assent or dissent: but to determine the
nature of assent or dissent ‘is one of the most intricate of metaphysical problems’.7 However
these problems, as he points out, are in any case irrelevant to logic and the theory of
propositions:

whatever the solution may be, we may venture to assert that it can have nothing whatever to do
with the import of propositions; for this reason, that propositions (except sometimes when the
mind itself is treated of) are not assertions respecting our ideas of things, but assertions
respecting the things themselves. (VII 88)

To believe or assert that gold is yellow is not to believe or assert anything about one’s own state
of mind. The belief is mental, but what is believed is not:

All language recognises a difference between a doctrine or opinion, and the fact of entertaining
the opinion; between assent, and what is assented to.

Logic, according to the conception here formed of it, has no concern with the nature of the act of
judging or believing; the consideration of that act, as a phenomenon of the mind, belongs to
another science. (VII 87)

Mill is forceful about Conceptualism. He thinks it

one of the most fatal errors ever introduced into the philosophy of logic; and the principal cause
why the theory of the science has made such inconsiderable progress during the last two
centuries. (VII 89)

He traces it back to the seventeenth century: it was introduced, he thinks, by Descartes,

especially fostered by Leibniz and Locke, and has obscured the true status of logic—as ‘the
Science of Science’—ever since.

Next he turns to the view of Hobbes and the. ‘Nominalists’. We shall consider what Mill calls
Nominalism at greater length in 3.9—and we have already noted that he was himself a
thoroughgoing nominalist in the current sense of the word. The aspects of ‘Nominalism’ which
concern us for the moment can be reduced to three points. It holds (a) that names denote objects;
(b) that the meaning of a sentence (the import of a proposition) is determined by the denotation
of its constituent names,

The third point, which spells out how sentence-meaning is determined, needs a clause for each of
the propositional structures

(c) (i) A sentence of the form S is P or All S are P, means that all objects denoted by S are also
denoted by P.

(ii) A sentence of the form S is not P or No S are P means that no objects denoted by S are
denoted by P.

(iii) A sentence of the form Some S are P means that some objects denoted by S are also
denoted by P.

(iv) A sentence of the form Some S are not P means that some objects denoted by S are not
denoted by P.

Mill launches into Conceptualism with all guns blazing. Nominalism gets much closer to sober
semantic theory; he explains it in greater detail and treats it with a good deal more respect.8 He
agrees that names denote objects but rejects (b). The meanings of sentences cannot be analysed
purely in terms of the denotations of their constituent names— for that leaves out the
indispensable notion of connotation.

But if (b) is rejected it must be replaced by some other set of rules connecting the meanings of
words and the meanings of sentences. It is a truism that the meaning of a sentence is determined
by the meanings of the words that make it up. Let us call it the compositional thesis, and the
particular rules which spell it out, compositional rules. The compositional thesis determines a
notion of word-meaning. The meaning of a word in that sense is its contribution to the meanings
of sentences in which it occurs. We shall call this the semantic content of the word. We have
noted that a name may also be said to have meaning in another sense, when predicating it of an
object conveys information about the object. This we shall call its information content.
Nominalism, then, is the view that the semantic content of names is specified by fixing their
denotations. Mill agrees in the case of proper names. But he thinks that in the case of connotative
names semantic content is determined by connotation; and he identifies connotation with
information content. So in the case of a connotative name, semantic content equates with
information content, and the information content of the name transmits information content to
the proposition in which the name occurs. Nominalism can give no account of the fact that
propositions convey information. The Nominalists’ error was that they failed to recognise. that
some names connote,

and sought for their meaning exclusively in what they denote: as if all names had been (what
none but proper names really are) marks put upon individuals; and as if there were no difference
between a proper and a general name, except that the first denotes only one individual and the
last a greater number. (VII 91)

But when we turn to thesis (c) we find Mill making a surprising concession. He thinks that the
specifications of meaning given in (c) do yield a correct account of ‘part of the meaning of all
propositions, and the whole meaning of some’ (VII 90).

(c) gives a correct account of the whole meaning of propositions in which both subject and
predicate are non-connotative (thus, proper names), as ‘Hyde was Clarendon, or, Tully is Cicero’
(VII 91). It is not surprising that Mill should grant that—though, as will be argued later, he is
wrong to do so. There is a real problem in accounting for the meaning of such propositions. For
if ‘proper names have strictly no meaning…are mere marks for individual objects’ (VII 91), then
what is the meaning of ‘Tully is Cicero’ or ‘Hyde was Clarendon’? Granting that these sentences
are not strictly meaningless, then, given the compositional thesis, their constituent names must
have semantic content. Since they have no connotation, their semantic content must be
determined by their denotation, in which case it seems to follow that they are, if true, truistic and
uninformative. If Tully is Cicero, Tully’ and ‘Cicero’ have the same denotation, and therefore the
same semantic content; and so Tully is Cicero’ must be synonymous with Tully is Tully’. Yet it
is plain that the former does in some way convey information whereas the latter does not. But
what is the information conveyed? It certainly seems that ‘when a proper name is predicated of
another proper name, all the signification conveyed is, that both the names are marks for the
same object’. This, Mill says, ‘is precisely what Hobbes produces as a theory of predication in
general’ (VII 91). And where the names have no connotation, as in Tully is Cicero’, he accepts
that only the Hobbesian component of meaning remains.

But he also grants that Nominalism gives a partly correct account of all other propositions. For
example, ‘Some men are copper-coloured’ does have, as part of its meaning, ‘that among the
individuals denoted by the name man, there are some who are also among those denoted by the
name, copper-coloured’ (VII 90). Yet Mill immediately states his own view in a manner which
shows the concession to be merely formal:

When…we are analysing the meaning of any proposition in which the predicate and the subject,
or either of them, are connotative names, it is to the connotation of those terms that we must
exclusively look, and not to what they denote. (VII 90–1, first emphasis mine)

The inconsistency arises from a use/mention confusion. Consider the following two passages:
(a) If it be true that all oxen ruminate, it must be true that all the individuals denoted by the name
ox are also among those denoted by the name ruminating; and whoever asserts that all oxen
ruminate, undoubtedly does assert that this relation subsists between the two names. (VII 90, my
emphasis)

(b) To warrant us in putting together two words with a copula between them, it is really enough
that the thing or things denoted by one of the names should be capable, without violation of
usage, of being called by the other name also. If, then, this be all the meaning necessarily implied
in the form of discourse called a Proposition…. (VII 90–1, my emphasis)

In (a), Mill in effect argues that since “‘All oxen ruminate” is true’ implies ‘Whatever “oxen”
denotes is denoted by “ruminate’”, whoever assertively utters the sentence ‘All oxen ruminate’
must be asserting (among other things) that ‘oxen’ denotes whatever ‘ruminates’ denotes. In (b)
he argues in effect that since, if I know that whatever is denoted by ‘oxen’ is also denoted by
‘ruminate’ I am warranted in assertively uttering the sentence ‘All oxen ruminate’, nothing more
can be ‘necessarily implied’ by that sentence than that whatever ‘oxen’ denotes is denoted by
‘ruminate’.

This second argument would lead not merely to a concession to Nominalism but to a complete
collapse into the Nominalist view. But both arguments are fallacious. ‘All oxen ruminate’ must
be distinguished from ‘“All oxen ruminate” is true’. The second sentence, assertively used,
implies that whatever ‘oxen’ denotes is denoted by ‘ruminate’, the first does not.9

As for the argument in (b): I am indeed justified in one sense in assertively uttering a sentence of
a language if I know that it is true. But it does not follow that I know what is asserted by the use
of that sentence, and so it does not follow that I know what that sentence means. I may know that
‘All oxen ruminate’ is true and hence be justified in this sense in uttering the sentence
assertively, yet still have no grasp of what assertion I have made.

In practice Mill ignores his ill-advised general concession to Nominalism and gives a
‘Nominalistic’ account only of the meaning of predications containing nothing but proper names.
But an objection can be raised to Nominalism even in this case—Mill makes it himself: ‘Hobbes’
theory of Predication, according to the well-known remark of Leibniz, and the avowal of Hobbes
himself, renders truth and falsity completely arbitrary, with no standard but the will of men’ (VII
95–6). On Mill’s account, that would apply to ‘Hyde is Clarendon’: it being, after all, nothing but
the ‘will of men’ which makes it true that ‘Hyde’ denotes what ‘Clarendon’ denotes. No doubt
for sentences of this kind Mill would have accepted the conclusion. He would in a sense be right:
but not because ‘“Hyde” denotes what “Clarendon” denotes’ is any part of the strict meaning of
the sentence. But before we pursue the issues raised by proper names further, we must take a
more detailed view of Mill’s own theory of the import of propositions.

6 The import of propositions: Mill’s theory

Mill follows the syntactic structures distinguished by syllogistic theory, giving a semantic
account of each structure. But the situation is complicated by the thesis that proper names and
certain abstract names are not connotative. This means that in the case of singular predications,
positive and negative: S is P, S is not P, the cases in which a non-connotative name appears in
one or both positions have to be treated separately. On the other hand, where both subject and
predicate are connotative, singular predications, positive or negative, can be treated along with
universal predications, positive or negative. However, we shall not consider negative
predications at all for the moment: they raise questions which are best introduced later, when we
treat of Mill’s view of affirmation and denial. That leaves us with four structures to consider.
Symbolising connotative names by CN, non-connotative names by DN, we have two cases of
singular predication: DN is DN and DN is CN. Then there is the singular-cum-universal form,
(All) CN is/are CN, and the particular form Some CN are CN. Mill gives the following
compositional rules:

(1) A sentence of the form DN is DN means that the subject name denotes what the predicate
name denotes (cf. VII 91).

(2) A sentence of the form DN is CN means that what the subject name denotes has the attributes
connoted by the predicate name (cf. VII 97).

(3) A sentence of the form (All) CN is/are CN means that whatever has the attributes connoted
by the subject name has the attributes connoted by the predicate name (cf. VII 97).

(4) A sentence of the form Some CN are CN means that some objects which have the attributes
connoted by the subject name have the attributes connoted by the predicate name (cf. VII 108).

Each of these compositional rules has the disadvantage of being false — the problem arises from
the use/mention confusion diagnosed in the last section. If they were true, one would know the
meaning of a sentence of any one of these structures, simply by knowing that it belonged to that
structure. For example one would know the meaning of ‘Socrates is wise’ simply by knowing
that it was of form (2), and thus meant that the object denoted by ‘Socrates’ had the attribute
connoted by ‘wise’. One would not need to know what attributes were connoted by ‘wise’.
Dictionaries would be quite unnecessary. To avoid the difficulty we must replace ‘means’ in (1)
—(4) by ‘is true if and only if. We then have:

(5) A sentence of the form DN is DN is true if and only if the subject name denotes what the
predicate name denotes.

(6) A sentence of the form DN is CN is true if and only if whatever the subject name denotes has
the attributes connoted by the predicate name.

(7) A sentence of the form (All) CN is/are CN is true if and only if whatever has the attributes
connoted by the subject name has the attributes connoted by the predicate name.

(8) A sentence of the form Some CN are CN is true if and only if some objects which have the
attributes connoted by the subject name have the attributes connoted by the predicate name.

The same amendment to the clauses given in (c) on p. 60 would give us ‘Hobbesian’ rather than
‘Millian’ compositional rules. The mistake in each case is to make the compositional rules for
sentences of a given structure directly state the meaning of sentences of that structure. They
show its meaning, but they do not state it. But once this point has been taken into account, Mill’s
version gives a workable semantic theory whereas Hobbes’s does not. The crucial difference is
Mill’s distinction between connotation and denotation. The Millian compositional rules can be
combined with a dictionary (which states the semantic content of every name in the language) to
yield truth-conditions for sentences. Take, for example, ‘Socrates is wise’.

Mill’s theory identifies ‘Socrates’ as a non-connotative name by giving the following statement
of its semantic content:

(9) ‘Socrates’ denotes Socrates.

And it identifies ‘wise’ as connotative thus:

(10) ‘Wise’ connotes the attribute wisdom.

We can now identify ‘Socrates is wise’ as belonging to structure (6). (6), (9) and (10) together
enable us to deduce

(11) ‘Socrates is wise’ is true if and only if Socrates has the attribute wisdom.

If one knows what is expressed in (11), does one know the meaning of ‘Socrates is wise’? It is at
least arguable that if the knowledge is derived as above from knowledge of (9) and (10), and if
one knows that all the rules involved are conventions of English, then that is enough.

Consider another point. The sentence which states the ‘truth-condition’ in (11) (the sentence on
the right of ‘if and only if’) contains a singular abstract name (‘the attribute wisdom’), unlike the
object sentence (the sentence on the left, whose truth-condition it states). The object sentence
contains the corresponding concrete general name (‘wise’). Can we keep the essential insight
captured in the distinction between denotation and connotation, while avoiding explicit mention
of attributes in the truth-conditions of object sentences which do not themselves make any such
mention? Given the difficulties which lurk for Mill’s semantic theory in his appeal to the notion
of an attribute, and which will be considered later in this section, it would be well worth doing
so.

What is the essential difference between a non-connotative and a connotative name? It comes
down to the fact that in the semantic rules for the language, the denotation of the former is
specified directly, while the denotation of the latter is specified conditionally. A connotative
name is associated, by linguistic convention, with a condition which is met by an object if and
only if the name denotes the object. Thus we have:

(12) ‘Wise’ denotes an object, x, if and only if x is wise.

To know the semantic content of ‘wise’ is to know what is expressed by (12), and to know it to
be the case as a matter of linguistic convention. In short, (12) will do just as well as (10) as a
dictionary entry displaying that ‘wise’ is connotative, and what its connotation is. On the other
hand, the dictionary entry for ‘Socrates’ remains as before: it stipulates the denotation of
‘Socrates’ directly, and not by means of a condition which must be met by an object which is
denoted by ‘Socrates’. Let us call these dictionary entries, whether for connotative or non-
connotative names, denotation rules.10
Adopting rules along the lines of (12) rather than (10) means that we have to change the
compositional rules accordingly. Thus, instead of (5), (6) and (7) we have:

(13) A sentence of the form (All) S is/are P is true if and only if the predicate name denotes
whatever objects the subject name denotes.

Instead of (8), we have:

(14) A sentence of the form Some S are P is true if and only if the predicate name denotes some
objects which the subject name denotes.

These rules are exactly as given in the Nominalist theory (under (c) on p.60). But the distinction
between denotation and connotation is still made, and the Nominalist version of the
compositional thesis ((b) on p.60) is still false. The semantic content of sentences is determined
by the semantic content of their constituent names; but a name’s semantic content may be
determined either by its connotation or its denotation, according to the case. The distinction is
now expressed in the difference between denotation rules like (9)—which specify denotation
directly— and rules like (12), which specify it conditionally. And now by substitution into (13)
we get

‘Socrates is wise’ is true if and only if ‘wise’ denotes whatever objects ‘Socrates’ denotes.

From this, together with (9) and (12), we get

(15) ‘Socrates is wise’ is true if and only if Socrates is wise.

To know the meaning of ‘Socrates is wise’ is to know what is expressed by (15)—on the basis of
one’s knowledge of the compositional and denotational rules expressed by (9), (12) and (13).

We now have a corrected version of Mill’s approach. Our first amendment was to the form of the
compositional rules: making them show sentence meanings by giving their truth-conditions,
rather than state them directly. The second amendment was designed to eliminate reference to
attributes from the truth-conditions of sentences which did not themselves contain references to
attributes.

There are two reasons for this. One is simply that in semantics, as anywhere else, theoretical
concepts which are not needed should not be brought in. Another reason follows on from this.
Eliminating the unnecessary notion that a connotative name stands in a two-fold relation —
denoting an object or an attribute and connoting an attribute as well— gives us a clearer
understanding of the insight contained in the notion of connotation. We have seen that Mill
rejects the Realist’s idea that general terms stand for abstract universals. Conformably with this,
attributes for him are not intensional abstract entities. They are natural properties or features of
things.

That is a perfectly respectable notion (Putnam 1970). But it will not do the work Mill wants it to
do in semantics. The semantic role which the concept of an attribute has to play in Mill’s theory
requires (i) that a name has meaning if and only if it connotes an attribute, (ii) that synonymy of
names is identity of attributes connoted. If N connotes attribute A, and N1 connotes attribute B,
and A=B, then N and N1 have the same meaning. But a natural attribute can be picked out by
different, non-synonymous predicates. For example the property of being hot turns out to be the
property of being made up of molecules with a high mean kinetic energy. Obviously, however,
‘This is hot’ does not mean This is made up of molecules with a high mean kinetic energy’—as it
would have to do, if the general names connoted the same natural attribute. Mill has failed to see
the real force of the Realist’s case.

But if ‘semantic attributes’ cannot be identified with natural attributes, what are they? The
question need not arise if the essentials of Mill’s doctrine of connotation can be expressed
without introducing the notion of an attribute at all.

7 Proper names
We can now go back to Mill’s view of proper names. Let us first consider what account we get
of an identity proposition like ‘Tully is Cicero’ — one in which the copula is flanked by two
proper names—in our revised Millian theory. We will have the following denotation rules:

(16) Tully’ denotes Tully.

(17) ‘Cicero’ denotes Cicero.

Substitution in (13) gives

(18) Tully is Cicero’ is true if and only if ‘Cicero’ denotes whatever Tully’ denotes.

And by (16) and (17),

(18) Tully is Cicero’ is true if and only if Tully is Cicero.

What appears as the truth-condition of Tully is Cicero’ is that same sentence itself, and not
“‘Cicero” denotes whatever “Tully” denotes’ — which is what one gets if one takes the
compositional rule as a direct statement of meaning, as in (1).

But does this not leave us with the problem mentioned on p. 61, of accounting for the
informativeness of Tully is Cicero’? Now it was said on p. 61 that the semantic content of a
proper name is ‘determined’ by its denotation; and that would appear to imply that proper names
with the same denotation have the same semantic content. And they have no information content
—predicating a proper name of an object conveys no information about the object. What then do
I know when I know the semantic content of a proper name? The semantic content is given by
the name’s denotation rule; to know it therefore is to know the denotation rule. But where
distinct proper names have the same denotation, their semantic content is nevertheless
determined by different denotation rules. Knowing the denotation rule for ‘Tully’, is knowing
that ‘Tully’ denotes Tully. Knowing the denotation rule for ‘Cicero’ is knowing that ‘Cicero’
denotes Cicero. One can know both those things without knowing that Tully is Cicero.11

That shows, negatively, why it is that someone who grasps the semantic content of Tully’ and
‘Cicero’ may nevertheless fail to know that Tully is Cicero. It does not positively tell us what it
is that he knows if he does know that. But the answer, strictly speaking, is— nothing. Tully is
Cicero’ has no information content and corresponds to no fact; it is not, in Mill’s terminology, a
‘real’ proposition. We shall recurn to the point in 3.2.

A further difficulty is posed by a possibility which Mill does not consider at all: that proper
names may fail to have a denotation. For example if Ossian did not exist, then it will not be true
that ‘Ossian’ denotes Ossian. ‘Ossian’, it seems, can have no semantic content—so what
becomes of the meaning of sentences containing the name ‘Ossian’? The difficulty can be put as
Wittgenstein put it in the Tractatus’. if a sentence in which the name ‘Ossian’ is used is to have a
sense, another sentence must be true—an empirical fact must hold. Wittgenstein’s desire to avoid
this conclusion—that the significance or otherwise of certain (in his case, all) sentences depends
on empirical facts—while holding on to the view that language contains names, led to startling
consequences. But we can accept the conclusion.

My knowledge of the semantic content of ‘TulIy’ is not simply a knowledge of linguistic

conventions: or rather, the convention presupposes an empirical fact (that Tully exists). If we try
to free the convention of that presupposition, what are we left with? Something like this: ‘If
“Tully” denotes, then “‘Tully’ denotes Tully” states its denotation rule.’ I know that just by
virtue of knowing that Tully’ is grammatically a proper name, I also, if I have a mastery of the
role of proper names in the language, grasp the general principles which govern what evidence is
relevant to determining whether an object is denoted by the name. Nevertheless, if Tully’ does
not denote, the sentences in which it is used have no truth-condition, and thus no semantic
content: if the conventions of the language are held constant, no state of affairs has been
specified in which any such sentence is true.

8 Predication, assertion, denial

In the first section of i.iv (‘Of Propositions’) Mill considers ‘the nature and office of the copula’.

It is important that there should be no indistinctness in our conception of the nature and office of
the copula; for confused notions respecting it are among the causes which have spread mysticism
over the field of logic, and perverted its speculations into logomachies. (VII 78)

A very true remark—no less true, in some respects, after Mill wrote, than it was before.
Unfortunately Mill’s explanation of predication is itself confused. His main point is to
distinguish the ‘is’ of predication from the ‘is’ of existence (following, he says, James Mill):

there is an ambiguity in the word is; a word which not only performs the function of the copula
in affirmations, but has also a meaning of its own, in virtue of which it may itself be made the
predicate of a proposition. (VII 78)

Stripping propositions of the existential import introduced by this supposed ambiguity would
produce what is nowadays called a ‘free logic’. (Mill gives ‘A centaur is a fiction of the poets’ as
an example in which the existential import is cancelled by content, and hence as showing that the
copula does not necessarily carry an ‘affirmation of existence’.) He does not follow the idea
through; and he does not explain how to combine it with his own composition rules for the
import of propositions. (For example, what account can be given—on his own view of proper
names—of the supposedly possible meaning of ‘Socrates is just’ in which it carries no
implication of the existence of Socrates?) At any rate the copula is the pure ‘is’ of predication. Its
office is to indicate which name in the proposition is predicated of which. Now the name in
predicate position may be predicated positively or negatively of the subject. Thus we have
positive predication ((All) S is P, Some S is P) and negative predication ((All) S is not P, Some S
is not P). Moreover, ‘affirmed or denied’ suggests that Mill identifies affirmation with positive
predication, and denial with negative predication; and the next section (‘Affirmative and
Negative propositions’) confirms that this is so.

An affirmative proposition is that in which the predicate is affirmed of the subject; as, Caesar is
dead. A negative proposition is that in which the predicate is denied of the subject; as, Caesar is
not dead, The copula, in this last species of proposition consists of the words is not, which are
the signs of negation; is being the sign of affirmation. (VII 80)

Yet as Mill himself says a few pages later, in his rebuttal of Conceptualist theories of logic, ‘All
language recognises a difference between…assent, and what is assented to’; and the difference
between affirmation and what is affirmed is no less plain. To identify predication and affirmation
is to ignore that difference. The key point (made by Frege) is that propositions can occur in
discourse unasserted: as in ‘Is it the case that Caesar is dead?’ or ‘Suppose that Caesar is dead’.
In neither example is it affirmed or denied that Caesar is dead. Yet an unasserted proposition,
occurring in discourse, is still a predication—it is perfectly well defined which name is
predicated of which. Frege’s point is decisive, and a consequent repair to Mill’s account
indispensable.

It does not follow, however, that what results is the orthodox modern view, deriving in essentials
from Frege. On this view, we have a rhree-fold distinction between (i) a predication (‘Caesar is
dead’), which may occur in discourse with or without assertive force; (ii) the negation of that
predicative sentence (‘It is not the case that Caesar is dead’), which is itself a complex sentence
formed from the initial sentence by affixing the negation operator, and which, again, may occur
in discourse with or without assertive force; and (iii) the act of assertion. Distinguishing between
predication and assertion does not in itself force the Fregean treatment of negation. There are two
alternatives. First, negation (‘denial’) might be treated as an act of discourse, on a level with
assertion. Or second, it might be treated as a form of predication, so that there would be two
irreducible kinds of basic or ‘atomic’ sentences: affirmative and negative. (The irreducibility
would, of course, be relative to the particular set of simple names the language happened to
contain, or happened to be analysed as containing.)

The first of these alternatives was put forward by Frank Ramsey in his paper ‘Facts and
Propositions’ (in Ramsey 1978) and entertained, at least, by Wittgenstein in the Tractatus. Some
of Mill’s remarks suggest it, but only because he fails to distinguish predication and assertion. It
is the second view which produces the least overall change to his position. For Mill in effect
gives statements of the import of negative propositions—or (in the light of our discussion) of the
composition rules for two structures of negative predication (VII 108: Mill omits to give the rule
for negative DN-DN and DN-CN predications.) Parallel to (5)—(8) one would have

(19) A sentence of the form DN is not DN is true if and only if the predicate name does not
denote what the subject name denotes.
(20) A sentence of the form DN is not CN is true if and only if whatever the subject name
denotes does not have the attributes connoted by the predicate name.

(21) A sentence of the form CN is not CN is true if and only if whatever has the attributes
connoted by the subject name does not have the attributes connoted by the predicate name.

(22) A sentence of the form Some CN are not CN is true if and only if some objects which have
the attributes connoted by the subject name do not have the attributes connoted by the predicate
name.

If we made the further amendments to Mill’s position suggested on pp. 65, these four rules
would be replaced by two, corresponding to (13) and (14).

However, this treatment of negation, in keeping reasonably close to Mill’s intentions, only
underlines his unquestioning fidelity to the syntactic structures provided by syllogistic theory.
(To be sure, analysis of syllogistic theory was, after all, his main object.) Why not sweep (19)—
(22) away, and just leave one rule instead:

A sentence of the form It is not the case that P is true if and only if the sentence P is false.

That, even on Mill’s terms, is a weighty argument in favour of the Fregean three-fold
classification. And when one abandons Mill’s syllogistic syntax in favour of Fregean syntax, the
argument becomes immeasurably stronger.

9 Simple and compound propositions

Section i.iv.3 deals with ‘simple and complex propositions’, or as Mill prefers to say, ‘compound
propositions’. Compound propositions contain more than one predication; Mill remarks ‘At first
sight this division has an air of absurdity; a solemn distinction of things into one and more than
one; as if we were to divide horses into single horses and teams of horses’ (VII 82). And in fact it
turns out that he does not think there really are any ‘compound propositions’ containing more
than one predication. That is only to be expected, given his assimilation of predication and
affirmation. (For in affirming a genuinely compound proposition, one would make a single
affirmation, but what was affirmed would contain more than one predication.)

Mill begins with conjunction, taking the examples ‘Caesar is dead, and Brutus is alive’, and
‘Caesar is dead, but Brutus is alive’. There are here two assertions’, he says,

and we might as well call a street a complex house, as these two propositions a complex
proposition. It is true that the syncategorematic words ‘and’ and ‘but’ have a meaning; but that
meaning is so far from making the two propositions one, that it adds a third proposition to
them…the words, Caesar is dead and Brutus is alive, are equivalent to these: Caesar is dead;
Brutus is alive; it is desired that the two preceding propositions should be thought of together. If
the words were, Caesar is dead, but Brutus is alive, the sense would be equivalent to the same
three propositions together with a fourth: ‘between the two preceding propositions there exists a
contrast:’ viz. either between the two facts themselves, or between the feelings with which it is
desired that they should be regarded. (VII 82)
We shall not discuss whether the third and fourth propositions do capture what is conveyed when
‘and’ and ‘but’ are used to conjoin sentences. Whether or not they do, it is another question
whether what is thus conveyed is part of the strict meaning of the conjunctive sentence, or
whether it is merely (‘pragmatically’ or ‘conversationally’) implied by the speaker by his choice
of words, and forms no part of the strict meaning of the sentence itself. For the sake of simplicity
in our later discussion of logical inference, we shall assume the latter. Granting that, the Millian
view takes an assertive utterance of ‘Caesar is dead and Brutus is alive’ to be exactly equivalent
in content to the joint assertions ‘Caesar is dead, Brutus is alive’. The assertion of a conjunction
is simply a conjunction of assertions.

But Mill goes on to note that

there is a kind of proposition which, though it contains a plurality of subjects and predicates, and
may be said, in one sense of the word, to consist of several propositions, contains but one
assertion; and its truth does not at all imply that of the simple propositions which compose it. An
example of this is, when the simple propositions are connected by the particle or; as, either A is
B or C is D, or by the particle if; as, A is B if C is D. (VII 82)

Following Whately (1848), Mill defines disjunction in terms of the conditional: “‘Either A is B
or C is D” means, “if A is not B, C is D, and if C is not D, A is B”’ (VII 83). He then proceeds to
define the conditional:

When we say, if the Koran comes from God, Mahomet is the prophet of God, we do not intend to
affirm either that the Koran does come from God, or that Mahomet is really his prophet…. What
is asserted is not the truth of either of the propositions, but the inferability of the one from the
other. What then is the subject, and what the predicate of the hypothetical proposition? The
Koran’ is not the subject of it, nor is ‘Mahomet’ for nothing is affirmed or denied either of the
Koran or of Mahomet. The real subject of the predication is the entire proposition, ‘Mahomet is
the prophet of God,’ and the affirmation is, that this is a legitimate inference from the
proposition, The Koran comes from God’. The subject and predicate, therefore, of an
hypothetical proposition are names of propositions. The subject is some one proposition. The
predicate is a general relative name applicable to propositions; of this form— ‘an inference from
so and so.’ … ‘If A is B, C is D,’ is found to be an abbreviation of the following The proposition
C is D, is a legitimate inference from the proposition A is B'. (VII 83)

What does Mill mean by a ‘legitimate inference’? He cannot mean merely a deductively valid
inference. He could answer that the System of Logic as a whole characterises the notion of
legitimate inference; the object of the System is to establish and codify all legitimate patterns of
inference, and not merely those which belong to what Mill calls ‘the logic of consistency’ —
those which are deductively sound. (And no doubt a conditional should be taken to assert the
legitimacy of an inference only relative to an assumed background of premises.) Or we could say
that an inference is legitimate if it preserves truth—if it is not in fact the case that the conclusion
is false and the premises are true. (This will not legitimate all inferences which are inductively
sound, since inductive soundness may not be truth-preserving.)

A number of questions which Mill does not consider at all must be answered if we are to
generalise this account of negation, conjunction, disjunction and the conditional; we shall need a
general account in chapter 4. Let us take it then that the negation of a conditional—Not (if P then
Q)—means The proposition that Q is not inferable from the proposition that P. The negation of a
conjunction—Not (P and Q) —may be taken to mean The proposition that not Q is inferable
from the proposition—that P, the proposition that not P is inferable from the proposition that Q.
A double negation—Not (not P) — will be taken to mean the same as P.

Conditionals may have compound premises and/or conclusions—e.g. If P and Q then R, or If R

then P and Q. To deal with this let us introduce the notion of a ‘proposition set’. A proposition
set is a set of propositions. It will be said to be true if and only if all its members are true, false if
and only if at least one of its members is false. If P then Q will now mean the proposition set Q
is inferable from the proposition set P. If P and Q then R and S will mean the proposition set R, S
is inferable from the proposition set, P, Q, and so on.

That gives us a reduction of all propositions to atomic positive and negative proposition, and sets
of them—together with propositions about the inferability relations among sets of proposition,
and sets of them.12 What is the point of this? When the reduction is performed all propositions
turn out to be of subject-predicate form. So to each and every affirmation there corresponds
exactly one predication. Since Mill assimilates predication and affirmation, his account of the
connectives may have been motivated by this. But the Fregean point would remain. Even if one
gets rid of ‘compound propositions’ along the lines of Mill, the difference between assertion and
predication stands. ‘Caesar is dead’ may be uttered with assertoric force, or simply as a
supposition, or one can ask, is it the case that Caesar is dead?’ In each case the copula serves its
normal office of indicating which name is predicated of which, but there is an assertion only in
the first case.

There are, however, deeper reasons for Mill’s analysis of the connectives, which still apply even
when one concedes the distinction between predication and assertion. They concern the
epistemology of logic. We shall come to them when we consider the distinction between real and
merely apparent inference in chapter 3, and the justification of deduction in chapter 4.

10 Mill and Frege

Let us now stand back and cast our eye over Mill’s analysis of language as a whole. We have
noted that Mill was not engaged in elaborating a comprehensive and systematic semantic theory
for its own sake.13 To have been interested in any such project he would have had, at the time he
was writing (the 1830s), to have developed the very idea of it for himself. It was rather that he
needed the outlines of a semantic account of names and propositions—that is, of the semantic
properties of terms considered in the light of their contribution to the meaning of sentences - as a
foundation for the ultra-empiricist analysis of deductive inference which we shall study in the
next three chapters.

The pre-conditions for systematic semantic theory emerged with Frege’s Begriffsschrift of 1879,
and in particular his later semantic essays from the 1890s onwards (Frege 1952; 1972; 1977).
How far Frege himself became interested in giving a semantic account of natural language for its
own sake is debatable. But there can be no question that he provided the materials for an analysis
of language which, whether or not one accepts it in its details or even in some of its cardinal
tenets, is in a different league of depth and comprehensiveness from Mill’s.

Mill’s syntax is syllogistic syntax. That determines what his compositional rules must be, and
these exhibit the semantic content of those words which they identify as ‘structural’ in a
sentence. Then there are rules for each ‘content’ word or phrase—for what Mill calls ‘names’—
which either directly specify its denotation, or specify it conditionally by displaying the name’s
connotation. The compositional rules and the denotation rules together yield truth-conditions for
sentences.

Frege broke out of the confines of syllogistic and replaced it by the general logical theory of the
Begriffsschrift. The essential insight was the syntactic analysis of a sentence into an ‘incomplete
expression’ and one or more names, and the associated apparatus of quantification. This was a
momentous development in logic. It was simultaneously a development of great importance for
semantic theory, for it provided a set of ground rules whose light penetrated deep into the
syntactic articulation of natural language.

In this crucial respect Mill’s syllogistically based syntax cannot compare with Frege’s. He lacks
a perspicuous treatment of relational expressions, and of inferences involving them. (‘Relative
names’ are briefly discussed at i.ii.7.) That was a technical advance in logic which came after he
wrote. More lamentable is his failure to distinguish predication and assertion—a distinction for
which he had all the materials in his hands.

Even so, Mill’s semantic model is rich enough to bring home important lessons about the
relationship between the meanings of sentences and the meanings of their constituent words. He
should not be blamed, as he too often has been, for failing to appreciate the importance of
philosophical points which, on the contrary, he particularly emphasised. A comparison between
Mill and Frege on some more general issues of the philosophy of logic will help to bring this out.

In the introduction to The Foundations of Arithmetic (p.xe) Frege stated three principles of
method:

always to separate sharply the psychological from the logical, the subjective from the objective;
never to ask for the meaning of a word in isolation, but only in the context of a proposition;
never to lose sight of the disinction between concept and object.

Consider, first, the second principle (the ‘context principle’). It has been credited with such
talismanic efficacy that any attempt to read it as a definite and limited thesis is risky. But its
essence, surely, is that the primitive concept in semantic analysis is that of sentence-meaning’,
that is to say, the basic notion of meaning for sentence-constituents must be their contribution to
determining the meaning of sentences in which they occur.

Mill’s analysis of language is fully in line with that. This is not particularly surprising—
Bentham, after all, had stressed that the ‘integer of meaning’ is the sentence. The overall
objective of i.i.5 is a theory of ‘the import of propositions’ opposed to Conceptualist and
Nominalist views; and Mill introduces names as part of a ‘first step in the analysis of
Propositions’ (i.i.2, VII 20–3). He sees that, for most names, semantic content is a matter of
connotation and not denotation; and like Frege he also sees the connection between meaning, in
its ordinary sense, understanding and information content. However, Mill also recognises, unlike
Frege, that some names—notably proper names— have no information content, and thus, in his
terms, no connotation. What he fails to see is that a uniform treatment of propositions containing
only non-connotative names can be given within his theory, without breaking its framework and
making any concessions to the Nominalist view. But on that point he is far from being the only
one.

Assessing Mill’s approach in terms of the first of Frege’s principles is a more complex business.
It may be found surprising—if so it says something of our understanding of Mill’s System and its
historical context —that this is a maxim which Mill would have enthusiastically endorsed. He
stressed the irrelevance of psychological questions about the nature of judgement to logical
theory; his semantic analysis is as free of psychologistic views of meaning as it could possibly
be. (On Mill’s alleged psychologism see also the appendix to chapter 5.)

True, Frege’s opposition to ‘psychologism’ was part of an all-out campaign in favour of logical
realism. So it went beyond the specific points with which Mill could have agreed. For Frege,
separating sharply between psychological and logical questions meant more than providing a
cordon sanitaire against what Mill called Conceptualism. His maxim was aimed against the
naturalistic attitude to logic as such. Mill’s way of grounding our rules of reasoning on an appeal
to considered practice could only be rejected by Frege with scorn. He must have considered it
benightedly insensitive to the timeless and immutable third realm in which logic belongs. Still,
that having been said, it remains that in his Foundations of Arithmetic the context principle is
specifically deployed as a weapon against psychologising idealists. And that at least Mill would
have heartily approved.14

Frege’s final dictum refers to the doctrine which he regarded as his main logical insight. In a
1906 note called ‘What may I Regard as the Result of my Work?’ he puts his treatment of
concepts and relations as functions at the head of his list (Frege 1979:184).

We have already noted the separation of assertion and predication, and the treatment of multiple
generality, both of which Frege also lists, as unchallengeable advances of logical insight. His
treatment of incomplete expressions as standing for functions, is much harder to assess. Its
influence on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, and through that on wider issues in the analytic tradition
—in particular on the distinction between what can be said and what can only be shown—was
profound. To a considerable extent, modern ideas about this distinction can be seen as emerging
from the combined influence of Frege’s notion of incompleteness and Kant’s distinction between
the transcendental and the empirical. Yet it is by no means clear that there is any intelligible
problem to which Frege’s doctrine is a solution.

Let us finally compare Frege’s notions of sense and reference with Mill’s notion of connotation
and denotation. The main differences are: for Frege, (a) every constituent expression of a
sentence has both sense and reference, as does the sentence itself; (b) incomplete expressions
refer to incomplete abscract entities; (c) sentences refer to truth-values— which are taken to be
abstract objects; (d) senses are treated as abstract entities as well. Such platonizing was undreamt
of by Mill; certainly it would never have been acceptable to him. Only names can be said to have
denotation or connotation in Mill’s account. He had nothing comparable to Frege’s theory of
indirect reference. A number of indications suggest that had he faced the question in these terms,
he would have taken sentences in oratio obliqua to be predications about propositions—that is,
token sentences. But it would be anachronistic to read any specific view into what he actually
says.

The chief merit of Mill’s analysis of language remains his doctrine of connotation and the way
he deploys it in accounting for the meanings of sentences. Could one then graft Mill’s semantic
concepts onto Frege’s grammar? (Here I am ignoring the treatment of sentential connectives.)
Not without important alterations. Remember that a general name, like a singular name, denotes
each of the objects it is truly predicable of. As soon as we admit Fregean relational expressions
—‘predicates’ with more than one gap—this can no longer hold. Consider—loves—. What this
is ‘truly predicable of is a pair—say, John, Mary: a pair in which the order matters—an ‘ordered
pair’. N-place predicates denote ordered n-tuples— sequences. Sequences are classes of a certain
kind: introducing them into semantics is hardly in line with Mill’s dismissive view of classes and
his thoroughgoing nominalism.15

In what does the essence of the Millian analysis of language lie? Perhaps in three things: its
stress on the primacy of the ‘import of propositions’; its insight into the necessity, for an account
of the import of propositions, of the distinction between denotation and connotation; and finally
and most generally, its naturalistic and nominalist temper. The question of how best to
implement that Millian conception still remains interesting and open.
3
Verbal Propositions and Apparent Inference
1 Agenda
In System of Logic, i.vi, Mill distinguishes between Verbal’ and ‘real’ propositions. His
immediate aim is to apply the distinction to the analysis of classification and definition which
follows in the next two chapters.

Mill’s attitude to traditional Aristotelian theory on these matters is two-sided—a case of his
favourite Coleridgean policy of finding in old traditions valuable truths clothed in misleading
forms. He wants to free the schoolmen’s Aristotelian doctrines of classification and definition
from their essentialist underpinnings. But he accepts that an important truth is contained in their
notion of ‘natural kinds’. ‘Kinds have a real existence in nature’ (i.vii.4) —the problem is to
explain what constitutes a natural kind without relying on essences. Mill rightly sees that the
notion of natural kinds plays an indispensable role in scientific—or indeed any—thinking about
the world; he accepts that that fact calls for explanation from an essence-dispelling radical
empiricist. His positive theory, which is that a natural kind of object, or a natural kind of stuff, is
set apart by ‘an indeterminate multitude of properties not derivable from one another’ (VII 126)
hardly rises to the real issues, though it does raise interesting questions of its own. We shall not
pursue it,1 but we shall examine the negative side of the case, namely, his rejection of essential
properties.

However the distinction between verbal and real propositions (and the corresponding distinction
between real and ‘merely apparent’ inferences which Mill makes in ii.i) also has a larger, indeed,
central, purpose. It will be used to show, as Mill paradoxically puts it, that ‘All deductive
sciences are inductive’ (VII 252)—that is, that logical and mathematical knowledge is empirical
knowledge, grounded ultimately on inductive reasoning.

The strategy involves three steps. First, to show that logic and mathematics contain real
propositions and inferences. Second, to establish the cardinal Millian tenet that no real
proposition or inference is a priori. Third, to explain and vindicate the inductive character of our
logical and mathematical knowledge.

The strategy is implemented by Mill in a sustained argument which occupies the first three books
of the System of Logic. We shall follow it in this and the next three chapters. This chapter
examines and criticises Mill’s way of making the distinction. We shall also consider his remarks
about essentialism and his account of definition. The next chapter considers Mill’s analysis of
syllogistic reasoning, and thus begins our examination of the first step of Mill’s strategy. The
examination continues in chapter 5, in which we shall also consider the second step. The final
step, Mill’s analysis of the character and status of induction, will be considered in chapter 6.

2 Real and verbal propositions

…we may predicate of a name which connotes a variety of attributes, another name which
connotes only one of those attributes, or some smaller number of them than all. In such cases, the
universal affirmative proposition will be true; since whatever possesses the whole of any set of
attributes, must possess any part of that same set. A proposition of this sort, however, conveys no
information to anyone who previously understood the whole meaning of the terms. (VII 112–13)

Mill calls such propositions Verbal’ (VII 115). He mentions, in this passage, only universal
affirmative propositions (All S are P), but the criterion as he states it applies to all affirmative
propositions: particular (Some S are P) and singular (S is P) as well. In fact he means the
distinction between Verbal’ and ‘real’ to apply exhaustively to all propositions. Extending it to
negative propositions containing connotative names (‘No bachelor is married’) poses no
difficulty,2 but the case of propositions containing only non-connotative names will be
considered separately in the next section. They are, specifically, identity propositions whose
names are proper names. Mill thinks they are verbal too, and he has separate reason for thinking
them so. Leaving them aside for the moment, however, the idea is that in a verbal proposition the
attributes connoted by the predicate are a subset of the attributes connoted by the subject. Let us
call this the criterion of ‘connotative inclusion’.

The last sentence of the passage just quoted adds another point: a verbal proposition ‘conveys no
information to anyone who previously understood the whole meaning of the terms’. A few pages
later, Mill remarks that a verbal proposition is one which

asserts of a thing under a particular name, only what is asserted of it in the fact of calling it by
that name; and which therefore either gives no information, or gives it respecting the name, not
the thing. (VII 115)

Real propositions, on the other hand,

predicate of a thing some fact not involved in the signification of the name by which the
proposition speaks of it; some attribute not connoted by that name…. When I am told that all, or
even that some objects, which have certain qualities, or which stand in certain relations, have
also certain other qualities, or stand in certain other relations, I learn from this proposition a new
fact; a fact nor included in my knowledge of the meaning of the words, nor even of the existence
of things answering to the signification of those words. It is this class of propositions only which
are in themselves instructive, or from which any instructive propositions can be inferred. (VII
115–16)

Only real propositions convey information. Verbal propositions are void of genuine information
content. Therein lies the point of the distinction: it gives Mill an essential tool for his
epistemological analysis of logical and mathematical inference. The criterion of connotative
inclusion picks out some propositions as verbal and explains just how it is that they lack content.

All of this is clear. But complications arise from the fact that the assertion of a proposition may
carry existential commitments, and Mill makes pretty heavy weather of clearing them up. He
believes all propositions (universal as well as particular and singular ones) normally carry an
‘implied assertion’ or ‘tacit assumption’ that there exist objects denoted by the subject name (VII
113). A speaker who assertively utters a real proposition, Mill thinks, is doing something: he is
asserting of the, some, or all objects denoted by the subject name that it or they have certain
attributes connoted by the predicate name. In doing so the speaker conveys his belief that there
are such objects; if there are none, he fails to make an assertion. The existence of the objects is
‘really’ implied or presupposed by the assertive utterance of the proposition.

But the assertive utterance of a verbal proposition is a different story. Mill evidently thinks that
someone who assertively utters a proposition like ‘All vixens are foxes’ cannot be understood to
be referring to vixens, and saying of them that they are foxes. He is making no real assertion
about vixens. Rather, he must be understood to be making a semantic assertion about the name
‘vixen’—giving a partial definition of its meaning.

Where the assertive utterance of a verbal proposition has point, then, the point can only be to
define or elucidate the meaning of the subject name, and hence the existence of objects denoted
by the subject name is not ‘really’ implied—that is, it is not a precondition of the utterance
achieving its object.

Nevertheless there remains an apparent implication of existence. It ‘arises’, Mill thinks, ‘from
the ambiguity of the copula’ which apart from indicating predication is also ‘a concrete word
connoting existence’. The implication is no part of the point of the utterance, which is to explain
the meaning of the subject name: ‘we may say, A ghost is a disembodied spirit, without believing
in ghosts’. It is not, therefore, ‘really’ implied by the assertive utterance of the proposition. But
Mill thinks that it is usually conveyed, even when a definition is explicitly given in
metalinguistic form. The two points, that an existential implication is typically conveyed by a
definition, and that it is detachable or cancellable, will be important in Mill’s discussion of
geometry and arithmetic.3

Verbal propositions, then,

do not relate to any matter of fact, in the proper sense of the term, at all, but to the meaning of
names. Since names and their signification are entirely arbitrary, such propositions are not,
strictly speaking, susceptible of truth or falsity, but only of conformity or disconformity to usage
or convention; and all the proof they are capable of, is proof of usage; proof that the words have
been employed by others in the acceptation in which the speaker or writer desires to use them.
(VII 109)

An instructive proposition can be true or false, in the strict sense in which truth is a matter of
correspondence with facts which are not merely conventional facts about the rules of use
governing the language in which we describe the world. Only such propositions, propositions to
which the conception of truth as correspondence has a genuine, non-honorific application, have
information content. A real proposition has genuine truth-conditions; to understand it is to grasp
those rruth-conditions—to grasp what facts must obtain for it to be true.

3 Non-connotative propositions are verbal

Mill briefly mentions in i.vi.1 that propositions ‘of which the subject and predicate are proper
names’ belong to ‘the class of merely verbal propositions’ (VII 110). He takes them to be verbal
because, as we noticed at 2.5, he thinks they assert only that two names have been
conventionally assigned to the same individual. He makes no mention of the obvious point that
they cannot be accounted verbal by the eriterion of connotative inclusion, since neither the
subject name nor the predicate name has connotation.

If Tully is Cicero’ did have a metalinguistic truth-condition, then it ought to be classed a real
proposition conveying information about the meaning of words. It does not have; it has a truth-
condition provided for it as in the account in 2.7. Semantic theory provides a truth-condition for
‘Tully is Cicero’ just as it provides a truth-condition for ‘All vixens are foxes’. Still, it does not
follow that either proposition has information content. The essential point is that there is no fact
in the world to which if true they correspond, nor is understanding them a matter of grasping
how the world must be for them to be true.

But even if we accept that an identity proposition with non-connotative names corresponds to no
fact in the world, should we say that it has no information content? As Frege pointed out, such a
proposition—his example is ‘Hesperus is Phosphorus’—may be a posteriori. It cannot be seen to
be true by reflection on the ‘meanings of words’ alone—as Mill several times says verbal
propositions can be. Discovering that it is true certainly in some way gives us information which
we did not have before.

How can a proposition which corresponds to no fact in the world be a posteriori? There are
really two questions. First, why cannot we know the truth of Tully is Cicero’ just by reflecting on
the meaning of the words? We have answered this question in 2.7. The second question is, in
what way does finding out that it is true give one new information, and what is the new
information given?

To know the semantic content of ‘Tully’ and ‘Cicero’ is to know, respectively, that ‘Tully’
denotes Tully, and that ‘Cicero’ denotes Cicero. Taken by themselves, these two pieces of
semantic knowledge can yield neither the conclusion that Tully is Cicero, nor that Tully’ denotes
what ‘Cicero’ denotes. Now the latter two propositions do not have the same meaning—yet
given either of them, and in combination with the two pieces of semantic knowledge, the other
can be deduced. It is in that way that Tully is Cicero’ conveys the information that Tully’ denotes
what ‘Cicero’ denotes. Nor does it convey any information over and above that—for conversely,
that Tully is Cicero can be inferred from ‘“Tully” denotes what “Cicero” denotes’: a proposition
which is true simply in virtue of human decision and not of how the world is (except in so far as
it requires the existence of the denotation). So in itself it contains no information content, even
though asserting it may give someone new information.

As Mill says,

When we predicate of anything its proper name; when we say, pointing to a man, this is Brown.
or Smith, or pointing to a city, that it is York, we do not, merely by so doing, convey to the
hearer any information about them, except that those are their names. By enabling him to
identify the individuals, we may connect them with information previously possessed by him; by
saying, This is York, we may tell him that it contains the Minster. But this is in virtue of what he
has previously heard concerning York; not by anything implied in the name. (VII 35–6)

4 Real and apparent inference

Let us now jump to ii.i (‘Of Inference, or Reasoning in General’). In section 2 of this chapter
(‘Inferences improperly so-called’) Mill makes a distinction between real and apparent inference
which corresponds to the distinction between real and verbal propositions. An inference is
‘apparent, not real’ when ‘the proposition ostensibly inferred from another, appears on analysis
to be merely a repetition of the same, or part of the same, assertion, which was contained in the
first’ (VII 158).

In such cases there is not really any inference; there is in the conclusion no new truth, nothing
but what was already asserted in the premises, and obvious to whoever apprehends them. The
fact asserted in the conclusion is either the very same fact, or part of the fact, asserted in the
original proposition. This follows from our previous analysis of the Import of Propositions. (VII
160)

To simplify terminology, and bring the two distinctions more closely into line, I shall talk of real
and ‘verbal’ rather than real and ‘apparent’ inference. Consider the inference, P, …, Pn, therefore
C; and the conditional, if P1&, …, &P then C. We shall call the inference the corresponding
inference of the conditional, and the conditional, the corresponding conditional of the inference.
One might take the notion of a verbal proposition defined in terms of the criterion of connotative
inclusion, as basic, and define verbal inference as the corresponding inference of a verbal
conditional. Or one might go in the opposite direction, taking the notion of a verbal inference as
basic, and defining a verbal proposition as the corresponding conditional of a verbal inference.

The latter option is preferable. Consider the conditional ‘If Caesar is dead then Caesar is dead’.
Mill would obviously have regarded this as a purely verbal proposition. But according to his
view of conditionals, it is a proposition about propositions: The proposition, “Caesar is dead”, is
inferable from the proposition, “Caesar is dead’”. To apply the criterion of connotative inclusion,
we would have to show that inferability from the proposition, ‘Caesar is dead’ is one of the
attributes connoted by the name The proposition, “Caesar is dead’”. Instead of taking on such
complications, consider the corresponding inference: ‘Caesar is dead, therefore Caesar is dead’.
Obviously this is a merely apparent, or verbal, inference: the proposition ‘ostensibly inferred’ is
‘merely a repetition’ of the premise.

Let us now generalise the definition of a verbal inference. An inference is verbal if and only if
the set of propositions constituting the conclusion is a subset of the set of propositions
constituting the premises. Next, we define verbal propositions in terms of verbal inference. In the
first place, the corresponding conditional of a verbal inference is a verbal proposition. Consider
the proposition ‘If Sheba is a vixen, then Sheba is a fox’. The corresponding inference is ‘Sheba
is a vixen, therefore Sheba is a fox’. Analysis of the connotation of ‘vixen’ reduces ‘Sheba is a
vixen’ to the conjunction ‘Sheba is female and Sheba is a fox’. Thus, by Mill’s account of
conjunction, the propositions constituting the premise are: ‘Sheba is female’, ‘Sheba is a fox’.
The inference is revealed as verbal, hence also the corresponding conditional. In general,
determining whether an inference is verbal or real will call for an analysis of connotations, and
an analysis of ‘compound propositions’ in terms of Mill’s definition of the connectives.

Consider next the proposition, ‘All vixens are foxes’. Generality introduces new issues which
will be more fully treated in the next chapter. As will be seen, Mill does not have a consistent
view of general statements. However, it is comparible with one of the lines he takes to treat ‘All
vixens are foxes’ as meaning ‘Any proposition of the form “x is a fox” is inferable from the
corresponding proposition of the form “x is a vixen’”. The proposition “Sheba is a fox” is
inferable from the proposition “Sheba is a vixen’” and is a substitution-instance of this schema.
We can now stipulate that a universal proposition is verbal if and only if all its substitution
instances are verbal.4

Our amended definition of verbal propositions and verbal inference still excludes propositions
whose constituent names are non-connotative (‘Hesperus is Phosphorus’) from the verbal
category. Nor does it include such inferences as ‘Hesperus is a planet, Hesperus is Phosphorus,
therefore Phosphorus is a planet’ as verbal. Mill would rightly deny that either the proposition or
the inference was real. The truth of the proposition depends on no matter of fact; and the
inference advances to no proposition whose truth depends on any facts other than those on which
the truth of the premises depends.

But it was Wittgenstein, in the Tractatus, who found a way of making these points stand out
clearly. He shows how a language could be constructed containing no sign of identity, but in
which any information content expressible in our language (and not metalinguistic —about our
language) could be expressed.5 In such a reconstructed language, identity propositions would
drop out, and the distinction between real and verbal propositions and inferences would
successfully pick out as real the intended class of propositions and inferences—those which are
genuinely ‘instructive’. In the chapters that follow we shall ignore the case of identity
propositions except where there is specific reason to take it into account.

5 Mill’s ‘verbal’ and Kant’s ‘analytic’

In a footnote added to the 1862 edition of the System Mill says that his distinction between
verbal and real propositions

corresponds to that which is drawn by Kant and other metaphysicians between what they term
analytic and synthetic, judgements; the former being those which can be evolved from the
meaning of the terms used. (VII 116)6

Kant’s definition of ‘analytic’ (Critique A6–7, B10–11) is given for affirmative judgements. (He
says that ‘the subsequent application to negative judgements’ is ‘easily made’.) A judgement is
analytic if the concept of the predicate is ‘(covertly) contained’ in the concept of the subject;
‘adding nothing through the predicate to the concept of the subject, but merely breaking it up
into those constituent concepts that have all along been thought in it’. Mill’s definition in terms
of connotative inclusion is obviously analogous, though Mill, as we have seen, rejects Kant’s
Conceptualist terminology, of judgements and of one concept being contained in another.

Elsewhere in the Critique however (A151, B190–1) Kant puts forward what is in fact a different
account of analytic judgements:

…if the judgement is analytic, whether negative or affirmative, its truth can always be adequately
known in accordance with the principle of contradiction…. The principle of contradiction must
therefore be recognised as being the universal and completely sufficient principle of all analytic
knowledge.

Although Kant’s meaning is not completely clear this appears to define an analytic judgement as
one from whose negation a contradiction can be deduced. Obviously, ‘deduced’ here means
‘deduced in accordance with the principles of formal logic’. And so in effect we have: an
analytic judgement is one which can be formally deduced from purely logical principles, with the
help, where necessary, of definitions of terms. It is in this broader sense that the term ‘analytic’
has come to be most commonly used.

To understand Mill’s overall view of logic and mathematics, it is viral to see that his ‘verbal’
does not correspond to ‘analytic’ as used in this wider and commoner sense. The essential point
about a verbal proposition or inference—one which is ‘analytic’ in the narrow sense—is that it is
epistemologically innocuous, and if necessary can be made by analysis to be perspicuously so.
There can be no problem, for the most radical empiricist, about how we can know it to be true or
sound. Or rather, we cannot be said to have genuine knowledge here, since no real proposition or
inference is involved. No assertion as to real facts is made, no move from one fact to another is
effected. ‘A priori’ knowledge of this kind is not, strictly speaking, knowledge at all. To show,
by semantic analysis, that a proposition or inference is verbal is to dissolve any perplexity about
how it could be a priori—to exhibit the triviality of its claim to that status.

In the broader sense of ‘analytic’, it is a definitional truism that the principles of pure logic are
‘analytic’. But there is no epistemological moral to be drawn from that. To show that a
proposition is analytic in this wide sense—that it is reducible to logic—does not eliminate
perplexities about its a priori status unless the a priori status of logic itself has been shown to be
unproblematic.

It cannot be assumed that the propositions and inferences of formal logic are exclusively verbal.
One of the great merits of the System is that Mill sees that crucial point clearly.7 To establish
whether logic is verbal requires an analysis of the import of logical propositions. For Mill that
meant an ‘Analysis of the Syllogism’, to which he turns in the chapter which follows the one in
which he distinguishes real from verbal inferences (ii.ii, ‘Of Ratiocination, or Syllogism’). In the
remainder of Book ii he makes many false turnings, and many diversions through irrelevant,
though often interesting, territory. But the path’s eventual destination is clear. Real, and not
merely verbal, propositions lie at the heart of logic. The laws of excluded middle and of
contradiction are real propositions: hence, since no real proposition can be a priori, the evidence
for them must be inductive.

When we assess Mill’s success in carrying through his programme we should keep three
elements of it separate: there are the tools Mill develops for the semantic analysis of logic (the
doctrine of denotation and connotation, the semantic account of sentence connectives and the
distinction between real and verbal propositions and inferences); his conception of logic, which
sees logical theory in terms of the traditional theory of the syllogism; and lastly, his actual
success in applying his own tools to the analysis of logic as he understood it. Mill’s conception
of logical theory is pre-Fregean, which is as much as to say, pre-modern. His analysis of
syllogistic theory (ii.ii-iii) badly lacks rigour in applying his own semantic concepts, and is
pulled in too many directions by too many aims. But that in no way shows that essentially
Millian tools— those examined in this chapter and the previous one—cannot be applied to
modern logical theory, and applied more carefully and single-mindedly than Mill applied them.
And it does not show that doing so will not lead to precisely the same Millian result.

6 Essence
For the moment, however, we must return to vi.i, where the distinction between real and verbal
propositions is introduced in the context of an attack on essentialism.

Essentialism distinguishes ‘essential’ from ‘accidental’ properties of things: a distinction much

stressed, says Mill, by ‘the schoolmen’ and ‘almost all metaphysicians prior to Locke’ (VII 110).
The essence of a thing, according to these metaphysicians, ‘was that without which the thing
could neither be, nor be conceived to be. Thus, rationality was of the essence of man, because
without rationality man could not be conceived to exist’ (VII 110). Properties which were not of
the essence of a thing, i.e. without which the thing could be, were called accidents.
Correspondingly, an ‘essential proposition’ was one in which only essential properties of things
were predicated of those things, and an ‘accidental proposition’ was one in which some of the
properties predicated were accidental.

To many philosophers—until recently—Mill’s criticism of this doctrine would probably have

seemed definitive. It is worth quoting at length.

…man cannot be conceived without rationality. But though man cannot, a being may be
conceived exactly like a man in all points except that one quality, and those others which are the
conditions or consequences of it. All therefore which is really true in the assertion that man
cannot be conceived without rationality, is only, that if he had not rationality, he would not be
reputed a man. There is no impossibility in conceiving the thing, nor, for aught we know, in its
existing: the impossibility is in the conventions of language, which will not allow the thing, even
if it exist, to be called by the name which is reserved for rational beings. Rationality, in short, is
involved in the meaning of the word man: is one of the attributes connoted by the name. The
essence of man, simply means the whole of the attributes connoted by the word; and any one of
those attributes taken singly, is an essential property of man. (VII 110–11)

Thus objects of a given class have an essential property only inasmuch as the class is defined by
a connotative name; so that the question, what are the essential properties of an object, can only
be answered relative to the connotation of some term by which it is described. This, as Mill says,
is in effect Locke’s doctrine of nominal essence:

it was reserved for Locke at the end of the seventeenth century, to convince philosophers that the
supposed essences of classes were merely the signification of their names; nor, among the signal
services which his writings rendered to philosophy, was there one more needful or more
valuable. (VII 112)

‘Essential propositions’ are simply verbal propositions. Given Mill’s view that proper names
have no connotation, this has a corollary: no proposition of which the subject is a proper name is
an essential proposition. Or—as Mill thinks, equivalently—‘individuals have no essences’ (VII
119).
Why did ‘these reflections, so easy to us’ not occur to the schoolmen? Because, Mill thinks, the
doctrine of essences rested on a ‘theory’ according to which there exist ‘general substances’
named by some, but not all, general terms—for example by the term ‘gold’. Gold, the general
substance, was thought to have properties, and to inhere in any chunk of gold; its presence,
together with its properties, constituting the chunk a chunk of gold (VII 111). The theory of
general substances, as Mill recognises in the next chapter (i.vii), does contain an insight; namely,
that some classes of things constitute ‘real kinds’, and others do not. The pieces of gold scattered
about the universe constitute a kind, the objects I picked up on the beach last Sunday do not. Mill
undertakes to explain without metaphysical notions what makes a class of objects a ‘kind’, along
the lines we noted briefly in section 1. But the idea of real essence he brusquely dismisses as
verbal sorcery: ‘Metaphysics, that fertile field of delusion propagated by language, does not
afford a more signal instance of such delusion’ (VII 127).

He is too brusque. Allow, for the sake of argument, that ‘Man is rational’ is a verbal proposition.
Then that certainly shows one sense in which a man cannot be conceived who is not rational. But
Mill’s point— that a being may be conceived exactly like a man in everything except rationality
—does not show that no other inconceivability is involved.

There is a sense—the one noted by Mill—in which one cannot conceive that the mother of
Casanova should have been childless. Since ‘The mother of Casanova had a child’ is a verbal
proposition, no circumstances can be conceived which would make it false. Suppose however
that someone says, The mother of Casanova might have had no children’. We would not take
him to mean that circumstances may be imagined which would make the proposition, The
mother of Casanova had a child’, false. He means that the individual—the person who in fact was
the mother of Casanova—might have had no children, and thus not been a mother at all. (She
might have died before child-bearing age, become a nun, etc.) In schoolmen’s language, we
would take him to be saying that a certain property of Casanova’s mother—that of being a
mother—is an accidental and not an essential property; and that is quite compatible with holding
the proposition ‘The mother of Casanova had a child’ to be verbal.

It is obvious that Casanova’s mother might not have had children. But it is not so obvious that,
for example, she might not have been human, or might never have been conscious, or might have
had different parents. So these (unlike ‘being a mother’) look like essential properties of
Casanova’s mother.

To identify the notion of an essential property we must, then, distinguish between saying that a
proposition is necessarily true, and saying, of an individual, that that individual necessarily has a
property: that is, that the property is an essential property of the individual. The essentialist need
not believe that the proposition, ‘man is rational’, is verbal—he need not be interested in that
question at all. What he is saying is that each individual man has the essential property of being
rational: that it is necessarily true, of each individual man, that that individual is rational. Mill
says that there could, for all we know, be a being exactly like a man in all points except
rationality. But this does not in itself show, of any actually existing man, that he could have
existed without rationality.

To say that rationality is an essential property of man is thus not at all the same as saying that
‘Man is rational’ is a verbal proposition. Attempting to ‘make sense’ of the former claim by
interpreting it in terms of the latter only befogs a philosophical issue.

Of course, if Mill accepted these points about what is meant by an ‘essential property’ he could
still deny that there are any. Compare the supposed metaphysical distinction between
‘necessarily’ and ‘contingently’ true propositions. Mill specifically asserts that the distinction is
quite empty and groundless; he uses the word ‘necessary’ not ‘in its metaphysical but in its
popular sense’ (see p. 130). But he grasps well enough what some philosophers understand by
the alleged metaphysical distinction, and he does not at all deny the psychological fact,
concerning what we do or do not find conceivable, which leads them to believe that certain
propositions (for example ‘No two straight lines can enclose a space’) are ‘necessarily’ true. He
thinks himself obliged to give an account of the psychological fact which will prevent it from
being used in support of the metaphysical claim.

Essentialism requires a similar response. Mill’s reinterpretation of essence as ‘nominal essence’

stops him from seeing that by concealing the real strength of the essentialist case.8 But how the
empiricist’s response should run in detail is no easy question. The distinction between essence
and accident in some way turns on our general criteria of identity for objects, kinds and stuffs.
These criteria however are not in any normal sense of the word conventional; a deep-seated
psychological inevitability resides in our conceptualising the world as we do. The Millian
empiricist must identify these psychological facts and then somehow cut off the support they
seem to give to the essentialist’s metaphysical claim. A much more detailed inquiry than Mill
provides would be necessary— into our conceptual scheme of substance, individual, kind and
attribute —before one could say anything sensible about how that might be done.

7 Defining a name
We turn to i.viii, ‘Of Definition’. ‘A Definition is, a proposition declaratory of the meaning of a
word’ (VII 133). So proper names, which have no meaning, ‘cannot be defined’; on the other
hand, ‘In the case of connotative names, the meaning… is the connotation; and the definition of a
connotative name, the proposition which declares its connotation’ (VII 133).9 A connotative
name may connote a plurality of attributes, or just one. Where it connotes a plurality, the
definition spells out the attributes connoted, and may be called (Mill takes the term from
Condillac) an analysis;

To resolve any complex whole into the elements of which it is compounded, is the meaning of
analysis; and this we do when we replace one word which connotes a set of attributes
collectively, by two or more which connote the same attributes singly, or in smaller groups. (VII
134)

Analysable names are semantically complex. 10 Obviously there must also be semantically
simple connotative names, names which admit of no semantic analysis. These, one might
assume, would be the ones which connote a single attribute, such as ‘white’. Confusingly, Mill
does not say that. ‘It might seem’, he says (VII 135), that the meaning of such names can be
declared only by giving a synonym, where one exists, or in the form ‘“white” connotes the
attribute whiteness’. But he thinks that their meaning can be further analysed: one can ‘analyse’
or ‘define’ the attribute which they connote.
The rest of i.viii.2 compounds the confusion. What does Mill mean by analysing the attribute
itself? If the ‘single’ attribute connoted is genuinely simple, any proposed further ‘definition’ of
it cannot be a matter of semantic analysis. If connotation is of attributes, the analysis of
connotations can go no further than a specification of the simple attributes connoted. Is it then
some other kind of analysis that is involved? The shift from ‘definition’ as a matter of declaring
the attributes connoted by a name (i.viii.1) to talk of defining or analysing the attributes
themselves (i.viii.2) suggests as much.

There is something important in the idea that a discontinuity is involved here, a shift from one
kind or level of analysis to another. We will come to it in the next section. But at first sight Mill
himself appears to see no such discontinuity. He does think a further semantic analysis of ‘white’
can be given: ‘Whiteness may be defined, the power or property of exciting the sensation of
white’ (VII 136).

The only names’, he goes on,

which are unsusceptible of definition, because their meaning is unsusceptible of analysis, are the
names of the single feelings themselves. These are in the same condition as proper names. They
are not, indeed, like proper names, unmeaning; for the words sensation of white signify, that the
sensation which I so denominate, resembles other sensations which I remember to have had
before, and to have called by that name. But as we have no words by which to recall those
former sensations, except the very word which we seek to define, or some other which, being
exactly synonymous with it, requires definition as much, words cannot unfold the signification of
this class of names; and we are obliged to make a direct appeal to the personal experience of the
individual whom we address. (VII 136)

It turns out that we only arrive at a truly unanalysable, or semantically simple, class of names
when we get to the names of sensations. But what immediately looks implausible here is the
direction of semantic analysis: names denoting physical objects in terms of names denoting
private experience. Even if one accepts that the proposition ‘An object is white if and only if it
has the power of exciting the sensation of white’ is verbal, it still does not follow that ‘white’
should be defined in terms of ‘sensation of white’. It may be the other way round: ‘sensation of
white’ may be definable as ‘sensation which white objects characteristically have the power of
exciting’. That ‘sensation of white’, rather than ‘white’, is the semantically complex name, is
evident enough from its surface structure. It is only because he endorses an epistemological
doctrine—that we are immediately conscious only of our experience—that Mill takes the
opposite view.

But we also learn something here about Mill’s model of how a semantically simple connotative
name is understood. Such a name has meaning, unlike a proper name, because it is predicable of
objects in virtue of some resemblance between them. Mill does not mean that This is a sensation
of white’ literally means This resembles sensations S1, S2,.—.’. The point is that the resemblance
is what justifies predicating the name in new cases. In learning a simple connotative name one is
introduced to a sample of items which are all denoted by the name, one grasps the criterion, or
directly ascertainable common feature, on the basis of which the name is applicable to all of
them, and one is then in a position to predicate the name of new cases. The resemblance must be
a directly recognisable one—that is why it must involve a resemblance of sensations. To grasp
the meaning of a simple name is to grasp that phenomenal resemblance or common feature in
virtue of which it is applicable to new cases.

8 The foundation of an attribute

So far we have discovered no genuine difference of level or kind between the semantic analysis
of names and the ‘analysis of attributes’. Analysing the attribute whiteness seems to mean
nothing more than giving a further semantic analysis of ‘white’. But we cannot leave matters
there. Deeper Issues are raised in Mill’s discussion; they lead into borderlands of psychology,
metaphysics and the analysis of language which are still being explored. Mill says,

we must remember that every attribute is grounded on some fact or phenomenon, from which,
and which alone, it derives its meaning. To that fact or phenomenon…the foundation of the
attribute, we must, therefore, have recourse for its definition. (VII 135)

The ‘definition’ will involve ‘dissecting the fact or phenomenon (whether of perception or of
internal consciousness) which is the foundation of the attribute’ (VII 136).

In an earlier chapter (i.iii), Mill distinguishes substances and attributes, and recognises—not as a
final metaphysical verdict, but as representing the common view—two kinds of substances:
bodies and minds. He takes it for granted that ‘knowledge is phenomenal’—that the only
knowledge of substances and their attributes which we can have is knowledge of how they
appear to us. Moreover he takes the doctrine in a subjective vein—as referring not to
appearances in the objective sense (‘the look of the table as one comes into the room’), but to
subjective experience. Our immediate knowledge is only of our own state of consciousness. The
significance of this doctrine, and its tenability, will be considered further in chapter 7; Mill took
it to be uncontroversial—as indeed it was when he wrote.

A consequence of the doctrine, in the subjectivist version in which Mill holds it, is that any
assertion about substances and attributes must be epistemologically grounded on the states of
experience which are all I directly know. That being so, ‘when we ascribe whiteness to any
substance, as, for instance, snow; when we say that snow has the quality whiteness, what do we
really assert?’ (VII 65) Mill considers two possible answers. Each of them accepts that I am
justified in saying that snow is present if and only if I experience ‘a certain assemblage or series
of sensations’; and am justified in saying that it is white, if and only if the sensation of white is in
a certain way interposed in that series. But the first answer infers from this that the content of the
assertion, ‘snow is white’, can be no more than that the sensation of white is structurally
interposed in that way, in that kind of assemblage, or series of sensations. The other answer does
not:

It may be said, that it is true we know nothing of sensible objects, except the sensations they
excite in us; that the fact of our receiving from snow the particular sensation which is called a
sensation of white, is the ground on which we ascribe to that substance the quality whiteness; the
sole proof of its possessing that quality. But because one thing may be the sole evidence of the
existence of another thing, it does not follow that the two are one and the same. The attribute
whiteness (it may be said) is not the fact of receiving the sensation, but something in the object
itself; a power inherent in it; something in virtue of which the object produces the sensation. And
when we affirm that snow possesses the attribute whiteness, we do not merely assert that the
presence of snow produces in us that sensation, but that it does so through, and by reason of, that
power or quality. (VII 65)

A little later (VII 67)—

I shall say…that the quality of whiteness ascribed to the object snow, is grounded on its exciting
in us the sensation of white; and… shall term the sensation of white the foundation of the quality
whiteness.

Mill thinks that he does not need to choose between the two answers ‘for the purposes of logic’
(VII 65). The question whether physical attributes in some way reduce to their foundations, or
are merely epistemically grounded on them, is one of ‘metaphysics’. But he makes it clear that
his own answer is the first. He thinks, that is to say, that what we ‘really assert’ when we make a
statement about the physical world can be analysed phenomenalistically. And yet we have just
seen him, in i.viii.2, defining whiteness as the property or power of producing the sensation of
white.

There need be no contradiction here, so long as what we have in mind when we talk of ‘what is
really asserted’ by using a sentence diverges from, or goes deeper than, a merely semantic
account of its meaning—as determined by the denotation and connotation of its names in the
manner of chapter 2. A familiar problem about philosophical reduction arises here. The strict
meaning of what we say often seems to transcend what there is for us to mean. On the one hand,
the initially obvious semantic analysis of a given area of discourse—it might be mathematics or
ethics or statements about the physical world or causal statements and counterfactuals—has us
referring to certain types of objects and attributing to them certain properties and relations. On
the other hand, philosophical reflection suggests that we could not know that any such objects
and attributes exist. Or it suggests that they could not exist, or even that the very idea of them is
unintelligible.

If the plausible semantic analysis of what we mean by our assertions is correct, we are presented
with a paradox—for it then looks as if none of our assertions in the particular area of discourse
being considered could, strictly speaking, be known to be true, or be true, or even be intelligible.
(Hume’s analysis of causation is the classic case.) And yet we appear to get along, and succeed
in conveying something by our assertions, something which can be unproblematically assessed
as true or false.

In this situation there are three basic reactions. One is to revise the language game. Another is to
rewrite the semantic analysis. Another is to leave both language game and semantic analysis
alone, but to go to another level—a non-reductive philosophical analysis which nevertheless
brings out the ‘real content’ of talking about such objects and attributing properties to them. In
favour of this last option one might say that the task of semantic analysis is to represent
accurately the rules which do in fact govern our language and which determine what we strictly
mean. Further inquiry into the metaphysical tenability of what we actually say or the foundations
or ultimate groundings of our discourse belongs to another department of philosophy. This view
is the one Mill tries to hold to in the System of Logic. He tries to insulate philosophical analysis
of the ‘foundation’ of attributes from the strictly semantic business proper to a treatise on logic.
Is such insulation possible? And if it is, then what is one doing when one analyses the
foundations or grounds of attribution? Mill certainly finds it hard to stick to the insulating
strategy. There is a constant undertow in his thinking towards direct semantic phenomenalism.
One factor which pushes him in this direction can be removed without too much dislocation. It is
the dual role played by his notion of an attribute, in metaphysics and in semantic analysis. His
real metaphysical view (chapter 7) is that there are only states of consciousness. We have, he
thinks, no ground whatsoever to postulate that there are substances which causally affect our
states of consciousness, but exist independently of them. But if there are no substances, or
powers inhering in substances, and if a name which has meaning has it by dint of connoting
attributes, attributes cannot be identified with powers inhering in substances. Either language has
no meaning, or attributes must be identified in some way with their experiential foundation. Thus
the metaphysical view, that there are only states of consciouness, entails, via the doctrine that the
meaning of a name is the attributes it connotes, a phenomenalistic reduction of the meaning of all
propositions.

We have however already seen reason to relieve the concept of an attribute of the semantic role
which it plays in Mill’s analysis of language, and a way of doing so. (See 2.6.) So some of the
undertow can be removed. But if Mill’s analysis of the experiential foundations of attributes and
the propositions in which they feature is not to be regarded as semantic analysis, then what is its
point?

His question is epistemological: what information can a proposition — ‘Snow is white’—convey

to us: what knowledge can it really give us? He thinks that the information it gives us can at
bottom only be, that any total experiential state which includes a foundation for attribution of
‘snow’ (‘This is snow’) will also include a foundation for attribution of ‘white’ (This is white’).

It is not that the meaning of ‘snow is white’ is literally expressible in some such form as
‘Whenever an assemblage of actual and possible sensations S1, …, Sn occurs, the sensation of
white is interposed in the senses, actually or potentially’. But there is a conception of meaning
which would still allow one to see Mill’s probing into the experiential foundations of attribution
as analysis of meaning in another sense—an analysis, as one might say, of the cognitive role of
connotative names and sentences, rather than of their strict semantic content.

I refer to this conception of meaning in 1.2 and 7.4 as the ‘epistemic conception’. It is
foreshadowed at a number of points in Mill’s philosophy (which is by no means to say that he
formulates it or even works with it inexplicitly—he certainly does not). All of them are points
connected with his marked pragmatic interest in analysing what assertions do—what difference
they make to the habits of inference with which we encounter new experience. Mill often argues
from the grounds which justify one in asserting a proposition to its ‘real’ content. One can see
this as a matter of clarifying the proposition’s cognitive role; clarifying, that is, what
understanding of the proposition consists in. For what, after all, is it to understand the semantic
content of a sentence? I understand it just in so far as it has a potential role in my thinking. Or in
other words: I understand a sentence when I grasp its cognitive role—when I grasp what states of
experience warrant its assertion. This line of thought, generalised, leads to a conception of
meaning in which understanding a sentence consists in grasping its assertion conditions. And that
opens up a perspective from which Mill’s strategy of insulating the semantic analysis of
propositions from an investigation of their experiential foundations makes sense.
9 ‘Nominalism’ and Mill’s nominalism
The opposition, and also the interplay, between what Mill calls ‘Nominalism’ and his own views
on language and logic have been a recurrent theme of the last two chapters; we have reached a
convenient point for taking stock of what he understands by it. It involves, in fact, two views,
which Mill thinks related. The first is a view of names which seeks ‘for their meaning
exclusively in what they denote’ (VII 91); the second is the view that the propositions and
inferences of logic and mathematics are purely verbal. Mill’s rejection of the first view has been
studied in chapter 2. His rejection of the second will be considered in the next two chapters. But
why does he think them connected?

If we took seriously the Nominalist’s compositional rules as stated in (c) on p.60, then
Nominalism would entail that all propositions are ‘verbal’: not however in the sense defined in
the present chapter, but in the sense that they would all be metalinguistic. Their truth or
otherwise would rest on linguistic convention. And of course if that was true of all propositions it
would be true of logical and mathematical propositions in particular. On the other hand once we
are clear that compositional rules do not state sentence-meanings but show them (p. 60), the
consequence that all propositions are verbal in the sense of being about language will no longer
flow from the thesis that the semantic content of names is determined by their denotation. But it
would still be true, on that thesis, that propositions were empty of content and true by convention
in the sense in which identity propositions containing only proper names are.

Nominalism about mathematics would then be the doctrine that all mathematical propositions are
non-connotative identities. This empties mathematical propositions of content, but only because
it makes all propositions empty of content. Nor does it explain the aprioricity of logic and
mathematics. ‘Tully is Cicero’ is, as we saw, void of cognitive content. It is ‘true by convention’
in the sense that it is true by nothing else—it corresponds to no fact. But it is not a priori.

A third form of Nominalism is more plausible than either of these. It holds that logical and
mathematical propositions are verbal (or ‘analytic’): not in the way non-connotative identities
are, but in the sense defined by the criterion of connotative inclusion. This would explain the
aprioricity of logic and mathematics, and it too would hold that logical and mathematical
propositions are true by convention—in the sense of being true in virtue of nothing else. Mill
opposes this third view by arguing that analysis shows that logic and mathematics contain real
propositions.

In the current sense of the word, however, Mill was himself a nominalist. He rejects real
essences and he rejects abstract entities. But we must be careful not to give his nominalism too
up-to-date a flavour.

In the Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy, ‘Nominalism’ and ‘Conceptualism’

reappear as views about the signification of general names. ‘Realism’ holds that ‘General Names
are the names of General Things’ (IX 301) which have an immaterial existence outside the mind.
General Things or Universals are existents, but they are not individuals; they are denoted, not
connoted by general names, so that the copula stands for an obscure relation of ‘participation’
which is like, but not like, the relation of identity. Mill wastes no time on this view: ‘Realism
being no longer extant, nor likely to be revived, the contest at present is between Nominalism
and Conceptualism’ (IX 302). According to the Nominalists, a name ‘is general, if it is applied in
the same acceptation to a plurality of things; but every one of the things is individual’, while the
Conceptualists held that

generality is not an attribute solely of names, but also of thoughts. External objects indeed are all
individual, but to every general name corresponds a General Notion, called by Locke and others
an Abstract Idea. General Names are the names of these Abstract Ideas. (IX 302)

Mill’s discussion of Abstract Ideas in the Examination slavishly follows Berkeley’s, contains all
Berkeley’s errors, and vitiates his analysis of judgement, reasoning and thought. But this is
irrelevant at present. He clearly sees that whether or not the idea of a ‘General Notion’ is
required in the psychology of thought, it is not required in the semantic analysis of language.
General Names do not denote General Notions, any more than they denote General Things. As
the positions are stated in the Examination, then, Mill’s view is Nominalist. His improvement on
traditional Nominalism is his recognition that most names do not merely denote individual
things, but also connote attributes, and that this connotation constitutes their meaning.

We have seen however (2.6) that Mill’s concept of an attribute cannot play the role he wants to
give it in his analysis of language. So the analysis must be amended in one of two ways.
‘Attributes’ may be treated as abstract intensional entities. This would mean abandoning Mill’s
nominalism for a form of ‘Realism’, though it would not be the Realism Mill considers,
according to which general terms denote abstract universals. Or one can try to show how the
essential insight of Mill’s doctrine of connotation can be captured, without treating connotation
as a relation between names and something else. This was the approach taken in chapter 2.

But even then another kind of abstract individual seems indispensable in the semantic analysis of
mathematics and science, and indeed of all relational predications (2.10), namely, classes or sets.
What Mill says about classes is partly incoherent,11 but one thing is clear: the idea that classes
might be conceived of as abstract individuals simply does not occur to him. Not that that is
surprising—classes as extensionally determined abstract objects had not, when he wrote, been
dreamt of. The development of set theory, the elucidation of the central place of the concept of a
set in the foundations of mathematics, the discovery of set-theoretic paradoxes, the resulting idea
that not every predicate determines a set, all of these things lay a long way in the future. Before
them, modern ‘platonism’, which differs from Plato’s in treating its abstract entities as
particulars, could hardly have made an impact.

Reading Mill’s account of geometry or arithmetic today, it becomes evident (chapter 5) that its
weaknesses arise not from his empiricism but from his rather primitive nominalism, and from his
account of inductive logic. I am not saying that nominalism cannot be defended, and I am not
endorsing the Quinean view that one can be a naturalistic empiricist and at the same time a realist
about sets. But Mill had no opportunity to get to know the real strength of his enemy. I am sure
that he would have stuck to his nominalism if he had. Various strategies would have been
available to him.12 But we cannot hope to learn from Mill which one a nominalist should choose,
or with what prospects of success.
4
The Justification of Deduction
The ultimate purpose of thought is to guide our action, and…on any occasion an action depends
only on beliefs or degrees of belief in singular propositions. (Frank Ramsey 1978:141)

1 Introductory
Having completed his analysis of language, and distinguished between real and verbal (or
‘merely apparent’) propositions and inferences, Mill is ready to broach the major task of the
System of Logic—analysing the rules of reasoning, and answering what he considers a
fundamental question: how reasoning can lead to new knowledge.

Among real inferences he distinguishes between ‘ratiocinations’ and ‘inductions’ —deductive

and inductive inferences. Deduction occupies the remainder of Book ii, induction is the topic of
Book iii. Since Mill identifies deduction with syllogistic reasoning, the question becomes,
‘whether, and in what sense’ the syllogism is ‘a real process of Reasoning or Inference’ (VII
163).

But at this point the argument disappears into a thicket. The confusion—of reader and author—
arises because Mill has more than one goal in mind and does not distinguish them. There is the
grand strategy of showing that logic and mathematics contain real propositions and inferences,
and that no real propositions or inferences are a priori. It culminates in inductive accounts of
geometry, of arithmetic, and finally of the laws of thought, in the last three chapters of Book ii.
But Mill also pursues another question, which on the face of it belongs not to the semantic
analysis of deductive inference but to its psychology. He wants to explain the role of ‘general
propositions’ in reasoning, and to show that ‘all inference is from particulars to particulars’.
When he discusses the ‘Functions, and Logical Value of the Syllogism’ in ii.iii, this takes over
and commandeers arguments which properly belong to the grand strategy. There are, it is true,
underlying connections between the two lines of argument, but that only makes it more difficult
to disentangle the distinct threads in what he says.

Mill persists in treating deductive reasoning as though it consisted exclusively of deducing ‘from
general propositions previously admitted, other propositions equally or less general’ (VII 166).
This is perhaps the main reason why the two themes get so badly entangled. So instead of turning
directly to Mill’s ‘analysis of the syllogism’ let us first combine the distinction he makes
between real and verbal inferences with his account of the meaning of sentence connectives
(2.9), and apply these tools to the analysis of inferences in propositional logic. This will help us
to keep the two themes separate. And it also has the advantage of detaching the central theses of
Mill’s philosophy of logic from the syllogistic logical theory in terms of which they are mainly
expressed.

2 Analysis of rules of deductive inference

Propositional logic is the logic of inferences involving the words ‘not’, ‘and’, ‘or’ and ‘if’. A
partitioning of such inferences into those which are merely apparent and those which are real
must flow from Mill’s account of their meaning. Some inferences will be verbal. For example,
any case of what is called ‘and-introduction’: given A and given B, infer A and B, and ‘and-
elimination’: given A and B infer A and infer B, will be verbal; involving on Mill’s account in the
first case, an inference from the premise set (A, B) to the conclusion set (A, B) and in the latter,
from the premise set (A, B) to the conclusion set (A) or the conclusion set (B). Again, if not-not A
is taken to mean A, then inference from one to the other will be verbal. Other verbal inferences
can be read off from the definitions of ‘or’ and ‘if’. For example the inference from A or B to If
not A then B will be verbal, in view of the definition of ‘or’. More subtly, what is called
‘conditional proof’, that is, the move from a demonstration that B is inferable from A on certain
assumptions, to the conclusion that If A then B is inferable from those assumptions alone, will be
licensed as verbal given Mill’s view of the meaning of If A then B.

Other inferences, however, will be real. Consider, for example, modus tollens inferences:
inferences from not-B and If A then B to not-B. The conclusion, not-B, does not appear in the
premise set (not-A, B is inferable from A). The same also goes for ‘or-introduction’, the inference
from A to A or B, as reflection on the Millian definition of A or B will show.1 When Mill’s
distinction between real and verbal inferences is combined with his analysis of the connectives
and applied to propositional logic we are forced to conclude that the most fundamental branch of
logic contains real propositions and inferences.

Remember, however, that the point of distinguishing verbal from real propositions is
epistemological. Verbal propositions are to be those whose aprioricity poses no philosophical
problem; on the other hand, Mill will argue that all real propositions are a posteriori. Verbal
propositions are true by virtue of meanings of words alone. The criterion of connotative
inclusion certainly shows us a way in which that can be so. But it may be objected that there can
be other ways—that this criterion makes the notion of a ‘verbal’ proposition too narrow to cover
all propositions which we recognise as empty of genuine content, because true solely by virtue of
meanings of words. We have considered the case of non-connotative identity propositions and
inferences in the logic of identity. May there not be a way, overlooked by Mill, of showing that
propositional inferences are also all verbal?

On Mill’s conception, the definition of a word gives a rule for eliminating any sentence in which
the word occurs in favour of a synonymous sentence in primitive notation. But there are other
ways of giving the meanings of the connectives. For example, one can fix the meaning of ‘or’ by
laying down the role it plays in inferences. We stipulate that the meaning of ‘or’ is to be such as
to make the following propositions true:

(i) If A is true then A or B is true.

(ii) If B is true then A or B is true.

(iii) If A or B is true, and C is inferable from each of A and B, then C is true.

The fact that we have directly stipulated that (i)-(iii) are to be true suffices to show, it might now
be argued, that they are true solely in virtue of linguistic convention. If so, then their material-
mode correlates (for example if A then A or B) will be empty of content.

There is a fallacy in this argument: it does not follow simply from the fact that (i)-(iii) have been
stipulated as true that they are true by linguistic convention alone. Suppose, by way of analogy,
that I explain the meaning of a new word, ‘treen’, in part by stipulating that the following
sentences are to be true:

(iv) If ‘X is grass’ is true then ‘X is treen’ is true.

(v) If “X is treen’ ‘is true then ‘X is coloured’ is true.

We might then conclude that ‘grass is treen’ and ‘treen is a colour’ are a priori because true by
meanings of words alone. We could infer, by a priori reasoning, that grass is coloured (granting
it to be a priori that inferability is transitive). What has led us astray is the assumption that,
because (iv) and (y) are stipulated, they must be true in virtue of meaning of words alone. On the
contrary, the stipulations depend on an a posteriori fact—namely, that grass is coloured. If grass
was colourless they would be futile. We do not create the fact that grass is coloured by our own
linguistic fiat: the stipulations presuppose the fact and cannot bring it into existence.2 Thus
suppose we replace (iv) by

(vi) If ‘X is a prime number’ is true, then ‘X is treen’ is true.

These stipulations—(v) and (vi) —are null and void. They fix no meaning for ‘treen’. The reason
they fail is that the conditionals which they attempt to prescribe as true are not truth-preserving.
When we explain the meaning of a word by stipulating the inferences which introduce it and
which eliminate it we presuppose that those inferences are truth-preserving. The stipulation does
nothing to tell us whether the truths which are assumed in that presupposition are a priori or a
posteriori.

The case of pure logic is no different. (i) to (iii) are effective in fixing the meaning of ‘or’, but
not because they are true by linguistic convention alone. It is presupposed that they are truth-
preserving; linguistic convention does not make them so. The fact that they can be used to
display the meaning of ‘or’ does not show their material-mode equivalents are empty of content,
any more than the fact that (iv) and (v) can be used to display the meaning of ‘treen’ shows that
their material-mode equivalents are so. Connotative inclusion, and non-connotative identity,
remain as the only unchallengeable moulds for a genuinely empty proposition. They define the
class of propositions which have no cognitive content; which do not depend on how the world is.

But what then should we say of modus ponens: A, If A then B, therefore B? We seem forced to
conclude that it is a real inference. The premises assert that A, and that B is inferable from A, but
that is not to assert B. Yet even the most radical empiricist—one who, like Mill, is prepared to
accept that the law of contradiction is an a posteriori inductive truth—is likely to baulk at the
notion that the inference from these premises to the conclusion that B is a posteriori.

If we believe that A, and that B is inferable from A, we are committed to accepting B as a matter
of mere self-consistency. Yet the fact remains that no analysis of these premises can show them
to include the proposition B. Should we then accept that If A then B is a genuine proposition,
capable of featuring as a premise, at all? Mill’s analysis of it as stating a rule of inference is
suggestive. But on this analysis the statement is still a proposition, whose truth or falsity must
depend on its correspondence or otherwise with the facts. We could go further, and abandon the
idea that endorsing If A then B constitutes a genuine assertion. We could treat it as expressing an
attitude—a standing intention to accept that B, if one has grounds for accepting that A. On this
view the only genuine premise in modus ponens reasoning is A. From it there is a real inference
to B. But to accept that inference, given one's standing intention, is, precisely, a matter of self-
consistency: if I reject it I act against my expressed intention. We shall return to this analysis of
modus ponens when we discuss Mill's claim that all inference is from particulars to particulars.

3 Mill's analysis of the syllogism

Now for Mill's own account of deductive reasoning, which - since he identifies deductive with
syllogistic reasoning — consists in an analysis of the syllogism.

He begins by pointing out that all syllogisms which do not already fall under one of the four
moods of the first figure, can be reduced to these, by rules which allow for the 'conversion' of
one or both premises. He takes it for granted that all these conversions represent purely verbal
transformations, that is, that the inference from a proposition to its converted form or vice versa
is purely verbal. He is wrong to do so — for example, the reduction of All C is B, Some A is not
B, therefore Some A is not C, which is in the fourth mood of the second figure, to the third mood
of the first figure, All B is C, Some A is B, therefore Some A is C, is not purely verbal. It requires
conversion of All C is B to All not-B is not-C; and this involves an appeal to reductio ad
absurdum, and thus to the truth of the law of contradiction, which according to Mill is a real
proposition.

But let us ignore the point for the moment, in order to follow the train of Mill's thought. If all
syllogisms are merely verbal transformations of syllogisms in the first figure, then the question.
becomes, what is 'the ground of the legitimacy' of these four moods?

Mill arranges them in two forms, as follows:

Every B is C No B is C

therefore —

And he asks, on what 'fundamental axiom' the validity of these two forms of inference, and thus
of 'ratiocination' in general, rests.

It is a desperately unclear question. Why should one think that there is some one axiom on which
all syllogising rests; and in what sense is it supposed to rest on it? There is however a traditional
suggestion which Mill has in mind and wants to reject. It is that the fundamental axiom is the
dictum de omni et nullo, which Mill states thus:

whatever can be affirmed (or denied) of a class, may be affirmed (or denied) of everything
included in the class. (VII 174)

This he dismisses as a mere ‘identical proposition’, which can at best be looked upon as
explaining ‘in a circuitous and periphrastic manner, the meaning of the word class’ (VII 175).
His target is, again, the Nominalist view of the import of propositions. For when this is combined
with the view that the dictum is the fundamental axiom, ‘startling conclusions’ follow: namely,

that the process of arriving at new truths by reasoning consists in the mere substitution of one set
of arbitrary signs for another. (VII 176)

Mill’s remarks about this position are, to say the least, confusing. It is clear enough that he
himself thinks that we do arrive, by reasoning, at new truths. He gives the point a good deal of
rhetorical emphasis, and rightly takes it as the fundamental fact to be explained in any
philosophical analysis of ratiocination. But it is not at all clear what the position he is criticising
is supposed to be. This is not entirely Mill’s fault—remember again that there are two ways in
which a proposition may be empty of content. It may be verbal by the criterion of connotative
inclusion, or it may be composed of non-connotative names. Corresponding to the first
possibility is the view that in a syllogistic inference the conclusion can always be shown on
analysis to occur in the premises. This is the view Mill is mainly concerned with, and which he
wrestles with at length in the following chapter. But the view of syllogistic inference Mill is here
rejecting would correspond, rather, to the second possibility. Since Mill does not think there can
be non-connotative general names, he is, not surprisingly, unable to give any clear account of
what this second position on syllogistic inference amounts to: there simply is no clear position.

One can get an idea of what a philosopher who thought along these lines might have in mind, by
comparing the syllogistic inference, All A is B, All B is C, therefore All A is C, with the
following: a is b, b is c, therefore a is c; where ‘a’, ‘b’ and ‘c’ are proper names. In the latter
case, given Mill’s view of proper names, the inference is merely apparent and would disappear
altogether in a perspicuous primitive notation. Its ‘axiom’ might be said to be: ‘Whatever is
identical with a thing, is identical with whatever is identical with that thing; But that proposition
would on Mill’s view be a completely empty one.

In something like this way, Mill thinks, the Nominalist view of propositions would make
syllogistic inference merely apparent, not real. Given that the Nominalist takes all general names
to function in the manner of ‘Brod’ in 2.4, the dictum would be some generalisation of the
principle, ‘Whatever can be affirmed or denied of a Brod, can be affirmed or denied of Tom,
Dick and Harry’. It would be a ‘merely identical’, empty proposition. The culminating point of
this philosophy’ would indeed be expressible, as he says, in Condillac’s aphorism ‘that a science
is nothing, or scarcely anything, but une langue bien faite’ (VII 176). It would omit precisely
what is fruitful in a generalisation—the discovery of a real connection between attributes.

Having rejected the dictum de omni as the fundamental axiom, Mill could have thrown out the
idea that syllogistic logic rests on some ‘fundamental axiom’ altogether. That would have been
clear-cut. He does not: he searches for an alternative of his own. What he finds is not one
principle but two, ‘strikingly resembling the axioms of mathematics’ (VII 178), and respectively
underwriting affirmative and negative syllogisms. The first is, Things which coexist with the
same thing, coexist with one another.’ The second is, ‘A thing which coexists with another thing,
with which other a third thing does not coexist, is not coexistent with that third thing.’ One can
only confess that these ‘axioms’ are dismally obscure: as so often, Mill is misled by ‘his failure
to realize the incompatibility of a good new insight with a bad old tradition’.3 He does not pause
to think hard about what it means to talk about a ‘fundamental axiom’ for the syllogism. Only
one note sounds out insistently: the axiom or axioms, whatever exactly it or they are, are real
propositions, ‘treating of facts and not conventions.

What does Mill mean by this? His tortuous dealings with the syllogism wrap up its meaning in
impenetrable Victorian cloud. But if we hold to the thread grasped in the last chapter, there is
only one thing that it can mean. It ought to mean that syllogistic inferences are real and not
merely apparent, in that their condusion is not asserted in their premises. This should be the full
extent of Mill’s radical empiricism.

4 Is the syllogism a petitio principii?

Chapter ii.iii, the chapter which immediately follows this discussion of syllogistic inference,
deals with ‘the Functions and Logical Value of the Syllogism’; and its first section is entitled, is
the syllogism a petitio principii?’ Mill has just analysed the syllogism and concluded that the
fundamental ‘axioms’ on which syllogistic inference rests are real propositions. If this means that
syllogistic inferences lead to the discovery of new truth, one naturally expects that Mill in this
section intends to administer a coup de grace to the opposite view—by forcing home the point
that if syllogistic inference was purely verbal, if its conclusion was always contained in its
premises, all syllogisms would be a mere petitio principii. That would be a pincer movement:
one section being a direct semantic analysis of the syllogism, showing that syllogistic inferences
are ‘real’, the other being a negative argument, pointing out that if they were not, syllogistic
inference could advance to no new knowledge.

At first sight, this appears to be exactly Mill’s strategy. ‘We have shown’, he begins,

what are the fundamental axioms on which [the syllogism’s] probative force or conclusiveness
depends. We have now to inquire, whether the syllogistic process…is, or is not, a process of
inference, a progress from the known to the unknown: a means of coming to a knowledge of
something which we did not know before.

Logicians have been remarkably unanimous in their mode of answering this question. It is
universally acknowledged that a syllogism is vicious if there be anything more in the conclusion
than was assumed in the premises. But this is, in fact, to say, that nothing ever was, or can be,
proved by syllogism which was not known, or assumed to be known, before. Is ratiocination,
then, not a process of inference? And is the syllogism, to which the word reasoning has so often
been represented to be exclusively appropriate, not really entitled to be called reasoning at all?
This seems an inevitable consequence of the doctrine, admitted by all writers on the subject, that
a syllogism can prove no more than is involved in the premises. (VII 183)

And he adds:

Logicians have persisted in representing the syllogism as a process of inference or proof; though
none of them has cleared up the difficulty which arises from the inconsistency between that
assertion, and the principle, that if there be anything in the conclusion which was not already in
the premises, the argument is vicious. (VII 185)

All of this is admirably forceful and clear.

‘Proof’, as Mill uses it in the last passage, signifies ‘a means of coming by reasoning to a
knowledge of something which we did not know before’. A fallacy is a failed proof: it may be a
formal fallacy in relying on an invalid argument, or a demonstrative fallacy in relying on a
formally valid argument which, however, can yield no new knowledge. The fallacy of petitio
principii belongs to the latter category. Mill’s objection to the orthodox justification of deduction
is that if it is taken seriously, it makes all deductively valid reasoning demonstratively fallacious.

The objection can be encapsulated in the following argument (I will call it the ‘semantic
argument’):

I In a formally valid argument, the conclusion is asserted in the premises.

Therefore

II If a person knows the premises of a formally valid argument to be true, he ipso facto knows
the conclusion to be true.

The unchallengeable fact, however, is that new knowledge is acquired by deductive reasoning.
So either I, or the inference from I to II, must be rejected.

On first thoughts it seems obvious that we should reject the inference. When a person knows the
premises, the conclusion is ‘somehow’ contained in what he knows, even though he cannot be
said to know that it is. But on closer scrutiny this comfortable compromise is not at all easy to
sustain. The trouble is, that in rejecting the inference from I to II, one puts into doubt the
meaning of I.

The inference depends on the following principle:

What a person who knows that P knows, is what is asserted by an assertoric use of the sentence
‘P’.

To give up this principle is to throw into obscurity the relationship between sentence meaning
and understanding. One can of course introduce some new way of explaining what is ‘asserted’
by a sentence. Yet the point of I is after all epistemological. It is meant to justify deductive
inference, and explain its a priori character by showing that no real step is involved in the
transition from premises to conclusion. In interpreting I in some new sense, which no longer
validates the inference to II, one simultaneously erodes the epistemological point of putting it
forward at all. If the conclusion is not part of what I already knew, then how can my transition to
it be a priori? If it is part of what I already knew, then how can it be enlightening?

The difficulty is deep indeed. It is in fact insurmountable.4 Muddying the waters is of no avail, as
Mill rightly insists:

It is impossible to attach any serious scientific value to such a mere salvo, as the distinction
drawn between being involved by implication in the premises and being directly asserted in
them. When Archbishop Whately says that the object of reasoning is merely to expand and
unfold the assertions wrapt up, as it were, and implied in those with which we set out, and to
bring a person to perceive and acknowledge the full force of that which he has admitted, he does
not, I think, meet the real difficulty requiring to be explained, namely, how it happens that a
science like geometry can be all ‘wrapt up‘in a few definitions and axioms. (VII 185)

This last passage naturally leads one to expect that Mill will proceed to deny that geometry is
thus wrapped up, and in general, that deductive inference is merely verbal; that he will instead
triumphantly unite the semantic argument with his own previous analysis of the syllogism, and
conclude that deductive reasoning does—and must— contain real inferences to propositions not
asserted in the premises. And that conclusion does indeed surface in the subsequent chapters on
demonstrative sciences. But in chapter ii.iii, the chapter in which it should have been clearly
brought out and boldly stressed, it never manages to make an appearance at all. Mill’s failure to
think the issues through at this turning point is perhaps the most important missed opportunity in
the System of Logic. It overshadows a vital step in his naturalistic analysis of reasoning just at the
moment when it should have been highlighted. What goes wrong?

5 General propositions have no probative force of their own

The trouble is that Mill cherishes another project, that of demystifying the role of general
propositions in reasoning. With a polemicist’s zeal he cannot resist seizing the petitio difficulty,
and inappositely mobilising it in its support. That tempts him into making a tactical concession:

It must be granted that in every syllogism, considered as an argument to prove the conclusion,
there is a petitio principii. (VII 184, my emphasis)

That—given his immediately preceding argument that the ‘fundamental axioms’ on which
syllogistic reasoning rests are real propositions—comes as a startlingly unexpected gambit. It
seems to be just what Mill’s larger strategy on logic should not grant. Only the qualifying clause
which I have italicised offers hope of finding underlying consistency in Mill’s position. The hope
does indeed turn out to have some justification, but it will take some preliminary discussion
before we can find a way of bringing out at all clearly what that justification is.

One important thesis Mill wants to develop is that general propositions have no probative force
of their own. He means that there is no conclusion established deductively from premises among
which general propositions are included, which could not be established, with equal probability,
by a directly inductive argument from singular propositions alone. However, Mill conflates this
thesis with another one, which sounds similar but is really distinct—that ‘all inference is from
particulars to particulars’. The issues underlying this latter thesis are by no means unrelated to
Mill’s larger strategy; they are linked by his radical empiricism about deductive logic, and
ultimately centre on the question of how a radical empiricist should handle the ‘inference’ from a
general proposition to one of its instances: for example, from ‘All men are mortal’ to ‘Socrates is
mortal’. It is only when we consider this question that we shall see the point of Mill’s careful
qualification: that syllogistic reasoning is a petitio when considered as an argument to prove the
conclusion.

The three ingredients—the claim that general propositions have no autonomous probative force,
the thesis that all inference is from particulars to particulars, and finally the larger argument
concerning the a posteriori status of logic, can and must be disentangled. We shall examine and
separate the first two in this section and in 4.6 and 4.7. To do so we must temporarily release the
thread of the larger argument. We shall come back to it in 4.8.

The moment Mill embarks on the defence of his thesis about general propositions he narrows the
focus down to one very special kind of case; syllogisms in the first mood of the first figure, with
singular minor premise and conclusion—‘All men are mortal, Socrates is a man, therefore
Socrates is mortal’. He wants to show that the general proposition here has no autonomous
probative force. He wrongly identifies that point as the reason for thinking that they cannot be
said to function as premises in the syllogism. He tries to bolster the claim that they are not
premises by arguing that, if they were, then the conclusion would be literally asserted in the
premises—and that lands him in a nest of difficulties and inconsistencies. But a good deal of
what Mill has to say about the role of general beliefs in reasoning stands in its own right,
independently of his misuse of the petitio argument, and we shall consider that side of it first.

The reason Mill himself gives for thinking that syllogism, ‘considered as an argument to prove
the conclusion’, is a petitio, does not in fact establish that at all. It is

that we cannot be assured of the mortality of all men, unless we are already certain of the
mortality of every individual man: that if it be still doubtful whether Socrates, or any other
individual we choose to name, be mortal or not, the same degree of uncertainty must hang over
the assertion, All men are mortal: that the general principle, instead of being given as evidence of
the particular case, cannot itself be taken as true without exception, until every shadow of doubt
which could affect any case comprised with it, is dispelled by evidence aliunde; and then what
remains for the syllogism to prove? (VII 184)

This argument must be distinguished from the semantic argument which proceeded from I to II,
and turned on the conceptual connection between what is expressed by a sentence, and the
content of a piece of knowledge which can be stated by the sentence. I will call it the ‘epistemic
argument’, since it rests on a claim about the routes by which we can raise our rational
confidence in a belief. The argument is this.

III One cannot rationally have less confidence that a particular man is mortal than that all men
are mortal.
Therefore

IV An argument from the premises ‘Socrates is a man’ and ‘All men are mortal’ cannot
rationally raise one’s confidence that Socrates is mortal.

The argument, if valid, would show that syllogistic reasoning cannot yield new knowledge, or
even an increased degree of confidence in its conclusion, and in that sense cannot be a ‘proof’ of
it. But it would not show that the syllogism is a strict petitio. But in any case the argument is not
valid.

The premise is true: if I am consistent, my degree of belief that all men are mortal cannot exceed
my degree of belief that Socrates is mortal (supposing I am certain that Socrates is a man). But
the conclusion only follows if one assumes that any process of reasoning which can raise my
confidence in the proposition that all men are mortal, has to include a specific and separate
assessment of the probability that Socrates is a man and is mortal. Suppose, on the other hand,
that there is a sound method of reasoning which can rationally raise my confidence that all men
are mortal, without requiring me to consider the particular case of Socrates. Then from the
general proposition, together with my knowledge that Socrates is a man, I can infer that Socrates
is mortal: and thus, without circularity, I become more confident of Socrates’ mortality.

There obviously is such a method of reasoning—induction. I can argue inductively from cases
other than that of Socrates to ‘All men are mortal’, and hence via the link specified in III, from
‘Socrates is a man’ to ‘Socrates is mortal’. So IV does not follow from III.

In short the argument is unsound, and even if sound would not establish that general propositions
cannot be treated as genuine premises in syllogistic reasoning. But why does Mill want this
strong conclusion anyway? There are reasons, as we shall see. But they have nothing to do with
the epistemic role of general propositions in inference. If Mill only wants to argue for the
epistemological point that general statements have no autonomous probative force, he does not
need to bring in the strong conclusion. All he needs to show is that an argument which goes via
the general proposition ‘men are mortal’, from the premise ‘Socrates is a man’, cannot raise
one’s confidence that Socrates is mortal to any greater degree than a corresponding argument, by
which it could in principle be replaced, and which does not go via the general proposition at all.
This is perhaps close to IV, but it is not the same.

Consider two distinct paths of reasoning from ‘Socrates is a man’ to ‘Socrates is mortal’: they
are shown in Figures 4.1 and 4.2. Mill makes a number of points about these two paths of
reasoning. First, path B is just as legitimate as path A. Second, path A gives one no stronger
reason to believe that Socrates is mortal than path B does.
Figure 4.1 Path A

If from our experience of John, Thomas, etc, who once were living, but are now dead, we are
entitled to conclude that all human beings are mortal, we might surely without any logical
inconsequence have concluded at once from these instances that the Duke of Wellington is
mortal. The mortality of John, Thomas, and others, is, after all, the whole evidence we have for
the mortality of the Duke of Wellington. Not one iota is added to the proof by interpolating a
general proposition. Since the individual cases are all the evidence we can possess, evidence
which no logical form into which we choose to throw it can make greater than it is; and since
that evidence is either sufficient in itself, or if insufficient for the one purpose, cannot be
sufficient for the other; I am unable to see why we should be
Figure 4.2 Path B

forbidden to take the shortest cut from these sufficient premises to the conclusion, and
constrained to travel the ‘high priori road’, by the arbitrary fiat of logicians. (VII 187)

A third point is that all knowledge of general propositions is based on knowledge of particular
cases. There is no ‘intuitive knowledge’ of general truths. ‘…all which man can observe are
individual cases. From these all general truths must be drawn…’ (VII 186). And finally there is
the psychological point that we frequently do reason in fashion B rather than fashion A: ‘Not
only may we reason from particulars to particulars without passing through generals, but we
perpetually do so reason. All our earliest inferences are of this nature’ (VII 188).

The first three points combine to show, Mill thinks, that general statements, and with them the
syllogistic forms, are not indispensable epistemologically. The fourth shows that they are, at least
in some cases, dispensable psychologically. Mill illustrates this last point at copious length. The
aim is to drive home the full force of his problem: what is the actual function and value of the
syllogism? What does it do?

6 Demystifying deduction
Since observation is frequently separated from inference, either temporally in one person’s
thinking, or socially, between one person’s observation and another person’s inference, the first
function of general propositions is to record observations in summary form. Thus we have to
distinguish between ‘two parts of the process of philosophising {i.e. reasoning], the inferring
part, and the registering part’, and avoid the mistake of

ascribing to the latter the functions of the former. The mistake is that of referring a person to his
own notes for the origin of his knowledge, If a person is asked a question, and is at the moment
unable to answer it, he may refresh his memory by turning to a memorandum which he carries
about with him. But if he were asked, how the fact came to his knowledge, he would scarcely
answer, because it was set down in his notebook: unless the book was written, like the Koran,
with a quill from the wing of the angel Gabriel. (VII 186)

So the first reason for having path A, that is, general propositions and syllogistic inference, at our
disposal is that it makes it easier to separate the two parts of reasoning;

by that valuable contrivance of language which enables us to speak of many as if they were one,
[we] record all that we have observed, together with all that we infer from our observations, in
one concise expression; and have thus only one proposition, instead of an endless number, to
remember or to communicate. The results of many observations and inferences, and instructions
for making innumerable inferences in unforeseen cases, are compressed into that one short
sentence. (VII 187)

The general proposition ‘All men are mortal’ serves to record in summary form the full inductive
implications of other people’s or one’s own past observations of particular cases of men who
were mortal. This

memorandum reminds us, that from evidence, more or less carefully weighed, it formerly
appeared that a certain attribute might be inferred wherever we perceive a certain mark. The
proposition, All men are mortal…shows that we have had experience from which we thought it
followed that the attributes connoted by the term man, are a mark of mortality. (VII 194–5)

The rules of syllogism are rules for deciphering such records: ‘a question, as the Germans
express it, of hermeneutics. The operation is not a process of inference, but a process of
interpretation’ (VII 194).

General propositions and syllogistic reasoning from them have a second, closely related,
function. It is to serve as a reflective test of inductive inference from particular observations,
whether or not that inference is separated by temporal or social distance from the observations.
The detour through syllogism provides an explicit measure of the inductive power of a set of
data.

Every induction…which suffices to prove one fact, proves an indefinite multitude of facts: the
experience which justifies a single prediction must be such as will suffice to bear out a general
theorem. This theorem it is extremely important to ascertain and declare, in its broadest form of
generality; and thus to place before our minds, in its full extent, the whole of what our evidence
must prove if it proves anything.

This throwing of the whole body of possible inferences from a given set of particulars, into one
general expression operates as a security for their being just inferences…. (VII 196)

An induction from particulars to generals, followed by a syllogistic process from those generals
to other particulars, is a form in which we may always state our reasonings, if we please. It is not
a form in which we must reason, but it is a form in which we may reason, and into which it is
indispensable to throw our reasoning, when there is any doubt of its validity…. (VII 198)

Finally, general propositions have a third function: they facilitate ‘trains of reasoning’ (ii.iv, ‘Of
Trains of Reasoning, and Deductive Sciences’, 2 and 3). Mill has in mind the inference of a
singular conclusion from a singular minor premise by way of a chain of general propositions; see
Figure 4.3. Again, path C has no greater probative force than path D; see Figure 4.4.

Figure 4.3 Path C

Figure 4.4 Path D

It is, however, plainly a psychological fact about our reasoning abilities that path D is far harder
to handle than path C is. The explicit interpolation of general propositions serves to ‘mechanise’
or codify, and thus facilitate, thought. (An inference from generals to generals is simply a higher-
order rationalisation of one’s memoranda, or streamlining of the thinking mechanism.)

The role of general propositions in reasoning is curiously similar to the role of money in
production and exchange.5 In an economy, goods— things which have use—are produced and
exchanged. Economic value is the power to purchase goods; money is (i) a store of value, (ii) a
measure of value, (iii) a means of exchanging one good for another. In reasoning, singular
propositions are observationally established and inferred. Epistemic value is the power to infer
singular propositions; general propositions are (i) a store of value, (ii) a measure of value (of
what one’s singular beliefs are worth), (iii) a means of inferring one singular proposition from
another. Observation and inference can take place to a limited extent without general
propositions, just as production and exchange can take place to a limited extent without money.

The use of the syllogism is in truth no other than the use of general propositions in reasoning.
We can reason without them; in simple and obvious cases we habitually do so…. But…if we
made no general propositions, few persons would get much beyond those simple inferences
which are drawn by the more intelligent of the brutes. Though not necessary to reasoning,
general propositions are necessary to any considerable progress in reasoning. (VII 199)

Compare the Principles of Political Economy:

Great as the difference would be between a country with money, and a country altogether
without it, it would be one of convenience…. (117)

There cannot…be intrinsically a more insignificant thing, in the economy of society, than
money; except in the character of a contrivance for sparing time and labour. It is a machine for
doing quickly and commodiously, what would be done, though less quickly and commodiously,
without it: and like many other kinds of machinery, it only exerts a distinct and independent
influence of its own when it gets out of order. (III 506)

Demystifying deduction is showing that general propositions have no intrinsic significance or

value of their own: no autonomous inferential power. They allow one to infer no singular
conclusions which could not have been inferred by direct induction from singular premises
alone. The ultimate object of monetary transactions is the consumption of goods. The ultimate
object of syllogistic transactions is assent to, or denial of, singular propositions.

There is, however, a profound distortion in Mill’s picture of the role of general propositions. It
centres on his failure to take into account the fact that general propositions are not merely
inferred by enumerative induction from particular facts; they can also be hypothesised—singly,
or in systems of theory—to explain those facts. This type of reasoning— ‘inference to the best
explanation’—will be discussed in chapter 6. If it is accepted as legitimate, it makes an important
difference to Mill’s claim that all knowledge of general propositions is based on knowledge of
particular cases. For, while it remains true that ‘all which man can observe are individual cases’,
there is now a new route by which general propositions can be written into our system of
reasoning about the world, and expand its inferential power. General propositions which have
been inferred from observed data by inference to the best explanation are not direct
generalisations of those data. They cannot be eliminated in favour of reasoning of either type B
or type D. And that isolates precisely what is important and philosophically problematic about
them.

It is like the shift from an economy in which there is money but no banks, to one in which a
banking system can create money by issuing promissory notes and lending more than it owes.
The creation of money (where productive resources are under-used) can have a real effect in
increasing production and thus purchasing power, and need not be merely inflationary. Equally,
the creation of theories can have a real effect in increasing our inferential power. Theories are not
merely ‘inflationary’. That is an important fact in the debate between the scientific realist and the
Millian inductivist. We shall take up the issue again in chapters 6 and 7.

7 All inference is from particulars to particulars

The thesis that general propositions have no autonomous probative force turns out to be
unexpectedly connected with Mill’s inductivism. But it is at any rate an understandable claim,
and its relation to Mill’s psychological interest in the actual role of general propositions in
thought is clear. And it is perfectly consistent with Mill’s overall view that deductive reasoning
involves real inference.

Lying behind it, however, is a claim which is in many ways deeper, and certainly obscurer: the
claim that all inference is from particulars to particulars. It is only because he wants to make this
claim that Mill makes the suprising concession that

in every syllogism, considered as an argument to prove the conclusion, there is a petitio principii.

Mill’s analysis of the role of general propositions suggests an interpretation of their meaning. To
say that all As are Bs is to assert the soundness of an inference rule; it is to say that a proposition
of the form X is B is inferable from a proposition of the form X is A. That encapsulates the point
that general propositions are ‘memoranda’ of the inferential power accumulated by past
observations—licences to infer. Thus, for example, Mill says ‘the major is an affirmation of the
sufficiency of the evidence on which the conclusion rests. That it is so, is the very essence of my
own theory’ and adds that this is just what distinguishes path B from path A: The conclusion in
an induction is inferred from the evidence itself, and not from a recognition of the sufficiency of
the evidence’ whereas in a deduction ‘we make the testing operation a part of the reasoning
process itself’ (VII 204–5).

Why then does Mill make the concession? Consider the syllogism, ‘Socrates is a man, All men
are mortal, therefore Socrates is mortal’. How can one show this to be a verbal inference? First
one needs to take ‘All men are mortal’ as asserting the conjunction of its instances. And second,
one needs, it seems, to take a very simple-minded view of what its instances are: they will have
to be of the form, ‘a is mortal’, where the subject term is a singular name of a man. Then the
proposition ‘Socrates is mortal’ becomes an instance, and hence turns out to be asserted in the
premises.

Mill is constantly tempted to the simple-minded view, but it betrays his own more fruitful
conception of the import of general propositions. There is, moreover, a crushingly obvious
refutation of it: it would imply that the syllogism remains valid even when the minor premise—
‘Socrates is a man’— is struck out. Among those who made the point was De Morgan, whom
Mill quotes (VII 207): The whole objection tacitly assumes the superfluity of the minor….’

In reply, Mill in effect rejects the simple-minded view of ‘All men are mortal’ and reaffirms the
‘licence to infer’ model. The general proposition licenses the conclusion that X is mortal, given
that X has been ascertained to be a man. In Mill’s language, it asserts that humanity is a ‘mark’
of mortality: so ‘we have still to compare any new individual with the marks; and to show that
this comparison has been made, is the office of the minor’ (VII 207). But then almost
immediately he repeats the claim that in affirming ‘All men are mortal’ we do after all assert that
Socrates is mortal.

Let us continue to grant for the moment that the universal proposition is a conjunction of its
instances. Then, on Mill’s better conception of the import of general propositions, the relevant
propositions in the premise set will be: Socrates is a man; ‘Socrates is mortal’ is inferable from
‘Socrates is a man’. The inference becomes a case of modus ponens’, and therefore Mill’s claim
that in asserting the premises we have asserted that Socrates is mortal is a mistake.

Why then does he make it? Understandably, he takes it for granted that the inference from the
premises ‘Socrates is a man’ and ‘All men are mortal’ to ‘Socrates is mortal’ is not a real (and
hence a posteriori) one. So he concedes that ‘considered as an argument to prove the conclusion’
— that is, with the general proposition treated as a major premise—it must be verbal. He then
gets stuck with all the problems that flow from that concession. But he should not have said quite
that. His suggestion— that the general proposition is not to be treated as a premise—is along
exactly the right lines to give him a way out; a way of avoiding the conclusion that the supposed
inference is real, without accepting that it is verbal. He simply needed to say that there is no real
inference from ‘Socrates is a man’ and ‘All men are mortal’, because there is no inference from
those premises at all. Remember the discussion of modus ponens in 4.2. A conditional
proposition expresses a standing intention to accept the consequent, if one has reason to accept
the antecedent. What then is a conjunction of conditionals? It simply compendiously expresses a
number of such intentions.

If general propositions are treated as conjunctions of their instances, syllogisms in other moods
will also reduce to real inferences in propositional logic. Consider, for example, ‘All men are
mortal, Zeno is immortal, therefore Zeno is not a man’, Notice first that, on the simple-minded
conception, the premises will contradict each other (since Zeno is a man); nor can the inference
be shown to be verbal. As soon as Mill turns to arguing that all inference is from particulars to
particulars, he narrows the focus down to one very special kind of case; syllogisms in the first
mood of the first figure, with singular minor premise and conclusion. If he had considered
syllogisms of other kinds, he might have been more keenly aware of the difference between the
simple-minded conception and his own view of conditionals, and therefore less likely to fall into
the trap of seeming to concede that all syllogistic reasoning involves a petitio. For on the ‘licence
to infer’ model, the relevant propositions in the premise set of our syllogism are—on a first
analysis: Zeno Is not mortal, ‘Zeno is mortal’ is inferable from ‘Zeno is a man’. The inference to
the conclusion becomes a case of modus tollens. On a further analysis, the conditional is struck
out of the premises. It expresses an intention and does not assert a proposition at all But a real
inference, relying on reductio ad absurdum, remains.
If universal propositions are to be treated as conjunctions of their instances, particular
propositions must be treated as disjunctions of theirs. ‘Some As are Bs’ will be a disjunction of
propositions of the form, x is A and x is B—with one such proposition for each object in the
universe. The effect of this would be to reduce all syllogistic inference to propositional inference,
But the resulting inferences would still be real inferences.

However, universal propositions cannot be treated as conjunctions of their instances, nor can
particular propositions be treated as disjunctions of theirs. Even if one artificially supposes the
‘universe’ to contain a well-defined set of ‘objects’, the conjunction of all substitution instances
of ‘All As are Bs’ will not on its own entail ‘All As are Bs’, nor will ‘Some As are Bs’ on its
own entail the disjunction of its substitution instances. In each case one needs an extra premise,
namely, an enumeration of the objects and an explicit statement that the enumeration is
complete.

Need this fact be of any interest for a reconstruction of Mill’s empiricist analysis of logic? It may
seem that he needs the idea that universal propositions can be treated as conjunctions of their
instances only because of his erroneous concession that syllogism ‘considered as an argument to
prove the conclusion’ is a petitio, and thus only so long as he combines it with the simple-
minded view of what those instances are. Had he been firm in his rejection of the simple-minded
view, and had he been clear that there was no need to make the concession that required it, he
would have had no reason for holding that universal propositions are conjunctions of their
instances.

There is however another consideration involved. What is the status of an inference from a
general proposition to an instance of it? (A parallel question could be asked about particular
propositions.) For example, from ‘Everything is mortal’ to ‘Socrates is mortal’? One can hardly
answer that the inference is a real one if, like Mill, one is going to go on to argue that all real
inferences are a posteriori. On the other hand, if a universal proposition could be treated as
asserting the conjunction of its instances, the inference would turn out to be verbal. This
probably underlies the temptation which Mill obviously feels very strongly, to say that in
asserting ‘All men are mortal’, one has asserted something about Socrates. The assertion would
not, on his better view of general propositions, be the categorical assertion that he is mortal, but
the conditional assertion, that if he is a man he is mortal. But there would be an assertion about
Socrates, and it would explain why the inference from the general proposition to its substitution
instance is verbal.

If that is not asserted in the assertion of the general proposition, then the inference is not verbal.
But it cannot be real either. All that remains is to deny that there is an inference involved at all—
and that means denying that general propositions are assertions. When I say ‘Everything is
mortal’ I am not asserting anything.

What then am I doing? I am expressing a willingness to assert, of any object, that it is mortal.
The empiricist pressures which drove us to this conclusion in the case of the conditional, drive us
to it also in the case of generality. In the case of a general conditional, ‘All men are mortal’, they
are combined. I am expressing a ‘habit of inference’ from singular propositions of the form ‘x is
a man’ to singular propositions of the form ‘x is mortal’. As Frank Ramsey put it, we are forced
to conclude that ‘All men are mortal’ ‘expresses an inference we are at any time prepared to
make, not a belief of the primary sort’, not one which ‘is a map of neighbouring space by which
we steer’.6 There are difficulties which such a view must cope with: it must explain why we hold
general propositions to be true or false, and in general give an account of their occurrences as
subordinate clauses in complex propositions. (To assert a particular, or existential, proposition—
‘Some men are immortal— would be to reject a habit of inference.) Ramsey artempts to deal
with them, but we shall not follow his argument here.

There are, then, deep-seated reasons which drive the radical empiricist towards the paradoxical
and somewhat mysterious conclusion that ‘all inference is from particulars to particulars’. Mill
was close to this line of thought, but it would be idle to pretend that he got it clear. When he
concedes that ‘in every syllogism, considered as an argument to prove the conclusion, there is a
petitio principii, he means us to conclude that the syllogism cannot be considered an argument to
prove the conclusion. In other words, the apparent structure of a syllogistic argument—with the
general proposition appearing as the major premise—is misleading. Behind the appearance lies
the fact that ‘all inference is from particulars to particulars’. But what does this mean? It is here
that Mill’s grip falters. Sometimes he seems to want to say that there is in reality no such thing as
syllogistic reasoning at all—that all that really takes place is an inductive inference from singular
premises to a singular conclusion. But this is evidently not what happens as a matter of
psychological fact, and Mill realises that. Syllogistic reasoning is a distinct and separate process
from inductive reasoning. What then does the dictum that ‘all inference is from particulars to
particulars’ mean? When he is concentrating on the distinctness of syllogistic reasoning, Mill
emphasizes that a general proposition is ‘a memorandum of the nature of the conclusions which
we are prepared to prove’ (VII 207). It is then that he comes closest to the Ramsey view which
we have proposed here.

It is an achievement in philosophy to find one’s way, however gropingly, however circuitously,

to a genuine philosophical problem. Mill finds his way to deep questions about the nature of
generality and the conditional. The fact that the questions are easier to pose in a Fregean than in a
syllogistic framework makes his insight even more impressive. The issues are still alive, and
their ramifications appear ever wider.

8 The Logic of Consistency and the Logic of Truth

We must now grasp again the thread which was temporarily released at the beginning of 4.5.

Chapter iii.ii, dealing with the ‘Functions and Logical Value of the Syllogism’, occupies a
pivotal position in the System of Logic. It comes straight after a chapter on the analysis of the
syllogism in which Mill briefly sketches out the formalities of syllogistic theory and argues that
all syllogising rests on two axioms which are real propositions. And it is followed by chapters in
which he argues that the basic principles of geometry and arithmetic are inductively established
propositions. So it is in ii.iii that he develops his philosophy of logic itself. Thus one would
expect him to be vividly aware, in this of all places, of the incompatibility of holding both that
deductive reasoning is purely verbal, and that it can yield new information. And one would
expect him to hammer this point home as the clinching argument for his overall thesis: that
deductive inference is real and not verbal.
It does not happen; and perhaps the most important reason why it does not is that Mill thinks of
logic almost exclusively in terms of syllogistic theory, and of syllogism itself in terms of too few
cases. Thus it is that his treatment of the laws of contradiction and excluded middle as a
posteriori inductive truths is delayed to the very end of Book ii, coming after his analysis of
geometry and arithmetic instead of before it, and tacked on, as an afterthought, in a response to
Sir William Hamilton. It should instead have figured prominently in the chapter which presents
his philosophical analysis of logic itself. He could not then have concentrated so exclusively on
syllogisms in the first mood of the first figure. A second consequence of the identification of
logic with syllogistic theory is that it allows Mill to run together the general question of the
status of deductive inference with the special question of the status of inferences involving
generality. It is true that there are issues of profound importance bound up in the latter. The
deepest level of Mill’s demystification of the syllogism is the thesis that all inference is from
particulars to particulars. It draws him towards a pragmatist or functional view of general
beliefs.7 But it also thoroughly confuses his exposition, because it deploys the petitio problem in
a way which cuts right across its obvious role in the argument that logic itself is a posteriori. If
Mill had kept the two points apart, using the petitio problem to reinforce the thesis that deductive
inference is real, and arguing his view of the function and value of general propositions on its
own merits, his philosophy would have gained immeasurably in clarity and force.

There is one important respect in which this lack of clarity is particularly damaging. In ii.iii.9,
Mill distinguishes between the ‘Logic of Consistency’ and the ‘Logic of Truth’. (The section was
added in editions from 1865 onwards.) In it Mill explains his view of

what is termed, by recent writers, Formal Logic, and the relation between it and Logic in the
widest sense. Logic, as I conceive it, is the entire theory of the ascertainment of reasoned or
inferred truth. Formal Logic, therefore,… is really a very subordinate part of it, not being directly
concerned with the process of Reasoning or Inference in the sense in which that process is a part
of the investigation of Truth. What, then, is Formal Logic? The name seems to be properly
applied to all that portion of doctrine which relates to the equivalence of different modes of
expression; the rules for determining when assertions in a given form imply or suppose the truth
or falsity of other assertions…. The end aimed at by Formal Logic, and attained by the
observance of its precepts, is not truth, but consistency. It has been seen that this is the only
direct purpose of the rules of the syllogism; the intention and effect of which is simply to keep
our inferences or conclusions in complete consistency with our general formulae or directions for
drawing them. (VII 206–8)

The distinction between the ‘Logic of Consistency’ and the ‘Logic of Truth’ is simply the
distinction between deductive and inductive logic. A Millian ultra-empiricist must be able to
explain, in satisfactory fashion, what distinguishes the two. He will be challenged by opponents
to explain the key difference between them; which centres on the fact that deductive inferences
are indefeasible in a way in which inductive inferences are not.8 Mill clearly feels the pressure to
say something about it. The contrast between a negative logic of consistency, which keeps ‘our
inferences and conclusions in complete consistency with our formulae or directions for drawing
them’ and a positive logic of truth, which codifies methods of reasoning by the use of which we
enlarge our stock of these ‘formulae’—that is, of general propositions—is certainly germane. But
it deals exclusively with the special case of generality-involving inferences. And it makes him
sound as though he is accepting that principles of deductive logic are empty of content—which,
given that he holds the basic logical laws to be a posteriori real propositions, he certainly should
not accept.

What then does Mill mean by calling deductive logic the logic of consistency, and by his
seeming denial that it is ‘a part of the investigation of truth’? An interpretation which takes him
to be saying that deductive inferences are verbal and not real is supported by his remark that
Formal Logic is ‘that portion of doctrine which relates to the equivalence of different modes of
expression’. We have noticed in 2.3 Mill’s laxness in treating all conversions of syllogisms into
syllogistic forms of the first figure as purely verbal transformations. But we also saw that he
continues to insist that the ‘fundamental axioms’ of the syllogism are real propositions. To treat
syllogistic inferences as purely verbal would be patently inconsistent with that.

The phrase ‘Logic of Consistency’ suggests another interpretation. It would take Mill to be
saying that ‘Formal Logic’ is formal in the Kantian sense. That is, its principles are empty of
content in that they can all be derived or ‘evolved’ from the law of contradiction. (The ‘recent
writers’ to whom Mill credits the term were using it in this sense.)

I do not believe that this interpretation captures what was in Mill’s mind either. Mill is obviously
chary of the phrase ‘Formal Logic’. In ii.vi.5, he explicitly considers the view that ‘all
ratiocination rests in the last resort on a reductio ad absurdum and rejects it as

inadmissible as an explanation of the grounds on which ratiocination itself rests. If any one
denies the conclusion notwithstanding his admission of the premises, he is not involved in any
direct and express contradiction until he is compelled to deny some premise; and he can only be
forced to do this by a reductio ad absurdum, that is, by another ratiocination: now, if he denies
the validity of the reasoning process itself, he can no more be forced to assent to the second
syllogism than to the first. In truth, therefore, no one is ever forced to a contradiction in terms: he
can only be forced to a contradiction (or rather an infringement) of the fundamental maxim of
ratiocination, namely, that whatever has a mark, has what it is a mark of; or, (in the case of
universal propositions,) that whatever is a mark of anything, is a mark of whatever else that thing
is a mark of. (VII 260)

Mill is making the sound point that when one derives a contradiction from someone’s rejection
of a principle of deductive inference, one can do so only by using principles of deductive
inference, which the other may refuse to accept. It simply is not true that all principles of
deductive reasoning can be derived from the Law of Contradiction. And what he could also have
added is that the Law of Contradiction is in his view an a posteriori truth, so that the derivability
of a principle from it would not in any case show it to be ‘formal’ in the sense of being empty of
content.

We come back again to Mill’s conflation of deductive inference with the specific case of
inference from the general to the particular, and his concentration on syllogisms in the first mood
of the first figure. To refuse to accept a deductively sound inference is to ‘infringe’ the
‘fundamental maxim of ratiocination’. What inconsistency is involved here? The ‘intention and
effect’ of the rules of the syllogism are simply ‘to keep our inferences or conclusions in complete
consistency with our general formulae or directions for drawing them’.
With this one may compare the following passage from a review Mill wrote in 1873, ‘Grote’s
Aristotle’.

The syllogistic process merely maintains consistency between our general theorems from
experience and our particular applications of it, and compels us to face the whole extent of the
generalisation, which is necessary to justify our inference in a given particular case. What is
called Formal Logic is the logic of consistency: and consistency is not necessarily truth, but is
one of the most essential conditions of it. (XI 479)

‘Consistency’ here means, consistency in the application of a rule, in ‘decyphering’ one’s

‘memorandum’. It is in that sense, I suggest, that Mill took deductive reasoning to be the ‘Logic
of Consistency’. Now this has no immediate application to deductive reasoning of a purely
propositional kind from singular propositions to singular propositions. But it becomes applicable
if we analyse conditional ‘propositions’ as expressing propensities to infer in the manner
suggested in our discussion of modus ponens in 4.2. That will still leave the laws of excluded
middle and contradiction as real propositions, and therefore, by Mill’s principles, a posteriori
ones; but then Mill explicitly grasps that particular nettle. So this, we must on the whole
conclude, is the interpretation which best fits everything that Mill has to say about the status of
deductive logic. And it gives him a gratifyingly searching, radical position.

If I adopt the rule, ‘Given that X is A, infer X is B’, and I accept that this is A, in what sense am
I required to accept that this is B? In what sense am I ‘inconsistent’ if I refuse to accept it? The
natural answer is that to accept a rule is simply to form a general intention. To reject the out
one’s intention. One would be inconsistent in that sense if one conclusion, this is B, is to be
‘inconsistent’ in the sense of failing to carry resolved to perform a particular action and then
failed to do so. Such inconsistency between one’s actions and one’s intention can arise whether
the intention was ‘general’ or ‘singular’. But a further question arises, specifically in the case of
general intention, namely that of interpreting what the application of a general rule to a particular
case is. It seems that from the general imperative ‘Given that X is A, infer X is B’, and the
singular proposition ‘This is an A’, I have to move to the singular imperative ‘Infer this is a B’,
and this move surely constitutes an inference, for which the question arises, whether it is verbal
or real. Noting this point earlier we suggested that it leads the radical empiricist to a view of
general propositions like Ramsey’s. To say ‘All As are Bs’ is neither to make an assertion, nor to
issue a general imperative, but to express a habit of inference. It then appears that to reject the
conclusion of the syllogism is to express a habit of inference and at the same time to flout it: to
act in a way which allows no consistent interpretation of one’s attitudes.

At this point we are led into deep waters, which were to be explored by Wittgenstein in his later
writings. One way of understanding Wittgenstein’s discussion of rule-following is to see it as
taking its starting point from the question—is the ‘inference’ from a general principle to a
specific application verbal or real? Like Ramsey before him, Wittgenstein in effect concludes
that there is no inference — grasping or adopting a general rule does not predetermine its correct
application; the rule is constituted by its application. But the difficulty is to see how this
‘sceptical solution’, as it has been called (Kripke 1982), can be squared with our picture of
ourselves as agents, applying objective principles of reason. We come up here against those
general problems for naturalism which were outlined in 1.7, and will be touched on again in
8.10; but to explore the issues fully is beyond the scope of this book.
5
Empiricism in Logic and Mathematics
The notion that truths external to the human mind may be known by intuition or consciousness,
independently of observation and experience, is, I am persuaded, in these times, the great
intellectual support of false doctrines and bad institutions…. And the chief strength of this false
philosophy in morals, politics, and religion, lies in the appeal which it is accustomed to make to
the evidence of mathematics and of the cognate branches of physical science. To expel it from
these, is to drive it from its stronghold…. (Autobiography I 233–5)

1 Reviewing the strategy

The laws of any science, on Mill’s view, can ultimately be grounded only on generalisation from
experience. That applies to deductive sciences— sciences whose propositions are derived by
deductive reasoning from a small number of initial axioms or laws—as it applies to all others.1
The difference lies in the connectedness of the generalisations established: a science still in the
experimental stage is one ‘of detached and initially independent generalizations’ (VII 219);
whereas in a deductive science, the generalisations are so connected as to allow the deduction of
laws from laws: ‘all sciences tend to become more and more Deductive…. The opposition is not
between the terms Deductive and Inductive, but between Deductive and Experimental’ (VII
219). The ultimate grounding in both cases is inductive—but that does not mean that Mill thinks
progress towards deductive systematisation brings with it no gain. Far from it. He makes it a
central point in his account of the ‘inductive process’—as we shall see in the next chapter (6.6)
—that the interconnectedness of a body of generalisations is in itself an important source of
epistemic strength.

In the System of Logic, chapters ii.v-vii, Mill undertakes to apply this general analysis to
geometry, arithmetic and finally to logic itself. These, he thinks, are the ultimate strongholds of
the intuitional or transcendental school; they are therefore also the crucial testing ground for his
own naturalistic and inductive philosophy.

This being so, his treatment of them is in many aspects undeniably ill-considered or at best
sloppy; yet it repays careful reading. Mill’s view of geometry is intricate and sophisticated,
though excessively compressed. What he says about arithmetic is in some ways weaker, for
reasons which we shall examine; but it is, if anything, still more interesting, and bolder, than his
treatment of geometry. He is at his thinnest and least plausible in his treatment of the ‘laws of
thought’—identity, excluded middle and contradiction. But the question of what status these
logical laws have is one which a consistently radical empiricist cannot shirk. Mill must be given
credit for seeing the question and trying to return a consistently empiricist answer.

Recall the overall strategy of the System. At its foundation lies the distinction between verbal and
real propositions. Mill argues that geometrical and arithmetical propositions are real—as are the
laws of excluded middle and contradiction. (Strictly speaking, on Mill’s definitions of the
connectives it is the inference principle of reductio ad absurdum, rather than the law of
contradiction, which is real—see 5.6.) And he argues that no real propositions are a priori. We
shall consider the case for this in 5.7 and 5–8. If it is accepted, then it follows that the
propositions of geometry and arithmetic, and the laws of thought, are a posteriori, and that they
can be grounded, if at all, only inductively.

Here I am using the term ‘inductive’ in its widest sense (see 6.1). However, given Mill’s account
of inductive reasoning, he himself is committed to holding that mathematical propositions are
grounded on enumerative induction—‘generalisation from experience’. This ‘inductivism’ is a
vital flaw which saps Mill’s attempt to supply an empiricist epistemology for logic and
mathematics. We shall consider his treatment of induction, and in particular his grounds for
thinking that hypothetical as against enumerative inference cannot be regarded as an independent
or autonomous method of justifying belief, in the following two chapters. They are far from
negligible: they are the necessary consequence of a certain metaphysical realism. In 5.8, and
eventually in 7.4, we shall move towards a vantage point from which they can be better seen, and
only then shall we be able to give our final account of empiricism about logical and
mathematical knowledge, and of the naturalism from which it flows. But first, in this chapter, we
shall consider Mill’s analysis of geometry, arithmetic and the laws of thought.

Anyone who proposes to give an inductive account of logical and mathematical knowledge faces
a very obvious difficulty. Logic and mathematics unquestionably seem to be knowable prior to
experience; their fundamental propositions, and the elementary inference rules by which other
propositions are deduced, seem self-evident and necessary. The very contrast between a priori
and a posteriori is typically introduced by contrasting mathematics with something else. An
empiricist must explain why logic and mathematics give this appearance. As Mill himself puts it,
if

the foundation of all sciences, even deductive or demonstrative sciences, is Induction…. Why are
mathematical certainty, and the evidence of demonstration, common phrases to express the very
highest degree of assurance attainable by reason? Why are mathematics by almost all
philosophers, and (by some) even those branches of natural philosophy which, through the
medium of mathematics, have been converted into deductive sciences, considered to be
independent of the evidence of experience and observation, and characterised as systems of
Necessary Truth? (VII 224)

It is characteristic of Mill’s fair-mindedness that he recognises the force of the question and tries
to answer it. He can answer it, of course, only within the resources of his philosophical
framework. Specifically, he draws on associationist psychology. Nineteenth-century
associationism may leave us unimpressed. But whatever the underlying psychological theory
may be, a naturalistic philosophy must hold that the only facts in this area are psychological facts
about ourselves, and that it is on these that an explanation of the illusion of a priori knowledge
must be based. We shall return to the point.

2 Geometry
The basic points in Mill’s view of geometry are clear. The theorems of Euclidean geometry are
deductively inferred from premises which are themselves real propositions. These propositions,
where they are not straightforwardly true of physical space, are what Mill calls ‘hypotheses’: he
means that they are, in a sense to be explained, ‘true in the limit’. (‘Hypotheses’ in this sense
should not be confused with hypotheses in the general sense in which the term is normally used
—Mill’s view of these is described in 6.8.) The truth ‘in the limit’ of geometrical propositions is
inductively established.

The details, however, are confusing—for three main reasons. First, Mill’s discussion of the
geometrical definitions in Euclid, and of the sense in which the premises of Euclidean reasoning
are ‘hypothetical’, reflects the complexity in his own conception of the objects of geometry, a
complexity which he does not give himself the space to bring out in an adequately explicit way.
Second, as we have noticed, Mill rightly wanted to account for the apparent certainty, aprioricity
and exactness of geometrical science, and the apparent necessity of geometrical truths. But these
various characteristics of geometry—exactness, certainty, apparent necessity and aprioricity—
are not the same. The points required for explaining any one of them are not quite the same as
those required for explaining any other, and Mill did not distinguish them enough. Finally, here
as so often elsewhere, Mill adheres to his ‘own rule’, ‘so to define words that their application
may cover the same ground, and if possible, even the same extent of ground as before’. This
formal conservatism concealing substantial radicalism is one of Mill’s favourite polemical
devices,2 and it repeatedly leads him into difficulty. In this case, instead of asserting that
geometrical truths are not necessary, and then trying to explain why people thought they were, he
accepts that geometrical truths are ‘necessary’—but in a sense which is clearly not the one
intended in philosophical as against ordinary uses of the term. And that only forces him to
retrace the ground with subsequent explanations.

Section 1 of ii.v asserts that ‘the Theorems of geometry are necessary truths only in the sense of
necessarily following from hypotheses’ (VII 224). Its title suggests a ‘postulationist’
interpretation of geometry: geometrical theorems are necessary only inasmuch as they are
implicitly conditionalised on the initial postulates, the resulting conditionals being truths of logic.
Now as a way of vindicating the non-empirical status of geometry such a move would be, in the
words of Quine, ‘a verbal tour de force which is equally applicable in the case of sociology or
Greek mythology’ (Quine 1966:76, ‘Truth by Convention’). More: it would be of no avail to an
empiricist about logic. If Mill were asserting that these conditionals are necessary truths in a
‘strict’ or ‘metaphysical’ sense, he would be flatly contradicting his own empiricist view of
logical truths. Spencer picked Mill up on precisely this point: ‘Mr Mill assumes that there is
something more certain in a demonstration than in anything else —some necessary truth in the
steps of our reasoning, which is not possessed by the axioms they start from’ (Spencer 1855:19–
25). Since Mill’s expressed view of deductive or syllogistic reasoning was that it rested on a
‘fundamental axiom’ (‘whatever has a mark, has what it is a mark of’—see 4.3), Spencer quite
naturally took Mill to be committing himself to the view that that axiom was itself a
metaphysically necessary truth. He was wrong to do so; Mill’s view of the metaphysical
distinction between ‘necessary’ and ‘contingent’ truths was bluntly straightforward—he thought
it wholly empty. In the 1856 edition of the System he added the following note: ‘Mr Spencer is
mistaken in supposing me to claim any peculiar “necessity” for this axiom as compared with
others. I have corrected the expressions which lead him into that misapprehension of my
meaning’ (VII 267).
The corrections mainly take the form of changing such expressions as ‘necessarily follow’ to
‘“legitimately” or “correctly” follow’ (but the section title is left in its original form). The most
telling change is at VII 252, where the phrases I have italicised were added in editions from
1856:

The results of those [i.e. deductive] sciences are indeed necessary, in the sense of necessarily
following from certain first principles, commonly called axioms and definitions; that is, of being
certainly true if those axioms and definitions are so; for the word necessity, even in this
acceptation of it, means no more than certainty.

And in the letter to W.G.Ward which was cited in note 2 he says:

Mr Herbert Spencer and you have misunderstood me. When I spoke of inferences as necessarily
following from premises, I was not using the word necessary in its metaphysical but in its
popular sense. I meant neither more nor less than that the reasoning process is, to us, conclusive
evidence of what it proves…. As… I wished to keep the word necessary specifically for truths
which are the result of reasoning, I was not unnaturally led to applying the term to the reasoning
process itself. But (as I said before) I meant nothing in this case by necessity, but conclusiveness.
(My emphasis)

The theorems of geometry, then, are necessary only in the sense of being certainly true if the
axioms and definitions of geometry are so. But, as Mill says of the results of any deductive
science,

their claim to the character of necessity in any sense beyond this, as implying an evidence
independent of and superior to observation and experience, must depend on the previous
establishment of such a claim in favour of the definitions and axioms themselves. (VII 252)

And so it is this claim which Mill mainly concerns himself to rebut.

In observing the distinction between ‘definitions’ and ‘axioms’ Mill follows the presentation of
Euclid’s Elements, where the sequence of proofs is prefaced by a list of definitions of
geometrical terms, and a list of axioms (and postulates). Mill thinks the axioms of geometry are
‘exactly true’; it is the definitions which are to be seen as ‘hypotheses’. Before considering what
he means by this, we should take account of his general remarks about the logical status of
definitions. These are at i.vii.5. The title of the section is, ‘What are called definitions of Things,
are definitions of Names with an implied assumption of the existence of Things corresponding to
them’ (VII 142ff.). Mill explains that a definition of a name may be given in explicitly
metalinguistic form: ‘”Dragon” is a word meaning “serpent which breathes flame’”; or it may be
given in the material mode: ‘A dragon is a serpent breathing flame’. The definition in explicitly
metalinguistic form gives information ‘only about the use of language…from which no
conclusions affecting matters of fact can be drawn’. But when the definition is given in the
material mode, it tends to carry with it a tacit assumption that there exist things denoted by the
name which is being defined.

The definitions given in Euclid are of this latter kind. For example the definition of a triangle, ‘A
triangle is a rectilinear figure with three sides’, contains
two propositions, perfectly distinguishable. The one is, There may exist a figure, bounded by
three straight lines’; the other, ‘And this figure may be termed a triangle’. The former of these
propositions is not a definition at all; the latter is a mere nominal definition, or explanation of the
use and application of a term. The first is susceptible of truth or falsehood, and may therefore be
made the foundation of a train of reasoning. The latter can neither be true nor false; the only
character it is susceptible of is that of conformity or disconformity to the ordinary usage of
language. (VII 149; Mill is quoting from his review (1828) of Whateley’s Logic)

Mill’s point, then, is that the Euclidean ‘definitions’ in fact carry with them accompanying
postulates, which play an essential role in the following proofs. Notice however that what is
postulated according to Mill is not that there exist rectilinear three-sided figures, but that such
figures may exist. His reason for slipping in this modification is plain. If the world in fact
contained no rectilinear three-sided figures, that would not falsify any propositions of Euclidean
geometry. All that Euclidean geometry assumes is that such figures may exist. But what does
‘may’ mean here? If he is to be consistent, Mill cannot rely on any notion of metaphysical
possibility; the ‘may’ must be that of natural possibility— the postulate must be, that the
existence of such a figure is consistent with the laws of nature.

But this last statement does not discriminate enough. Consider a universe whose physical laws
are such that matter can only exist in the form of a very thin soup of perfectly continuous gases.
In such a universe rectilinear figures could not exist. Would it follow that the geometry of this
universe was not Euclidean? Obviously not.

When we say that rectilinear figures cannot exist in this hypothetical universe, we are taking
geometrical objects to be material entities. So we must either give up this assumption, or we
must refine our account of the notion of possibility which occurs in the postulate that triangles
may exist.

In favour of the first option is the fact that we often speak as though geometrical objects were not
material entities occupying regions of space, but rather the regions of space themselves. For
example, I can consider the triangle described in empty space by the peaks of three mountain
tops. Such talk, however, need not be construed as primitive. Geometrical objects (the primitive
bearers of geometric properties) have to be either regions of space or material objects, but they
cannot, for an empiricist at any rate, be both, for the following reason. If all real propositions are
a posteriori, then the proposition ‘A cube occupies a cubical region of space’ must surely be
verbal. We must distinguish ‘cubical’ as a name denoting material objects, and ‘cubical’ as a
name denoting regions of space, and define one in terms of the other, If we take geometric
objects to be material entities, then ‘x is cubical; where x ranges over regions of space, must
mean something like, ‘A cube may be constructed which would exhaustively occupy x.

Mill takes geometrical objects to be material entities.3 Points, lines and planes, considered as
persisting parts of empty space, must therefore be construed as ‘permanent possibilities of
construction’, to copy his famous phrase about material objects (cf. 7.7); and that brings us back
to the problem of refining the notion of possibility involved. What we want to say is that
although in the soup-of-gases universe rectilinear figures cannot be constructed, that is not a
matter of its geometry, its laws of space, but of its laws of matter. The Euclidean postulate that
triangles may be constructed is to be understood as asserting that the possibility of such
constructions is not incompatible with the laws of space. Take, in contrast, the definition of a
rectangle: ‘a four-sided rectilinear figure which has all its angles right angles’. The
corresponding postulate would be that such a figure can be constructed. On current scientific
views, the postulate is false; and it is false in such a way as to falsify Euclidean geometry: that is
to say, the possibility of such a construction would be incompatible with the laws of space.

This way of explaining the form of possibility intended relies on our understanding the notion of
a ‘law of space’, and would be unsatisfactory if we found ourselves to have no consistent or
agreed way of operating with that notion. We cannot explore the issue further here; but the
notion is at least intuitively clear enough to indicate the lines which a Millian analysis of
geometrical possibility would have to explore.

There is, however, a further layer of complication in Mill’s account, which we have still to
consider. The geometrical ‘definition’ of a point characterises it as an object which has ‘position
but not magnitude’, the geometrical definition of a line characterises it as an object which has
‘length without breadth’. The corresponding postulates will be, that there can be objects which
have position but no magnitude, or length without breadth. But if the objects in question are to be
material objects, for example, chalkmarks on a blackboard, these postulates seem to be clearly
false.

To this point, unlike the previous one, Mill draws explicit attention. He begins his discussion of
geometry by referring back to his account of definitions, and to the point that from a definition,
as such, no real propositions can follow. They can follow only from the postulate which
accompanies the definition. Yet not merely are there no ‘points without magnitude’ or ‘lines
without breadth’,

according to any test we have of possibility, they are not even possible. Their existence, so far as
we can form any judgement, would seem to be inconsistent with the physical constitution of our
planet at least, if not of the universe. (VII 225)

Mill is noticeably careful here not to claim that a material object which has position but no
magnitude, or length but no breadth, is a ‘contradiction in terms’. But if the impossibility of such
objects is a purely natural one, as must on his own terms be the case, could one not follow the
same line as before, and deny it to be a geometric impossibility? It is not in virtue of the
geometrical properties of our region of space that material points without magnitude or material
lines without breadth cannot exist.

However this is not what Mill says, nor would it be very convincing to do so. There is obviously
an important difference, for us, between the impossibility of rectilinear figures in the soup-of-
gases universe, and the impossibility of extensionless points or breadthless lines—‘we cannot
conceive a line without breadth’ (VII 223). Mill is not implying that breadthless lines are
therefore strictly impossible, or that we can know a priori that they do not exist: the illegitimacy
of such inferences is a fundamental point of his philosophy. But the fact of their inconceivability
is still important: it suggests that their possibility or otherwise is irrelevant to the truth of
geometry.

Notions such as that of a breadthless line, or an extensionless point, are limit concepts. Thus, for
example, a line may be more or less thick; and ‘thicker than’ is a relational expression which we
can explain ostensively. We then explain the notion of a ‘breadthless’ line as the limit
approached in a progression of lines of diminishing thickness. The same applies to ‘straight’ and
‘flat’ (cf. VII 232, footnote). It is, on this view, an error to suppose that ‘straight’, for example, is
definable in terms other than the limit approached as we take lines which are progressively less
crooked. The term is introduced into language by ostensive reference to progressions of that
kind, and cannot be defined as ‘path of a light-ray’ or ‘geodesic’. That light rays or geodesics are
straight are a posteriori propositions.

The various geometrical figures are then defined in terms of this basic stock of limit concepts:
point, line, straight, flat, together with the idea of a construction. For example a rectilinear figure
is a construction bounded by straight lines. We can say that such a figure is ‘imperfect’ to the
degree that its edges are not perfectly straight. The notion of a ‘perfect figure’ will again be a
limit concept. We need not take ourselves to be literally supposing the existence, actual or
possible, of breadthless lines, extensionless points or perfect figures, when we make geometrical
statements.4 We simply take our geometrical assertions about figures to be more nearly true, the
closer those figures are to being perfect.

Geometrical objects are therefore doubly ideal: they are the absolute limits of permanent
possibilities of construction, The apparently literal commitment to extensionless points,
breadthless lines, perfect figures, is feigned.

This is what Mill means, when he accepts The opinion of Dugald Stewart respecting the
foundations of geometry…that it is built on hypotheses’ (VII 226). Although some of his
remarks in ii.v. 1 may suggest otherwise, he is not claiming that the axioms and postulates are
simply put forward as suppositions on which the conclusions are conditionalised. His point is a
different one. It is that the postulates implicitly asserted in the ‘definitions’, and all geometrical
propositions containing those ‘defined’ terms, are not to be understood literally. They are
‘fictional’ or, as Mill says, ‘feigned’ proxies, for the more complicated propositions which are to
be understood. Thus, on Mill’s view, the postulate corresponding to the definition of a rectangle;
that there may be rectangles, is not as far as we know literally true, but the underlying assertion
for which it goes proxy, that a figure may be constructed approaching a perfect retangle to any
degree of closeness, is certain. The postulates, then, are ‘hypotheses’ in the sense that

they are known not to be literally true, while as much of them as is true is not hypothetical but
certain…the hypothetical element in the definition of geometry is the assumption that what is
very nearly true is exactly so. This unreal exactitude might be called a fiction, as properly as an
hypothesis; but that appellation, still more than the other, would fail to point out the close
relation which exists between the fictitious point or line and the points and lines of which we
have experience. (VII 227, footnote)5

Mill suggests that the axioms are not in this sense hypothetical and then proceeds to ask on what,
in that case, their certainty rests. In doing so he generates the misleading suggestion that the
certainty of the postulates contained in the definitions results from their hypothetical character.
But this is a slip, as the passage I have just quoted shows. The ‘fictional’ or ‘hypothetical’ form
of geometrical postulates explains the exactness of geometrical science. It does nothing to
explain its certainty. Moreover, the axioms are just as hypothetical or fictional as the postulates.
For example Two straight lines cannot enclose a space’ (which Mill takes as an axiom) still
contains the ‘fictional notion’ of a straight line. The underlying assertion is something like, The
more closely two lines approach to absolute breadthlessness and straightness, the smaller the
space they enclose’ (see Mill’s footnote at VII 232). It is this which, according to Mill, is
certainly true—but it is, nevertheless, ‘an induction from the evidence of our senses’ (VII 231).
And he would have to hold the same about the corresponding assertion about rectangles.

So when Mill’s position is tidied up it comes to this. Not only the ‘definitions’ but also the
axioms and theorems of geometry are expressed ‘hypothetically’ in the special sense that the
objects to which they appear to refer are ideal limits of possible constructions, though in reality
we are not committed either to the actual or even to the possible existence of such limiting cases.
This explains the ‘exactness’ of geometry. When these ways of talking are replaced by the literal
assertions about geometrically possible figures in actual space to which Euclidean geometry
actually commits us, these turn out to be, in the case of axioms and definitions, inductively
certain truths about space. Since the theorems follow from them by certain rules of inference,
they too are certain truths about space.

We may accept, with Mill—and against conventionalist accounts of geometry—that geometrical

propositions are real propositions about space; but we could still disagree with him in either one
of two very different ways. On the one hand it may be pointed out that a good many propositions
of Euclidean geometry, so far from being certain, are actually false (if we go by current scientific
theory). Of course Mill could not have known of scientific developments which occurred after
his time. Yet these later developments do highlight particularly cruelly the central flaw in Mill’s
position—his confidence that Euclidean geometry could be established on the basis of
enumerative induction alone.

One may make this criticism of Mill without disagreeing with him that geometry is ultimately
grounded on inductive inference from experience. It is only in his inductivist account of
inductive reasoning, on this view, that he goes astray. We shall examine these issues more fully
in the following two chapters. The other objection, however, is a more fundamental one: it is that
knowledge of geometrical truths is not a posteriori and inductive at all, but a priori and derived
from pure geometrical intuition. This is the objection— ‘the a priori theory’ —Mill considers: he
finds it in Whewell (VII 231). He counters it by arguing that no real proposition can be a priori.
The argument, so central to Mill’s philosophy, will be considered in the concluding sections of
this chapter (5.7–5.9).

3 Arithmetic: the refutation of ‘Nominalism’

The hardest test for Mill’s general doctrine that all deductive sciences are inductive is posed, as
he himself says, by the science of number. He deals with it in ii.vi and iii.xxiv. In arithmetic, as
in geometry, the claims of the a priori philosophers have great plausibility. But arithmetic,
unlike geometry, is also the stronghold of another philosophical theory: ‘Nominalism…the most
opposite to theirs’, which represents ‘the propositions of the science of Numbers as merely
verbal, and its processes as simple transformations of language, substitutions of one expression
for another’ (VII 253). Mill objects to this that it leaves quite unexplained how purely verbal
transformations can yield a new fact, a conclusion not contained in the premises. The objection is
exactly analogous to the one which he made (but failed to force home) against the ‘Nominalistic’
view of syllogistic reasoning. Then he turns to the question of what makes Nominalism about
mathematics plausible, and here he makes two points of great importance.

One thing which makes it plausible is the purely formal or symbolic character of arithmetical and
algebraic reasoning: we reason with numbers, without concerning ourselves with what those
numbers are numbers of. Nevertheless

All numbers must be numbers of something: there are no such things as numbers in the abstract.
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. Propositions, therefore, concerning
numbers, have the remarkable peculiarity that they are propositions concerning all things
whatever, all objects, all existences of every kind, known to our experience. (VII 254–5)

Anything can be numbered: the laws of numbers are topic-neutral—they do not vary with the
domain being numbered. So when we make computations we can do so in absrraction from the
question of what the numbers are numbers of. And by abstracting again, we can rise to the
further level of generality involved in algebraic reasoning.

There is a second factor, of even greater importance in making arithmetic and algebraic
propositions seem merely verbal:

when considered as propositions respecting Things, they all have the appearance of being
identical propositions. The assertion, Two and one is equal to three, considered as an assertion
respecting objects, as for Instance ‘Two pebbles and one pebble are equal to three pebbles,’ does
not affirm equality between two collections of pebbles, but absolute identity. It affirms that if we
put one pebble to two pebbles, those very pebbles are three. The objects, therefore, being the
very same, and the mere assertion that ‘objects are themselves’ being insignificant, it seems but
natural to consider the proposition, Two and one is equal to three, as asserting mere identity of
signification between the two names. (VII 256)

Mill’s way of answering this difficulty anticipates Frege’s famous treatment of identity
propositions; he relies on the fact that an identity proposition is not empty of content if its two
names differ in connotation. The expression “two pebbles and one pebble,” and the expression
“three pebbles” stand indeed for the same aggregation of objects… {but} though they denote the
same things, their connotation is different’ (VII 256). Number terms, then, denote aggregates and
connote properties of aggregates. Aggregates are physical entities—they are not abstract entities
as sets are. The conception of numbers—as physical aggregates constitutes Mill’s distinctive
brand of nominalism (not to be confused with the ‘Nominalism’ which he attacks—see 3.9).

So far, Mill has made a negative criticism of the Nominalistic view— in effect, that it makes all
arithmetical reasoning a petitio principii, and he has tried to explain the circumstances which
make Nominalism plausible. What is still needed is the positive side of the argument which, as in
the case of the syllogism, would provide an analysis showing that arithmetic contains real
propositions. Here Mill’s treatment (ii.vi.3, iii.xxiv.5) exactly parallels his account of geometry.
He takes it that arithmetic can be treated as a set of deductions from axioms and ‘so-called’
definitions. The axioms are real propositions. The definitions ‘are composed of two things, the
explanation of a name, and the assertion of a fact’ (VII 610), so each of them also asserts a real
proposition. The truth of all these real propositions is, according to Mill, inductively established.

What are the axioms and definitions? The only axioms required, Mill thinks (VII 610), are
Things which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another’ and ‘Equals added to equals
make equal sums’.6 To this one must add a definition of each successive numeral as denoting the
number ‘formed by the addition of an unit to the number next below it in magnitude’ (VII 612).
So there is an infinity of postulates, one for each numeral greater than one, each instantiating the
schema There exists a number which is formed by adding 1 to n’. A clearer idea of what Mill has
in mind will be gained by working through, and revising, his proof in these terms of the
proposition, 5+2=7 (cf. VII 613).

Mill’s first axiom, strictly speaking, is ‘If a=b and c=b then a= c’. But for convenience we shall
put:

(1) If a=b and b=c then a=c

(Mill ought to have regarded this as a suppressible verbal transformation, in accordance with his
treatment of identity, discussed in 3.3.) The second axiom is:

(2) If a=b and c=d then a+c=b+d

As Frege pointed out (Frege 1950:10e), Mill, like Leibniz, omits a necessary premise, namely the
‘law of additive association’:

(3) (a+b)+c=a 4-(b+c)

Given Mill’s theory of aggregates, this law is a real, and not a verbal, proposition. Next we must
put

(4) 1+1=1+1

This identity proposition is true if and only if there exists a number which is formed by adding 1
to 1, and thus corresponds to the existence postulate which, on Mill’s view, is contained in the
definition of ‘2’. (The proof also requires an existence postulate for ‘1’: ‘1=1’. I have not made
this step explicit.) The definition itself, strictly speaking, plays the role not of a premise but of a
rule of substitution; so we can get to (5) only by applying the definition to (4):

(5) 2=1+1 (by definition of ‘2’ on 4)

(6) 5+(1+1)=5+2 (by 2 on 5)

(7) (5+1)+1–5+(1+1) (by 3)

(8) 5+1=5+1 (existence postulate corresponding to def. of ‘6’)

(9) 6–5+1 (by def. of ‘6’ on 8)

(10) 6+1=(5+1)+1 (by 2 on 9)

(11) 6+1=5+(1+1) (by 1 on 7 and 10)

(12) 6+ 1=6+1 (existence postulate corresponding to def. of 7’)

(13) 7=6+1 (by def. of 7’ on 12)

(14) 7=5+(1+1) (by 1 on 11 and 13)

(15) 7=5+2 (by 1 on 6 and 14)

The general character of Mill’s approach is clear, and could easily be applied to Peano’s
postulates for arithmetic. When these are uninterpreted, they simply give the formal theory of
arithmetic; but if the term ‘number’ as it occurs in the postulates is understood in its normal
sense, then, on Mill’s analysis of number, the postulates become real propositions about physical
aggregates and their structural properties. We shall now examine more closely the thesis that
arithmetical statements are about physical aggregates. (‘Physical’, incidentally, could be replaced
by ‘natural’: Mill would not deny the possibility of counting sensations.) After that we return to
the claim that arithmetic contains real propositions, and to the ultra-empiricist doctrine that these
propositions —like all real propositions—are a posteriori.7

4 Numbers and aggregates

Let us go back to Mill’s treatment of the proposition ‘Two pebbles and one pebble are equal to
three pebbles’. Mill elucidates further in ii.xxiv.3:

Each of the numbers two, three, four, &c., denotes physical phenomena, and connotes a physical
property of those phenomena. Two, for instance, denotes all pairs of things, and twelve all
dozens of things, connoting what makes them pairs, or dozens….

What, then, is that which is connoted by a name of number? Of course, some property belonging
to the agglomeration of things which we call by the name; and that property is, the characteristic
manner in which the agglomeration is made up of, and may be separated into, parts. (VII 610–
11)

Frege quotes this last sentence and objects to it on a number of grounds (Frege 1950:30e). His
first criticism is that an aggregate may be separated into parts in various ways: a bundle of straw
can be split into two bundles, or into the separate straws, or the straws themselves may be cut
into half. Hence one cannot talk about the number of parts in an aggregate. But it is clear that
Mill would simply have denied this; for he immediately proceeds to explain what he means as
follows:

When we call a collection of objects two, three, or four, they are not two, three, or four in the
abstract; they are two, three or four things of some particular kind; pebbles, horses, inches,
pounds weight. What the name of the number connotes is, the manner in which single objects of
the given kind must be put together, in order to produce that particular aggregate. (VII 611; the
last two emphases are mine)

In other words, aggregates are to be individuated by reference to their composition from ‘parts’,
or let us say, elements. Those elements may be enumerated directly, or they may be specified by
a condition which they have to satisfy. It follows that the number of an aggregate—the number
of elements of which it is composed—is a determinate property of the aggregate.

The law of identity for aggregates will be that aggregate x is identical with aggregate y if and
only if x is composed of the very same elements as y. Thus the aggregate of straws in Frege’s
bundle is not to be identified with the aggregate of half straws. But nor is it to be identified with
the bundle. For first, the number of straws in the bundle can change. But, given the law of
identity for aggregates, the number of straws in a given aggregate of straws cannot change. And
second, straws form a bundle only if they are packed together. But no restrictions are placed on
spatial or temporal relations between the elements in an aggregate. Both points are
straightforward implications of Mill’s position. According to this, numerals denote aggregates,
and connote a property of aggregates: the numeral ‘n’ connotes the property of being n-
numbered. Thus, ‘Four customers came into the shop this week’ must be parsed as The aggregate
of customers who came into the shop this week is a four’, The fact that we can count spatio-
temporally separated items means that there must be aggregates of spatio-temporally separated
elements.

So a Millian aggregate cannot be identified with a ‘bundle’, ‘parcel’ or ‘agglomeration’ in the

ordinary use of these terms. Mill does not make this clear, and Frege is therefore justified in
seizing on the ordinary use of these terms to make polemical points against him. But that still
leaves open the fundamental question. Can we explain what an aggregate is in such a way as to
make it clear that aggregates are physical entities, and at the same time are the objects required
for giving an account of the import of arithmetic propositions? Some other features of what Mill
says about aggregates must be brought in before we can address this question.

Every arithmetical proposition; every statement of the result of an arithmetical operation; is a

statement of one of the modes of formation of a given number. It affirms that a certain aggregate
might have been formed by putting together certain other aggregates, or by withdrawing certain
portions of some aggregate; and that, by consequence, we might reproduce these aggregates from
it, by reversing the process. (VII 611)

Let us say that aggregates may be segregated into (disjoint) sub-aggregates and combined into
larger aggregates. An aggregate is made up of the elements of its sub-aggregates. Then, for
example, 7=(5+4)-2’ means ‘a seven is constructible by the operation of segregating a two from
the combination of a five and a four’. We must also introduce unit-aggregates, which are simply
identical with their element.

Frege objects that Mill’s account of number is not general enough: for if aggregates are physical
entities, then their elements must be physical entities. Yet we can count abstract entities—for
example the four figures of the syllogism, even though these do not constitute a physical
aggregate. Now Mill specifically says that whatever exists can be numbered. But he does not
accept that there are such things as abstract entities. So he would not accept that the figures of the
syllogism are entities and therefore, to answer Frege’s objection, would have to find some way
of giving a nominalistic paraphrase of There are four syllogistic figures’. The same point holds
for apparent references to zero (another difficulty cited by Frege): given that aggregates are
physical entities, there can be no aggregates composed of no elements at all. So names which
appear to denote zero-membered aggregates must be paraphrased out. (For example, The number
of unicorns is less than five’ becomes ‘Either there is an aggregate of unicorns and it is less than
a five, or there are no unicorns’.)

Mill’s position, as we noted, is that numbers are aggregates. It follows that the ‘names of
number’ are general and not singular. For example ‘three’ is a general term denoting all
aggregates composed of three elements and connoting their attribute of being composed of three
elements. Grammatically, however, ‘3=2+1’ is a singular identity proposition and not a universal
one. To this one might simply answer that grammatical form is in this case misleading—that the
real import of the proposition is ‘An aggregate is a three if and only if it is the union of a two and
a one\ On the other hand, there is a very natural way of changing Mill’s account to meet the
point: take ‘names of number’ to denote the properties which Mill thinks they connote. Numbers
then will be, not aggregates, but properties of aggregates. The ‘names of number’ become
abstract singular names.8

We noted in 2.6 that Mill thinks of attributes not as intensional abstract entities but as physical
properties of things. And he takes the number properties of aggregates to be physical (or natural)
attributes of their composition. On Mill’s empiricist view of the laws of number the criterion of
identity of number properties will be nomological co-extensiveness. If n and in are numbers, then
n=in if and only if it is a law of nature that an aggregate instantiates n if and only if it instantiates
m.9

Now we come back to our central question. Can Millian aggregates— as we have characterised
them here—be regarded as genuine physical entities: or are they just sets in disguise? And can
their properties, in particular their number properties, be considered physical? Cerrainly they are
established empirically, by direct perception, or by counting; and it is a classic problem for
platonistic accounts of mathematics, how such methods can yield knowledge of abscract objects
and their properties. But we can regard them as physical properties only if the aggregates
themselves are physical objects.

A theory of aggregates that fits Millian requirements has been put forward by Tyler Burge
(1977) (though Burge does not mention Mill and his concerns are unrelated to Mill’s philosophy
of arithmetic). Burge defends the view that aggregates are physical entities (on the grounds that
they have a spatio-temporal configuration and causal powers— consider for example the
aggregate of iron atoms in the earth). Whether he is right to do so is no easy question. But even if
we accept that aggregates are physical entities there is still the further question of whether
aggregates so conceived can furnish a semantics for arithmetical propositions.

Burge argues that we cannot, compatibly with treating aggregates as physical, allow aggregation
of aggregates into higher-order aggregates. And this seems right, for just the reason he gives.10
But in that case, can we be sure that we will not run out of natural numbers? Is the number of
first-order physical objects—physical objects which are not themselves (plural) aggregates—
infinite? The second question is a distinctly odd one—we certainly do not want the answer to the
first to turn on it. But on Mill’s view, which takes numbers to be aggregates, ‘Is there a greatest
number?’ means the same as is there a greatest aggregate?’ If we are allowed to postulate a
hierarchy of aggregates, then so long as we are given a first-order physical object there will be no
greatest aggregate. But if, as Burge argues, there can be no hierarchy of aggregates, then the first
question does seem to turn on the second.11.

The problem is comparable to that which arises for the view that geometrical figures are material
bodies; and a Millian could follow a line similar to that which Mill follows on geometry.
Numbers would become permanent possibilities of aggregation. In other words, he could
paraphrase ‘7 exists’ as The existence of a 7-membered aggregate is compatible with the
arithmetic laws of nature’, just as Triangles exist’ is paraphrased as ‘The construction of a
surface approximating in any degree of accuracy to a triangle is compatible with the geometric
properties of space-time’.

But this is not the only problem. Burge’s contention is that aggregates, inasmuch as they are
physical entities, cannot themselves be aggregated into higher-order aggregates. And yet we can
count aggregates. We can say for example that four plural aggregates can be composed out of
three first-order physical objects. And that ought to mean that the aggregate of plural aggregates
formed out of the three objects is a four. But Burge’s thesis rules out any such higher-order
aggregates. If aggregates are physical objects then it ought to be possible to count them—and yet
it seems to be precisely because they are physical objects that they cannot, on Mill’s analysis of
number, be counted.

This difficulty is formidable, and indicates that a Millian account of the import of arithmetical
propositions will have to move further away from Mill’s ideas than we have done so far. The
answer may lie in shifting from the notion of aggregates, understood as the results of actual or
possible aggregation, to the indisputably concrete activity of aggregation itself. Such an approach
has been developed by Kitcher (1980; 1983). He proposes an account of arithmetic—in the spirit
of Millian nominalism—as being the theory of the collecting and ordering operations of an
idealised human agent. He is in particular able to allow that these operations may themselves be
collected and ordered. But this is not the place to investigate Kitcher’s extremely well worked-
out and defended account. For we must not overestimate the importance of Mill’s analysis of
numbers as aggregates for his own overall project. Mill’s theory is worked out with a good deal
more underlying care than hasty critics of his suave prose have allowed; and it still marks out a
possible strategy for the nominalist. But we now know a great deal more than Mill did about the
difficulties of implementing a fully nominalistic account of logic and mathematics, and about the
great variety of possible approaches to the problem. (Cf., for example, Field 1980)

The fact is that Frege was interested in the question of what numbers are in a way that Mill was
not; and he transformed its significance for subsequent philosophy by bringing out in sharp relief
the constraints on any satisfactory answer. This is not to say that Mill’s account is unreflective;
he clearly took pains to work out a demystified, naturalistic account of arithmetic—and (as he
would no doubt have thought) by that very token, a nominalistic one. But what really interested
him was the epistemological objective, not the ontological one: it was routing the ‘a priori
school’ that mattered. To this we must now turn.

5 Arithmetic contains real propositions

As in the case of geometry Mill thinks that the axioms and ‘definitions’ of arithmetic are
‘inductive truths’, ‘known to us by early and constant experience’ (VII 256). This claim roused
Frege to a high pitch of scornful rhetoric. We have already touched on some of his objections to
Mill’s analysis of arithmetic. In this section we encounter two others.

The first is fundamental. On Mill’s account, each numeral greater than one is ‘defined’ as
denoting the number which is formed by adding one to the number denoted by the immediately
preceding numeral in the sequence of numerals. Each such ‘definition’, Mill says, asserts an
inductive truth. And so it seems to follow that arithmetic must rest on an infinite number of
inductive truths ‘known to us by early and constant experience’. The conclusion seems quite
bizarre. As Frege says,

Who is actually prepared to assert that the fact which, according to Mill, is contained in the
definition of an eighteen-figure number has ever been observed, and who is prepared to deny that
the symbol for such a number has, none the less, a sense? (Frege 1950:11e)

Now a Millian need not accept that each such inductive truth must be separately ‘observed’.
Given Mill’s view of how numerals are defined, the infinity of inductive truths contained in these
definitions can all be collected into the general proposition that for any number n, there exists
just one number formed by adding one to n. So the question then becomes whether it is plausible
to conceive this as an inductive truth. On the theory of numbers as aggregates outlined in the
preceding section the proposition would say that (for any n) there could exist an n-numbered
aggregate X, and a disjoint unit aggregate Y; that X and Y could be combined into an aggregate
Z; and that all such aggregates Z would be equinumerous. (Mill, incidentally, takes no account of
the need to postulate that no two numbers have the same successor.)

It does strain credulity to claim that the basic laws of arithmetic are founded on enumerative
induction. But it does not follow that they are not empirical propositions, founded on induction
in some larger sense. The issue belongs to chapter 6, in which we consider Mill’s account of
inductive reasoning. For the moment we need only note that if the laws of arithmetic are real
propositions, and if all real propositions are a posteriori, they must be empirical. So if we wish to
reject Mill’s empiricism about arithmetic, we must reject at least one of these claims. We shall
consider in this section the claim that arithmetical propositions are real. The general thesis that
real propositions.are a posteriori will be considered in 5.7, and we shall come back to Frege’s
criticism of Mill’s epistemological claim in 5.8.

Mill is quite right in saying that ‘definitions’ of numerals cannot be treated as asserting ‘the
meaning of a term only’; his way of defining them, however, should not be accepted. Given his
definition of 3’, ‘3= 2 4 1’ can be derived definitionally from ‘2+1=2+1’. This latter proposition
involves an existence assumption: that there are or could be aggregates which are the union of a
two and a one. Or as Mill puts it: ‘that collections of objects exist, which while they impress the
senses thus, may be separated into two parts, thus, (VII 257). Let us examine more
closely how numerals are defined. The primitive criteria for an ascription of number to an
aggregate are perceptual. If a physical aggregate is sufficiently small in both the number and the
spatio-temporal extension of its elements, we can directly perceive what its number is.
Otherwise, we tell what its number is by counting its elements. Consider then two ways of
defining a numeral ‘n, where n is greater than 1. First, we can define ‘n’ as denoting all
aggregates which can be directly perceived or else counted up to be n-membered— denoting,
that is, all aggregates whose elements can be put in one-one relation with the numerals from ‘1’
to ‘n’. Or, second, we can define it in Mill’s way, as denoting aggregates which result from
combining a unit aggregate with an aggregate denoted by the preceding numeral.

Take the proposition ‘168=167+1’. Suppose that I count the pebbles in a heap and find that there
are 167. I can also see a single pebble which is not in the heap. On Mill’s definition of ‘168’ I
can now infer, definitionally, that the number of the aggregate which consists of all the pebbles
in the heap together with the single pebble is 168. But from the fact that its number is 168 If
cannot infer definitionally that the pebbles in the aggregate can be put into one-one relation with
the numerals from ‘1’ to (168’. That second inference would be a real one.

This is highly counter-intuitive, precisely because the primitive criterion for telling the number
of an aggregate is counting its elements. And so we should adopt the first type of definition. In
that case, however, it cannot follow definitionally that the number of the aggregate which
consists of all the pebbles in the heap together with the single pebble is 168. That becomes a real
inference.

However we define the numerals, ‘167+1=168’ remains a real proposition. With that Mill’s ‘a
priori school’ of philosophers would agree. Where they differ from Mill is in holding it to be a
priori.

Their case is at its strongest when one considers aggregates small enough in both number and
spatio-temporal extension for the number of their elements to be perceived directly, without
counting. And as Craig (1975) points out, all counting can be reduced to this case. So let us go
back to Mill’s example, ‘3=2+1’. What this asserts, it will be remembered, is ‘that collections of
objects exist, which while they impress the senses thus, may be separated into two parts,
thus, This formulation puts out a number of hostages to fortune, which it will be
worthwhile to eliminate. First, as we have seen, a Millian analysis of number propositions should
not interpret them as making categorical existence assumptions. The presupposition of ‘3= 2+1’
—still a real one—is that aggregates of three objects either do exist or that it is physically
possible that they should exist.

Second, the word ‘separated’ seems to commit Mill to the view that the assertion is about what
will result from certain physical operations. Frege assumes that it does, when he counters that, on
Mill’s view, if everything was nailed down 2+1 would not be 3 (Frege 1950:9e).

Now it is not at all necessary for Mill’s argument that the ‘separation’ be conceived of as a
matter of physical movement. It is enough that ‘a collection of objects which impresses the
senses thus can also be perceived as two adjacent collections (Lehman 1979:124).
Never-theless, it is worth pausing to ask whether Frege’s interpretation of Mill does not have
some justification. Frege’s general criticism is that ‘Mill always confuses the applications that
can be made of an arithmetical proposition, which often are physical and do presuppose observed
facts, with the pure mathematical proposition itself’ (Frege 1950:13e). This is a
misunderstanding, though an understandable one. Mill often does express himself in a way
which supports it. But we must remember our discussion, in 3.8, of his view of the relation
between an attribute and its foundation, or more generally, of the relation between a proposition
and the ‘phenomenal evidence warranting its assertion. There we saw that Mill should not be
understood to be reducing attributes to their phenomenalistic ground. What he is doing is best
understood as the product of a naturalistic, but not a semantically reductionist, interest in the
kinds of experience which warrant us in asserting a proposition.

The same goes for Mill’s statements about geometry and arithmetic. Consider the proposition
that two triangular figures, A and B, are congruent. One can easily imagine Mill saying, ‘What
this proposition really asserts is that if you laid off a measuring rod against the sides of A, and
then transported it to B and laid it off against the sides of B you would find that…’. Considered
as a semantic claim this would be false: the two propositions might even differ in truth-value, for
example, if transporting a measuring rod deformed it. But Mill would not mean it as a semantic
claim. His point would be about the characteristic grounds on which one asserts the proposition,
and about the concrete differences accepting it would make to our expectations about the effects
of our actions. Mill does of course hold that ‘pure mathematical propositions’, in Frege’s phrase,
are empirical laws of nature. But it is a mistake to read into his account the confusion of which
Frege accuses him.

There is a third point in Mill’s formulation to which one might object. Not all aggregates of three
impress the senses. Some of them are too widely scattered, in space or time, to be directly
perceived at all. So ‘3=2+1 cannot be understood as making an assertion only about aggregates
which impress the senses.

Behind this rather fussy-looking point lies something important. When he considers what makes
us confident that ‘3=2+1’ Mill naturally thinks of aggregates which we can directly see, or which
we can visualise, that is, imagine seeing. We can visualise a three as a two and a one, but we
cannot visualise it as, say, a two and a two. We cannot visualise a way of seeing as
Similarly, we cannot visualise—imagine seeing—two straight-looking lines intersecting twice.
That is what makes us confident that two straight lines cannot intersect twice. In both cases, that
of geometry and that of arithmetic, the ultimate source of our confidence rests on the limits of
perceptual imagination. This important fact is what gives strength to the a priori school. It seems
that our confidence in the truth of classical arithmetic and Euclidean geometry rests not on
induction from experience but, as Kant claimed, on direct insight into the necessary arithmetical
and geometrical properties of anything perceivable.

Against this Mill concedes that our confidence rests on perceptual intuition, and agrees—all too
happily—on the reliability of perceptual intuition. He makes the crucial point that the reliability
or otherwise of perceptual intuition as a guide to the actual geometrical and arithmetical
properties of the physical world is an a posteriori matter. But his efforts to force that point home
are greatly weakened by his exclusive attention to directly perceivable cases. If one concedes that
Two straight lines never intersect twice’, or ‘3=2+1’, could be falsified only by a case in which
one sees two straight-looking lines intersecting twice, or an aggregate which can be perceived
both as and as one is conceding that they could not be falsified. It is then somewhat
feeble to insist that it does not actually follow that they must be true. But there might be other
ways of falsifying classical arithmetic or Euclidean geometry. We shall return to the issue.

6 The laws of thought

The discussion in chapter 4 has already outlined a good part of Mill’s empiricist view of logic.
But it also (4.3) showed him taking it for granted that all syllogistic reasoning can be reduced to
syllogisms of the first figure by means of purely verbal transformations: an assumption which
presupposes that the principle of contradiction is not a real proposition. In this section we shall
restrict ourselves to establishing that Mill’s view of the principles of contradiction and excluded
middle was as might be expected from the overall account so far: they are real, and hence must
be a posteriori. The point requires some attention, since Mill’s various discussions, taken as a
whole, add up to a picture which is less than clear and often positively misleading.12

Mill discusses the principles of contradiction and excluded middle in ii.vii.5. Other relevant
discussions occur in chapter xxi of the Examination and in his review article, ‘Grote’s Aristotle’
(XI 473–510). The position taken in the System is clear enough. Mill begins by describing two
conceptions of the laws of contradiction and excluded middle opposed to his own. They will by
now be familiar: there is that of ‘Sir William Hamilton and the Germans’ who ‘consider the
principle of contradiction to be the statement in words of a form or law of our thinking faculty’,
and that of the Nominalists who ‘deem it to be an identical proposition; an assertion involved in
the meaning of terms; a mode of defining Negation, and the word Not’ (VII 277).

The first of these conceptions is not discussed or even fully described in the System. It holds that
the laws of logic are both ‘laws of our thinking faculties’ and ‘laws of existence’, and that we
have a priori knowledge that they are the latter, grounded in some way on the fact that they are
the former. As we shall see in a moment—when we consider the Examination—Mill’s treatment
of this aprioristic or ‘German’ view of logic is in line with his treatment of the aprioristic view of
geometry and arithmetic. He agrees that the laws of contradiction and excluded middle express
constraints on our thinking faculties. And he agrees that they can be accepted, on that basis, as
objective laws of existence. But he denies that that makes them a priori.

The other position, that of the Nominalists, is that contradiction and excluded middle are verbal
propositions. Mill explicitly rejects it. He can go, he says, ‘one’ step with the Nominalists:

That if the negative be true, the affirmative must be false, really is a mere identical proposition;
for the negative proposition asserts nothing but the falsity of the affirmative, and has no other
sense or meaning whatever.

Not-p has the same meaning as if is false that p; given the equivalence of p and it is true that p,
the principle of contradiction becomes, as Mill puts it, ‘the same proposition cannot at the same
time be false and true’ (VII 277). But, he says, he

can go no further with the Nominalists; for I cannot look upon this last as a merely verbal
proposition. I consider it to be, like other axioms, one of our first and most familiar
generalizations from experience. (VII 277)

He proceeds to make analogous remarks about excluded middle, which becomes: Either it is true
that p or it is false that p. This principle, he thinks, holds only where the predicate ‘can in any
intelligible sense be attributed to the subject’ (VII 278).13 It is, again, simply one of our first
generalisations from experience.
Mill’s discussion of the Hamiltonian or ‘German’ view occurs in the Examination, and
particularly in chapter xxi, to which the reader of the System is referred. (Chapters vi and xiv are
also relevant.) Here Mill considers the three principles which Hamilton characterises as
‘Fundamental Laws of Thought’: Identity, Contradiction and Excluded Middle.14

In the first and major part of the chapter, Mill begins by distinguishing the claim that these
principles are descriptive, psychological laws of thought, that is, that we cannot but think in
accordance with them, from the claim that they are prescriptive precepts of reasoning. He then
proceeds to a tangled and unfocused discussion of the sense in which they can be said to have a
special role as ‘principles of all reasonings’. The difficulty for Mill in this part of the chapter is
that the issues he was grappling with could only be clarified in the context of a fuller and more
rigorous analysis of logic than was available to him: one which would allow, for example, for
axiomatisation and a formal definition of the notion of completeness. It is a case in which
philosophical discussion required technical advances in logic before it could make progress.

However the relevant part of the chapter for present purposes comes after this discussion, when
Mill turns from the question of what claim the ‘Fundamental Laws of Thought’ have to be
described as such—that is, in what sense they can be said to codify principles by which we
actually try to regulate our reasonings—to the question of what grounds we have for thinking
that reasonings which accord with them are sound.

His position can be summed up in five points.

(1) The laws of thought are ‘universally true of all phaenomena’ (IX 380–1) and since ‘they are
laws of all phaenomena’, and phenomena are all we know, ‘we are quite safe in looking upon
them as laws of Existence’ (IX 382).

(2) They also express ‘laws of thought’ in the descriptive sense, that is, ways in which we cannot
but think. We do of course sometimes violate them in our thinking, but never consciously, ‘for
knowingly to violate them is impossible’ (IX 373).

(3) He is prepared to keep an open mind as to whether they are ‘necessities of thought’ by Virtue
of being an original part of our mental constitution’, or because the laws of association have
made them so:

Whether the three so-called Fundamental Laws are laws of our thoughts by the native structures
of the mind, or merely because we perceive them to be universally true of observed phenomena,
I will not positively decide; but they are laws of our thoughts now, and invincibly so. They may
or may not be capable of alteration by experience, but the conditions of our existence deny to us
the experience which would be required to alter them. Any assertion, therefore, which conflicts
with one of these laws—any proposition, for instance, which asserts a contradiction, though it
were on a subject wholly removed from the sphere of our experience is to us unbelievable. The
belief in such a proposition is, in the present constitution of nature, impossible as a mental fact.
(IX 381)

(4) But though, in the sense explained, they are both ‘laws of thought’ and ‘laws of existence’,
they cannot be deduced to be laws of existence from the fact that they are laws of thought: they
must be ‘generalised’ from the phenomena themselves. To prove that ‘a contradiction is
unthinkable’ is not to prove it ‘impossible in point of fact’ (IX 382).

(5) It is the latter which is required to vindicate ‘the thinking process’: ‘Our thoughts are true
when they are made to correspond with Phaenomena’ (IX 384) and if

there were any law necessitating us to think a relation between phaenomena which does not in
fact exist between the phaenomena, then certainly the thinking process would be proved invalid,
because we should be compelled by it to think true something which would really be false. (IX
383)

In both the System and the Examination, then, Mill held that the principles of contradiction and
excluded-middle, and hence the validity of deductive reasoning, could be epistemically grounded
only on inductions from the ‘phaenomena’. But it might be argued that by the end of his life he
had changed his mind. The apparent evidence for this is provided by a passage in ‘Grote’s
Aristotle’. One cannot of course rest too much weight on a solitary passage in a review, nor is the
passage in question entirely clear. I quote it in full.

In Mr Grote’s opinion, the proof of the axiom of Contradiction, like that of all other axioms, is
inductive. ‘All that can really be done in the way of defence is, to prove the Maxim in its general
enunciation by an appeal to particular cases. If your opponent is willing to grant these particular
cases, you establish the general Maxim against him by way of induction; if he will not grant
them, you cannot prove the general Maxim at all.’ This is indeed hunting the doctrine of a priori
knowledge from its last refuge: and we should be heartily glad if we were able to agree with Mr
Grote: so important do we deem it both to philosophy and to practice to leave nothing standing
which countenances the notion that there is a kind of knowledge independent of experience. But
it seems to us that though the meaning of the two maxims, of Contradiction and Excluded
Middle, like that of all other propositions expressed in general terms, is only understood by
means of particular cases, those axioms stand, in one respect, on a different ground from axioms
in general. The proposition that the affirmation and denial of the same fact cannot both be true,
is at once assented to for this reason, that the judging one of them to be true and judging the
other to be false are not two different acts of mind, but the same act. We assent with like
readiness to the statement that they cannot both be false, because the judging either to be false is
the very same mental act with judging the other to be true. This identity of the mental operation
constitutes the very meaning of the words in which the axioms are expressed; it is impossible to
understand the words ‘true’ and ‘false’, the words ‘is’ and ‘is not’, in any other sense. For this
reason it seems to us that the axioms in question do not need the support of a gathered
experience; they have their root in a mental fact which makes it impossible to contravene them—
a fact implied in every form of words which can be used to express them. (XI 499–500, my
italics)

In the italicised sentences Mill says that, given a pair of propositions p and not-p, judging that
one of the pair is true is nothing but judging that the other of the pair is false. Half of this claim is
already asserted in the System of Logic. given the definitional equivalence between not-p and it is
false that p (and between p and it is true that p), the judgement that p is false can be nothing
other than the judgement that not-p is true. The new element is the claim that judging that p is
true is judging that not-p is false. On the definition given in the System, to judge that not-p is
false is to judge that not-not-p. Thus (granting that judgements with differing content cannot be
identical) the claim must be that a proposition and its double negation have the same content.
These facts, Mill says, constitute the meanings of the words ‘true’, ‘false’, ‘is’ and ‘is not’.
Presumably he means that it is false that p if and only if not-p, it is true that p if and only if p, and
p if and only if not-not-p are verbal truths. The last point, namely the verbal equivalence of p and
not-not-p, is exactly what one would expect, given the discussion in 2.9- It will also be
remembered from that discussion that a proposition of the form not (p and q) is understood to
mean, the proposition that not-q is inferable from the proposition that p. Applying this to the law
of contradiction reduces it to a verbal truth: not (p and not-p) will mean not-not-p is inferable
from p, which in turn will mean p is inferable from p. Again, propositions of the form p or q
were understood to mean q is inferable from not-p and p is inferable from not-q. Thus;? or not-p
will mean not-not-p is inferable from p, and that will mean the same as p is inferable from p.

Given these definitions, then, contradiction and excluded middle are verbal truths. But it is
important not to be misled about what definitions can do. If we grant the definitions, we grant
that not (p and not-p) is a verbal truth—but that in itself gives no a priori grounds for
withholding assent from the proposition p and not-p; To put this surprising point in another way:
it is one thing to accept that the inference rule which allows derivation of not-not-p from p, and
vice versa, is verbal, it is quite another to furnish grounds for adopting a rule of reductio ad
absurdum. Pointing out that not (p and not-p) is, on the given definitions, verbal, does not in and
of itself establish that if an argument leads to the conclusion p and not-p, we must discharge a
premise.

To accept an inference rule as deductively sound is to accept that it indefeasibly leads from true
premises to true conclusions.15 That is the basis of reductio ad absurdum: if a deductively sound
argument leads to a contradictory conclusion, then, since the conclusion is not true, one of the
premises is not true. But that of course presupposes that no contradiction is true. From a
contradiction, by the principles of classical logic, one can deduce anything; but experience tells
me not to endorse, for example, the proposition that I have three hands. So if classical logic is
accepted, no contradiction is true. And if any contradiction is true, classical logic is not truth-
preserving. If I had grounds for endorsing a contradictory proposition, therefore, they would be
grounds for amending classical logical principles in some way. That could be done without
rejecting the definitions which make the law of contradiction verbal; but it would no doubt be
simpler to change those definitions. In that innocuous sense only is there an interplay between
what principles of reasoning we accept and what definitions of connectives we adopt.

The moment some connectives are defined in terms of others some truths of logic will be verbal.
Equally, however, on any set of definitions, some truths of logic will be real. That is the
fundamental point in Mill’s argument. Combined with the thesis that all real propositions are a
posteriori, it forces the conclusion that logic itself is a posteriori. The conclusion is in no way
affected by Mill’s claims, in ‘Grote’s Aristotle’, about the meanings of the terms ‘true’, ‘false’,
‘is’ and ‘is not’.

It is quite possible of course that Mill himself did not see this, and that by 1872, the year in
which he wrote ‘Grote’s Aristotle’, his view of logic had changed in some fundamental way
towards the ‘Nominalist’ theory which he had previously rejected. But it is equally possible that
the only change was that he had thought harder about the implications of his account of the
meanings of the connectives in the System, without abandoning the empiricist view of logic
which that book presents. At any rate, it is the empiricist view which we shall consider. If Mill
can establish that no real proposition is a priori, he will have established that any grounds for
accepting principles of deductive logic must be a posteriori.

7 Perceptual imagination

So we finally come to Mill’s case for the crucial thesis that no real proposition is a priori.16 The
arguments for the opposing view, that there are real propositions whose truth is nevertheless
‘perceived a priori (VII 231), are, Mill thinks, ‘reducible to two’ (VII 233).

The first simply points to the fact that we consider ourselves to have grounds for accepting
certain propositions, in mathematics and logic in particular, not on the basis of inductions from
experience but by ‘merely thinking’ about them. In thinking about them we appeal to ‘intuition’;
that is to say, to our perceptual imagination—to what we can imagine as perceptible. Since we
are prepared to endorse them on this basis alone it seems that they must rest on the a priori
properties of pure perceptual imagination, and not on the facts discovered by actual perception.

We have seen that perceptual intuition in this sense plays an important role in the epistemology
of arithmetic as well as that of geometry; and it is fundamental in the epistemology of logic too.
An empiricist owes us an account of its role and Mill accepts the obligation. In fact he concedes
to perceptual intuition a much greater value than it really has.

Take the axiom, ‘Two straight lines cannot enclose a space’. The a priori theorist argues that we
are able to grasp its truth merely by visualising pairs of straight lines; and hence that our
knowledge of its truth cannot be a posteriori.

Intuition is ‘imaginary looking;’ but experience must be real looking: if we see a property of
straight lines to be true by merely fancying ourselves to be looking at them, the ground of our
belief cannot be the senses, or experience: it must be something mental. (VII 233; the quoted
phrase is from Whewell 1858: I, 140)

Moreover, even if actual observation never shows two straight lines enclosing a space, it could
not show ‘that having once intersected, if they are prolonged to infinity they do not meet, but
continue to diverge from one another’ (VII 233). We cannot go on extending them indefinitely,
so for all we know from our experience, they may begin to converge beyond the points to which
we have extended them. Our certainty that they do not do so cannot be justified on empirical
grounds.

Mill’s reply to these objections contains the essential empiricist point - namely, that the
reliability of perceptual imagination, as a guide to the actual properties of physical space, must
itself be an a posteriori question. But it is buried in a thoroughly misleading account of the role
visual imagination plays in geometrical reasoning.

He holds that ‘geometrical forms’ can be ‘painted in the imagination with a distinctness equal to
reality’. And he claims that any distinctly imagined configuration is physically possible: a
physical configuration could exist of which it would be an exact ‘copy’. Thus ‘mental pictures’
are just as good as ‘any which we could make on paper’, and for this reason visual imagination
does have a demonstrative role in geometrical reasoning, as the a priori theorists claim.
Nevertheless, geometry remains inductive: for the fact that any imagined configuration is
physically possible is itself known inductively:

we should not be authorized to substitute observation of the image in our mind, for observation
of the reality, if we had not learnt by long-continued experience that the properties of the reality
are faithfully represented in the image. (VII 234)

Various things are wrong with this. It is notorious, in the first place, that reliance on an
inaccurately drawn geometrical diagram which ‘looks right’ on paper can lead one completely
astray—because what the diagram seems to depict or instantiate is in fact not a physical
possibility. The same would have to apply to an imagined diagram, however distinct. But even
allowing that imagined configurations which ‘look right’ are physically possible, how could
‘attentive contemplation’ of any such imagined configurations show that a configuration such as
a two-sided rectilineal figure is not possible?

Mill suggests that whenever we suppose that two allegedly straight lines, on being extended,
intersect a second time, ‘and transport ourselves thither’ (VII 235) in imagination, we will find
ourselves visualising them as bent. But it is simply false that they would have to look bent, or
that we should visualise them as looking bent. To imagine what two straight lines would look
like if they met a second time is easy: they would look like two straight lines meeting.

Of course what he has in mind is that we cannot form in visual imagination, in a single gestalt, a
picture of two straight-looking lines meeting twice—any more than we can draw a diagram,
surveyable at a single glance, of two straight-looking lines meeting twice. Presumably we argue
from that finding inductively. Any pair of lines which we perceive or visualise intersecting twice
are bent, so all pairs of lines which intersect twice are bent.

Leaving aside the obvious weakness of such an inductive argument, the account misrepresents
the role visual imagination actually plays in geometrical reasoning. The key point cannot be that
any visualised configuration is physically possible. It must be that any physically possible
configuration (below a certain level of complexity) is visualisable. That is how visual
imagination is supposed to tell us that two straight lines cannot enclose a space—because such a
configuration, a ‘biangle’, cannot be visualised. And that is why the axiom seems a priori.

Yet the empiricist thrust of Mill’s argument is unaffected by these defects. In the argument from
the impossibility of visualising biangles to their physical impossibility, the claim that any
physically possible configuration is visualisable remains essential—and that claim cannot on
Mill’s analysis be a priori. The important thesis is that the reliability of visual imagination as a
guide to geometric possibilities is an a posteriori matter. But while Mill insists that its reliability
is a posteriori, he also greatly over-rates it.

On his own epistemology, he has no grounds for such confidence. In either an associationist or
an evolutionary point of view, one would expect visual imagination to be reliable as a guide to
the geometry of the space of our immediately relevant biological environment. (We shall come to
the evolutionary argument in a moment, when we consider Mill’s debate on this issue with
Herbert Spencer.) But neither approach gives any reason to expect it to be a reliable guide to the
geometry of space in the large. Nor could enumerative inductive arguments of the kind Mill
envisages possibly establish the truth of Euclidean geometry as against some other, such as a
Riemannian geometry, since the latter’s assumptions about spatial curvature might produce the
same directly observational predictions.17

8 Necessity, aprioricity, and conceivability

There is, Mill thinks, a second important argument for apriorism. He quotes it from Whewell:

experience cannot offer the smallest ground for the necessity of a proposition. She can observe
and record what has happened; but she cannot find, in any case, or in any accumulation of cases,
any reason for what must happen…. To learn a proposition by experience, and to see it to be
necessarily true, are two altogether different processes of thought. (Whewell 1858: I, 65–7;
quoted at VII 237)

The point was famously made by Kant: ‘Experience tells us, indeed, what is, but not that it must
necessarily be so, and not otherwise’.18 We do know that certain propositions are necessarily
true; that knowledge, therefore, cannot derive from experience.

Mill, as we saw, rejected any metaphysical distinction between ‘necessary’ and ‘contingent’
truths as empty (5.2); so he could simply have bluntly denied that there are any modal truths
about the necessity of propositions to know. But that would only have led to an unsatisfactory
stalemate, given Whewell’s equally blunt insistence that

if any one does not clearly comprehend this distinction of necessary and contingent truths, he
will not be able to go along with us in our researches into the foundations of human knowledge;
nor, indeed, to pursue with success any speculation on the subject. (Whewell 1858: I, 60; quoted
at VII 237)

Mill’s strategy is more indirect, but splendidly forceful. He insists on understanding Whewell’s
definition of ‘necessary truth’ in a wholly naturalistic way. According to Whewell,

Necessary truths are those in which we not only learn that the proposition is true, but see that it
must be true; in which the negation of the truth is not only false, but impossible; in which we
cannot, even by an effort of imagination, or in a supposition, conceive the reverse of that which
is asserted. That there are such truths cannot be doubted. (Whewell 1858: I, 58–9; quoted at VII
237)

Mill responds:

Although Dr Whewell has naturally and properly employed a variety of phrases to bring his
meaning more forcibly home, he would, I presume, allow that they are all equivalent; and that
what he means by a necessary truth, would be sufficiently defined, a proposition the negation of
which is not only false but inconceivable. I am unable to find in any of his expressions, turn them
what way you will, a meaning beyond this and I do not believe he would contend that they mean
anything more….
This, therefore, is the principle asserted: that propositions, the negation of which is
inconceivable, or in other words,-which we cannot figure to ourselves as being false, must rest
on evidence of a higher and more cogent description than any which experience can afford. (VII
237–8)

Whewell could well have replied that his claim had been misunderstood. It was not that
‘necessarily true proposition’ means ‘proposition whose negation is inconceivable’, his point was
simply that we recognise a necessary truth by the inconceivability of its negation. Sill, however,
on Whewell’s own showing, it seems that a psychological fact about the proposition, namely, our
inability to ‘conceive’ it false, is our only way of recognising something called its ‘necessity’. So
long as this is our only access to ‘necessities’, the issue reduces, as Mill says, to the legitimacy of
inferring from the psychological inconceivability of a proposition’s negation to its truth.

Obviously the notion of inconceivability cries out for elucidation. The a priori theorist does not
have in mind, for example, the kind of inconceivability that would be involved in an arithmetical
proposition involving numbers too great to be computed by a human mind. But however one
spells it out, it must remain a psychological notion. Whewell is not appealing, in the manner of
certain twentieth-century philosophers, to the literal ‘meaninglessness’ of such sentences as ‘2+1
=4’, or ‘Biangles exist’ —their alleged failure to express anything at all. He is appealing to a
certain distinctive cognitive repugnance, an inability to believe, that one experiences in the face
of the propositions they express. The inability is a psychological fact, but that is not to say that it
is like being unable, for example, to believe that your father was a thief. The distinctive thing
about it—not in all cases, but in an important range of them—is its basis: it arises from the limits
of perceptual imagination—from our inability to give ourselves a picture or representation of the
perceivable situation which would make a proposition of this kind true.

Perceptual imagination plays an important role in geometry and arithmetic. But one should not
be mesmerised by it. An empiricist in particular, because he wants to get the complex
connections between mathematical reasoning and experience straight, should not endorse
monopolistic claims on its behalf. There is a natural tendency, especially in thinking about the
epistemology of geometry, to be bewitched by what is visualisable, to the exclusion of other
kinds of thought experiment. We may not be able to visualise two straight lines intersecting
twice; but it does not follow that we cannot imagine evidence for it. One might imagine two
space ships, travelling along what by any ordinarily or scientifically acceptable criterion are
straight paths, and eventually meeting a second time. The fact that we can describe the kind of
evidence which would, in an appropriate theoretical context, count in favour of a proposition is
enough to establish its meaningfulness—even though it remains, in Mill and Whewell’s
particular sense, ‘inconceivable’. The point applies as much to an arithmetical proposition such
as Mill’s ‘3=2+1’ as to geometry.19

It is an important historical point that Mill does not respond along these lines. The response is a
philosophically natural one for those who have become accustomed, or resigned, to the complex
ways in which physics has become ever more perceptually counter-intuitive since the end of the
last century, and it fits plausibly into the holistic and hypothetico-deductive empiricism which
has developed in reaction to that process. But Mill’s paradigm is that of enumerative inductions
from perceived situations. So ‘being able to imagine evidence for’ becomes, for him, ‘being able
to directly visualise’. Mill therefore accepts Whewell’s notion of inconceivability on its own
terms. He is in no position to drive a wedge between the ‘inconceivability’ of a proposition and
the unimaginability of finding recognisable evidence for it. That makes the task of giving an
empiricist account of logic and mathematics immensely more difficult for him.

On the other hand, he does have another weapon lying to hand—his psychological
associationism; and he uses it for all (and more) than its worth. Associationism holds that an
invariable, and sufficiently repeated, correlation in experience of attributes A and B, will (unless
inhibited from doing so by counteracting associations) produce an association of the ideas of A
and B so strong as to make it inconceivable that A should be instantiated without B. This
framework—used with considerable resourcefulness—allows Mill to ram home a point which he
illustrates by a multitude of not terribly convincing examples: that what has been found
inconceivable has frequently at a later stage in thought been recognised as true. He seizes on
Whewell’s remark, that new scientific principles can become entrenched to such an extent as to
make their denial seem inconceivable, and triumphantly points out that that is exactly the result
to be predicted on his own associationist theory of inconceivability.

The issue of inconceivability is taken up again in ii.vii, where Mill considers the opinions of
Herbert Spencer. In his Principles of Psychology Spencer had discussed Mill’s criticisms of the
‘test of inconceivableness’. He accepted that they showed the fallibility of the test, but pointed
out that a fallible test need not be a useless one. The fact that a belief was ‘primary’, that is, that
it was universally accepted, and innately impossible to conceive as false, could, Spencer held, be
accepted as a criterion of its truth. Or as Mill invidiously put it, ‘Mr Spencer’s doctrine…does
not erect the curable, but only the incurable limitations of the human conceptive faculty, into
laws of the outward universe’ (VII 264).

Mill however overestimated—initially at least—the degree of disagreement between himself and

Spencer. Spencer—unlike Whewell, or Hamilton—was in no disagreement with Mill’s
naturalistic framework in general, nor with his associationism in particular. What he did was to
exploit associationist psychology in the opposite sense to Mill. If an invariable correlation of
attributes in experience produces an invariable association of ideas, to the point where it becomes
inconceivable that the attributes should exist apart, then the fact of such an inconceivability must
indicate an actual association in experience. And Spencer was able to strengthen this point
greatly by putting it in an evolutionary perspective, because his own brand of evolutionism
envisaged biological inheritance of habits acquired by experience. On this theory our innate
incapacities to separate certain ideas could be taken as indicating an invariable correlation in
experience over previous generations.20

In fact Spencer’s naturalistic vindication of the ‘test of inconceivableness’ is remarkably like

Mill’s naturalistic vindication of the reliability of geometrical intuition; except that it entrenches
it further by setting it in the framework of an evolutionary theory. By the same token, some of
Mill’s criticism of it could equally well have been directed at his own confidence in the
reliability of geometrical intuition: as when he argues, quite correctly, that the uniform
correlation in experience on which a generalisation is based may be limited or in other ways
misleading, and cannot be accepted as a substitute for a properly scientific induction from the
facts.

Mill’s discussion of Spencer does however bring out more clearly the essentials of his own
position. The relish with which he deploys associationist arguments against apriorism all too
often tends to give the impression that he would accept that a belief which was ‘originally’ or
‘innately’ inconceivable would have to be endorsed as an a priori truth. That impression is
misleading, as is clear in the following passage:

even if we believe with Mr Spencer, that mental tendencies originally derived from experience
impress themselves permanently on the cerebral structure and are transmitted by inheritance, so
that modes of thinking which are acquired by the race become innate and a priori in the
individual, thus representing, in Mr Spencer’s opinion, the experience of his progenitors, in
addition to his own…. All that would follow…is, that a conviction might be really innate, i.e.
prior to individual experience, and yet not be true, since the inherited tendency to accept it may
have been originally the result of other causes than its truth. (VII 276)

It is evident here that the basic argument against apriorism arises from the naturalistic standpoint
as such, and not from any particular empirical theory of the mind. If minds are only a part of
nature, there can be no a priori inference from a state of mind, a belief- be it innate or otherwise,
be its negation inconceivable or not—to the truth of that state of mind. Such an inference may, it
is true, be internally vindicated, underpinned a posteriori, by a theory of the causes of the belief
which would entail that the belief was true. In this respect, evolutionary theory has a genuine
epistemological relevance, nor does its relevance depend on Spencer’s belief in the inheritance of
acquired characteristics.

But any such justification of a belief remains internal to a theory which is itself ultimately
grounded a posteriori. This is an important point, to which we shall have to return. It marks a
crucial difference between Spencer’s ‘justification’ of certain beliefs, as in a limited and
naturalised sense ‘a priori, and the pure epistemological project of philosophers in the tradition
of Kant, who propose to interpret certain real propositions as genuinely a priori in the sense that
one can infer from their intuitiveness to their truth transcendentally or externally—prior, that is
to say, to any natural theory of the mind and its nature.

Against this Kantian standpoint, the basic naturalistic argument becomes the central one. Mill
puts it forcefully in the Examination:

even assuming that inconceivability is not solely the consequence of limited experience, but that
some incapacities of conceiving are inherent in the mind, and inseparable from it; this would not
entitle us to infer, that what we are thus incapable of conceiving cannot exist. Such an inference
would only be warrantable, if we could know a priori that we must have been created capable of
conceiving whatever is capable of existing: that the universe of thought and that of reality, the
Microcosm and the Macrocosm (as they once were called) must have been framed in complete
correspondence with one another…. That this is really the case has been laid down expressly in
some systems of philosophy, by implication in more, and is the foundation (among others) of the
systems of Schelling and Hegel: but an assumption more destitute of evidence could scarcely be
made, nor can one easily imagine any evidence that could prove it, unless it were revealed from
above. (IX 68)

What needs to be shown is that what we are ‘incapable of conceiving cannot exist’. And that
must be shown to be true a priori: not internally and a posteriori. That is the real force of Mill’s
naturalistic case. It lies in the impossibility of providing any model of real a priori knowledge
which does not break the constraints of naturalism. On this point at least, Mill and Kantian
idealists could agree.

9 The a priori in reasoning

Must we then accept Mill’s argument, and conclude that on a naturalistic view there is no a
priori knowledge? Is the view that no knowledge at all is a priori coherent? If it is not, and if
Mill’s naturalistic argument for it is sound, then we have a reductio ad absurdum of naturalism.
It is now time to consider these larger issues.

One point made by Whewell, and discussed by Mill, goes deep. It is that some principles of
reasoning (and in Whewell’s view, some laws of nature—for example, the conservation of
matter) cannot, in Mill’s words, ‘be drawn from experience, inasmuch as they are, on the
contrary, assumed in the interpretation of experience’ (VII 247).

Mill’s response is interesting. He accepts that assumptions have to be made in the course of any
inquiry but points out that a ‘theory or hypothesis’ assumed provisionally for the purpose of
‘experimental inquiry’ may be confirmed by the success of that inquiry. It is the reply which any
radical empiricist must make; but Mill’s inductivism prevents him from working it up to its full
force. There is, as we shall see in the next chapter (6.7), a strong coherentist vein in Mill’s
account of the natural history of the ‘inductive process’. Nevertheless, the idea which became
such a major theme in the philosophical thought of the last decades of the century—that of the
holism of our beliefs about the world —a theme shared by thinkers as different as American
pragmatists, British idealists and philosopher-scientists like Poincare, appears in the System of
Logic only as a germinating seed overshadowed by better established but less promising growths.
In this respect Mill’s position is markedly weaker than the holistic hypothetico-deductivism
which has become today’s empiricist orthodoxy.

An empiricist of this modern kind can get much stronger play out of Mill’s response. He can
separate clearly the claim that in any inquiry it is necessary to make some presuppositions from
the aprioristic claim that there are presuppositions which are necessary and must be made in
every inquiry. He can accept that the interpretation of experience must presuppose some
theoretical framework or other, but still deny that there is a given theoretical framework which it
must presuppose. And he will hold that the ultimate grounding for the theoretical framework
which has been presupposed lies in the backward flow of justification from its actual success in
empirical inquiry.

Can we not conclude, therefore, that Mill’s radical empiricism—the claim that real propositions
can be grounded only on experience—is sound, while at the same time granting that his specific
account of how they should be grounded is defective?

We arrive at our scientific conception of the natural world, and of ourselves as a part of that
world, by applying to experience certain naturally given dispositions to make inferences. This
can be a virtuous circle. Our perceptual and cognitive dispositions lead us to successively more
sophisticated theoretical conceptions of the world, in which we ourselves, together with our
perceptual and cognitive dispositions, figure, and within which we find their general or normal
reliability confirmed.

A naturalistic self-conception carries with it, as we have seen, the epistemological consequence
that all our judgements and principles of reasoning are revisable. But fallibilism, the empiricist
will say, should not be confused with scepticism (see for instance Quine 1975; 1981). The theory
of nature which emerges from our natural reasonings includes a theory of human beings’
perceptual and cognitive relations with their environment. It is justified as a good explanation of
the data on which it rests. To be a good explanation, it will, in particular, have to be self-
consistent: it will show us the aetiology of our beliefs, and will therefore provide an internal
criterion for judging the limits of our knowledge — and it will then itself have to fall within
those limits, thus supplying its own vindication. So our instinctive cognitive dipositions are in
the end justified by appeal to the data of experience.

Beliefs and forms of reasoning can indeed be vindicated in just this way. But that does not show
the complete dispensability of a priori principles. There is a vital distinction to be made. It
follows from the naturalistic view that all real propositions (including those of logic and
mathematics) are in principle revisable in the light of experience. Does it also follow, however,
that no real proposition can have a rational claim on our thinking prior to experience? The two
things are nor the same. They are in fact crucially different. For if naturalism does entail not
merely radical fallibilism, but the stronger claim that no real proposition or principle can have a
prior rational claim on our thinking, then it does run into precisely the self-undermining sceptical
consequence which the Kantian argument draws from it.

We find that certain postulates and principles of reasoning spontaneously suggest themselves to
us as intuitive and natural. We are quite within our rights when, in the light of the evidence, and
the conclusions reached by applying those postulates and principles to the evidence, we apply
them to themselves, and find our confidence in them raised. They can be self-vindicating just
because they might have turned out to be self-undermining. (Indeed some spontaneous modes of
reasoning are undermined in this process—the initial array of spontaneous modes of reasoning is
purified, some modes being codified and enhanced, others being inhibited and restrained. That,
however, is another story.)

But we are within our rights in this reflexive application of rules of reasoning to themselves only
inasmuch as they have some positive degree of primitive or original authority. The internal
appeal to their actual success can rationally raise our confidence in them only if we are justified
in attaching some confidence to them in the first place. For if the initial structures had no
epistemic strength at all, we could not use them to build a firmer structure, and then could not in
turn use that firmer structure to go back to the initial structures, strengthening some elements by
incorporating them into the whole, and discarding others.

Some real inferences or propositions must have a prior claim, even if they always in principle
remain revisable in enlarged states of knowledge. We have to make sense of at least this
weakened notion of, or surrogate for, the synthetic a priori, if knowledge is to be possible at all.
That is the sound kernel of the Kantian argument. And it seems that Mill’s philosophical
premises leave him no room to cope with it.

That Millian empiricism was in this way incoherent was a standard claim during the reaction
against it at the end of the nineteenth century (see for example Sidgwick 1882). But the
challenge applies with equal force to the naturalistic empiricism which now again dominates the
English-speaking scene. The question in fact is whether, as Kant supposes, it is naturalism as
such which produces the impasse. We return to the question again in 6.7, and deal with it more
fully in 7.3–4. But the issue should not be presented solely as an epistemological one—whether
on the naturalistic view of the mind we can have reason to believe anything. It is also a question
whether, on that view, one can make sense of such notions as reasoning, inferring, deliberating
and so forth at all.

We accept certain principles in our reasoning as prior postulates: groundrules of induction,

various propositions of logic and mathematics, guidelines of scientific inquiry such as principles
of continuity, conservation and sufficient reason. Such principles have a distinctive
phenomenological status. They impress us—sometimes, to be sure, only at the end of a process
of pure analysis—as objectively valid: we do not ‘choose’ them, but find ourselves constrained
by them. Their authority is bound up with our common recognition of them as requirements of
reason.

This is the real force of Whewell’s position, and it is why Mill’s treatment of it seems
reductionist. In thinking of ourselves ‘hermeneutically’—that is, in interpreting each other as
reasoners and moral agents —we understand our reasoning as guided by something which
objectively constrains it. When Kant characterised rational autonomy as the ability to recognise
and respond to objectively valid reasons he was simply describing the core of our hermeneutic
conception of ourselves as persons—as rationally autonomous believers and agents. But it is just
here that a clash seems to arise with our naturalistic self-understanding, a clash between our
image of ourselves as autonomous reasoners and our image of ourselves as natural objects. This
is the most fundamental source of the sense of strain and implausibility in Mill’s treatment of the
a priori in reasoning.

To say that a person has inferred that Q is to say not merely that he has been caused to believe
that Q because he believes, say, that P Q and has come to believe that P. It is to say that this is
true in virtue of his having recognised P together with P Q entails Q. In treating the causal
process linking the beliefs as an inference, we treat him as a reasoning agent recognising that
rational requirement.

This recognition—grasping that, given P, and P Q, there is reason to believe that Q—seems to
escape naturalistic, causal analyis. It cannot be treated as a third belief among the causal
antecedents of the belief that Q, for the reasons brought out by Lewis Carroll’s parable of
Achilles and the tortoise (Carroll 1895). To take that causal sequence, from the three antecedent
beliefs to the conclusion, as an inference is still to credit the reasoner with the perception of an
entailment—in this case between the three antecedent propositions and the conclusion.

We are nevertheless tempted to think of this recognition as an act which figures essentially
among the antecedents of the agent’s conclusion: but an act of a special kind, involving some
special apprehension of an objective Platonic or transcendental realm of rules of reason. No
naturalistic account can supply such an act. (This was already implicit in our treatment of modus
ponens in 4.2, 4.7 and 4.8.) No experience or behaviour will do. Nor will any causal connection
between experiences, or between experiences and behaviour. Nor can any object of awareness
have the property of ‘pure meaning’—the capacity to instruct me on its own application.

At this point we seem to be threatened with the conclusion that rational autonomy, the central
category of the hermeneutic perspective, is unintelligible in naturalistic terms: naturalism can
give us only a ‘heteronomous’ causal process. As we shall see in chapter 8, the same conflict
between the naturalistic and the hermeneutic conception of human beings and their interactions
rumbles underneath Mill’s account of freedom of the will. Just as his analysis of reasoning seems
to leave out something essential, so too does his account of free action: it is, in both cases, the
‘fact’ (as we are tempted to think of it) that a free or rational agent recognises and responds to
reasons. Is what is left our sayable at the naturalistic level at all? Is it a fact about some non-
naturalistic level? Or is it that no fact is left out? We return to these questions in 8.10.

Appendix: Mill’s ‘psychologism’

Mill is often accused of ‘psychologism’ in his treatment of logic. The accusation goes back to
Husserl.21

‘Psychologism’ is a far from clear notion. The unclarity lies partly in the ambiguities of the term
itself, and partly in the fact that its users normally intend to gesture towards what they take to be
a set of implicit confusions, rather than towards any explicitly propounded thesis. The term can
cover at least two groups of ideas. The first includes the view that the laws of logic are simply
psychological laws, that is to say, that they should be regarded as stating, or perhaps expressing,
the actual uniformities which are in fact instantiated by our mental processes; and also the
closely related idea that the necessity of logical laws is simply psychological necessity. The
second centres on the notion that ‘meanings’ are mental entities, and that ‘judgements’ assert
relationships among these entities.

If the last four chapters carry conviction, then it must by now be evident that Mill can be accused
of none of these doctrines. His view is that logic, like mathematics, consists of a posteriori truths
grounded in inductions from experience. Mill understands perfectly well what the a priori school
intends by the notion of necessity, and he explicitly holds that the distinction between necessary
and contingent truths understood in that sense is empty. If there is evidence that he changed his
mind at all on the view that the laws of logic are laws of nature ascertained a posteriori, it is
evidence of a change towards ‘Nominalism’, that is towards a view of logical truths as ‘verbal’,
and not to psychologism (see 5.6).

The second kind of psychologism, according to which names refer to ideas, and propositions
assert a psychological relation of some kind between them, is precisely what Mill criticises under
the name of ‘Conceptualism’ (see 2.2, 2.5); ‘one of Mill’s principal intentions’, as R. F.McRae,
in his introduction to the Collected Works edition of the System, says, ‘is to depsychologise the
theory of meaning in radical fashion’. And McRae rightly adds that ‘So far as concepts and
judgements are concerned, Mill’s logic is not an exemplification of what Husserl calls
psychologism, but, rather, a forceful condemnation of it’ (V xlii).

The fact is that Mill, just like Frege later, opposed both forms of psychologism, and, again like
Frege, opposed them because he took them (rightly) to be bound up with idealism. It is
noteworthy that Frege does not make the mistake of attributing ‘psychologism’ to Mill. He
argues separately and on two fronts, on the one hand against psychologistic views, and on the
other against Mill’s position, that the laws of arithmetic (and of logic) are known inductively,
and that number terms connote attributes of physical aggregates.

What explains, then, the attribution of ‘psychologism’ to Mill? Reading only the System of
Logic, and reading it carefully and right through, one would hardly dream of accusing Mill of
psychologism. (Only the definitions of the subject at the beginning could mislead on this score.)
The situation is different when one turns to the Examination. There the issues mainly arise in
chapter xx and chapter xxi. Mill is grappling with a slippery idealist opponent and trying to make
reasonable concessions to him; the effect is confusing and unclear. That makes it particularly
important to consider the dialectical setting in which any particular statement is made.

Husserl (1970:90) picks out a passage which has been quoted many times since (for example by
Karl Britton 1969:142 and by Sluga 1980:26). I have italicised the section which he quotes and
included the context in which it appears:

I conceive it to be true that Logic is not the theory of Thought as Thought, but of valid Thought;
not of thinking, but of correct thinking. It is not a Science distinct from, and coordinate with
Psychology. So far as it is a science at all, it is a part, or branch, of Psychology; differing from
it, on the one hand as the part differs from the whole, and on the other, as an Art differs from a
Science, Its theoretic grounds are wholly borrowed from Psychology, and include as much of
that science as is required to justify the rules of the art. Logic has no need to know more of the
Science of Thinking, than the difference between good thinking and bad. A consequence of this
is, that the Necessary Laws of Thought, those which our author…reserved especially to Logic,
are precisely those with which Logic has least to do, and which belong the most exclusively to
Psychology. What is common to all thought, whether good or bad, and inseparable from it, is
irrelevant to Logic, unless by the light it may indirectly throw on something besides itself. The
properties of Thought which concern Logic, are some of its contingent properties; those, namely,
on the presence of which depends good thinking, as distinguished from bad. (IX 359)

This is hardly a model of clarity; the italicised passage taken on its own might seem to bear a
psychologistic reading. Husserl’s interpretation is of this kind; he thinks that Mill has fallen into
the confusion of thinking that ‘Logic is related to psychology just as any branch of chemical
technology is related to chemistry, as land-surveying is to geometry etc’ (Husserl 1970:90).

However this is to take loose programmatic remarks out of context. Just before, for example,
Mill has agreed that ‘the real theory of Thought—the laws, in the scientific sense of the term, of
Thought as Thought—do not belong to Logic, but to Psychology: and it is only the validity of
thought which Logic takes cognisance of…’ (IX 359). He thinks that logic must be ‘grounded on
a scientific investigation of the requisites of valid thought’ (IX 359–60)—but he means no more
than that the logician must formulate rules of inquiry in a manner which will be as helpful as
possible to inquirers, and must draw on the psychology of thought to do so. It is in that sense that
the art of the logician depends on the science of the psychologist. How best to promote the art of
clear thinking is a psychological question. Mill would have agreed with Peirce that ‘Formal logic
must not be too purely formal; it must represent a fact of psychology, or else it is in danger of
degenerating into a mathematical recreation’ (quoted in Passmore 1968:142–3). Peirce, as
Passmore points out, was interested in human activities of inference, not abstract structures of
implication: ‘his “logic” is in large part a theory of inquiry, into which he is not ashamed to
introduce psychological, social and even ethical considerations’. Precisely the same could be said
of Mill. Such a conception of logic as a box of psychologically well-designed tools for clear
thinking is far from the abstract science which emerged in the twentieth century. Mill loves to
psychologise about the art of thinking; he does not, in the modern manner, surround logical
theory with a cordon sanitaire against psychological pollution. But he is not propounding a
philosophical thesis of ‘psychologism’ about the status of logical laws.
6
Induction and Inductivism
Let us consider…what sort of subject is inductive or human logic— the logic of truth. Its
business is to consider methods of thought, and discover what degree of confidence should be
placed in them, i.e. in what proportion of cases they lead to truth. In this investigation it can only
be distinguished from the natural sciences by the greater generality of its problems…. The proper
plan of such a subject is to be found in Mill; I do not mean the details of his Methods or even his
use of the Law of Causality. But his way of treating the subject as a body of inductions about
inductions, the Law of Causality governing lesser laws and being itself proved by induction by
simple enumeration. (Frank Ramsey)1

1 Inductive logic
Books i and ii of the System of Logic have shown that no real inference or proposition is a priori,
and that logic and mathematics themselves contain real propositions and inferences. The
question must now be, what are the a posteriori grounds for belief ? How can belief be grounded
on evidence? That is the question of inductive logic.

Terms like ‘inductive logic’, or ‘inductive reasoning’, can however be used in a broad or a
narrow sense.

In the broad sense, induction is inference from singular to general propositions. That is how Mill
defines it: ‘Induction may be defined, the operation of discovering and proving general
propositions’ (VII 284). (Note that he sees it here both as a logic of discovery and as a logic of
proof.) There is no incompatibility between this definition and the thesis that all inference is
from particulars to particulars, as Mill goes on to note. Any inference from particulars to
particulars can be represented as involving an inductive step from particulars to generals. The
point made by the thesis that inference is from particulars to particulars, on our interpretation of
it, was that general propositions express habits of inference. Induction therefore becomes the
operation by which we accumulate habits of inference, and inductive logic becomes the ‘theory
of evidence’, of how to extract sound habits of inference from one’s data.

Mistakenly, Mill asserts that all real inference is inductive: ‘all Inference…consists of
inductions, and the interpretation of inductions’ (VII 283). That view derives, as we have seen,
from his tendency to treat universal instantiation as the paradigm of all deductive reasoning—
deduction becomes a case of ‘interpreting’ a general rule, or ‘decyphering’ a ‘memorandum’,
which by previous processes of induction has been placed in one’s mental archives (4.8). But this
ignores the point that inferences which rest on the laws of contradiction, excluded middle and
transitivity of implication are not verbal inferences and neither are they ‘interpretations’ of a rule.
They are real inferences, justified, on Mill’s empiricist principles. only by induction. But their
use in reasoning is not itself a case of induction.

The same point in fact applies to Mill’s canons of eliminative induction, or ‘Methods of
Experimental Inquiry’—which he himself sees as the centre-piece of his inductive logic. They
are, as we shall see, demonstrative methods, in which a general proposition is deductively
inferred from singular observations together with certain appropriate general propositions as
background assumptions. They are inductive therefore only in the somewhat loose sense that the
main work involved in applying them consists in observation and ‘operations subsidiary to
induction’ such as the classification of possible causes. If induction is taken in the sense of
inference from singular premises alone to general conclusions, they should not strictly speaking
be included. We shall however follow Mill in referring to them as inductive methods of
reasoning.

There is a narrower, and more common, sense of the word ‘induction’. In the narrower sense
‘induction’ is understood as enumerative induction: it is the generalisation to ‘All As are Bs’
from an enumerated sample of As which are all observed to be Bs.2 Mill assumes that all
inductive canons either are, or are justified by, enumerative induction. In particular, he rejects the
hypothetico-deductive method as an independent method of arriving at the knowledge of new
truths. He therefore makes no distinction between the narrow and the broad sense of ‘induction’,
and defines induction in another place as

that operation of the mind, by which we infer that what we know to be true in a particular case or
cases, will be true in all cases which resemble the former in certain assignable respects. In other
words, Induction is the process by which we conclude that what is true of certain individuals of a
class is true of the whole class, or that what is true at certain times will be true in similar
circumstances at all times. (VII 288)

We, however, must be careful not to beg questions about the status of hypothetico-deductive
inference or—as it is often illuminatingly called— ‘inference to the best explanation’. So we
shall understand the word ‘induction’ exclusively in the broader sense, as covering every method
of reasoning by which general beliefs may be grounded on singular data. Induction in the narrow
sense we shall always specifically refer to as enumerative induction (EI for short).

This brings us to the term ‘inductivism’. Here two positions must be distinguished,
corresponding to the broad and the narrow sense of ‘induction’:

(1) The view that there is such a thing as inductive logic in the broad sense explained above: a
‘logic of truth’.

(2) The view that inductive logic consists exclusively of enumerative induction, and such other
methods as may be grounded in one way or another on enumerative induction.

Mill was committed to both (1) and (2); we shall accept (1) and reject (2). William Whewell,
Mill’s great antagonist in the analysis of scientific method, would have fully agreed with Mill
that there is such a thing as inductive logic in the broad sense of the word ‘inductive’. His
argument with Mill was not about the existence of inductive reasoning in this sense, or about the
possibility of codifying its methods. It was a disagreement about what the methods were, and
about their metaphysical presuppositions. The issues involved in this debate between Mill and
Whewell were, and remain, fundamental in philosophy. We shall consider them in section 6.8,
and in 7.1–4.
It might be thought that acceptance of (1) is a formality. To reject it is to deny that there are
wholly general, topic-neutral rules of inductive reasoning. What reason, short of a thoroughgoing
scepticism about induction as such, could there be for doing so?

We shall encounter reasons later on for doubting whether it is useful to talk of a logic of
induction, reasons which have nothing to do with thoroughgoing inductive scepticism. But we
must also briefly take account of the position of Popper. He rejects the very possibility of
proving, confirming or probabilising beliefs by evidence. The hypothetical method, according to
Popper, can no more do that than enumerative induction can. We can falsify hypotheses, but we
cannot confirm them. A scientific hypothesis, it is true, may be ‘corroborated’; but this only
means subjected to severe tests and not falsified.

There is a very obvious difficulty in this view. Since there is no ground for thinking that a
corroborated hypothesis is true, or probably true, there is no more ground for believing it than for
believing a falsified hypothesis. Popper’s position, so far from offering an alternative to Hume’s
scepticism about induction, is indistinguishable from it.3 In contrast, Mill and Whewell would
both accept that inductive reasoning can give rational grounds for accepting a general
conclusion. That is not to say that either of them had an answer to, or had even deeply
considered, Hume’s inductive scepticism. Hume’s problem, which has quite rightly figured so
largely in more recent philosophical discussion, hardly figured at all in nineteenth-century
British philosophy before T.H. Green’s revival of Hume. This point should be stressed from the
outset. In his analysis of induction Mill is not proposing a solution to the sceptical problem of
induction posed by Hume.4 He takes it for granted that our ‘spontaneous’ —unreflective,
habitual—inductions are reliable to some degree. Inductive logic is concerned only to refine and
codify the methods of inductive reasoning. Mill’s philosophical discussion of inductive logic is
not intended to give them a metaphysical justification, but simply to clarify the way in which, by
applying inductive principles to their own results, we may be able to raise the degree of rational
confidence we place in those principles. Anyone who reads Mill as searching for an answer to
the epistemological sceptic, is bound to be baffled by what he says.

But what then are Mill’s questions? His discussion of induction, as of so many other topics, is
much more intricate and subtle than at first appears. It also contains the usual measure of
confusions and misstatements. Nevertheless, the questions are penetrating ones, and the answers
are well worth getting clear.

2 ‘The question of Inductive Logic stated’

Chapter iii.iii (‘On the Ground of Induction’) is the natural starting point. Mill’s topic is ‘the
propensity to generalize from unvarying experience’ (VII 312)—‘Inductio per enumerationem
simplicem, ubi non reperitur instantia contradictoria’, to give it its full Baconian title; and ‘the
question of Inductive Logic’, as Mill understands it, is stated in its last section (iii.iii.3).

Section 1 of the chapter deals with the ‘Axiom of the uniformity of the course of nature’. Sadly,
it contains a traditional and important confusion, which throws the reader off the scent and
makes Mill’s position look much weaker than it really is. Consider the following passage:
what happens once, will, under a sufficient degree of similarity of circumstances, happen again,
and not only again, but as often as the same circumstances recur. This, I say, is an assumption
involved in every case of induction. And if we consult the actual course of nature, we find that
the assumption is warranted. The universe, so far as known to us, is so constituted, that whatever
is true in any one case, is true in all cases of a certain description; the only difficulty is, to find
what description. (VII 306)

Mill calls this assumption the ‘principle, or axiom, of the uniformity of nature’. But he also says
that it is established by induction. And thus he gives every appearance of making two points
which entail an immediate vicious circle: (a) that general uniformity is assumed in every
induction, and (b) that the existence of general uniformity is known only on the basis of
induction.

But both in fact, and considered in terms of his overall position, (a) is false.

Enumerative inductions presuppose no unvarying uniformity through-out nature. They assume

only the legitimacy, in the particular case in question, of inferring from a sample of observed As
found without exception to be B, to the unrestricted generalisation that all As are Bs. Now the
noteworthy fact, of which Mill is fully aware, is that it may be more or less legitimate to do so,
depending on the subject matter in question. The degree of trust one can place in an EI depends
on one’s background knowledge of the kind and degree of uniformity, or lack of it, in the
empirical domain within which one is making one’s induction. And it is this fact, that the
reliability of EI is not invariant across subject matter, which interests Mill and gives rise to his
question.

Why, in that case, does he appear to concede that general uniformity is ‘assumed’ in all
inductions? He ought at most to have allowed that it is assumed in eliminative inductions (we
shall come to these). In Mill’s overall picture, which comes into focus only in iii.iv and iii.xxi,
mankind begins with ‘spontaneous’ and ‘unscientific’ inductions about particular unconnected
natural phenomena or aspects of experience. Generalisations accumulate, interweave and are
found to stand the test of time: they are not disconfirmed by further experience. As they
accumulate and interweave, they justify the second-order inductive conclusion that all
phenomena are subject to uniformity, and more specifically, that all have discoverable sufficient
conditions. In this less vague form, the principle of general uniformity becomes, given Mill’s
analysis of causation, the Law of Universal Causation. This conclusion in turn serves (Mill
believes) as the grounding assumption for a new style of reasoning about nature, eliminative
induction. The improved effectiveness of the ‘inductive process’ which results from this new
style of reasoning spills back onto the principle of Universal Causation on which it rests, and
raises its certainty to a new level. That in turn raises our confidence in the totality of particular
enumerative inductions from which the principle is derived. In short, the amount of confidence
with which one can rely on the ‘inductive process’ as a whole depends on the point which has
been reached in its natural history. But within that overall level of confidence, the confidence that
can be attached to particular EIs will continue to be variable; nor does any principle of universal
uniformity feature as a premise in enumerative inductions.

As so often, confusion is caused by Mill’s over-concessive attitude towards an inherited

tradition. In this case, it is the notion that enumerative inductions can somehow be made into
deductive arguments by conjoining an ‘axiom’ of the uniformity of nature to their premises.
Having got off on the wrong foot by seeming to accept this idea he is led by his own analysis to
see its inadequacies; but instead of jettisoning it he insists on reinterpreting it unconvincingly.

Following Whately, Mill grants that ‘every induction may be thrown into the form of a syllogism
by supplying a major premise’ (VII 308). If this is done, the principle of the ‘uniformity of the
course of nature’ appears as ‘the ultimate major premise of all inductions’. But as he
straightaway points out, ‘the immediate major premise in every inductive argument it certainly is
not’ (VII 309, my emphasis). For example, ‘John, Peter &c. are mortal, therefore all mankind are
mortal’, is not turned into a deductive argument by adding some such premise as ‘Nature is
uniform’. It needs a specific assumption about ‘John, Peter &c’: a major premise of the form
‘what is true of John, Peter &c. is true of all mankind’. There is nothing about the general
uniformity of nature here.

What, however, is the ‘proof’ of this major premise? In ‘the long run’, according to Mill, it ‘can
only be, that a different supposition would be inconsistent with the uniformity which we know to
exist in the course of nature’ (VII 310). Mill’s reason for saying this, it seems, is that he thinks
that the major premise is only proved when, in ‘the long run’, it is deduced from the principle of
uniformity. That is to say, in the initial stage the assumption is made, and with justice: but it can
be made only as a working assumption. Gradually however the general principle of uniformity
gathers inductive support from the success of vast numbers of particular generalisations, to the
point of becoming certain. Its inductive certainty then flows back onto the generalisations from
which it derived support, raising their level of certainty, by collecting and transmitting the
confidence generated by the whole body of generalisations to each individual one.

The broad picture is sound, but in no way justifies the traditional claim that ‘uniformity of the
course of nature’ is ‘the ultimate major premise of all inductions’. For first, given this picture, it
must be possible for particular EIs to be legitimate even when the reasoner is in no position to
assert any such overarching principle. He can have some degree of confidence in the particular
uniformity he has inferred even though he has no equal confidence in the general uniformity of
nature.5 And second, even when his confidence in the general uniformity of nature has mounted
to the point where it spills back and raises his confidence in the reliability of particular
inductions, it does not do so by converting those particular inductions into deductive arguments
in which either it, or some proposition deductively derived from it, features as a premise, All this
is particularly obvious in the case of ‘What is true of John, Peter &c. is true of all mankind’. It
could not possibly be deduced from any principle of general uniformity, nor does it in any way
feature as a premise in the enumerative induction to ‘All men are mortal’.

Mill errs in trying to fill an old bottle with this new wine: he should have dismissed the
traditional idea, which converts inductions into syllogistic reasoning from singular observations
and the ‘axiom’ of the uniformity of nature, out of hand. The error obscures his other important
point, which is the one that iii.iii should have been exclusively devoted to making, and which
gives rise to his fundamental question of inductive logic. The point is this.

We are much more confident of some particular EIs than we are of others. We are willing to infer
a general conclusion from an observed correlation only inasmuch as we take the correlation to be
significant, and not accidental; but we are more willing to take some observed correlations to be
significant, than others which are formally matched in respect of the number of observed
instances. In one case, having observed n As which are Bs and no As which are not B, we are
confident in inferring that all As are Bs; in another case we are not. But if formally matched
enumerative inductions can rightly inspire unequal confidence, then there can be no ‘axiom’ of
uniformity—i.e. no proposition which, added to the premises, would have the effect of making
them all equally sound.

After only a few cases in which a particular make and type of tyre wears prematurely, I infer
with some confidence that all tyres of that type and make will wear earlier than they should. But
if I have visited a Saharan oasis the same number of times, and there has always been a
cloudburst, I do not infer that whenever I visit the oasis there will always be a cloudburst. ‘To
look for constancy where constancy is not to be expected…is justly accounted superstition’ (VII
311).6

I am willing to make the induction about the tyres because I take the observed correlation to be
significant. I do not make the parallel induction about my presence in the oasis, because in that
case I take it to be accidental. The difference in my attitude turns on my background causal
knowledge. To take a correlation to be significant is to treat it as resulting from some underlying
causal connection. Because so many background assumptions would be thrown into disarray by
the conclusion that my presence in the oasis is somehow causally connected with rain, it would
take a very stringent EI before we even begin to take the possibility seriously.

To this point Mill turns his attention in iii.iii.2 and 3:

The course of nature, in truth, is not only uniform, it is also infinitely various. Some phenomena
are always seen to recur in the very same combinations in which we met with them at first;
others seem altogether capricious; while some, which we had been accustomed to regard as
bound down exclusively to a particular set of combinations, we unexpectedly find detached from
some of the elements with which we had hitherto found them conjoined, and united to others of a
quite contrary description. To an inhabitant of Central Africa, fifty years ago, no fact possibly
appeared to rest on more uniform experience than this, that all human beings are black. To
Europeans, not many years ago, the proposition, All swans are white, appeared an equally
unequivocal instance of uniformity in the course of nature. Further experience has proved to both
that they were mistaken; but they had to wait fifty centuries for this experience. During that long
time, mankind believed in an uniformity of the course of nature where no such uniformity really
existed. (VII 311–12)

There are, then, three kinds of phenomena: (1) there are the ‘capricious’ ones, about which no
general propositions can be established by direct enumerative induction; (2) there are those
which are stably uniform, in that enumerative reasoning establishes general propositions which
stand the test of time, and (3) there are those in which enumeratively detected uniformities
regularly break down and trap the spontaneous reasoner. It is because of these variations that our
confidence in EI varies with the subject matter. But our knowledge that there are such variations
derives from past experience of uniformity. Only as a result of that experience does our
confidence in EI begin to vary systematically across subjects.

Enumerative induction, in Mill’s view, is the only ultimate type of inductive reasoning. But it is
more reliable in some cases than in others. Can we find a type of inductive reasoning which will
be more penetrating and more widely effective than direct enumerative reasoning while
nevertheless being ultimately based on it? That, for Mill, is the ‘question of Inductive Logic’, to
which Book iii is addressed:

As there were black swans, though civilized people had existed for three thousand years on the
earth without meeting them, may there not also be ‘men whose heads do grow beneath their
shoulders,’ notwithstanding a rather less perfect unanimity of negative testimony from
observers? Most persons would answer No; it was more credible that a bird should vary in its
colour, than that men should vary in the relative position of their principal organs. And there is
no doubt that in so saying they would be right: but to say why they are right, would be
impossible, without entering more deeply than is usually done, into the true theory of
Induction….

Why is a single instance, in some cases, sufficient for a complete induction, while in others,
myriads of concurring instances, without a single exception known or presumed, go such a very
little way towards establishing a universal proposition? Whoever can answer this question knows
more of the philosophy of logic than the wisest of the ancients, and has solved the problem of
induction. (VII 314)7

That problem is not Hume’s sceptical problem. But it would be too simple to say that answering
it is quite irrelevant to the sceptic’s question. The answer, in so far as it spells out the way in
which induction can be self-vindicating as well as self-undermining, and has in fact turned out to
be the former, provides what may be called an internal justification of induction. It leaves the
sceptic in possession of his territory but it marginalises it.

We shall return to scepticism, and reconsider its significance and its relation to the internal
justification of induction, in 6.7. But first we must examine Mill’s account of what he calls the
‘Methods of Experimental Inquiry’, and the analysis of causation on which he bases it. Mill
himself considered this codification of eliminative inductive reasoning to be his main
contribution to the ‘true theory of Induction’. His conception of inductive logic, of ‘the proper
plan of such a subject’, in Ramsey’s phrase, is thoroughly bound up with it. We shall consider
his account of causation and of the experimental methods (EMs) in the following three sections.

3 The Law of Universal Causation

‘The truth that every fact which has a beginning has a cause, is coextensive with human
experience’ (VII 325). What then is a cause? Mill is concerned only with what he calls ‘physical
causes’; that is to say, he regards causation exclusively as a relation between ‘phenomena'.8
Uniformities in the spatio-temporal relations among phenomena are all we can know. If there are
‘metaphysical’ causes—causes lying ‘behind’ natural phenomena, and which are not themselves
natural phenomena— we can know nothing of them; nor need they be taken into account in the
analysis of inductive reasoning: ‘The only notion of a cause, which the theory of induction
requires, Is such a notion as can be gained from experience’ (VII 326).

Comte was wrong, Mill thinks, to take the notion of cause in an exclusively metaphysical sense,
and then to draw the unnecessarily paradoxical doctrine that we can know nothing of the causes
of things. We do have an ordinary notion of causation, which takes the causes of phenomena to
be other phenomena, and we make an indispensable distinction by means of it:

M. Comte leaves himself without any term for marking a distinction which, however incorrectly
expressed, is not only real, but is one of the fundamental distinctions in science; indeed it is on
this alone… that the possibility rests of framing a rigorous Canon of Induction. (VII 342)

The distinction is between a uniformity which is ‘unconditional’, and one which results from a
merely fortuitous combination of circumstances; or in the terms of more recent debate, between
‘law-like’ and ‘accidental generalisations.

Mill’s lengthy discussion of causation contains a number of worthwhile advances in the analysis
of the concept.9 We shall not pursue it in detail, but confine ourselves to those aspects of it which
are needed to complete his general picture of induction.

The formula Mill comes up with to summarise his own notion of cause is, that the cause of a
phenomenon is its unconditional, invariable antecedent. ‘Invariable’ can easily mislead the
casual reader. The ‘invariable antecedent’ of a phenomenon is not its necessary condition. It need
not be an antecedent which invariably precedes the-phenomenon. It is, rather, the antecedent
which the phenomenon invariably follows; that is to say, its sufficient condition. So a cause is an
unconditionally sufficient condition.

One and the same phenomenon can have more than one distinct sufficient condition; there can
therefore be a plurality of causes, as Mill notes. He also notes that, as the term is ordinarily used,
it does not denote the ‘assemblage of conditions’ which together constitute a sufficient
antecedent of the phenomenon; rather it is used to pick out some indispensable, though on Its
own insufficient, part of this assemblage. We pick out the triggering event as the cause, taking
for granted the background state of affairs without which that event could not have caused that
effect. We say that a man died because he ate of a particular poisoned dish (VII 327–8), omitting
to mention the conditions of bodily constitution and health, state of the atmosphere and so forth,
without which the eating would not have caused the death.

There is however, Mill thinks, no ‘philosophical’ reason to distinguish what is ordinarily picked
out as the cause of a phenomenon from among the total assemblage of antecedents which are
jointly sufficient for it. And—as one might expect, given that his objective is to analyse
eliminative methods for detecting causal uniformities—he decides to use the term to denote the
assemblage of conditions which jointly constitute a sufficient condition of the phenomenon,
taken as a whole. (It will have to be, as Mackie (1974:62) points out, a ‘minimal sufficient
condition’; no proper subset of conditions in the assemblage should be sufficient for the
phenomenon.)

In this philosophical definition, the causal relation is taken to hold between types of phenomena.
We do use the term in that way (‘Smoking causes cancer’), but we also often use it in a different
way, to predicate a relation between events or states of affairs taken as particulars—
‘phenomenon-tokens’ rather than ‘phenomenon-types’; for example when I say that the tyre
punctured because I drove over a broken bottle, or that the prime minister’s resignation caused
the government’s collapse. There is no ‘phenomenon’ which is ‘invariably’ followed by that
puncture: since no other puncture is that puncture.

That is no objection to Mill’s definition so long as a particular a causes a particular b if and only
if there is some regularity of which that sequence is an instance; so long, one might say, as
singular causal statements are always in principle ‘universalisable’. Mill thinks they are, and
indeed, given his general empiricist position, he has to think so. Causal statements must be
‘universalisble’ if Causal powers are supervenient: that is to say, if an object or event has its
causal powers only in virtue of properties which could always also be instantiated by other
particulars. For any particular which instantiated those properties would then, in virtue of having
them, also have those same causal powers. But an empiricist must hold that causal powers are
supervenient. There can be no more, for him, to saying that a particular is a cause than that some
inherently general description of it could in principle be found which would warrant a real
inference to the existence of another particular.

Suppose then that a is a particular instance of a type of phenomenon A, and b is a particular

instance of a type of phenomenon B, such that in every case in which certain other conditions, C,
D and E, are instantiated, an instance of A is succeeded by an instance of B. Suppose also that
there are instances of every proper subset of A, C, D and E which are not succeeded by an
instance of B. If we believe that, then we have unimprovable grounds for saying that a causes b.
And if we believe that a causes b, then we are committed to believing that. The ‘assemblage of
conditions’ ACDE is the Millian cause of the phenomenon B.

Mill says that the cause of a phenomenon is not just the ‘invariable antecedent’, but the
‘unconditional invariable antecedent’ (iii.v.6, VII 338). He means that the assemblage of
anrecedent conditions must be exhaustive. That, he thinks, is all that can properly be meant by
the doctrine that causes necessitate their effects. That which is necessary, that which must be,
means that which will be, whatever supposition we make in regard to all other things’ (VII 339).
Hence it is strictly speaking redundant to insist that a cause is an unconditional invariable
antecedent. We are justified in holding that B will succeed ACDE whatever supposition is made
in regard to all other things if we are justified in supposing that the assemblage is genuinely
sufficient: that there is no case in which it is instantiated and the phenomenon does not occur:

Let me add, that the antecedent which is only conditionally invariable, is not the invariable
antecedent. Though a fact may, in experience, have always been followed by another fact, yet if
the remainder of our experience teaches us that it might not always be so followed, or if the
experience itself is such as leaves room for the possibility that the known cases may not correctly
represent all possible cases, the hitherto invariable antecedent is not accounted the cause; but
why? Because we are not sure that it is the invariable antecedent. (VII 340)

What we are not sure of is that the observed uniformity justifies an unconditional inference.10

The Law of Universal Causation is that ‘every event has a cause’. If causal powers are
supervenient, causal statements are universalisable, and that ensures that Mill’s other version of
it is also true: it is the law ‘that every event depends on some law’, or ‘that there is a law for
everything’ (VII 325).
This is the basic principle which Mill needs—or rather thinks he needs —for his ‘Methods of
Experimental Inquiry’.

4 The eliminative methods of induction (i)

Mill presents these ‘methods’ in iii.viii. He took considerable pride in this chapter.11 Not
surprisingly: the message of the System of Logic, after all, is that there is no grounding a belief
except on immediate observation and inductive evidence, and the codification of the methods —
was Mill’s main substantive contribution to the ‘theory of evidence’.

The methods are ‘modes of singling out from among the circum-stances which precede or follow
a phenomenon, those with which it is really connected by an invariable law’ (VII 388). They are
‘methods of elimination (VII 342) because they eliminate from among possible causes all except
the real one. A phenomenon is to be understood, as we have seen, not as a particular but as a
type; the eliminative canons identify causal connections among types of events or states.

Two basic ingredients are involved in any eliminative reasoning. The first is a pair of
assumptions:

(a) that the phenomenon under investigation (P) has a cause (or an effect),

(b) that some list of the possible causes or effects (A, B, C, D, E.) can be taken as exhaustive.
(This, as we shall see, need enter in only as a working, or revisable, assumption.)

The second is a set of observations, which, within the framework provided by assumptions (a)
and (b), entail that some particular one of the possible causes or effects is the actual cause or
effect. We shall call (a) the causation assumption and (b) the exbaustiveness assumption.

A fully general theory of the eliminative methods needs to take systematic account of two
dimensions of freedom in this framework. The first concerns the causation assumption. It will
vary depending on whether one takes a ‘cause’ to be a necessary, a sufficient, or a necessary and
sufficient condition. The second concerns the notion of ‘possible causes’ (or ‘possible effects’).
Should we assume that the possibly causally relevant factors A, B, C, D, E, constitute possible
causes (or effects) of the phenomenon only as taken positively and singly? Or may the absence
of a factor also be a cause or effect of the phenomenon P? May conjunctions, or disjunctions, of
possible causes (or effects) also be possible causes (or effects)? There is a definite number of
ways of answering this question: in fact eight, as Mackie shows (Mackie 1974: 301–2). There are
therefore three possible options in the first dimension, and eight possible options in the second;
and a general theory would study ways of formulating eliminative methods in all these cases, and
the relationships between them.

But Mill’s methods are formulated with a particular case in mind. This only becomes clear in a
later chapter, iii.x (‘Of Plurality of Causes; and of the Intermixture of Effects’); and that fact has
caused considerable confusion.

Mill allows that the absence of a condition (call this a ‘negative condition’) may be the cause or
effect of a phenomenon, and he allows that the cause or effect may be neither any single one of
the conditions which are possibly relevant, nor the absence of any single condition, but an
‘assemblage’ (a conjunction) of conditions, positive and negative. In this he is faithful to his
view that The cause…philosophically speaking, is the sum total of the conditions, positive and
negative taken together; the whole of the contingencies of every description, which being
realized, the consequent invariably follows’ (VII 332).12

Now this definition of ‘cause’ also allows for a plurality of causes: there can be more than one
sufficient condition for a given type of phenomenon. But when he states the methods in the form
of ‘canons’ in iii.viii, Mill silently ignores the point. The methods, as canonically stated there,
are drawn up without regard to the possibility of a plurality of causes; that is to say, on the
assumption that causes are necessary and sufficient conditions. Only in iii. x does he draw
explicit attention to this: ‘we have supposed that there was only one possible assemblage of
conditions, from which the given effect could result’ (VII 434) and he tries to deal (less than
satisfactorily) with the complications introduced by the possibility of a plurality of causes. This
procedure does, as he says, have the advantage of simplifying the initial presentation of the
methods. But it is patently unsatisfactory to have left the canonical formulation of the methods in
its original form—which is correct only on the assumption that causes are necessary as well as
sufficent conditions—if the final view is that causes need not after all be necessary.

Mill states the Method of Agreement (MA) as follows:

FIRST CANON

If two or more instances of the phenomenon under investigation have only one circumstance in
common, the circumstance in which alone all the instances agree is the cause (or effect) of the
given phenomenon. (VII 390)

A good way of illustrating it diagrammatically is provided by Mackie (1974) and shown in

Figure 6.1.

Figure 6.1 Method of Agreement

A, B, C represent the possible causes or effects of phenomenon P. The list is assumed to be

exhaustive. I1 and I2 are two observed instances of P. In I1, A and C were instantiated
(‘p’=present), and B was not (‘a’ = absent). In I2, A and B were present, C was absent. So long
as a cause is taken to be a necessary and sufficient condition, Figure 6.1 identifies A as the cause.
B, C, the absence of B, of C, and of A—and all combinations involving any one of these—are all
eliminated. The argument proceeds in the same way whether the investigation is into the cause or
the effect of P.

The Method of Difference (MD) is stated as follows:

SECOND CANON

If an instance in which the phenomenon under investigation occurs, and an instance in which it
does not occur, have every circumstance in common save one, that one occurring only in the
former; the circumstance in which alone the two instances differ is the effect or the cause, or an
independent part of the cause, of the phenomenon. (VII 391)

This is illustrated by Figure 6.2, where I1 indicates a positive instance of the phenomenon, that
is, one in which it is observed to be present, and N indicates a negative instance, one in which it
is observed to be absent. Then B, C, the absence of A, of B, of C, and any combination made up
exclusively of these is eliminated. Figure 6.2 proves that A is a cause or effect of P—or an
‘independent part of the cause’. For granting that the cause of P may be an assemblage of
conditions, it remains perfectly possible that the cause of P is the joint presence of A and B, or
the joint presence of A and absence of C.

Figure 6.2 Method of Difference

Next comes what Mill calls the Joint Method of Agreement and Difference. He states it thus:

THIRD CANON

If two or more instances in which the phenomenon occurs have only one circumstance in
common, while two or more instances in which it does not occur have nothing in common save
the absence of that circumstance; the circumstance in which alone the two sets of instances
differ, is the effect, or the cause, or an indispensable part of the cause, of the phenomenon. (VII
396)

Here ‘the circumstance in which alone the two sets of instances differ’ is clearly to be understood
as the circumstance which alone is present in all the positive instances, and absent in all the
negative instances. Thus understood the method is illustrated in Figure 6.3.

Figure 6.3 Joint Method of Agreement and Difference

But as Figure 6.3 shows, the method, so understood, is redundant. Given Mill’s formulation of
the Third Canon, the positive instances alone must always suffice to show that one circumstance
—in this case A —is the cause, by MA alone. Notice also that if the negative instances ‘have
nothing in common save the absence of that circumstance’ then they alone eliminate every other
circumstance—in this case, B, C, and the absence of A, of B, and of C—though they do not on
their own exclude assemblages of these circumstances, such as BC. They do this by a form of
agreement reasoning in which negative instances are compared in order to isolate the
circumstance which is absent—Mackie (ibid., p. 303) calls it the ‘negative method of
agreement’. That may be why Mill also describes this method as a ‘double employment of the
Method of Agreement’ (VII 395).

But if no difference reasoning is involved at all, why does Mill call it the Joint Method of
Agreement and Difference; and why does he also say that it can be called the ‘Indirect Method
of Difference’? And why does he feel the need to introduce the qualification ‘…or an
indispensable part of the cause’ in his statement of the canon?

The Third Canon, we have assumed, requires that only one circumstance is present in all the
positive instances, and absent in all the negative instances. Now this may not identify that
circumstance even as an indispensable part of the cause by the Method of Difference, since there
may be no pair of positive and negative instances which have every other circumstance in
common—there is not in Figure 6.3. It may not identify it as an indispensable part of the cause at
all, because the cause may be an assemblage of circumstances in which it is not included. But if
we rule out this last possibility, then the circumstance will have been identified as an essential
part of the cause, and by what is essentially difference reasoning. Consider Figure 6.4.
Figure 6.4 Indirect Method of Difference

Here we can isolate A as the cause, or an indispensable part of the cause, by what is essentially
difference reasoning: but no single pair of positive and negative instances drawn from the table
suffices for that conclusion, nor does any application of the positive or negative method of
agreement. This fits Mill’s description of what his Joint Method is intended to do: namely, to
describe a way of applying difference reasoning where no direct use of the Method of Difference
is possible, because the necessary pairs of positive and negative observations, matched in all but
one factor, cannot be isolated. And it explains the presence of the restrictive clause (‘an
indispensable part of the cause’).

Thus instead of Mill’s redundant ‘double employment of the Method of Agreement’ we might
formulate the true Indirect Method of Difference as follows:

AMENDED THIRD CANON

If two or more instances in which a phenomenon occurs have a circumstance in common, while
in two or more instances in which the phenomenon does not occur that circumstance is absent,
and if there is no other circumstance or combination of circumstances which is present in all the
instances in which the phenomenon occurs, and absent in all the instances in which it does not
occur, then the given circumstance is the effect, or the cause, or an indispensable part of the
cause, of the phenomenon.

(Notice that a combination of circumstances may be absent in more than one way: for example in
the case AB, A might be absent in one case and B in another. Therefore AB might be present in
all cases in which P is, and absent in all cases in which P is, even though the same does not hold
individually of A or of B.)
I shall now state Mill’s two remaining ‘methods’, the Method of Residues, and the Method of
Concomitant Variations, and make some main points about them, without discussing them in
detail. Neither of them is on all fours with the basic methods of agreement and difference
reasoning covered so far.

The Method of Residues:

FOURTH CANON

Subduct from any phenomenon such part as is known by previous inductions to be the effect of
certain antecedents, and the residue of the phenomenon is the effect of the remaining
antecedents. (VII 398)

And the Method of Concomitant Variations:

FIFTH CANON

Whatever phenomenon varies in any manner whenever another phenomenon varies in some
particular manner, is either a cause or an effect of that phenomenon, or is connected with it
through some fact of causation. (VII 401)

Mill says that the ‘Method of Residues is in truth a peculiar modification of the Method of
Difference’ (VII 397). He explains the idea as follows. Suppose it is independently known that
the phenomenon P! is the only effect of factor A taken on its own, and the phenomenon P2 is the
only effect of factor B taken on its own. And suppose that an instance of the complex
phenomenon P1P2P3 is observed to occur when ABC occurs—these being the only possibly
relevant causal factors of the complex phenomenon. We can then infer that P3 is caused by C,
even if we are unable to observe the appropriate negative instance: that is to say, an instance in
which P3 and C do not occur and A and B do occur. Strictly speaking, however, we need also to
be able to rule out the possibility that C results from the combination of A and B. And even if
that is discounted, we can infer only that C is an indispensable part of the cause of P2, since we
are proceeding by what is, in effect, difference reasoning on a postulated negative instance.

The fifth canon is very loosely stated. (Mill should at least have added: ‘all other circumstances
remaining constant’.) It does no more than gesture at a whole new field of analysis brought in
when we take into account the notion of functional causal dependence.13 ‘Functional’ variants
can be stated for all three basic forms of agreement and difference reasoning. (Thus: joint non-
variation of cause and effect against a varying background, joint variation of cause and effect
against a constant background, joint variation and joint non-variation of cause and effect against
suitably staged backgrounds of variation or non-variation among independent possible causes.)
Given appropriate assumptions such methods can eliminatively identify variables on which a
phenomenon functionally depends, or which functionally depend on it, and they can suggest the
form of the function by identifying points onto which one can fit a curve.

5 The eliminative methods of induction (ii)

Before turning to consider how the eliminative canons fit into Mill’s general picture of induction,
we must note some important weaknesses in his discussion.

There are two basic forms of eliminative reasoning: agreement and difference reasoning.
Agreement reasoning isolates the single common factor present in two or more instances in
which the phenomenon occurs. Or it could isolate the single common factor absent in two or
more cases in which the phenomenon does not occur. Difference reasoning isolates the single
common factor which is present whenever the phenomenon is present, and absent whenever the
phenomenon is absent. On these basic elements more complicated variations, combining the two
methods, can be built. Some of the instances may be ‘constructed’ from what is known by
previous observations, and the instances may be instances of a joint variation.

For Mill a cause is an unconditionally sufficient condition. That means that a phenomenon can
have a plurality of causes; but we have seen that Mill’s statement of the canons in iii.viii assumes
that there is no such plurality.

When that assumption is relaxed the Method of Agreement turns out, he says in iii.x.2, to have a
‘characteristic imperfection’. That, to say the least, is an understatement. For when the restriction
is lifted, the Method of Agreement simply ceases to be a method of identifying causes by
elimination at all. Figure 6.1 does not then show that A is a cause of P. True, if one can assume
that one of the circumstances A, B, C is a necessary condition of P, then it does indeed
eliminatively demonstrate A to be that necessary condition. And given that causes are sufficient
conditions of effects, effects must be necessary conditions of causes. Thus if A, B, C are taken to
be possible effects of P, then Figure 6.1 does serve to identify A as the effect. But there is
nothing in Mill’s analysis of causation to show that a phenomenon must have a causally
necessary antecedent.

So Mill was wrong to leave the First Canon as it stood, once he had allowed for plurality of
causes. He should at least have explicitly restricted its formulation to the detection of effects—
even better, he should have thoroughly reviewed the use of eliminative agreement reasoning
under conditions in which plurality of causes is allowed.

Why did he not do so? Because in his comments on MA (not in the statement of the canon itself)
he systematically mixes up the eliminative Method of Agreement with a quite different principle
of reasoning— that of enumerative induction from instances observed under widely differing
conditions. In the latter case, we observe a number of instances of A, all followed by instances of
P, and no instances which are not so followed. We infer by EI that all As are followed by Ps. The
observed cases otherwise differ among each other in all prima facie relevant circumstances, and
so we take it that A causes P. And as is characteristic of enumerative inductions, this conclusion
becomes more plausible, the greater the number and variety of cases considered.

The confusion is evident in iii.viii.3 and iii.x.2 (especially at VII 436–7). Mill says he is
comparing the Methods of Agreement and Difference, but what he in fact compares is
enumerative induction under varying conditions with the Method of Difference.14 Once one has
noticed that a good deal of what he says makes sense; in particular his favourable estimate of the
greater power of MD over what he refers to as the Method of Agreement but is in fact EI under
varied conditions. It is for example quite natural to suggest as Mill does that the ‘Method of
Agreement’, considered as an enumerative induction, is best suited for suggesting possible
causes of a phenomenon—these suggestions being more rigorously tested by MD.

Mill is perfectly aware that any listing of possible causes for purposes of eliminative reasoning is
always provisional. Now in principle the implications for MA and MD are completely
symmetrical: the conclusion of MA may fail because common circumstances which were
unnoticed or considered irrelevant were not in fact so; the conclusion of MD may fail because
relevantly differing circumstances were unnoticed or considered irrelevant. But Mill does not
apply the point symmetrically: he applies it to enumerative induction, and eliminative difference
reasoning. The implication for the first is that the putatively sufficient condition may not be
unconditionally significant: the observed uniformity may be an accidental rather than a causal
one, because some other unremarked circumstance common to all occurrences of P is the real
cause. The implication for MD is that the elimination may fail: but as Mill says, the possibility of
an unnoticed variation can be very greatly reduced in an experimental as against a purely
observational situation. When, in a laboratory experiment, a possible cause is introduced by the
experimenter into an environment which is carefully controlled to be otherwise invariant, the
grounds for thinking that no other relevant circumstance is involved may be very good, There is
then no need for a listing of possible causes, and an assumption that the list is exhaustive, The
only assumption is that the phenomenon has a cause. MD is therefore particularly suited, as Mill
suggests, to inquiries where experiment is possible.

We will now consider how Mill sees the role of the eliminative canons in inductive reasoning;
this will lead us back to wider philosophical questions.

6 The place of the eliminative methods in M.ill’s inductive logic

The Methods of Experimental Inquiry are eliminative in that they demonstratively narrow down
the possible causes (or effects) of a phenomenon to one—given the presence of appropriate
causation and exhaustiveness assumptions.

But on this point Mill is too often over-ambitious and over-simple. He likes to present the
following scenario. The causation assumption involved in every piece of eliminative reasoning—
that the phenomenon under investigation has a cause—is deduced from the Law of Universal
Causation (UC) (for example VII 562), and therefore has whatever certainty that law has. UC is
established by enumerative induction. Now in Mill’s opinion certain very wide-ranging kinds of
enumerative induction can approach certainty, or be practically certain, just because they span
every domain; and the induction by which UC is established is an induction of this kind. UC is
therefore practically certain. This certainty is transmitted to the causation assumption involved in
every eliminative induction, and thence to conclusions derived by eliminative induction (cf. for
example System VII 322; Comte X 293).

But the certainty of UC (and of the observations on which an eliminative induction is based) is
transmitted to its conclusion only if the relevant exhaustiveness assumption is certain. In
practice, Mill is well aware that such an assumption is always needed; he is conscious of the
difficulties which are often involved in analysing the antecedents of a phenomenon into ‘possible
causes’; he realises that such an analysis, together with the assumption that all relevant factors
have been taken into account, is, in its early stages at least, inevitably provisional. But in
programmatic utterances he ignores all this. And in a treatise which proposes to give a systematic
epistemological survey of the nature and standing of inductive reasoning that is a serious fault.

A related point is raised by Whewell in his criticism of the methods:

Upon these methods, the obvious thing to remark is, that they take for granted the very thing
which is most difficult to discover, the reduction of the phenomena to formulae such as are here
presented to us. (Quoted by Mill, VII 429, from Whewell 1860:263)

Mill replies by comparing the Methods of Experimental Inquiry to the syllogistic forms. In both
cases, finding a proof is one thing, ‘reducing it to a form which tests its conclusiveness’ is
another. ‘But if we try to reduce it without knowing what it is to be reduced to, we are not likely
to make much progress’ (VII 430). The business of Inductive Logic is to provide rules and
models…to which if inductive arguments conform, those arguments are conclusive, and not
otherwise’ (VII 430). The canons, Mill reasonably thinks, do codify ‘methods of discovery’
which are constantly used, and an inquirer is helped to the discovery of truths if he is consciously
aware of them. But however that may be, they are in any case ‘methods of proof; they provide
rules by which the value of the evidence provided for a conclusion can be tested, however that
conclusion was arrived at.

This is sound doctrine. It remains the case, however, that a piece of eliminative reasoning,
considered as an inductive proof, is only as strong as its exhaustiveness assumption can make it.
What kind of evidence for the exhaustiveness assumption in an eliminative induction can be had,
and how strong can it be? Mill’s relevant thoughts on this are contained in iii.vii (‘Of
Observation and Experiment’) and in Book iv (‘Of Operations Subsidiary to Induction’).

Chapter iii.vii is a preliminary to iii.viii in which the eliminative canons are expounded; in it Mill
notes the difficulties of performing the ‘mental analysis of complex phenomena’ which is
presupposed in any application of the EMs:

the extent and minuteness of observation which may be requisite, and the degree of
decomposition to which it may be necessary to carry the mental analysis, depends on the
particular purpose in view. To ascertain the state of the whole universe at any particular moment
is impossible, but would also be useless. In making chemical experiments, we do not think it
necessary to note the position of the planets; because experience has shown, as a very superficial
experience is sufficient to show, that in such cases that circumstance is not material to the result:
and accordingly, in the ages when men believed in the occult influence of the heavenly bodies, it
might have been unphilosophical to omit ascertaining the precise condition of those bodies at the
moment of the experiment…. We have done enough when we have carried the subdivision as far
as the point at which we are able to see what observations or experiments we require. It is only
essential, at whatever point our mental decomposition of facts may for the present have stopped,
that we should hold ourselves ready and able to carry it further as occasion requires, and should
not allow the freedom of our discriminating faculty to be imprisoned by the swathes and bands of
ordinary classification. (VII 380–1)

Our analysis always starts from received classifications and assumptions. It is these which
initially determine how the ‘causal field’—the network of phenomena to be considered as
forming a system of possible causes and effects for the purpose of eliminative inquiry—is
separated from a background of phenomena which are deemed irrelevant. (Notice that once the
causal field has been isolated, agreement reasoning need assume only that instances have just
one ‘circumstance’ in common within that field, and difference reasoning need only assume that
no feature within the causal field other than the singled out circumstance is present in the
positive instance and absent in the negative one.) The classifications and assumptions which
enter into a piece of eliminative reasoning are themselves products of experience; and though the
analysis starts from them, it must be prepared where necessary to reject them or go beyond them.

So ‘mental analysis’ of phenomena, and hence the exhaustiveness assumption involved in

eliminative reasoning, is neither presuppositionless nor final. It is based on an existing state of
belief and remains provisional.

But what makes us decide that the provisional analysis has to be revised? Only the failure of
eliminative inquiry to advance, on the basis of that provisional analysis, to a stable system of
unrefuted causal laws. By the same token, if an eliminative inquiry, conducted on that basis, does
succeed in establishing causal laws which remain unrefuted, and are incorporated into the fabric
of belief, then confidence in the adequacy of the analysis is retroactively strengthened.

The other assumption involved in any piece of eliminative reasoning is the causation assumption.
Obviously the Law of Universal Causation is not strictly required for eliminative reasoning to be
possible within a restricted field; even if not all departments or regions of nature are
deterministic, or if nature is not deterministic ‘all the way down’, there might still be levels or
aspects of the phenomena which were so.

Again Mill was aware of the point. But he believed the Law of Universal Causation to be true—
he wrote with a Laplacian confidence in the classical Newtonian synthesis. And he believed that
it had a special degree of certainty deriving from its grounding in an enumerative induction
spanning an unrestricted domain.

The theme is developed in iii.xxi.3–4. As the subject matter of the observations on which EI is
based becomes less and less ‘special and limited in extent’, so

this unscientific method becomes less and less liable to mislead; and the most universal class of
truths, the law of causation for instance, and the principles of number and geometry, are duly and
satisfactorily proved by that method alone, nor are they susceptible of any other proof….

EI is fallible because a uniformity suggested by it may

be a consequence of collocations, which cannot be concluded to exist in one place because they
exist in another; or may be dependent on the accidental absence of counteracting agencies, which
any variation of time, or the smallest change of circumstances, may possibly bring into play. (VII
569)

But these possibilities are increasingly ruled out as the observations on which EIs are based are
varied in time, place and circumstance, as in the case of the laws of number and geometry.
These points are worth making, and they help to make it clear that an enumerative induction to
the Law of Universal Causation can have considerable force. But they certainly do not show that
the law could, purely on that basis, be regarded as certain or conclusive; nor are Mill’s reasons
for holding it to be so, ‘within the possible range of our experience’, convincing, though they are
ingeniously stated (iii.xii.4).

His eagerness, as champion of ‘the inductive philosophy’, to stress the certainty and
conclusiveness of ‘scientific’ —that is, eliminative— methods of induction betrays him. He
treats the flow of justification from UC to the causation assumption involved in any eliminative
reasoning as though it was exclusively one-directional. But just as the exhaustiveness assumption
gains support retroactively from the success of the eliminative inductions based on it, so does the
causation assumption, and thus in turn, the Law of Universal Causation.

In practice Mill appreciates the point; but he needed to step back and state it with full emphasis
and generality. That there is give and take between particular inductions, enumerative and
eliminative, and the law of causality he explicitly sees:

if we consider, not what mankind would have been justified in believing in the infancy of their
knowledge, but what may rationally be believed in its present more advanced state, we shall find
ourselves warranted in considering this fundamental law, though itself obtained by induction
from particular laws of causation, as not less certain, but on the contrary, more so, than any of
those from which it was drawn. It adds to them as much proof as it received from them. For there
is probably no one even of the best established laws of causation which is not sometimes
counteracted, and to which, therefore, apparent exceptions do not present themselves, which
would have necessarily and justly shaken the confidence of mankind in the universality of those
laws, if inductive processes founded on the universal law had not enabled us to refer those
exceptions to the agency of counteracting causes, and thereby reconcile them with the law with
which they apparently conflict. (VII 570)

Causal correlations are obtained in rough-hewn form by processes of enumerative induction; a

further second-order enumerative induction suggests the universality of causation; the
eliminative methods of induction based on this assumption are then successfully applied to the
job of refining and delimiting the original rough-hewn generalisations. By showing how
exceptions to these rough generalisations fall into place within an underlying and more exact
system of uniformities, they strengthen our confidence in the law of causality on which they
depend. At that stage,

The law of cause and effect…is capable of imparting its certainty to all other inductive
propositions which can be deduced from it; and the narrower inductions may be regarded as
receiving their ultimate sanction from that law, since there is no one of them which is not
rendered more certain than it was before, when we are able to connect it with that larger
induction, and to show that it cannot be denied, consistently with the law that everything which
begins to exist has a cause. And hence we are justified in the seeming inconsistency, of holding
induction by simple enumeration to be good for proving this general truth, the foundation of
scientific induction, and yet refusing to rely on it for any of the narrower inductions. (VII 571)

It must be accepted, then, that Mill’s programmatic utterances about induction present an over-
simple picture. It takes the flow of justification from EI via UC to the EMs as being one-
directional, and it seems to assume that the classification of possible causes is somehow given in
the phenomena. This ‘epistemological atomism’ is most in evidence where Mill is over-anxious
to defend the value of his ‘inductive logic’ against aprioristic critics.

But this is merely programmatic. Underlying it is a coherentism which emerges clearly, for
example, in the following passage from the Examination.

We are constantly told that the uniformity of the course of nature cannot itself be an induction,
since every inductive reasoning assumes it, and the premise must have been known before the
conclusion. Those who argue in this manner can never have directed their attention to the
continual process of giving and taking, in respect of certainty, which reciprocally goes on
between this great premise and the narrower truths of experience; the effect of which is, that,
though originally a generalization from the more obvious of the narrower truths, it ends by
having a fulness of certainty which overflows upon these, and raises the proof of them to a
higher level…. (IX 482, note)

The passage occurs in the Examination in a context in which Mill is stressing the epistemological
importance of the highly deductive and mathematical structure of scientific knowledge; a point
he also makes in the System:

It may be affirmed as a general principle, that all inductions, whether strong or weak, which can
be connected by ratiocination, are confirmatory of one another; while any which lead deductively
to consequences that are incompatible, become mutually each other’s test, showing that one or
other must be given up, or at least more guardedly expressed. In the case of inductions which
confirm each other, the one which becomes a conclusion from ratiocination rises to at least the
level of certainty of the weakest of those from which it was deduced; while in general all are
more or less increased in certainty. (VII 321–2)

When Mill writes in this vein his conception of the ‘inductive process’ can be seen to stand in a
line of development of which the naturalistic pragmatism of Quine is a further stage. Inductive
inquiry modifies, revises and extends a given fabric of belief. It involves a virtuous circle, in
which provisional assumptions are repeatedly revised, more fully confirmed, and thus
continually rise in their degree of ‘certainty’.

Between Mill and the pragmatist naturalism which has increasingly dominated philosophy in this
century, stand two important differences. One of them is to a considerable extent a matter of
emphasis and tone, but none the less important: it is the contrast between Mill’s nineteenth-
century rhetoric of inductive certainty and the twentieth-century rhetoric of fallibilism. Behind
that rhetoric, as we have seen, the substantive differences are smaller than they at first appear.
But there is, nevertheless, a vital substantive difference between Mill on the one hand and Peirce
or Quine on the other: it turns on whether the ‘Hypothetical Method’ can be accepted as a part of
the logic of truth. We come to this in 6.8. But we must first consider at greater length something
which Mill and this twentieth-century naturalistic standpoint have in common: their attitude to
philosphical scepticism.

7 Inductive scepticism and the internal validation of induction

The inductive process is cumulative, provisional and self-correcting. The gradually emerging
organisation of detailed inductions into an ordered scientific scheme justifiably raises our
confidence in the generalisations arrived at by these detailed inductions—and in inductive
methods of reasoning as such. This is an a posteriori vindication of induction: it is because the
world is as it is that induction cumulates into a system of generalisations. Precisely because
inductive methods might have turned out to be self-undermining, it makes a genuine
epistemological difference that they have in fact turned out to be self-supporting.

This naturalistic validation of inductive reasoning is ‘internal’: it provides no reply to pure

scepticism about induction, nor is it intended to do so. The point has not always been clear, but it
was clear enough to Mill. All the characteristic features of ‘naturalised epistemology’ are
forcefully presented in the pages of the System of Logic. This point is, I think, worth
documenting in some detail.

Consider the following passage (iii.iv.2, ‘Scientific inductions must be grounded on previous
spontaneous inductions’):

the most scientific proceeding can be no more than an improved form of that which was
primitively pursued by the human understanding, while undirected by science. When mankind
first formed the idea of studying phenomena according to a stricter and surer method than that
which they had in the first instance adopted, they did not, conformably to the well-meant but
impracticable precept of Descartes, set out from the supposition that nothing had been already
ascertained. Many of the uniformities existing among phenomena are so constant, and so open to
observation, as to force themselves upon involuntary recognition…. No science was needed to
teach that food nourishes, that water drowns, or quenches thirst, that the sun gives light and heat,
that bodies fall to the ground. The first scientific inquirers assumed these and the like as known
truths, and set out from them to discover others which were unknown: nor were they wrong in so
doing, subject, however, as they afterwards began to see, to an ulterior revision of these
spontaneous generalizations themselves, when the progress of knowledge pointed out limits to
them, or showed their truth to be contingent on some circumstance not originally attended to. It
will appear, I think, from the subsequent part of our inquiry, that there is no logical fallacy in this
mode of proceeding; but we may see already that any other mode is rigorously impracticable:
since it is impossible to frame any scientific mode of induction, or test of the correctness of
inductions, unless on the hypothesis that some inductions deserving of reliance have been
already made.

Let us revert, for instance, to one of our former illustrations, and consider why it is that, with
exactly the same amount of evidence, both negative and positive, we did not reject the assertion
that there are black swans, while we should refuse credence to any testimony which asserted that
there were men wearing their heads underneath their shoulders. The first assertion was more
credible than the latter. But why more credible? So long as neither phenomenon had been
actually witnessed, what reason was there for finding the one harder to be believed than the
other? Apparently because there is less constancy in the colours of animals, than in the general
structure of their anatomy. But how do we know this? Doubtless, from experience. It appears,
then, that we need experience to inform us, in what degree, and in what cases, or sorts of cases,
experience is to be relied on. Experience must be consulted in order to learn from it under what
circumstances arguments from it will be valid. We have no ulterior test to which we subject
experience in general; but we make experience its own test. Experience testifies, that among the
uniformities which it exhibits or seems to exhibit, some are more to be relied on than others; and
uniformity, therefore, may be presumed, from any given number of instances, with a greater
degree of assurance, in proportion as the case belongs to a class in which the uniformities have
hitherto been found more uniform.

This mode of correcting one generalization by means of another, a narrow generalization by a

wider, which common sense suggests and adopts in practice, is the real type of scientific
Induction. All that art can do is but to give accuracy and precision to this process, and adapt it to
all varieties of cases, without any essential alteration to its principle. (VII 318–19)

The contrast between Cartesian, pure epistemology, which sets out from the supposition that
nothing has been already ascertained, and the naturalistic project, which takes ‘spontaneous’
processes of reasoning for granted, and aspires only to sharpen them against their own results,
could not be more clearly drawn. For the pure inquirer, the world given in experience is a
‘spectacle’; his problem is to find some point of entry into it. Naturalised epistemology takes for
granted our position within the world, and the reliability of our basic perceptual and inferential
reactions to it. Scientific, ‘artificial’ methods of reasoning—the eliminative canons —are
grounded on spontaneous, ‘inartificial’ enumerative inductions: in terms of Mill’s psychological
framework, these are reasonings which directly manifest the basic associative processes of
cognition.15 The inquirer is faced not with a spectacle but with a ‘predicament’; that of
improving, revising and enlarging existing methods and beliefs.

An internal validation of the inductive process by the fact of its success in producing a
comprehensive and coherent system of generalisations presupposes, however, that enumerative
induction is accepted, ab initio, as sound:

Assuredly, if induction by simple enumeration were an invalid process, no process grounded on

it would be valid; just as no reliance could be placed on telescopes, if we could not trust our
eyes. But though a valid process, it is a fallible one, and fallible in very different degrees: if
therefore we can substitute for the more fallible forms of the process, an operation grounded on
the same process in a less fallible form, we shall have effected a very material improvement. And
this is what scientific induction does.

A mode of concluding from experience must be pronounced untrustworthy, when subsequent

experience refuses to confirm it. According to this criterion, induction by simple enumeration…
affords in general a precarious and unsafe ground of assurance…. Still, however, it affords some
assurance, sufficient, in many cases, for the ordinary guidance of conduct. (VII 567–8)

These passages exhibit all the three ingredients of naturalised epistemology which we
highlighted in 1.2. There is the appeal to natural or ‘spontaneous’ reasoning processes, which are
simply accepted as sound. There is the codification and internal validation of these reasoning
processes: Mill’s analysis of induction seeks only to show how (if nature obliges) the fallible
process of enumerative reasoning can give rise to methods which are less fallible and more
searching.

And finally there is the avoidance of pure sceptical arguments. But it is time to consider this last
ingredient more closely. What is it that Mill ignores?

Consider first the following point. I judge how much confidence to place in the conclusion of an
enumerative induction according to its subject matter. Thus formally equivalent enumerative
inductions may support their conclusions to different degrees. But my assessment of the
reliability of an induction itself rests on a background of generalisations derived from experience
—generalisations about the degree of uniformity to be expected in the domain with which the
induction is concerned. We have seen Mill making the point (‘It appears, then, that we need
experience to inform us, in what degree, and in what cases, or sorts of cases, experience is to be
relied on. Experience must be consulted in order to learn from it under what circumstances
arguments from it will be valid. We have no ulterior test to which we subject experience in
general; but we make experience its own test’). But if those background generalisations
themselves rest on enumerative inductions, as in Mill’s picture they ultimately must, we seem to
have a vicious circle. We cannot judge the reliability of any induction without a background of
knowledge derived from experience, but we cannot attain any such background of knowledge
without being able to rely on induction.

This argument, however, rests on a subtle mistake. It is true that our confidence in an
enumerative induction must respond to our background knowledge of the degree of general
regularity in the domain with which that induction is concerned. But it does not follow that, if we
have no such background knowledge at all, our confidence in the induction must equal zero.

For an empiricist, the judgement that an observed regularity is significant—that it warrants

generalisation into a habit of inference— cannot be about some independent fact over and above
facts about uniformities. We base habits of inference on observed correlations, with a confidence
proportionate to the number of observed confirming instances—subject, however, to diminution
or augmentation of that confidence by collateral information. Collateral information can raise our
confidence, but it can also diminish it towards zero. But in the absence of any collateral
information, all EIs are of equal, and positive, worth: any observed correlation, irrespective of
subject matter, generates a habit of inference to a degree proportionate to the number of
confirming instances and the variety of circumstances in which they are observed.16

It generates it—and it justifies it. In this specific sense, Mill takes it for granted that induction is
—‘at square one’—a rational process. A philosophical sceptic will question precisely that. What,
he will ask, is the status of this proposition—that induction is rational? Is it verbal, or is it real?
Is it a priori or a posteriori? How is the fact that people do reason in this way supposed to justify
the claim that it is reasonable to do so? The question is legitimate, and it requires an answer.

It should not be confused with the illegitimate notion that induction can be justified only by
turning it into deduction On the contrary, Mill Epistemologically, the basic process is induction.
But then the simple sees that there is a question about the epistemological basis of deduction. and
fundamental question still remains—the question of the status of the proposition, ‘induction is
rational’. Only one answer, it seems, is possible. It must be a real but a priori proposition. So in
that narrowed-down sense Kant is right. But can we return Kant’s answer without resorting to his
transcendental idealism? Can we square it with the naturalistic perspective, given the ‘master-
inference’ (1.2) from naturalism to strict empiricism, that is, to the conclusion that all real
propositions are a posteriori?
The key lies in recognising that a proposition may be a priori and yet in principle revisable. It
may be reasonable to accept it prior to experience but no longer reasonable to do so after certain
experiences. Yet such a conception of the a priori is not immediately intelligible. In fact it can
only make sense against the background of a distinctive and unobvious account of understanding
and meaning—the ‘epistemic conception’ which will be described in 7.4. We are then led to ask
whether the epistemic conception is coherent—and if it is coherent, whether it can be squared
with naturalism, or is itself a new form of transcendental idealism.

I believe that the epistemic conception is not only consistent with naturalism but is the inevitable
upshot of a rigorously naturalistic analysis of reasoning. Now we cannot follow through these
issues, concerning the contrast between the epistemic and the classical conception of meaning, in
a study of Mill’s philosophy—they lie well outside the terms of philosophical debate that were
available to him, and it would be anachronistic to give the impression that he himself could or
should have raised them. On the other hand, we shall at least have to outline them, and relate
them to the Kantian question of how real a priori propositions are possible, if we wish to make
any estimate of what the present prospects of Millian naturalism are—or even if we wish to gain
some sense of the questions which would have to be considered in making such an estimate. We
do so in 7.4. For the moment we must leave the question and turn to the subject of hypotheses.
As we study the sources of Mill’s inductivism we shall find ourselves being led back to it.

8 Hypotheses17
Eliminative reasoning is a ubiquitous feature of the inquiry into causes. In cases as utterly
different as the search for the causes of a child’s allergy, and of the emergence of philosophy in
archaic Greece (using the Phoenician city states as a contrast case) the very same methods of
agreement and difference come into play.

Mill’s detailed exposition of the canons is garbled and inaccurate, but that is less important than
what he did do. He showed how elegant and effective eliminative reasoning can be when
conducted deliberately. His picture of the interplay between enumerative and eliminative
reasoning, and of the way in which the overall success of the inductive process entrenches our
rational confidence in its methods, is original and philosophically penetrating.

There is however one essential element missing from this picture, which diminishes its
philosophical force: a proper recognition of what Mill calls the ‘Hypothetical Method’—or the
‘inference to the best explanation’, as it is often called. The form of this method of inductive
reasoning can be characterised thus:

Phenomena P1, …, Pn are observed.

P1, …, Pn would be explicable if H were true.

________________________________

There is reason to think that H is true.

Scientific practice attests its pervasiveness. Having read Whewell’s History of the Inductive
Sciences, Mill could hardly fail to be aware of that. What he fails to recognise is not the fact of
hypothetical reasoning but its epistemological significance. He was unable to accept that the
Hypothetical Method is an autonomous method of induction—that it is an independent and
primitive principle of the ‘Logic of Truth’.

This was the crucial issue at stake in the debate between Mill and Whewell. Mill was happy to
recognise the heuristic value of hypotheses in suggesting ideas—which could then be inductively
confirmed by methods which were genuinely fundamental principles of inductive logic. But he
denied that the Hypochetical Method constituted, in its own right, a method of arriving at new
truths from experience. He could not have accepted the premises in the above schema as
constituting in themselves a reason for accepting the conclusion that H is true.

Whewell argued that hypothetical reasoning was the basic method of induction, and he did so by
appealing to the actual practice of scientific reasoning, as observed in the history of science.18
Now an appeal of that kind was precisely what Mill, on his own principles, could not ignore. It
was, after all, his own conviction that ‘Principles of Evidence and Theories of Method are not to
be constructed a priori. The laws of our rational faculty, like those of every other natural agency,
are only learnt by seeing the agent at work’ (VII 833).

Yet Mill resolutely refuses to shift from recognising that hypotheses are in fact a normal part of
scientific inquiry to the epistemological conclusion which one might expect, given this
methodological stance: the conclusion that hypothetical inference—inference to the best
explanation—is an autonomous principle of reasoning in the logic of truth. The refusal has far-
reaching consequences for his philosophy. Its immediate consequence is the positivist doctrine of
the ‘phenomenal relativity of knowledge’. Through that it becomes the crucial stumbling block
for his naturalism.

We shall examine in the next chapter the tensions involved in combining positivism with a
naturalistic view of mind. But Mill’s inductivism is far from being an arbitrary stance.,
Naturalised epistemology, it is true, appeals to methods we naturally agree on: but it appeals to
them as purified and systematised by critical reflection. It Is perfectly legitimate for Mill to reject
some of the principles of reasoning which we naturally and spontaneously accept by appealing to
arguments based on other principles which are equally natural.

There are weaknesses in Mill’s polemic against Whewell. Yet the essential point underlying his
refusal to accredit hypothetical reasoning as part of the logic of truth is a powerful one. It is the
familiar posslbility that a body of data may be explained equally well by a plurality of
hypotheses. What justifies us in concluding, from the fact that a particular story would, if true,
explain the data, that it is a true story? Other stories may equally explain the data.

Before we assess this challenge we must consider Mill’s analysis of hypothetical reasoning in
more detail. He explains what he means by a hypothesis at VII 490:

An hypothesis is any supposition which we make (either without actual evidence, or on evidence
avowedly insufficient) in order to endeavour to deduce from it conclusions in accordance with
facts which are known to be real; under the idea that if the conclusions to which the hypothesis
leads are known truths, the hypothesis itself either must be, or at least is likely to be, true….
Since explaining, in the scientific sense, means resolving an uniformity which is not a law of
causation, into the laws of causation from which it results, or a complex law of causation into
simpler and more general ones from which it is capable of being deductively inferred; if there do
not exist any known laws which fulfil this requirement, we may feign or imagine some which
would fulfil it; and this is making an hypothesis.

We have seen that Mill is no ‘naïve’ inductivist. He is far from conceiving of science as a series
of mechanical and disconnected generalisations from experience. He places great emphasis on
the increasingly deductive and mathematical organisation of science, and on the epistemological
importance of that fact:

A revolution is peaceably and progressively effecting itself in philosophy, the reverse of that to
which Bacon has attached his name…. That great man changed the method of the sciences from
deductive to experimental, and it is now rapidly reverting from experimental to deductive. But
the deductions which Bacon abolished were from premises hastily snatched up, or arbitrarily
assumed. The principles were neither established by legitimate canons of experimental inquiry,
nor the results tested by that indispensable element of a rational Deductive Method, verification
by specific experience. (VII 482)

This may overestimate Bacon’s influence on seventeenth-century science and underestimate the
degree to which modern science was mathematical and deductive from its Galilean beginnings;
however that may be, one cannot accuse Mill of underestimating the importance of the
‘Deductive Method’. But he takes it to involve three steps: ‘induction’, ‘ratiocination’ and
‘verification’. A paradigm, in his view, is Newton’s explanation of Kepler’s laws of planetary
motion. Induction establishes causal laws of motion and attraction, ratiocination deduces lower-
level regularities from them in. conjunction with observed conditions, and verification tests these
deduced propositions against observation. (Mill gives a detailed analysis of Newton’s reasoning
in these terms at iii.xiv.4.) The logical order may well not coincide with the actual sequence of
inquiry—it did not in this case—but ‘Not one of these three parts of the process can be dispensed
with’ (VII 491).

Now ‘the Hypothetical Method suppresses the first of the three steps, the induction to ascertain
the law; and contents itself with the other two operations, ratiocination and verification; the law
which is reasoned from being assumed, instead of proved’ (VII 492). Mill accepts that there are
cases in which it is legitimate to suppress induction as a step separate from verification—those in
which the hypothesis in question can be shown to be the only one consistent with the facts. For
then, he thinks, the induction is in effect present after all: it is a form of difference reasoning
involving the method of residues. (The idea is that the actual deduction and verification provide
the positive instance, and the argument, whatever it may be, for holding that no other hypothesis
is consistent with the facts, must be sufficient to supply a constructed version of the negative
instance.)

But when can alternative hypotheses be eliminated? Mill appeals to an interesting distinction
between two kinds of hypothesis. Hypotheses of the first kind seek to explain a phenomenon by
reference to causes whose existence is known or ascertainable; what is hypothesised is the law
by which these are related to their effect (for example the law of planetary central force).
Hypotheses of the second kind, in contrast, explain a phenomenon by postulating causes for it
which are not directly knowable, but which are assumed to act by analogy with observable
processes whose form is already known. Mill cites Descartes’ vortices, and the hypothesis that
light is propagated through a luminiferous ether.

‘An hypothesis being a mere supposition’ there is no reason why we should not postulate both
unknown causes and unknown laws; but since such a hypothesis

would not supply the want which arbitrary hypotheses are generally invented to satisfy, by
enabling the imagination to represent to itself an obscure phenomenon in a familiar light; there is
probably no hypothesis in the history of science in which both the agent itself and the law of its
operation were fictitious. (VII 490)

Mill has no quarrel with hypotheses of the first kind. They fit the conditions of a genuine
inductive proof. In one type of case, a specific functional relationship between measurable
variables is postulated and then verified in more detail. Mill cites Kepler’s hypotheses about the
relationship between the line of incidence and line of refraction of light passing through a
medium. Another type of case is what might be called hypothetical description of a spatio-
temporal structure: for example of the figures described in space by the heavenly bodies.
Kepler’s various hypotheses about the shape of the planetary orbits are a case in point. The
elliptical shape of the orbits cannot be directly observed; all that we can do is make a hypothesis
and verify it in more detail.19

‘In all these cases, verification is proof’ (VII 495); only the two steps of deducing predictions
from the hypothesis and verifying them are required. The case is otherwise when it comes to
hypotheses of the second kind.

It is legitimate to postulate a cause for a phenomenon when the existence of that cause can
subsequently be confirmed independently of the occurrence of the phenomenon—‘if the cause
suggested by the hypothesis should be in its own nature susceptible of being proved by other
evidence’ (VII 459).

It is certainly not necessary that the cause assigned should be a cause already known; otherwise
we should sacrifice our best opportunities of being acquainted with new causes. But what is
true…is that the cause, though not known previously, should be capable of being known
thereafter; that its existence should be capable of being detached, and its connexion with the
effect ascribed to it should be susceptible of being proved, by independent evidence. (VII 496)

The role of the hypothesis is to ‘put us on the road to that independent evidence if it is really
attainable’ (VII 496). In this function, the method of hypothesis is indispensable in science, and
illustrates once more the provisional, self-correcting nature of inductive inquiry:

The process of tracing regularity in any complicated, and at first sight confused set of
appearances, is necessarily tentative; the simplest supposition which accords with the more
obvious facts, is the best to begin with; because its consequences are the most easily traced. This
rude hypothesis is then rudely corrected, and the operation repeated; and the comparison of the
consequences deducible from the corrected hypothesis, with the observed facts, suggests still
further correction, until the deductive results are at last made to tally with the phenomena. (VII
496–7)

Finally (iii.xiv.7), Mill makes allowance for a case which involves postulation of unobservable
causes but is nevertheless in his view properly ‘inductive’ rather than merely ‘hypothetical’. He
has in mind the geological and cosmological theories which formed such an important part of the
nineteenth-century’s intellectual climate. But his point applies generally to any historical inquiry
which postulates causes in the distant and unremembered past. Such explanations, he thinks,
involve only

the legitimate operation of inferring from an observed effect, the existence, in time past, of a
cause similar to that by which we know it to be produced in all cases in which we have actual
experience of its origin. (VII 506)

They are simply a special case of inductive generalisation.

When all these legitimate cases have been taken into account, we are left with pure cases of the
Hypothetical Method, in which the causes postulated are not directly observable, and not simply
because they are assumed to operate—in accordance with known laws, inductively established—
in regions of time or space too distant to observe. What are we to say of such hypotheses? For
example of the ‘emission’ theory, or the ‘undulatory’ theory of light? They cannot be accepted as
inductively established truths, not even as probable ones:

an hypothesis of this kind is not to be received as probably true because it accounts for all the
known phenomena; since this is a condition sometimes fulfilled tolerably well by two conflicting
hypotheses; while there are probably many others which are equally possible, but which from
want of anything analogous in our experience, our minds are unfitted to conceive. (VII 500)

The Hypothetical Method cannot be regarded as leading us, in its own right, to new truths:
because the fact that data are deducible from one hypothesis is consistent with their deducibility
from an indefinite number of other, and incompatible hypotheses. This underdetermination of
hypotheses by data is Mill’s basic objection to the Hypothetical Method, considered as an
independent method of discovering truth. Even then it does not prevent him from acknowledging
the usefulness of hypotheses in suggesting potentially fruitful analogies:

I am yet unable to agree with those who consider such hypotheses to be worthy of entire
disregard…. If an hypothesis both explains known facts, and has led to the prediction of others
previously unknown, and since verified by experience, the laws of the phenomenon which is the
subject of inquiry must bear at least a great similarity to those of the class of phenomena to
which the hypothesis assimilates it; and since the analogy which extends so far may probably
extend further, nothing is more likely to suggest experiments tending to throw light upon the real
properties of the phenomenon, than the following out such an hypothesis. But to this end it is by
no means necessary that the hypothesis be mistaken for a scientific truth. (VII 560)

This passage reflects the influence of Whewell’s notion of consilience of inductions; but it gives
it an all-important instrumentalist twist.

Mill’s treatment of hypothetical reasoning, then, is detailed and sympathetic; but it falls
resolutely short of accepting hypothetical inference as an autonomous principle in the logic of
truth. But we cannot take full stock of this position without following Mill into metaphysical
questions. A certain metaphysical picture underlies Mill’s analysis, determining the lines along
which he demarcates legitimate forms of induction. The issues are best dealt with in a separate
chapter.
7
Induction, Perception and Consciousness
1 The ‘phenomenal relativity of knowledge’
Scientific realism, the philosophy of Descartes, of Locke, of seventeenthcentury scientist-
philosophers, distinguished between things as they are, and things as they appear to us with our
particular sense modalities; between the ‘primary’ or ‘absolute’ qualities of things—their
qualities as characterised without phenomenal relativity—and their ‘secondary qualities’—their
qualities as characterised relative to our senses. Our initial knowledge of the physical world is,
necessarily, phenomenal. We can know it, in the first place, only as it is given to our senses. But,
according to the scientific realist, we are not barred from knowledge of the absolute qualities of
things, or at least from rationally defensible theory about what they are. By careful scientific
inquiry we can hope to infer, from the perceptible qualities of physical things, some reasonable
conception of the underlying absolute properties of matter.

Opinions could differ about the prospects for this programme, and about what sort of claim to
having attained knowledge it could ever—even in the best case—make. But such differences did
not detract from an underlying agreement that questions about the absolute qualities of things
could intelligibly be asked, and that a theoretical science—a science which put forward an
inferred description of those absolute qualities, and defended it as an optimal explanation of their
phenomenally known properties—was at least possible. Ideally, it should explain our initial,
phenomenally relative picture of the world— our ‘manifest image’ of nature—within a
perspective which transcended it by removing from it the elements of phenomenal relativity.
This ‘scientific image’, if we could attain it, would coincide with the image which creatures with
different sense modalities, starting therefore from a different manifest image, would also attain.
It would present a picture of the world in terms of its absolute qualities, and of ourselves and of
those other creatures as part of the world, which would explain why our manifest image was as it
was, and why theirs was as it was. This was the scientific realist’s ideal: how far physical science
could go in its inferences to such explanations remained to be seen in the progress of theoretical
inquiry.1

The distinction between ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ qualities is a demarcation between those
predicates which our best theory of nature needs in order to describe and explain what there is,
and those which our ordinary, pretheoretical descriptions deploy. Standard seventeenth-century
lists of primary qualities included extension, shape, number, motion. They sometimes did and
sometimes did not include solidity. Colour, sound, taste, odour were among the secondary
qualities.

To what extent settling the contents of the two lists turns on metaphysical reflection, or to what
extent it is an ‘internal’ issue in physics, still remains a question. But interpreting the ontological
status of the distinction, on whatever bases it be drawn, remains a philosophical issue. Scientific
realism reads it as being between properties which ‘things really have’ and properties which
‘they only appear to have’—properties, that is to say, which in some sense they do not really
have. That reading at once invites criticism. And in the eighteenth century it got it, to the point
where the distinction itself, and the scientific realism which presupposed it, came to seem
untenable or even unintelligible.

After all, things do have colour, just as they do have shape. What could be meant by the assertion
that they really have the latter, but do not really have the former? The question is surprisingly
perplexing and elusive. A secondary quality of a thing, on the scientific realist view, is nothing
more than a power in it of causing certain sensations, phenomenal states, in a perceiver.
Whiteness is a power of causing the appearance, or sensation of whiteness, in a normal perceiver
in normal circumstances. But if whiteness is this power, then an object which has it is,
objectively, white—even if it does not look white, because perceiver or circumstances are not
normal, or because there is no perceiver at all. In what sense, then, can it be said that it is not
really white but is really spherical?

The scientific realist will reply that objects have powers—dispositions or capacities to act in a
particular way in particular circumstances—only in virtue of qualities which they absolutely
have, and which it is the business of science to discover. An object has the power of looking
spherical because it is spherical. But it has the power of looking white not because it is white, but
because it has certain properties characterisable in terms of the primary qualities of extension,
shape, texture.

He cannot however be denying (the critic will insist) that the cause of a thing’s looking white
may be that it is white. In some sense this is clearly true. And on the other hand, what conception
do we have of a thing being spherical other than its power of looking spherical? What can there
be to any property of a thing other than its power to cause sensations in the observer? Can any
argument be found to show that secondary qualities exist ‘only as appearances to an observer’,
which would not, if valid, equally show that primary qualities ‘exist only as appearances to an
observer’?

How can a sensible quality, such as that of being spherical in shape, give us a model for a
property residing in things as they really are, and supposed capable of instantiation by objects
which are in principle imperceptible? This, perhaps the most telling argument against scientific
realism, which the scientific realist will always have to find some way of taming, stems from an
empiricist conception of meaning: we can form no conception of a property whose materials are
not given to us in experience. It is implicit in Berkeley’s insistence that ‘Nothing can resemble
an idea except another idea’, and in his all-out assault on abstract ideas.

When these questions are pressed, it begins to seem that the distinction between primary and
secondary qualities is illusory. We can form no conception of properties of an object other than
its phenomenal properties—the properties it appears to us as having, and we can give no sense to
a distinction, among these properties, between those which an object ‘really’ has and those which
it does not ‘really’ have.

The scientific realist’s answer must simply be to insist on his core idea: that the primary qualities
of things are those which science finds itself compelled to hypothesise, as part of an inference to
the best explanation. It is a truism that we know things in the first place only as they appear to us.
But from that we can hypothetically infer to how they actually are. And the force of ‘how they
actually are’—the justification for treating the scientific description as ontologically primary,
rests in its claim to provide a superior explanation. It is because the inference is an inference to a
better—fuller, deeper—explanation than the manifest image can provide that it establishes its
ontological priority.

Now the central thrust in the critique of scientific realism emerges more clearly. The attack is
directed against the idea that hypothetical reasoning can transcend our phenomenal predicament
by getting better explanatory, not just predictive, purchase on the phenomena. An inductivist
epistemology will reject any such claim. Moreover, given an empiricist conception of meaning
(part of Mill’s Berkeleian legacy), it is even unclear what meaning the conclusion of any such
inference could have. The inference will involve an analogy drawn from experience, and applied
beyond experience. The claim against scientific realism is that such analogies are void of
explanatory force, or even ultimately unintelligible.

If the seventeenth-century picture, in which by scientific reasoning we lever ourselves out of our
perspectival predicament to a conception free of phenomenal relativity, has to go, the distinction
between things as they appear and things as they are turns metaphysical. All we can know is the
appearances of things. Of the things in themselves of which they are appearances, we can know
only that they exist; since appearances must be appearances of something. If there is any way of
reaching an absolute understanding of the nature of things at all, it is certainly not by the path of
a posteriori scientific inquiry. Science can tell us only of correlations among phenomena.

In the eighteenth century this positivist doctrine of the ‘phenomenal relativity of knowledge’
became a commonplace. It was one main ingredient of the philosophical situation as Mill
encountered it at the beginning of the nineteenth century. When he later turned to the task of
setting out his metaphysical convictions in the Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s
Philosophy, he took it as his starting point, rightly assuming it to be agreed on all sides.2 The
essence of the phenomenal relativity doctrine is rejection of the idea that scientific inquiry—in
other words ordinary human methods of conclusion-drawing, since science is no more than a
disciplined application of them—can provide a route to knowledge of the absolute nature of
things. The point is made by Comte, and is even more forcefully present—central to his whole
conception of transcendental idealism—in Kant.

2 Inductivism and the manifest image

The objections to the distinction between primary and secondary qualities which we have just
considered can however be deployed in either of two, otherwise opposed, perspectives.
According to the scientific realist, things really are as we perceive them to be in respect of some
of their qualities. But we discover them to have properties which we do not perceive, and, in a
certain sense, we discover them not to have some of the properties that they seem, as we perceive
them, to have. Objections to this can be advanced equally well by someone who thinks that
objects have, or can be known to have, none of the qualities that they appear to have as we
perceive them—or by someone who thinks that they have no qualities other than those that they
appear to have as we perceive them. The moral drawn from these objections may be that we only
know things as they appear to us, and never as they really are: that all knowledge is
phenomenally relative. Or it may on the contrary be that things have no properties other than
those we perceive them to have. The latter position may be called ‘natural realism’, in contrast to
scientific realism. It holds that the perceptible qualities of things are their real qualities. Their
real qualities are their perceptible ones and no others. We do not see only the appearances of
something beyond those appearances. We see things as they are.

Natural realism was defended with sophistication by Thomas Reid, the main figure in the
‘Scottish common sense’ school which was one of the dominating influences on philosophical
thought at the time when Mill’s philosophical opinions were being formed. Reid penetratingly
criticised the insidious tendency to ‘reify’ appearances—to treat them as though they were
entities intervening between the perceiver and physical objects, so that what is perceived are nor
the objects themselves but only these entities, behind which the objects lie and which they cause
in virtue of their unperceived properties. Sometimes, it is true, a thing does not have the
properties it appears to have. It may look to have a different colour or shape from the colour or
shape that it actually has. One mistake comes when a philosopher moves from this to the idea
that there is some item, the way it looks, which is all we ever perceive, and which stands between
us and the object’s actual properties. A second mistake, equally fundamental, comes when these
hypostatised appearances are treated as subjective—as ideas in the mind of the perceiver. The
combination of these two mistakes, which Reid treated together, is another eighteenth-century
commonplace, the Theory of Ideas’, or ‘Ideal System’ as Reid called it. It was his main target.

We do not perceive the contents of our own minds. We perceive the objective, sensible qualities
of physical things. Natural realism takes it that physical things are objectively perceivable items
with exclusively perceptible qualities, extending in space and time beyond our immediate sphere
of perception. But natural realism of this Scottish common-sense kind does not in fact succeed in
exorcising the idea of a contrast between things as they absolutely are, in themselves, and things
as they appear to us. The ‘Ideal System’ should be distinguished from the doctrine of
phenomenal relativity as such. One may accept Reid’s diagnosis of both mistakes—the
reification and subjectivisation of appearances. The appearance of a thing may be understood in
an objective sense—the way that table looks in these lighting conditions to any normal human
observer standing by the door. Nor need ‘the way it looks’ be treated as an ontologically distinct
item screening human observers from an unperceivable table behind it. For all that, it remains
true that other creatures with different sense modalities might perceive it quite differently: to say
that it really is brown is true, but true relative to our sense modalities. And the picture of other
creatures with different sense modalities inevitably brings in the notion of things in themselves:
things as characterised by some conception which could explain why they appear as they do to
us, and in a different way to other creatures. There is a potential point of tension here in Scottish
common sense. It becomes glaring in the philosophy of Sir William Hamilton, of which Mill’s
examination is the subject of this chapter.

There is another important thing to notice about Reid’s critique. One may accept the point that
we are properly said to perceive physical objects, that the word ‘perceive’ is misused by the
philosopher who asserts that all we perceive are our own perceptual sensations. But Reid himself
held that whatever perceptual knowledge of objects we possess, we possess only in virtue of and
consequent on the perceptual sensations we have, and which are caused by those external
objects. He does not deny that we are conscious of the sensations, and conscious in that sense, of
nothing else. A philosopher who accepted Reid’s criticism of the theory of ideas could therefore
continue to hold that these sensations constitute our only ultimate data, epistemologically
speaking. Let us call this ‘subjectivism’. Subjectivism holds, in Bertrand Russell’s phrase, that
‘all my data are private to me’. The standpoint of consciousness is the only acceptable starting
point for epistemology. It is not obvious that anything in Reid’s analysis ultimately undermines
this view. Certainly Mill did not think it did. The question is considered in 7.7.

Mill takes the doctrine of phenomenal relativity for granted, and he understands it in a
subjectivist sense. The remaining question, as he sees it, is whether it makes any sense to
suppose that sensations are appearances of things external to the mind. Now when appearances
are understood in the objective sense, the idea of creatures with different senses perceiving the
same objective world is ineliminable. But on the subjectivist view, there is no such drive to see
sensations as appearances of something independent of sensation. If all my data are private to
me, and if enumerative induction is the only ultimate real rule of inference, I can establish only
correlations among my own states of experience. There ceases to be any sense to the idea that
these states of experience are appearances or even effects of anything external. This is the full
extent of the phenomenalism to which Mill is driven in the Examination by the combination of
subjectivism and inductivism.

In the System of Logic this phenomenalism is kept in the background. Mill claimed his logic was
neutral on the question of what is given. The ‘interpretation of consciousness’, the
epistemological analysis of what it is we are immediately aware or conscious of, is set aside as
matter for another treatise. The System is concerned only with giving an account of principles of
inference, whatever may be the ultimate base of data to which these are applied. Although Mill
makes no secret of his subjectivist epistemological stance, and as we noted in 3.8, brings it in in
his analysis of the foundation of attributes, in practice he operates from the perspective of natural
realism.

There would be no problems in this if the relationship between phenomenalism and natural
realism were simply that the former follows from the combination of inductivism and
subjectivism, while the latter follows from inductivism and objectivism. In that case one could
set aside the interpretation of consciousness, and take the System of Logic simply as a treatise
expounding rules of inference and leaving open the question of what the data are to which those
rules can be applied.

But things are not so simple. Natural realism holds that what we perceive are objective
particulars with sensible qualities. However it also takes these particulars to be spread out in
space and time beyond our immediately perceptible and memorable spatio-temporal
environment. This conception of an array of perceptible qualities indefinitely extended in space
and time informs Mill’s remarks about the legitimacy or otherwise of hypotheses.

What gives an inductivist the right to it? Let us accept that the given is constituted not by private
sensations but by perceptible qualities and changes in physical objects. At any time, however, we
can be said to be non-inferentially aware only of the properties and changes in our immediate
spatio-temporal environment, which we perceive and remember. In so far as our beliefs go
beyond that, it seems that we can justify them only by inference. The correct epistemological
starting point is the perspective of ‘here and now’. It includes spatio-temporal relativity, or
indexicality, as well as phenomenal relativity. Natural realism, to arrive at the manifest image,
eliminates the former kind of relativity, while preserving the latter.

Mill wants to treat our knowledge of distant regions of space and time as legitimately inductive.
That raises difficulties for his analysis of inductive logic which he fails to notice. Partly, no
doubt, this is because his underlying metaphysical stance is phenomenalist. He assumes natural
realism when metaphysical issues are not themselves under discussion, but it is only the
phenomenalist position which he would seriously defend under epistemological attack. He
would, indeed, claim that natural realism can be embedded and legitimated in the deeper
metaphysical perspective of phenomenalism. But he did not give this claim the close
examination it was to get over the next century. And that enabled him to accept too laxly the
defensibility of the manifest image.

Natural realism ‘brackets out’ spatio-temporal relativity, treating it as somehow merely

incidental. This tendency seems to be deeply entrenched in common sense—in our natural
attitude to the world, of which natural realism is simply a philosophical statement. (Perhaps it
has to do with the way in which human perception preserves constancies by automatically
compensating for perspectival and background variations.) Mill reflects it when for example he
imagines a suitably placed observer seeing the elliptical path of the planets, and on that basis
argues that Kepler’s first law is a description and not a hypothesis.

In examining Mill’s treatment of hypotheses in 6.8, we noted his distinction between geological
or cosmological theories which postulate causes in unobservably distant regions of space and
time, and physical theories which postulate causes lying behind the phenomena: he treats the
former but not the latter as cases of a legitimate inductive generalisation. But what is the
difference between inferring from presently observable causes, via their known laws, to the
occurrence of similar causes in the unobservable past, and on the other hand, inferring from
causes observable at the phenomenal level, via known laws, to similar but unobservable
‘theoretical’ causes? In both cases more than one hypothesis may be available.

The underlying notion must be that ‘phenomena’ occurring outside our spatio-temporal
environment are still perceptible: a suitably placed observer would be able to perceive them. The
spatio-temporal limitations on our observation are contingent, whereas the phenomenal
limitations are intrinsic. Events in other parts of space and time are ‘there’, ‘open to view’,
‘phenomenal, in a sense in which purported events not accessible to human senses at all are not.

This contrast invites critical scrutiny. We could have been in different places at different times.
But equally we could have had different senses. It is only necessary that we have some senses or
other—just as it is necessary that we are in fact situated in some given times and places. It is true
that the two possibilities—that we might have passed through different locations and that we
might have been equipped with different senses—are not felt to be on all fours. The one
supposition involves no departure from the standard of human cognition, whereas the other does.
They are differently entrenched in the natural attitude; we make a difference between the two
kinds of possibility.

However this does not help in defending Mill: for in fact we are dealing with unobservable states
of affairs in either case. So our knowledge of them must be inferential in both cases, and Mill has
no sound reason for treating inferences in the one case as legitimate and in the other as
illegitimate. The inferences are, in both cases, equally hypothetical.

If inductivism is pressed to its proper conclusion, it cannot sustain natural realism’s ‘manifest
image’. Much of what we ordinarily take for granted in the manifest image requires, on
epistemological reconstruction, inference, and this inference can be reconstructed only as
inference to the best explanation, though it does not feature in our thinking as a hypothesis
inferred from data, but rather as a presupposition we bring to them. It is just on this point that
Mill is uncritical: not always, but, crucially, when he is contrasting supposedly legitimate
processes of ‘induction’ and ‘description’ with illegitimate uses of the Hypothetical Method.

Or consider again Mill’s view that geometry, arithmetic, and logic itself are based on
enumerative induction. Developments in science since Mill’s day—the breakdown of the
classical Newtonian synthesis, the introduction of a cosmology in which space is represented as
having a non-Euclidean geometry, and a quantum theory whose theoretical assumptions seem to
question classical logic—make it very clear that challenges to our intuitive mathematical and
logical ideas are only going to come from deep theories established on thoroughgoingly
hypothetico-deductive grounds. Nevertheless a strict analysis of the limits of enumerative
induction could in principle have made it clear then. It could equally have brought home to Mill
the hypothetical character of the exhaustiveness assumption in an eliminative induction: for
example in the Newtonian deduction of Kepler’s laws which Mill considers as a specimen of
inductive reasoning.

In short a really critical naturalistic epistemology has to recognise that inference to the best
explanation lies at the heart of natural realism right from the start. Once that has been recognised,
the shift from natural realism to scientific realism—from the manifest image to the scientific
image—becomes much smoother.

Because we are, nowadays, inclined to place great emphasis on this point, our sympathies in the
debate between Whewell and Mill go to Whewell. He has a far more concrete grasp of the
importance of hypothetical reasoning in the history of science, and most importantly, an
appreciation of the creative role of ideas in the construction of theory which is unmatched by
Mill. Whewell’s feeling for the shifting quality of the ‘Fundamental Antithesis’, as he called it,
between ‘thoughts’ and ‘things’, ‘ideas’ and ‘sensations’, ‘theories’ and ‘facts’, ‘necessary truth’
and ‘experience’, is a distinctly modern one.

But we must not pluck this strand in Whewell’s thinking out of its context and time. Whewell’s
emphasis on the role of hypotheses and the theory-ladenness of facts was by no means associated
with the radical fallibilism with which it is provocatively blended by modern scientific realists.
(The blend has become so common that we are no longer sufficiently disconcerted by it.) Far
from it. His aphorism was that ‘Man’s intellectual progress consists in the Idealization of Facts’.
He meant that the hypothetico-deductive investigation of phenomena gradually leads to a
theoretical structure whose principles and premises we come to recognise as necessary and a
priori. How then is it possible that ‘that which is known a posteriori becomes known a priori?’
How can the fact that. our theories are eventually recognised as necessities of thought entitle us
to conclude that they register necessities in things? ‘Because the principle and beliefs which are
identified by theoretical investigators, and then recognised a priori, agree with the Ideas of the
Divine Mind.’
The move from what we must think to what is the case is underwritten not by transcendental
idealism but by an appeal to God, as in Hamilton. There is something very English about this
moderate theological common sense, running into a dilute Kantism, but staying well short of the
strains in Kant which so deeply influenced the German romantics.3

If the growth of scientific knowledge finally leads to a conception of the world which we
recognise as a necessity of thought, there cannot, in the long run, be genuine underdetermination
of hypotheses by data. Mill’s case is at its strongest when he emphasises the possibility of
underdetermination, and uses it as an argument for an instrumentalist view of theories.
Whewell’s replies vacillate between straightforward denial of the possibility of
underdetermination, and a more instrumentalistic line of argument—that if two apparently
alternative theories turn out to be predictively equivalent on being fully worked out, they are not
genuine alternatives at all. This latter point Mill can of course gratefully endorse. His claim, as
we have seen, is only that hypothetical inference is not an independent method in the logic of
truth.

3 Inductivism and inductive scepticism

A hypothesis may produce a useful story, yet since there are other stories —or at any rate, since
we cannot rule out the possibility of other stories which we cannot presently conceive—what
justifies us in accepting its truth? But isn’t Mill’s difficulty here a purely sceptical one? In other
words, is he not selectively applying, against the Hypothetical Method, a scepticism which if
valid could be applied against inductive reasoning in general? Or are there intelligible doubts
about the Hypothetical Method which do not apply to enumerative induction?

In both the case of enumerative and the case of hypothetical inference we find certain inferences
natural and acceptable, and others, which are formally on a par with those we accept, unnatural
and unacceptable. The enumerative inferences we accept as sound must be couched in what
Nelson Goodman has called ‘projectible’ predicates: whether a predicate is projectible or not is a
matter of whether we are naturally inclined to group the items it denotes together as similar, or of
a kind. Equally, not every hypothesis from which the known data can be deduced is accepted as a
good explanation. It must also satisfy certain other criteria of non-adhocness—projectibility,
simplicity, intelligibility—which may be hard to spell out, but are naturally imposed. Let us call
such inductions —enumerative or hypothetical—natural. It is a characteristic feature of
‘inductive logic’, and one which causes some to doubt the propriety of the term, that there seems
no way of spelling out in satisfying formal terms the difference between those inductions which
naturally strike us as sound, and those which strike us as bizarre. This is one of the ways in
which the logic of truth is a ‘human logic’. It responds to a human ‘quality space’—to natural
reactions about what is similar to what, what is the same way of going on. What theoretical
structure is simpler, and what more complicated, is assessed in terms of these natural reactions. It
is important that a naturalistic epistemology should not allow the sceptic to get illicit leverage by
thinking these natural facts away.

Now Mill’s reason for rejecting the Hypothetical Method as a primitive rule of inductive logic is
that it is always conceivable that more than one hypothesis could account for the known data.
This can certainly look like the sort of purely sceptical argument which, on his own approach,
ought to be dismissed as illegitimate. But to assess the issue we must distinguish between a
strong and a weak underdetermination thesis. The weak thesis holds that for any hypothesis
which reaches a certain level of predictive adequacy, a plurality of other hypotheses could
always be constructed to match that level. The strong thesis asserts that a plurality of theoretical
systems can always be constructed which match each other not only in predictive adequacy, but
also in explanatory adequacy when all the canons of good explanation (simplicity, economy)
which we accept, or would spontaneously accept when presented with them, are taken into
account.

The weak thesis is trivially true. Given one predictively adequate hypothesis, and with no
constraint to take into account other than that of predictive adequacy, a distinct but predictively
equivalent hypothesis can always be produced. But to accept this point as undermining the
Hypothetical Method is to deploy a sceptical argument of the illegitimate kind. An exactly
analogous point could be made against enumerative induction, as in Goodman’s ‘new riddle of
induction’ (Goodman 1979).

The point, therefore, has to be a stronger one: that given all natural constraints on what counts
as a good explanation, there will still remain a plurality of good explanations. If this stronger
point is correct, then we are led towards Mill’s analysis of the role of hypotheses, precisely by
appealing to the standards of reasoning which we naturally apply. For in practice, if we do have
more than one explanation which we recognise as explaining a body of data equally well—
equally well by the hard to state and not indisputable criteria which we actually apply—then we
regard the question as open: we do not claim to know that either is true. We try to find data
which will separate the two hypotheses. If the database is finite and known (for example two
equally good theories about the use of certain artefacts on a fully excavated set of archaeological
sites), we conclude that we cannot know which theory is correct for lack of evidence.

But what if we were to become convinced that an open theoretical domain was strongly
undetermined? We would not then take a realist attitude towards any hypothesis propounded to
account for it. We would treat all hypotheses instrumentally. That is what is right in Mill’s claim:
we could not simultaneously be convinced that a given hypothesis can be matched by another
equally good one and also endorse it as truth.

What this brings out, however, is that if we want to base a global instrumentalism about
scientific theory on the underdetermination thesis then we have to make a very strong claim. We
must have grounds for saying that there either are, or could be constructed, a plurality. of
hypotheses which

(1) non-trivially differ;

(2) are of equal explanatory power by criteria of good explanation which we ourselves recognise
(actually or potentially);

(3) could be progressively improved according to these criteria without ever converging.

We have no reason to hold that our theorising about nature is strongly underdetermined in this
way. We could perhaps come to have such reason (Skorupski 1985). But it is one thing to say
that, if we did, we would retreat to a global instrumentalism about scientific theory, quite another
to say that the mere conceivability of the situation—the mere fact that its possibility cannot be
ruled out—should make us take an intrumentalist view of our theorising now. We should not
concede to the sceptic—given our naturalistic approach—that the onus of proof is on our side.

We considered Mill’s internal vindication of induction in 6.7. The Law of Universal Causation is
initially rather weakly supported as a generalisation from enumerative inductions in particular
kinds of case— habits of inference in particular empirical domains. It in turn underpins the
eliminative canons of induction. Their actual success in application, in providing new habits of
inference, works retroactively to strengthen our confidence in the Law of Universal Causation. If
induction can— within the limits set out in 5–9—be justified inductively in this way, then why
should not inference to the best explanation be justified, within those same limits, by an
inference to the best explanation? How better to explain the pay-off from hypothetical reasoning,
its fruitfulness and simplifying power, than by supposing that the observacion-transcending
generalisations to which it leads are true? The challenge to the instrumentalist is to show why
hypothetical reasoning cannot be vindicated internally in the way that enumerative and
eliminative reasoning can. The instrumentalist cannot selectively resort to sceptical arguments
which would, if sound, tell as much against these forms of inductive reasoning as against the
method of hypothesis.

Perhaps, however, the instrumentalist can rise to this challenge. After all, what, functionally
speaking, do theories do? They increase our predictive power within the finitely observable
domain. They produce in us improved habits of inference from observation to observation. They
make us aware of uniformities holding between reconditely complicated assemblages of
phenomena which we would never have dreamed of if we had used enumerative induction alone.
The internal vindication of our inductive dispositions—including hypothetical reasoning—works
well so long as we consider only the observational core of our system of general beliefs, viewing
it as a system of habits of inference from observation to observation. We can then justify our
reasoning propensities by a straightforward meta-induction, along Millian lines. But we only
justify them as methods of arriving at true observational generalisations.

Or another approach for the naturalistic philosopher is to invoke evolutionary theory. We have
the inductive dispositions we do, because they have survival value. They have survival value
because they generate correct habits of inference from observation to observation. And they do
that to the extent that the observational generalisations which correspond to the habits of
inference are true.

Yet the evolutionary line of internal justification, just like the meta-inductive one, looks like
meat and drink for the instrumentalist. We justify a theoretical system not only by its predictive
power but also by its simplicity. Why then do we want our explanations simple? In the context of
evolutionary theory the answer seems evident—it is a matter of the cost-effectiveness of
simplicity: the smaller amount of information-processing required. Creatures with correct
expectations about their environment have a greater chance of surviving and propagating than
creatures with incorrect ones. And creatures with more cost-effective systems of generating
correct expectations have the same comparative advantage over those with less cost-effective
systems.

Now we appear to be able to explain the preference for simplicity— but in a way which does not
invoke the truth of the simpler theory at all. We go for the theory which is simplest relative to
our information-processing capacities. Creatures with the same capacities who preferred theories
which were complicated relative to those capacities would take longer to process information and
would be at a relative disadvantage. Whether the world is complicated or simple, this explanation
of our preference for simplicity would remain. And so on either approach the naturalistic view of
reasoning seems to lead to an instrumental view of theories.

4 Naturalism and the classical pre-understanding of meaning

But if naturalism leads to this conclusion, then it undermines itself.

For in the first place, instrumentalism strictly applied reduces us to the ‘here and now’
perspective. The evolutionary explanation of our reasoning propensities seems to prevent us
from treating hypothetical inference in the spirit of scientific realism, that is, as an independent
principle of the logic of truth: inference to the best explanation. So all hypothetical, as against
emumerative and eliminative, inductions from the data of present memory and perception have
to be viewed instrumentally. Therefore the evolutionary explanation itself has to be treated
instrumentally. There is nothing inconsistent in that: from the assumption that the theory can be
accepted in realistic spirit, we find ourselves led to the conclusion that it should be regarded
instrumentally. Therefore it, along with all other hypothetical inferences should be viewed
instrumentally. And the meta-inductive argument converges on the same conclusion.

But in giving up scientific realism we give up naturalism. The view that man is simply a part of
nature and can be studied as such positively requires that there be a tenable distinction between
the manifest image and the scientific image, between our immediate phenomenal descriptions of
the world and an inferred account of its absolute properties, in terms of which we can explain its
phenomenal features. If we think of ourselves as natural objects within the natural world, and of
the phenomena as products of an interaction between other objects in the world and our own
perceptual processes, we are already taking the realist stance. We have to allow the possibility of
different kinds of perceivers interacting in sensorily different ways with that same world—
perceivers who will characterise it in terms of different phenomenal properties. The only
question that remains is the Lockean one of how far scientific inquiry will be able to take us in
achieving a grasp of the world as it absolutely is.

There is indeed nothing wrong with the explanations provided at the phenomenally relative level;
things can properly be said to look red because they are red. But we have to be prepared to
discover that at a deeper level of scientific inquiry the explanation of why things look red no
longer deploys, in its explanans, the predicate ‘red’. In short naturalism necessarily encompasses
scientific realism but goes beyond it in incorporating the knowing and perceiving subject within
the natural domain. (The contrast is with a Kantian combination of scientific realism and
transcendental idealism.)

On the other hand the epistemological analysis of reasoning which flows from the naturalistic,
functional view of cognition seems to undermine scientific realism. In principle, of course, one
can hold that there is a ‘way things really are’ but that epistemological analysis shows that we
have no ground for accepting any account of what it is. This would mean, if thought through,
giving up the second bit of naturalism: that man can be studied as a part of nature; and would
make the naturalistic insistence that man is simply a part of nature a blank act of faith. It is not
Mill’s position, although he sometimes talks as if it was; in practice, in the System, he often
slides towards an underlying scientific realism, while in the Examination he argues for a strict
phenomenalism. (We shall consider whether the two can be reconciled in 7.9.)

We seem to come back again therefore to the Kantian criticism: naturalism makes knowledge
impossible, and in doing so undercuts itself. We first encountered it in discussing the role of a
priori elements in reasoning (5–9 and 6.7). We saw that some principles must have a prior claim
on reason, for reasoning about the world to get going—but that on the naturalistic view it seemed
that no principles could have such a claim.

Now we encounter a second difficulty, which holds even if the first is ignored. A naturalistic
view of the mind and its cognitive dispositions entails inductivism and leads towards an
instrumental view of any part of the fabric of theory that transcends observational habits of
inference. In doing so it undermines itself—as becomes clear when the consequences of
inductivism are thought through. That criticism can be levelled at the System of Logic, quite
independently of the phenomenalism which Mill defends in the Examination.

Is it naturalism as such that produces these self-undermining conclusions—imposing an

inductivist ‘logic of truth’, and even more incoherently, stripping all prior rational requirements
out of the reasoning process? Naturalistic philosophy can be defended only if it is not.

There is in fact a further suppressed premise. It is an underlying conception of what it is to

understand a language, of what it is for the sentences of a language to have meaning for a
language-user. Let us call it the ‘classical pre-understanding’ of meaning. ‘Classical’, because it
begins to be questioned in philosophy only at the beginning of this century, and ‘pre-
understanding’, because it is in no way an explicit assumption in the philosophy that came
before. One cannot attribute it to Kant or to Mill as a consciously formulated premise, or even as
a doctrine which they would have recognised and endorsed had it been put to them. Yet Mill
works out his naturalism and Kant his critique of naturalism within, so to speak, its horizon. But
its existence and significance could begin to be explored only when American pragmatism and
Viennese verificationism developed conceptions of language-mastery which threw it into relief
by providing alternatives.

On the classical conception, to understand a sentence is to grasp its truth-conditions—where the

concept of a truth condition is given in terms of a correspondence notion of truth: in terms of a
picture in which grasp of a sentence’s truth-condition appears as something determined
independently of a mastery of rules of evidence. Opposed to this is the ‘epistemic’ conception.
Here the essential thought is that understanding a sentence is nothing other than a recognitional
ability—the ability to recognise data, against a background context of belief, as licensing
assertoric utterance of the sentence understood.5

The essential idea in the classical pre-understanding of language-mastery is that a language-user

can understand sentences, and thus attain a grasp of their truth-conditions, independently of a
mastery of rules of evidence—that he can first grasp what it is for a sentence to be true and then
consider, as a separate question, what rules of evidence might in principle bear on it. In rejecting
this idea we precisely deny that any sense can be made of the question whether our ultimate rules
of evidence, taken as a whole, track the truth. And we also come to see how our mastery of the
rules of evidence can be, in the weak sense of 5.9, ‘a priori.

The fact that we spontaneously or originally accept certain rules of evidence and reasoning,
certain ‘ways of going on’, is part of the very process of acquiring mastery of the language. But
that is not to say that those rules cannot be discarded at a later stage in the history of inquiry. We
accept certain principles in our reasoning as prior postulates: certain ground rules of induction,
various propositions of logic and mathematics, guidelines of scientific inquiry such as principles
of continuity, conservation and sufficient reason. Such principles are weakly a priori’. we are
justified in accepting them so long as no natural history of the inductive process has undermined
them. But they are not verbal, or ‘analytic’, and they can be undermined: thus for example the
axiom that two straight lines cannot enclose a space is in this sense a priori and yet has turned
out to be false.

But is there not in principle, at any rate, a court of appeal beyond our natural reasoning
propensities—the facts of the matter, the way the world actually is? Those reasoning propensities
are objectively valid which are prone to get us believing that p, if p. The trouble is that the best
explanation of our preference for simplicity gives us no reason to think that that particular
preference passes this test. But we seem to have a clear conception of what the test is—we know
that the preference either passes or does not, though we cannot apply it. In principle, at least, our
natural reasoning propensities are not the last court of appeal. And this leads us to
instrumentalism: we break the inference from convergence to correspondence, because we have
an explanation of convergence which requires us to postulate no correspondence.

This line of thought requires the classical pre-understanding of meaning. It assumes that it makes
sense to ask whether our reasoning propensities, taken as a whole, lead us to truth. But if we
adopt an epistemic conception of what it is to understand a language, we reject the idea that it
makes sense to ask that question. Understanding a sentence is having the ability to recognise
circumstances which, against a context of background beliefs, warrant its assertion. That means
that the acceptance of certain rules of evidence and reasoning is part of the very process of
acquiring mastery of the language.

An epistemic conception of language undercuts the contrast which we are tempted to make—
which seems to some philosophers to arise from the very notion of an objective, mind-
independent reality—between a theory which satisfies our criteria for good theory and a theory
which is true. And it blocks the move from: other equally good theories can’t be ruled out, to: we
don’t know the truth of this theory. (But none of this implies that ‘true theory’ means ‘theory
which satisfies our criteria’.)

We have now identified the roots which underlie the System of Logics key doctrines—ultra-
empiricism about logic and mathematics, rejection of Hypothetical Method, Our claim is that
these doctrines grow not from naturalism alone but from a combination of naturalism and the
classical pre-understanding. If the claim is sound then a reply becomes possible to the Kantian
critique of naturalism. Ultra-empiricism, the view that no real proposition or principle is even
weakly a priori, is indeed incoherent. And rejection of the Hypothetical Method, because it
means rejecting a realist attitude towards our fabric of common sense and scientific belief, is
incompatible with naturalism. But if these catastrophic conclusions arise not from naturalism
alone, but from the combination of naturalism with the classical pre-understanding of meaning,
then it is possible to avoid them not by rejecting naturalism in favour of transcendental idealism
but by rejecting the classical pre-understanding in favour of an epistemic conception of
language-mastery.

This constitutes an indirect argument for the epistemic conception. But it can also be argued,
directly, that the conception is latent in a naturalistic analysis of the mind; specifically, in the
functional conception of general beliefs and inference to which a rigorously naturalistic view of
reasoning leads. It is therefore latent in Mill’s analysis of syllogistic inference and in the idea that
all inference is from particulars to particulars—although I am not at all suggesting that he brings
it to the surface, or becomes in any way aware of its significance.

On the direct argument we arrive at the epistemic conception by rejecting a picture of reasoning
which depicts it as a non-causal tracking of logical relationships between pure meanings in a
Platonic realm. Yet that picture can seem to arise inevitably from the inherent autonomy of
reasoning—it seems simply to draw out the meaning of the idea that in reasoning we recognise
and respond to rational requirements, which I described in 5.9 as the central category of our
‘hermeneutic’ understanding of ourselves. We rightly think the essence of understanding,
inference and general belief is rule-guidedness. But we think of being guided by a rule as
relatedness to some self-interpreting entity, and we think of the dispositions that a person who
understands acquires, as results of that relation, as accident rather than essence. So the question
is whether that hermeneutic image of human beings as reasoners and free agents can remain
when the metaphysical picture which seems to go with it, and which underpins the classical pre-
understanding, is detached from it.

We have reached a watershed in our examination of Mill’s philosophy. Our argument has been
that naturalism leads to radical empiricism, according to which all real propositions and rules of
inference are revisable in the light of experience—but not to ultra-empiricism, according to
which none has a claim on us prior to experience, Mill is the philosopher in whose work the fully
empiricist consequences of naturalism are first worked out, right through to logic and
mathematics. And so he poses in particularly acute form the question of the coherence of
naturalism. We have defended the essential core of his naturalistic epistemology—every real
proposition is revisable. But we have conceded that some real propositions must have a prior
rational claim, and we have acknowledged that some way must be found out of his inductivism.
The suggestion is that both things can be done by removing the classical pre-understanding of
language-mastery. But, of course, if the epistemic conception can be shown to be incoherent, or
if it can be shown that it is not genuinely distinct from idealism, then our defence collapses. We
are then forced by naturalism precisely to Mill’s inductivism and ultra-empiricism—and we are
forced to acknowledge their incoherence. The idealist critics of Mill turn out to be right.

These questions—whether the epistemic conception is coherent, and whether it genuinely differs
from idealism—are still open. One side of them—the conflict between the naturalistic and the
hermeneutic image of human beings, which was noted in the last but one paragraph—will
surface again in 8.9; but they cannot be pursued further here. We turn now to Mill’s account of
consciousness, perception and the self.
5 The ‘interpretation of consciousness’
In 7.1 and 7.2 we found two tenets which lead Mill to a phenomenalist analysis of perception and
its objects—inductivism and subjectivism. We have examined the consequences and the
underlying sources of the first, and we are now to consider the second tenet, according to which I
am immediately conscious of nothing other than my own states of mind.

At the beginning of the Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy (in chapter ii), Mill
expounds the doctrine of the phenomenal relativity of human knowledge—according to which
we can know things only as they appear to us—and he distinguishes various versions of it. He
takes it for granted that they all take the notion of appearance in the subjective sense, as referring
to perceptual sensation. Concerning physical objects,

We know no more of what they are, than the senses tell us, nor does nature afford us any means
of knowing more. Thus much, in the obvious meaning of the terms, is denied by no one, though
there are thinkers who prefer to express the meaning in other language.

There are, however, conflicting opinions as to what it is that the senses tell us concerning
objects. About one part of the information they give, there is no dispute. They tell us our
sensations. The objects excite, or awaken in us, certain states of feeling…. it is affirmed that all
the attributes which we ascribe to objects, consist in their having the power of exciting one or
another variety of sensation in our minds; that an object is to us nothing else than that which
affects our senses in a certain manner; that even an imaginary object is but a conception, such as
we are able to form, of something which would affect our senses in some new way; so that our
knowledge of objects; and even our fancies about objects, consist of nothing but the sensations
which they excite, or which we imagine them exciting, in ourselves. (IX 5–6)

This is ‘the doctrine of the Relativity of Knowledge to the knowing mind in the simplest, purest,
and, as I think, the most proper acceptation of the words’. But there are two forms in which the
doctrine may be held.

According to one of the forms, the sensations which, in common parlance, we are said to receive
from objects, are not only all that we can possibly know of the objects, but are all that we have
any ground for believing to exist. What we term an object is but a complex conception made up
by the laws of association, out of the ideas of various sensations which we are accustomed to
receive simultaneously. There is nothing real in the process but these sensations.

According to the other,

there is a real universe of Things in Themselves,’ and…whenever there is an impression on our

senses, there is a Thing in itself,’ which is behind the phaenomenon, and is the cause of it. But as
to what this Thing is ‘in itself,’ we, having no organs except our senses for communicating with
it, can only know what our senses tell us; and as they tell us nothing but the impression which the
thing makes upon us, we do not know what it is in itself at all. We suppose (at least these
philosophers suppose) that it must be something in itself, but all we know it to be is merely
relative to us, consisting in the power of affecting us in certain ways…. (IX 7)6
But before we follow the debate further let us examine the proposition about which Mill thinks
there can be no dispute—that ‘objects excite, or awaken in us, certain states of feeling’.

There is obviously a pre-philosophical sense in which it is indisputable. The question is, whether
subjectivism follows from the proposition when it is understood in that indisputable way. Does it
alone, understood in its plain pre-philosophical sense, force on us the standpoint of
consciousness?

Mill was writing after, and with full knowledge of, Reid’s careful analysis of perception. Reid
insists that ‘perceive’, ‘see’, ‘hear’ in their ordinary use signify relations between a perceiver and
an external object. It would not be correct to speak of ‘perceiving’, ‘seeing’, ‘hearing’, a state of
one’s own mind. To perceive an object, Reid thinks, is (i) to have certain sensations (ii) caused
by the object7 which (iii) naturally, without the mediation of any inference, prompt the formation
of certain perceptual beliefs. Sensations are not mental images which resemble external objects;
there are no such representative mental entities. There is no distinction to be made between
feeling a sensation and the sensation felt; sensations are ‘modifications’—states—of mind. They
are ‘natural signs’ of objects: cues which spontaneously prompt perceptual beliefs.

All of this is accepted by Mill and Hamilton. But does it undermine the subjectivist doctrine? It
seems, as was noted in 7.2, to be perfectly compatible with it—in fact positively to presuppose it.
On Reid’s account there are states of sensory consciousness which mediate between the objects
that excite them, and the beliefs about those objects which we come to hold in virtue of
experiencing them. I cannot perceive without being in such a state. But I can be in it without
perceiving. For example I may have a visual experience which prompts me to believe that I am
seeing a red triangle on a green field. It is then apparently true to say, in an obvious and
legitimate sense, that what I am immediately aware or conscious of is my sensing of a red
triangle on a green field. That remains true even if I am perceiving no red triangle because no red
triangle exists. And it seems in itself enough to force epistemology into the standpoint of
consciousness. It must become, in Mill’s phrase, the ‘Interpretation of Consciousness’. The very
fact of consciousness seems to require that philosophy be an interpretation of consciousness.

Suppose that a knife edge is pressed firmly against your palm. You feel painful pressure on your
skin. Exactly the same experience could in principle occur, even when in fact no edge is being
pressed against your palm. The sensation could be caused in some non-standard way. In that case
you could not be said to feel a knife on your palm, there being no knife there; nevertheless an
experience occurs which feels just like having a knife pressed against your palm. It has a certain
‘presentational’ or ‘phenomenal’— an appearing-to-me-as-if character.

Take any state of yourself which could be described, in the presence of the appropriate causal
connections between yourself and your physical environment, as seeing, hearing, touching
something. Bracket out those causal connections. You would then be in exactly the same state of
experience, presentationally or phenomenally speaking, but would be seeing, hearing, touching,
nothing at all.

Reid’s analysis seems to assume three ontologically distinct categories: physical objects, pure
sensings which have this irreducibly presentational character, and judgements prompted by them.
On that analysis subjectivism is an inevitable conclusion. To escape it something more is
required than the sensible points Reid makes about perception and sensation, something much
more counter-intuitive: a denial that ‘pure sensings’ —pure experience—constitute an
ontologically distinct category at all.

We shall come to this in 7.10. But Mill questioned the irreducibility status of ‘pure experience’
no more than Reid or Hamilton did. And so he proceeds to consider the epistemological
alternatives under that assumption.

He does so by examining Hamilton’s classification of ‘Different Theories Respecting the Belief

in an External World’. Hamilton distinguishes what he calls ‘natural realism’ from various forms
of ‘idealism’. But it is not clear that natural realism excludes everything Hamilton calls idealism,
and the issue here turns precisely on the existence or otherwise of pure sensings. Natural realism
we have introduced already. It is the Reidian and common-sense view that we perceive external
objects. The various forms of ‘idealism’, according to Hamilton, have it in common that they
hold the mind to be ‘immediately aware’ or ‘conscious’ only of data, or appearances, purportedly
presented to it by objects but in any case ontologically distinct from them. ‘Absolute idealism’
then holds that the data are in fact all that exist, that they are not appearances of something
ontologically distinct from themselves. In contrast ‘cosmothetic idealism’, which Hamilton also
calls, less tendentiously, ‘hypothetical realism’, holds that the mind infers the existence of
external objects as a hypothesis to explain the data, and the regularities it discovers in the data.

Natural realism and absolute idealism are, according to Hamilton, ‘the only systems worthy of a
philosopher’; natural realism is his own and Reid’s position. He proceeds to subdivide
hypothetical realism into three ‘classes’; according to the first two the data are thought of as
‘representative entities’ of one kind or another, resembling the objects; but according to the last,
the data are to be thought of simply as the acts or states of sensation which are involved in
perception.

Against the various forms of representative theory, Mill accepts, ‘Reid, [Dugald] Stewart, and
our author are completely triumphant’ (IX 155). What of the third form of ‘hypothetical realism?
Hamilton strives to distinguish this from natural realism. He ascribes it to Brown (another
philosopher of the common-sense school), and distinguishes him, as a hypothetical realist of the
third class, from Reid, whom he describes as a natural realist. He concedes however that Reid
was insufficiently aware of this important distinction, and that he did not adequately guard
himself against being taken, as Brown took him, to be a hypothetical realist of this third kind.

That Reid and Brown were unaware of the distinction Mill agrees— because he thinks there is
none. On the terms accepted by Hamilton, he is right. If natural realism holds only that we
perceive physical objects, that is quite compatible with various further analyses of what it is to
perceive an object. If perceiving an object is being in a sensory state caused by that object—the
sensory state being understood as a pure presentational sensing—then natural realism and
hypothetical realism of the third kind will have to coincide. The very belief that I am perceiving
something will then itself have to be an inference from the data.

Hamilton would reply that the natural realist, unlike the hypothetical realist, holds to a doctrine
of ‘intuitive Perception’— But he is unable to produce a clear statement of what that doctrine is
—precisely because he cannot work himself free of the assumption that perception involves pure
experience. The doctrine of intuitive perception holds not only that we do not in fact infer our
perceptual beliefs from our sensations, but that there is no scope or need for such an inference.
Hamilton wants it to be true that we are immediately conscious of objects—so that the need for
inference does not arise. But the moment one grants the existence of perceptual sensations, on
the basis of which we make perceptual judgements, no epistemologically worthwhile sense can
be made of this notion of immediate consciousness. It simply becomes another way of making
the semantic point that the proper objects of perception are physical things and their objective
qualities; and with this the hypothetical realist can of course agree, while insisting that, since
perception is mediated by sensation, it requires inference. To justify the claim that no inference is
needed Hamilton would have had to be immensely more radical than a follower of Reid could
have been expected to be. He would have had to deny the very existence of pure presentational
sensings.

Reid, as Mill says, undoubtedly

thought that certain sensations, irresistibly, and by a law of our nature, suggest, without any
process of reasoning, and without the intervention of any tertium quid, the notion of something
external, and invincible belief in its real existence. (IX 175)

But he grants that what the mind is immediately aware of is its own sensory states; and that it is
on the basis of its sensory states that it forms perceptual beliefs about external objects, whose
reasonableness or otherwise is a function of the content of the sensory states on which they are
grounded. It must then follow that whether or not we actually do, psychologically speaking,
make an inference, an inference is, epistemo-logically speaking, required.

Is this too hasty? Is it dogmatism on Reid’s part simply to point out that we do form particular
beliefs prompted by particular sensations, beliefs which we just do regard as rational—whereas
other perceptual beliefs if prompted by those same sensations would simply be dismissed as
irrational? A naturalistic epistemology, as we saw in section 7.3, has to be careful not to dismiss
inference to the best explanation on purely sceptical grounds—by the same token it must be
equally careful not to dismiss the natural belief in an external world on purely sceptical grounds.

But by natural standards this seems to be a case where inference is required. For we are—given
the assumption of pure presentational sensings—immediately aware only of one class of states of
affairs (our own sensory states) and on that basis form beliefs about another class of quite
distinct states of affairs (states of external physical objects). A naturalistic analysis of reasoning
can, it is true, in the end only appeal to what we agree are sound standards of inference. But it is
quite another thing to accept as primitive the soundness of a substantive belief which neither is
based on direct awareness of the state of affairs that makes it true, nor can be legitimately
inferred from anything of which we are directly aware.

6 The ‘introspective’ and the ‘psychological’ methods

The inference required from pure sensings to mind-independent physical objects cannot possibly
be recognised in Mill’s inductivist logic of truth. So Mill must either accept that we have no
grounds at all for any beliefs about external objects, or must reject the assumption that physical
objects are mind-independent—in particular, that they are ontologically distinct from the states
of consciousness which evidence them.

But let us trace his path to phenomenalism in more detail. For the reader of the Examination, it
seems to creep onto the scene in an oblique and undramatic way, as a kind of philosophical by-
product of associationist psychological science. It would have served the purposes of clarity if
Mill had kept psychology and epistemology more painstakingly separate—but the links in his
discussion are not adventitious.

He draws a contrast between two methods, the ‘introspective method’ and the ‘psychological
method’, which respectively characterise ‘the two great schools’ of metaphysics (Examination,
chapter ix, ‘Of the Interpretation of Consciousness’; IX 139).

The ‘introspective method’ is that of the a priori school. It inspects consciousness to establish
what our ‘intuitive beliefs’ are—those beliefs, or those dispositions to believe in the presence of
sensory stimuli, which we find we cannot reject. It undertakes a process of scrutiny to get at the
ones which are authentically ‘irresistible’, ‘ultimate’ or unconditional, and to screen out the
prejudices of the moment. Having done that it assumes that these remaining beliefs, and
dispositions to believe in the presence of appropriate ‘natural signs’ are innate—that is to say,
not explicable as habits acquired through experience—and true or sound.

These are of course very different conclusions; but they are brought together in such phrases as
‘original’, ‘ultimate’ or ‘intuitive’ knowledge, ‘affirmation of consciousness’ and so forth. They
were the stock in trade of the common-sense school, and they reflect a philosophical position
which by no means lacks defensive resources.

When we say that a person sees that p is the case (that there is a road junction ahead), we mean
that he believes that p, that p is the case, and that the fact of p’s being the case produces his
belief via standard processes of visual perception, which are not fortuitously but in general
reliably productive of true belief. A similar analysis holds of remembering that p. ‘Intuitive
knowledge’ could be used to stand in for any psychological verb which functioned like that, and
on that basis hearing, seeing, remembering and so forth would be said to be modes of intuitive
knowledge, or immediate consciousness. The knowledge is immediate in the sense that I just see
that p, I do not infer it from something else which I see. Immediate knowledge—seeing,
remembering—is, in this sense, non-inferential. We have just argued that this cuts little
epistemological ice: I can always ask myself whether what appears to me to be a perception or
memory really is one. However Reid would say that in all cases of intuitive knowledge I form a
belief by a disposition which is triggered by appropriate sensory or other cues, and operates
spontaneously unless specifically inhibited. On this basis he would hold it to be innate. And he
would hold it legitimate just because it is innate.

The force, for Reid, of saying that these dispositions were innate was negative: it was a way of
saying that they were not further explicable in natural terms at all. They were there because
implanted by a benevolent God. There is a great difference between saying this and saying that
they are innate in a post-Darwinian intellectual world in which that means that we look for a
natural explanation in terms of inheritance and evolution rather than in terms of environmentally
stimulated association. Nevertheless, either story provides a basis for moving from innateness to
reliability.
Of course either story itself needs justification: we have here another case of internal vindication
—an approach whose scope and limits have already been explored (5.9, 6.7, 7.3). In general, one
might object either that the irresistibleness of the disposition does not show it to be innate, or that
its innateness does not show it to be legitimate, or both. In one place or another Mill makes both
kinds of objections. But in his discussion of consciousness and perception in the Examination,
the emphasis is heavily on the first kind of objection. This often gives the impression that he is
implicitly conceding that a disposition to believe which is ‘original’, ‘ultimate’ in Reid’s sense,
is thereby ‘original, or ‘ultimate’ in the sense of being legitimate or sound. In general, that is
clearly something that he would not concede. (Compare the passages quoted at 5.8, p.158.) So
one might argue that the situation is simply that Mill is interested in the associationist
psychological analysis of perception, thinks he can show how certain irresistible cognitive
dispositions are formed by processes of psychological association, and in his eagerness to beat
the a priori school with this stick lets slip the point that the epistemological claims it makes
would be unjustified even in terms of its own psychology.

However Reid and his followers had a strong card of their own to play against the ‘psychological
method’ —the one espoused by Mill. They could argue not only that certain cognitive and
perceptual dispositions are natural and not open to further psychological analysis, but that their
status as yielding true knowledge is presupposed in every coherent theory of psychological
phenomena. And that reply, at least for the case of memory, would have had considerable force
against Mill in particular.

The ‘psychological method’ seeks to establish ‘the origin of ideas’: reducing the ‘data of
consciousness’ to the minimum number of elements which can then, by associationist principles,
be shown capable of generating the rest. Only then, Mill thinks, are we in a position to know
what the original data of consciousness are.

For we have it not in our power to ascertain, by any direct process, what Consciousness told us at
the time when its revelations were in their pristine purity. It only offers itself to our inspection as
it exists now, when those original revelations are overlaid and buried under a mountainous heap
of acquired-notions and perceptions. (IX 139)

The formation of our perceptual judgements, with all their natural spontaneity, is explicable,
according to Mill, without assuming that we perceive anything external to the mind. That is what
he thinks emerges when the psychological method is followed out, and that is what leads him to
phenomenalism. What he cannot do without, however, is memory. Neither our perceptual
judgements, nor our judgements of memory, are explicable without assuming that we really do
remember things. The mind, as modelled by associationist psychology, undergoes—or is—a
series of conscious states, sensory, cognitive, affective, volitional. Processes of association
gradually build up certain fixed and stable states of mind: beliefs, motives, dispositions. But to
postulate these associative processes is to postulate the retention in memory of past conscious
states. Wipe out the memory of past conscious states and you wipe out their present effects—that
is, you wipe out the mechanism whereby, according to associationism, other habits of mind, for
example the habit of making perceptual judgements, are acquired.

In this sense, Mill himself thought that memory was a mode of ‘intuitive knowledge’. When
challenged to explain where the difference lay between memory judgements, whose Veracity’ he
himself confessed to be ‘ultimate’, and ‘other alleged intuitions’, he replied,

The distinction is, that as all the explanations of mental phenomena presuppose Memory,
Memory itself cannot admit of being explained. Whenever this is shown to be true of any other
part of our knowledge, I shall admit that part to be intuitive. (IX 165, footnote)

In short, association psychology simply assumes that memory is ‘intuitive knowledge’, in

precisely the fused epistemological/psychological sense discussed above. It posrulates that
conscious states tend to prompt the ‘ego’ to subsequent judgements that it has undergone those
very conscious states, and it gives no explanation of that tendency.

Association psychology, and in particular the associationist theory of ‘the Belief in an External
World’, assume that the mind accurately remembers its past conscious states. But what warrants
one in making that assumption? Can it be justified within the terms of an inductivist logic? Or is
it a case of inference to the best explanation: an application contrary to Mill’s own inductivist
principles, of the Hypothetical Method? Or can it be justified at all? Mill seems to think it cannot
be: but in that case he is open, for the case of memory, to precisely the objections we have
levelled against Reid.

As in the case of perception, we can ask whether remembering that p involves a pure
presentational experience—a ‘memory-sensing’ that p, caused by p, and tending to cause the
judgement that I remember that p. The same bracketing arguments (concerning apparent
memories), which in the case of perception seem to require postulation of mediating perceptual
sensations, appear to require, in the case of memory, mediating ‘memory sensations’. Mill and
Hamilton both take it that remembering involves the consciousness of a present presentational
experience.8 In that case judgements about the past have to be reconstructed epistemologically as
inferences from these. It is not necessary on this approach to postulate a ‘momentarily’ present
consciousness actually inferring to an explanation of its own immediate, momentarily present
data. It is enough to argue that we are born with a tendency to interpret our memory experience,
and that the tendency is justified because it works—it makes sense of our experience, and no
more naturally satisfying hypothesis is forthcoming. What one cannot do, however, is to defend
this line consistently with Millian inductivist principles.

If on the other hand, we defend the reliability of memory on hypothetical grounds, why can we
not take the same approach to perception? It is true that the psychological method does not
postulate that we perceive external objects. Perceptual beliefs are explained as arising, by
associative processes, from sequences of sensory states. But then what explains the fact that I
undergo these sequences of sensory states, demonstrating, as they do, their distinctive patterns of
regularity and irregularity? By a hypothetical inference they are explained as effects of the
stimulation of our sensory organs by ‘external objects’. It is Mill’s inductivism which prevents
him from taking this line, which would otherwise be perfectly compatible with associative theory
of perceptual beliefs. But applying this inductivism to the case of memory judgements undercuts
the associative theory itself. Mill’s reliance on accepting memory as ‘intuitive knowledge’
cannot be reconciled with his own principles. His position is left hanging. And that may explain
why he pulled his punches against the idea that cognitive dispositions which must be assumed
innate, can by the same token be assumed reliable.
Conceding to Mill the thesis that memory is ‘intuitive knowledge’, however, let us follow
through more closely the links between Mill’s inductivism, associationist psychology and
phenomenalism.

7 Phenomenalism9
Chapter xi, The Psychological Theory of the Belief in an External World’, is the famous and
influential chapter in which Mill sets out his phenomenalism; it is one of his most forceful pieces
of philosophical argument. Mill runs briefly through the basic principles of association
psychology, then turns to analyse the notion of an ‘external’ object.

What is it we mean, or what is it which leads us to say, that the objects we perceive are external
to us, and not a part of our own thoughts? We mean, that there is concerned in our perceptions
something which exists when we are not thinking of it; which existed before we had ever thought
of it, and would exist if we were annihilated; and further, that there exist things which we never
saw, touched, or otherwise perceived, and things which have never been perceived by man. This
idea of something which is distinguished from our fleeting impressions by what, in Kantian
language, is called Perdurability; something which is fixed and the same, while our impressions
vary; something which exists whether we are aware of it or not, and which is always square (or
of some other given figure) whether it appears to us square or round—constitutes altogether our
idea of external substance. Whoever can assign an origin to this complex conception, has
accounted for what we mean by the belief in matter. (VII 178–9)

The key concept used by the psychological theory in assigning an origin to the complex
conception is the notion of a possibility of sensation. It

postulates…that the human mind is capable of Expectation. In other words, that after having had
actual sensations, we are capable of forming the conception of Possible sensations; sensations
which we are not feeling at the present moment, but which we might feel, and should feel if
certain conditions were present, the nature of which conditions we have, in many cases, learnt by
experience. (VII 177)

These various possibilities are the important thing to me in the world. My present sensations are
generally of little importance, and are moreover fugitive: the possibilities, on the contrary, are
permanent, which is the character that mainly distinguishes our idea of Substance or Matter from
our notion of sensation. These possibilities, which are conditional certainties, need a special
name to distinguish them from mere vague possibilities, which experience gives no warrant for
reckoning upon. Now, as soon as a distinguishing name is given, though it be only to the same
thing regarded in a different aspect, one of the most familiar experiences of our mental nature
teaches us, that the different name comes to be considered as the name of a different thing. (VII
179–80)

The possibilities of sensation are ‘conditional certainties’: my certainty attaches to a conditional

—I confidently expect, on the basis of past experience, that if I were to experience certain
sequences of sensation, certain sensory states would accompany or succeed those sequences.
(The confidence does not in practice have to amount to certainty of course: it may come in
various degrees of belief, depending on the degree of previously experienced correlation on
which it is based. The contrast is between firm experience-based conditional expectations and
mere epistemic possibilities.)

My sensations are transient, my conditional expectations of sensation are not: I build up a stable
network of conditional beliefs, of the form, ‘If such and such sensations were to occur, then such
and such other sensations would occur (with a given degree of probability)’. Let us call such
beliefs ‘sensation conditionals’. They express Mill’s famous ‘Permanent Possibilities of
Sensation’. ‘Permanent’ is slightly misleading, for there is of course change in the ‘permanent’
possibilities of sensation whenever there is change in the external world. Mill also uses other
terms—‘certified’, ‘guaranteed’.

He makes a number of further points. ‘Permanent’, or certified, possibilities of sensation are

‘joined together in groups’ which are themselves, as a whole, conditional on experience. We
regularly find, in other words, that whole clusters of sensation conditionals are true together,
whenever some other sensory condition obtains. So that whenever we experience that condition,
we are justified in forming all the conditional expectations expressed in that cluster of
conditionals. Moreover, as well as finding simultaneous correlations between certified
possibilities of sensation, that is, between the truth of any sensation conditional in a set and the
truth of any other in the set, we find ‘an Order of succession’. Whenever a given cluster of
certified possibilities of sensation obtains, or a given set of sensation conditionals are all true,
then a certain other cluster follows—a certain other set of sensation conditionals becomes true.

In almost all the constant sequences which occur in Nature, the antecedence and consequence do
not obtain between sensations, but between the groups we have been speaking about, of which a
very small portion is actual sensation, the greater part being permanent possibilities of sensation,
evidenced to us by a small and variable number of sensations actually present. Hence our ideas
of causation, power, activity…become connected, not with sensations, but with groups of
possibilities of sensation. (IX 180–1)

By this time,

the Permanent Possibilities in question have assumed such unlikeness of aspect, and such
difference of apparent relation to us, from any sensations, that it would be contrary to all we
know of the constitution of human nature that they should not be conceived as, and believed to
be, at least as different from sensations as sensations are from one another. Their groundwork in
sensation is forgotten, and they are supposed to be something intrinsically different from it. (IX
182)

Mill has scrutinised the real content of the notion of externality, and analysed the elements in our
sensory experience which give rise to it, by allegedly associationist principles. (The analysis is
extended in chapter xiii, The Psychological Theory of the Primary Qualities of Matter’.) He now
appeals to the principle of ‘Parcimony’. ‘Where there is a known cause adequate to account for a
phenomenon, there is not justification for ascribing it to an unknown one.’ Our conception of
Externality can be explained as arising by known laws from the known data of sensory
experience; there is therefore no scientific ground for treating it as an ‘original principle of our
nature’. Since it
not only might, but naturally would, exist, even on the supposition that it is not intuitive, we
must accept the conclusion to which we are led by the Psychological Method, and which the
Introspective Method furnishes absolutely nothing to contradict. (IX 183)

The conclusion is that the concept of an external object is acquired from experience by
association. It follows that the Scottish commonsense argument from the intuitiveness of the idea
of external objects to its applicability in experience fails, because its premise fails. Once again
Mill seems to be conceding that the argument itself is valid: that if a conception is shown to be
innate, then it must correspond to something real. It is understandable, given the terms of the
debate as they were understood by his philosophical opponents, and his own interest in
associationism, that he should put the psychological issue, whether the concept is intuitive or
acquired, at centre stage. But it diverts attention from the central question. Has he given a correct
analysis of our concept of matter (or externality) —and what sense of ‘analysis’ is involved? The
crux is Mill’s initial characterisation of ‘what we mean’ by saying, or ‘what leads us to say’, that
we perceive external objects—and the demonstration that the definition of matter as a Permanent
Possibility of Sensation fits that characterisation. But is this ‘what we mean’ when we speak of
external objects—or is it simply ‘what leads us to say’ that there are external objects?

If it is literally what we mean, then phenomenalism is established as an account of our

ontological commitments. But that is not quite Mill’s position. He holds that ‘the belief on which
all the practical consequences depend, is the belief in Permanent Possibilities of Sensation’ (IX
183), but he concedes that we also, at least in moments of philosophical reflection, believe in
more than this—namely, in the existence of a cause of all our sensations which is not itself
sensation— and he sees the apparent consequence.

It being evident…that some philosophers believe this, and it being maintainable that the mass of
mankind do so, the existence of a perdurable basis of sensations, distinct from sensations
themselves, is proved, it might be said, by the possibility of believing it. (IX 184)

In response, Mill proposes a diagnosis of how we come by the idea.

The familiarity with the idea of something different from each thing we know, makes it natural
and easy to form the notion of something different from all things that we know, collectively as
well as individually. It is true we can form no conception of what such a thing can be; our notion
of it is merely negative; but the idea of a substance, apart from its relation to the impressions
which we conceive it as making on our senses, is a merely negative one. There is thus no
psychological obstacle to our forming the notion of a something which is neither a sensation nor
a possibility of sensation, even if our consciousness does not testify to it; and nothing is more
likely than that the Permanent Possibilities of Sensation, to which our consciousness does testify,
should be confounded in our minds with this imaginary conception. (IX 185)

In twentieth-century philosophy, diagnoses of this kind have often been proposed, not to explain
our possession of such concepts as that of externality, but to explain away the idea that we have
them at all—to reveal it as an illusion created by our use of language. Mill also presents the
reflective idea of matter as arising from the misleading forms of language; but he does so to
undermine the claim that it is ‘intuitive’— he does not take the further step of treating it as
wholly empty of conrent. Here as elsewhere his functional approach to the role of concepts in
our thinking stops short of taking off into a functionalist account of meaning as such.

Our reflective concept of matter—the external cause of sensations— can be explained, then, on
associationist principles. Still, it remains open for someone to concede that the idea of matter is
acquired by association from simpler elements in our experience, and yet simultaneously to insist
that, at the epistemological level, that process also constitutes a legitimate inference to the
existence of an external cause of our sensations. Mill is perfectly aware of the difference between
the psychological and the epistemological question; it is here that his inductivism comes in. The
inference involved would be a case of hypothetical reasoning, to an explanation of experience
which transcended all possible data of experience: and that is just what Mill rejects: ‘I assume
only the tendency, but not the legitimacy of the tendency, to extend all the laws of our own
experience to a sphere beyond our experience’ (IX 187).

This brings out the central.epistemological issue very neatly. It is not in the end Mill’s
associationist psychology that forces the conclusion that there can be no more to matter than the
permanent possibility of sensation: it is the interplay of the two crucial epistemological doctrines
—subjectivism and inductivism.

In arguing that matter is no more than the Permanent Possibility of Sensation, then, Mill is not
directly addressing the literal meaning, or ‘import’, of propositions in everyday or scientific
discourse: he is concerned with their pragmatic or practical content. Where, in the System of
Logic, he does concern himself with the import of such propositions he holds (3.8) that the
names which make them up denote the external causes of our sensations, and connote the
attributes of these external causes. What he there says about the phenomenal foundation of those
attributes parallels his distinction in the Examination between the practical concept of matter,
which involves only the permanent possibility of sensation, and the reflective concept, which
envisages an external cause of sensation.

The implication is that our very language is impregnated with the reflective concept, so that in
using it we are led into commitments which outreach its practical functions and use. Mill often
talks in just this way; for example in the following passage from a letter to Herbert Spencer:

On the main question between us your chief point seems to be, that the Idealist [i.e.
phenomenalist] argument is reduced to nonsense if we accept the idealist conclusions, since it
cannot be expressed without assuming an objective reality producing, and a subjective reality
receiving, the impression…but the ultimate elements in the analysis I hold to be themselves
states of mind, viz.—sensations, memories of sensations, and expectations of sensation. I do not
pretend to account for these, or to recognize anything in them beyond themselves and the order
of their occurrence; but I do profess to analyze our other states of consciousness into them. Now
I maintain that these are the only substratum I need postulate; and that when anything else seems
to be postulated, it is only because of the erroneous theory on which all our language is
constructed, and that if the concrete words used are interpreted as meaning our expectations of
sensations the nonsense and unmeaningness which you speak of do not arise. (XVI 1090, my
italics)10

Of course, to combine this view of our language as theory-laden, with a rejection of the theory, is
to commit oneself to the apparently paradoxical consequence that no everyday proposition
carrying that commitment is, strictly and literally speaking, true. But in terms of his overall
position Mill is perfectly justified in treating this as a trivial, if surprising, incidental
consequence. For he can argue that the distinction between true and false propositions about the
‘external world’ which we in practice draw, is both objective and functional: what, in terms of
‘practical consequences’, makes such a proposition true or false is categorical and hypothetical
facts about sensations.

Twentieth-century phenomenalism, unlike Mill’s, has often taken a semantic form—holding that
propositions which apparently refer to physical objects are translatable without change of
meaning into purely phenomenalistic ones. Critics have argued that no such translation is
possible, not least because a pure phenomenalistic language is impossible. Mill’s phenomenalism
is not directly open to this objection. But still, does he not need to hold that there is, or at least
could be, a pure, non-parasitic, phenomenalistic language in which the practical or pragmatic, as
against the semantic truth-conditions for physicalistic proposition could be stated? Can he
otherwise defend himself against Spencer’s powerful objection (noted by Mill in the passage we
have just quoted)—that his theory is incoherent ‘since it cannot be expressed without assuming
an objective reality producing, and a subjective reality receiving’ sensations?

Perhaps he can. The facts about sensations which according to Mill constitute practical truth-
conditions for physicalistic propositions can only be stated in a public language which, taken as a
whole, is impregnated with the theory of material objects as ‘external causes of sensations’.
Nevertheless the facts themselves—granting the bracketing arguments—are ontologically
independent of facts about physical objects (understood as external causes of sensations). This,
Mill could argue, is enough—there is no need to suppose that a language could be found, even in
principle, for stating those practical truth-conditions in a way which is not parasitic on the public,
physicalistic language. So when Mill says that

there is…for every statement which can be made concerning material phenomena in terms of the
Realistic theory, an equivalent meaning in terms of Sensations and Possibilities of Sensation
alone, and a meaning which would justify all the same processes of thought. (IX 198)

he should not be seen as making a semantic claim. He is arguing that the idea of an external
cause of sensation is functionally redundant in our thinking.

We shall take up Mill’s phenomenalism again in section 7.9. But before doing so we must turn
our attention to his struggles with the concept of the self.

8 Minds
In chapter xii (The Psychological Theory of the Belief in Matter, How Far Applicable to Mind’)
Mill begins by pointing out what he takes to be ‘evident’, that ‘our knowledge of mind, like that
of matter, is entirely relative’. He then asks whether the mind, or ego, can be treated as a
‘permanent possibility of feeling’ in exactly the way in which the psychological theory treats
matter. Can it be resolved into ‘a series of feelings, with a background of possibilities of feeling’
(IX 193)? Against this view he comes up, notoriously, with a difficulty which leaves him
confessedly baffled. The thread of consciousness which composes the mind’s phaenomenal life,
consists not only of our present sensations, but likewise, in part, of memories and expectations’
(IX 193–4). But to remember or expect a state of consciousness is not simply to believe that it
has existed or will exist; it is to believe that I myself have experienced or will experience that
state of consciousness.

If, therefore, we speak of the Mind as a series of feelings, we are obliged to complete the
statement by calling it a series of feelings which is aware of itself as past and future; and we are
reduced to the alternative of believing that the Mind, or Ego, is something different from any
series of feelings, or possibilities of them, or of accepting the paradox, that something which ex
hypothesi is but a series of feelings, can be aware of itself as a series. (IX 194)

Mill is unwilling to accept ‘the common theory of Mind, as a so-called substance’ (IX 206):
nevertheless the apparently irreducible self-consciousness involved in memory and expectation
drives him to ‘ascribe a reality to the Ego—to my own Mind—different from that real existence
as a Permanent Possibility, which is the only reality I acknowledge in Matter’ (IX 208). This
opaque resting point—refusing to affirm the view of Mind as ‘substance’, yet conceding it a
reality more substantial than that of permanent possibility of feeling—naturally invited the
triumphant rhetoric of Mill’s opponents.11

What puzzles Mill? Why is he led into proposing or entertaining a view of mind as a continuous
series of feelings and possibilities of feeling? And what exactly is the difficulty for this theory
supposed to be? Mill asserts that ‘our knowledge of mind, like that of matter, is entirely relative’
(IX 188); if this leads to the ‘permanent possibility hypothesis’ in the case of matter, it should
also lead to it in the case of mind. Conversely, as Bradley pointed out, the parallelism transmits
any difficulties encountered by the psychological theory of mind to the psychological theory of
matter. The fact that our knowledge of mind is relative, yet the theory of mind as permanent
possibility of feeling is untenable, casts doubt on the analogous inference from phenomenal
relativity to the permanent possibility conception of matter.

However Mill has failed to note that our knowledge of mind is not relative in the way that our
knowledge of matter is. The thesis of the relativity of knowledge, in its subjective version, holds
that what we are immediately aware of is our own sensations, so that our knowledge of matter,
conceived as an external cause of sensations, must be inferential. Since Mill’s inductive logic can
legitimate no such inference, he is led to the permanent possibility view of matter. But the ego is
not conceived as an external cause of sensations. To say that I only know myself by my
conscious states is, rather, simply a case of saying that I only know anything by its properties.
This should be clear if, like Mill, one emphasises that mental states are states and events, not
objects. Consequently, denying the existence of the self on the basis that we are conscious only
of our mental states is not like the inductivist refusal to postulate an underlying cause of
phenomena. It is rather a case of denying the existence of ‘substances’ as individual bearers of
properties: it turns on the metaphysical dispute about whether there are things which have
properties, or whether there are ‘really’ only bundles of properties.12 The view one takes on that
issue will not carry over to the argument for treating matter as permanent possibility, rather than
an external cause, of sensation.

Moreover Mill’s own statement of the difficulty, which was quoted above, gives his
‘psychological theory’ of mind a gratuitously paradoxical air. The view that the mind is only a
‘series’ of feelings does not entail that ‘a series of feelings can be aware of itself as a series’: a
series cannot of course be aware of anything. But it is no implication of the ‘series’ theory that it
can. What the theory says is that for me to remember a previous conscious state is for the series
of conscious states which constitute my existence to include a consciousness of some previous
state, together with the belief that that previous conscious state is a part of the same series as the
present one.13

Still, this is not the real source of Mill’s perplexity. That only comes out a little later:

The true incomprehensibility perhaps is, that something which has ceased, or is not yet in
existence, can still be, in a manner, present: that a series of feelings, the infinitely greater part of
which is past or future, can be gathered up, as it were, into a single present conception,
accompanied by a belief of reality. (IX 194)

It is not easy to put one’s finger on what is puzzling Mill—not because there is nothing puzzling,
but because all philosophical questions about self-knowledge are so utterly puzzling. The
difficulty seems to lie in the possibility of immediate present consciousness of a series of states
of consciousness, past and future, conceived as a series. However, the only reason for holding
that there is such an immediate consciousness arises from the assumption that I am immediately
conscious of myself. For it then seems to follow that if I am a series of feelings I must be
immediately aware of that series. Mill has a problem if he accepts this conclusion, because he
also holds that my immediate awareness of a state of consciousness must be contemporaneous
with it—and indeed if sense can be made of the notion of immediate self-consciousness at all
then that must be a feature of it. However Mill should not be accepting that I am immediately
conscious of myself at all. That is just what is denied by the thesis that self-knowledge is
relative. What he ought to say is simply that when I remember that I had a certain experience, I
remember the experience, and I (rightly) believe that the experience stands in a given relation to
the experience I am currently conscious of: the relation, whatever it is, which makes them both
members of the ‘me-series’.

Much more can be said and should be said about self-knowledge, a subject which always seems
to mystify any philosopher who thinks hard and honestly about it. But we must move on from
problems about my knowledge of my own mind, to problems about my knowledge of other
minds. Phenomenalism has a fundamental choice to make here. Is it to be pluralistic—treating all
subjects of experience ontologically on a par? Or solipsistic—acknowledging only one subject,
and reducing ‘other minds’ to permanent possibilities of that subject’s experience? The question,
in other terms, is what kind of sensation conditionals are taken as ontologically basic: subjective
conditionals—

If there were such and such sensations they would be accompanied (or succeeded) by such and
such other sensations;

or intersubjective conditionals—

If a mind (mine or another) were to experience such and such sensations then it would at the
same time or subsequently experience such and such other sensations.

(The conditionals would in each case sometimes refer to volitions as well: if X performs volition
A when X experiences sensations A, then X experiences sensations C….

Mill’s phenomenalism is pluralistic. There are, irreducibly, experiences other than my

experiences. But his epistemology is subjective— subjectivism forces him to adopt the first-
person perspective. The database on which my reasoning must operate comprises only—on
Mill’s view—categorical facts about my past and present sensory states. We have seen that if
Mill were consistent, it would have to be facts about my present sensory states. Waiving that
point, a further question still remains. How do I get from facts about my past and present
sensations and the first-person sensation conditionals based on them (call it level I) to the
assertion of intersubjective sensation conditionals (level II)? Can the self move from its
knowledge of past and present conscious states, and of subjective sensation conditionals based
on that knowledge, to a knowledge of intersubjective conditionals?

How can I know of the existence of other minds? Mill thinks I can infer it by a legitimate
induction. I find correlations between my states of experience and changes in my bodily
condition: I observe similar bodies undergoing similar sorts of changes; I conclude that similar
states of experience must be associated with those changes. This reasoning, Mill holds, is sound
on the ordinary Realistic conception of the external world if and only if it is sound on the
phenomenalist conception (IX 191–2; 205–6, footnote, in reply to an acute critic). He states it in
its phenomenalist form thus:

I am aware, by experience, of a group of Permanent Possibilities of Sensation which I call my

body, and which my experience shows to be an universal condition of every part of my thread of
consciousness. I am also aware of a greater number of other groups, resembling the one that I
call my body, but which have no connexion, such as that has, with the remainder of my thread of
consciousness. This disposes me to draw an inductive inference, that those other groups are
connected with other threads of consciousness, as mine is with my own. If the evidence stopped
here, the inference would be but an hypothesis; reaching only to the inferior degree of inductive
evidence called Analogy. The evidence, however, does not stop here; for— having made the
supposition that real feelings, though not experienced by myself, lie behind those phaenomena of
my own consciousness which, from their resemblance to my body, I call other human bodies, —
I find that my subsequent consciousness presents those very sensations, of speech heard, of
movements and other outward demeanour seen, and so forth, which, being the effects or
consequents of actual feelings in my own case, I should expect to follow upon those other
hypothetical feelings if they really exist: and thus the hypothesis is verified. It is thus proved
inductively that there is a sphere beyond my consciousness: i.e. that there are other
consciousnesses beyond it…. (IX 205–6)

Mill seems to be suggesting that the idea of ‘other’ threads of consciousness becomes more than
a mere ‘hypothesis’ because its predictions are verified. But in the System of Logic’s analysis of
the hypothetical method three steps are distinguished: induction, ratiocination and verification,
and ‘verification’ on its own is explicitly said not to amount to proof. Does the argument for
other minds as he has stated it amount to an ‘inductive proof’, by the inductivist criteria of the
System of Logic? Plainly not. (The paragraph which follows the passage just quoted neatly
illustrates Mill’s struggles to evade this point.)

The only inductive reasoning available here is enumerative. But enumerative reasoning cannot
possibly lead to the conclusion that there are experiences unexperienced by the reasoner. It is,
precisely, restricted to the domain of phenomena subjectively available to him: it can only
entrench a habit of expectation within that experience.

One has to be careful not to credit the reasoner at the outset with a conception of experience as
his experience, and hence a distinction between his experience and something other than it—in
partiular, the possible experience of possible others. I have to have arrived at the conception of
my experience as correlated with something external to it, of myself and my consciousness as
located in a physical world, before I can begin to ask whether experiences other than mine could
be similarly located. Only if I can conceive of my experience as existing in a world irreducibly
distinct from it, can I begin to ask whether there could be threads of consciousness irreducibly
distinct from mine. Otherwise my talk of other minds can only be permanent possibility talk
reducible to subjective sensation conditionals at level I. If the standpoint of consciousness is
reconstructed on inductivist lines there can be no hope of explaining how I can ground the
distinction between my experience and something irreducibly other than my experience. I cannot
get to a conception of it as my experience, or to a conception of myself at all. (This is the
problem Mill should have had with self-knowledge.) Still less can I derive a conception of other
selves and their experience. Mill cannot get to level II from a subjective base.

9 Phenomenalism and naturalism

Phenomenalism holds that minds and experiences—or my mind and its experience, or perhaps
just pure experience—are all that exist. Naturalism, the leading theme in Mill’s philosophy,
holds that minds are natural entities and can be studied as such. Can they be reconciled? Or is
Mill’s philosophy at odds with itself?

Ultimately, on Mill’s view, the practical or pragmatic truth-conditions for all propositions are
categorical and conditional facts about consciousness. But Mill claims, like others before and
after him, that this is consistent with common-sense realism about the natural world:

Matter…may be defined, a Permanent Possibility of Sensation. If I am asked, whether I believe

in matter, I ask whether the questioner accepts this definition of it. If he does, I believe in matter:
and so do all Berkelians. In any other sense than this, I do not. But I affirm with confidence, that
this conception of Matter includes the whole meaning attached to it by the common world, apart
from philosophical, and sometimes from theological, theories. (IX 183)

Phenomenalism, he thinks, leaves common sense and science untouched.

One naturally reacts to this claim with suspicion. There seems to be an obvious inconsistency:
among our common-sense beliefs about the physical world is the belief that it could have existed
even if no minds or states of mind had existed. Can the phenomenalist cope with that?

The phenomenalist will argue that he can. He will reply as follows. What the common-sense
belief in question comes down to is that a situation could have obtained in which certain
conditional propositions of the following form were true:

If there were such and such states of consciousness there would be such and such other states of
consciousness;

and the following was also true:

There are no states of consciousness.

The truth of the conditional propositions follows from certain ultimate laws of consciousness,
which would also hold in this possible world. But those laws do not entail that there is any
consciousness which instantiates them, just as Newton’s laws of motion do not entail that there
are any objects which instantiate them.

This response looks like legerdemain. But we must ask why. One way to see why is by asking
whether the consciousness referred to at the level of phenomenalist talk is the same as that
referred to at the level of common-sense and scientific talk—call this latter the ‘plain’ level.14
Phenomenalistically speaking, we envisage the existence only of states of consciousness and
perhaps subjects of consciousness. At the plain level, on the other hand, we make reference to
physical objects and their properties—but also to subjects and states of consciousness; the very
ones, it seems, which exhaustively constitute the ontology of the phenomenal language.
Psychology, including Mill’s psychology, seeks to establish causal correlations among states of
consciousness and their physiological antecedents and consequents; but at the phenomenalistic
level there are only the states of consciousness and permanent possibilities of consciousness.

Are the states of consciousness referred to by the phenomenalist the very same as those we refer
to at the plain level? Either answer poses difficulties. If they are, then the phenomenalist
selectively endorses some empirical objects (objects countenanced at the plain level) as
metaphysically ultimate, while rejecting the metaphysical claims of others. He does not ‘leave
everything as it is’. But if they are not—then we have yet to discover what he is talking about.

Let us examine the first alternative further. Does it in fact involve any inconsistency? The
strange—and characteristic—thing about Mill’s phenomenalism is that it is intended to be quite
unmetaphysical—even anti-metaphysical. He presents it as the logical outcome of a naturalistic
and scientific stance. In this he has been followed by many another hard-nosed empiricist, but
that does not make the position any the less bizarre.

Naturalism implies that there is no strong a priori knowledge (5.9, 7.4) but at the same time
insists on respect for natural standards of inquiry as they appear in common-sense practice, or—
methodised—in the practice of science. On the naturalistic view epistemology can be nothing
other than the scrutiny of such standards and the codification of those which survive in reflective
equilibrium (‘plain’ standards).

Phenomenalism in Mill’s view is simply the conception of reality we are led to when the plain
standards of reasoning recognised by a naturalistic ‘science of science’, or ‘system of logic’, are
applied to our ultimate data—our own states of consciousness. If he is right then the naturalistic
vision of the world, which sees minds as part of a larger causal order, is self-undermining. If we
are led into idealism by an application of naturalism’s own plain standards, our conclusion,
‘there are only states of consciousness’, has to be understood on the same level as the naturalistic
affirmation that states of consciousness are part of a larger causal order external to them—and
therefore as incompatible with it.

We have seen that Mill’s analysis of our plain standards of reasoning is defective. Hypothetical
reasoning is one of them, and it survives in reflective equilibrium. The impression that it cannot
survive reflection arises from a philosophical preconception—the classical pre-understanding of
meaning. Once that preconception is removed the case for inductivism dissolves, and hence also
an important premise in Mill’s argument for phenomenalism. I am not suggesting that when
subjectivism is reconstructed hypothetico-deductively, naturalism becomes satisfactorily self-
consistent. We have yet to examine the sources and consequences of subjectivism in the next
section. I am saying that Mill’s particular claim, that phenomenalism results from a ‘plain’
application of our standards of reasoning to the facts of consciousness, fails. But if it was
successful then its upshot would be incompatible with the naturalistic doctrine that experience is
a part of nature—because it would be saying, as a ‘plain’, ‘positive’ or ‘scientific’ statement, that
experience is all there is. And so naturalism would be self-undermining after all.

A non-transcendental or positive phenomenalism is also at odds with naturalism in another way.

In postulating irreducible causal relations between possibilities of sensation it fails to respect
plain standards of explanation. It is a common-sense requirement of causation that it should
relate categorical conditions, states or events. Now at the plain level, Mill accepts, we envisage
causal relations holding between

– physical events

– episodes of consciousness in one mind

– physical events and episodes of consciousness

– episodes of consciousness in different minds, via physical events.

But at the phenomenalistic level the physical events drop out and are replaced by permanent
possibilities and their modifications. So the causal connections become correlations between
sensations, within or across minds, and/or permanent possibilities of sensation.

Mill considers the example of a boy cutting his finger. The cut causes him pain, that makes him
scream, the scream causes a sensation in me:

The chain of causation is the following: 1. A modification in a set of Permanent Possibilities of

Sensation common to the boy and me. 2. A sensation of pain in the boy, not felt by me. 3. The
scream, which is a sensation in me. (IX 207)

But if we are considering this story in a plain or positive way, as a scientific suggestion, it is
glaringly inadequate. What is it that produces a common set of Permanent Possibilities of
Sensation in the boy and in me, and co-ordinates the modifications in those two sets of
Permanent Possibilities? How can Permanent Possibilities of Sensation cause anything?

On Mill’s view causal laws must all reduce to elaborate correlations among sets of sensation
conditionals: ‘Whenever a set of counterfactuals with antecedents and consequents of such and
such a form are true, then a set of counterfactuals with antecedents and consequents of such and
such another form are simultaneously or subsequently true.’ But scientific reasoning itself does
not allow us to take such a correlation between counterfactuals as an ‘ultimate fact of causation’.
It enjoins us to look for a causal connection between underlying categorical states and processes
to explain them.

To sum up. If Mill’s principles are followed through they cannot get him to the kind of
phenomenalism he wants. They simply leave him, to borrow a phrase from Quine, in ‘cosmic
exile’. If it were possible to make sense of this at all, it would have to be along the lines of
transcendental idealism, not ‘scientific’, anti-meraphysical, phenomenalism. Consciousness
becomes a timeless presentation to a transcendental self. Nature is a construction within
consciousness. Minds considered as empirical objects within nature are part of the construction,
and so is the relation of causation. But in that case it no longer makes sense to suppose that ‘my’
consciousness—understood transcendentally—might not have existed. And so it cannot be
identified with any empirical object in the natural world—in particular, with the thread of
consciousness of an empirical individual—since any such object most certainly might not have
existed, its existence being causally dependent on the contingent dispositions of the physical
world.

10 Subjective and objective

On the strength of the last section it is tempting to conclude that subjectivism sets up a drive
towards transcendental idealism, or produces even more manifest incoherence, only when
combined with inductivist epistemology. For if we abandon Mill’s inductivist analysis of
standards of reasoning, can we not resort to the ‘hypothetical realism’ which he and Hamilton
both reject (7.5)? The historical detour through inductivism could then be seen as usefully
bringing to the surface an untenable preconception (the classical pre-understanding of meaning).
At the end of it, however, we would return to the seventeenth-century philosophy outlined in 7.1,
which accepts that the knowing subject is immediately conscious only of its own states of mind,
but holds that it can still arrive at reasonable beliefs about the larger world which encompasses
those states of mind.

Subjectivism rests on the bracketing arguments of 7.5. They seemed to lead us to the conclusion
that an irreducibly presentational experience is present in every acr of perception, mediating
between object and judgement. But here one needs to distinguish what I will call ‘subjective’ and
‘objective’ grounds for holding that there are such pure phenomenal states. The subjective
grounds are based on introspection. The objective ones are arguments for postulating sensory
states as the theoretical entities of a third-person science of behaviour.

Objective arguments about the possibility of misperception, about the time-lag between events
and perceptions of them, and so on, justify us in attributing to perceiving agents—human beings
or missiles fitted with homing devices—inner information states which record the environment
and mediate between environmental stimulus and information-processing and action. But they do
not force us to think of those inner states as pure presentational experiences. That notion arises
only when we take the subjective, phenomenological stance. It then interacts with the objective
point of view: the pure experiential states bracketed out of perception subjectively, are identified
with the intervening functional states which we postulate when we take the objective view.
Suppose the science of the brain produces a purely physical realisation of these functional states.
What other realisation could it produce? It is practically a rule of method for psychology that any
realisation must be reconcilable with physical theory, where by a ‘physical state’ we mean
nothing more than a state characterisable in terms of the vocabulary apt for ‘physical’ theory—
whatever that vocabulary turns out to be: the only ultimate constraints on it being those set by the
objective stance as such. So within the objective—naturalistic—perspective, conscious states
over and above physical states have no place. They are not required in the science of human
behaviour and are therefore also inexplicable from an evolutionary point of view. Either states of
consciousness are identical with physical states or there are no ‘states of consciousness’.

In stark contrast, the pure experience which seems to confront me as subject when I take the
standpoint of consciousness, precisely because it is conceived as intrinsically phenomenal,
cannot be thought of as something which is also characterisable in a radically different,
objective-naturalistic way.15 So if we accept the conception of our own experience which offers
itself when we take the subjective stance, we are left with a category of pure consciousness
which cannot be identified with anything within the objective world. And precisely because it is
not in the world, it cannot be explained by its relation to something outside of itself and in the
world. That is why the attitude of the hypothetical realist, who postulates the objective world as
an inference to a supposed explanation of pure experience is—as Hamilton quite rightly said
(7.5, p.223)—radically superficial.

The moment we accept the standpoint of pure consciousness, phenomenalism is forced: but of an
absolute-idealist, not a Millian ‘scientific’ kind. This phenomenalism is once again incompatible
with naturalism—because it demotes naturalism from a philosophical position to a ‘pre-critical’
ideology of science which fails to follow through its own findings. We see how Mill must have
infuriated his absolute-idealist critics: just because in one way—in accepting the standpoint of
consciousness—he was so close to them.

To follow naturalism through it is necessary to be more radical, and to reject the standpoint of
pure consciousness as such. Can that be done? To do so in a satisfying way we would have to
explain, from the objective standpoint, how it is that the standpoint of pure consciousness can be
both plausible and yet ultimately unintelligible.

Reid’s analysis of perception (7.5) gave it three ingredients—the perceived object, the state of
feeling excited by the object, and the perceptual judgement prompted by the feeling. Bracketing
arguments show us the need to distinguish between the object I perceive, and the experience I am
conscious of in perceiving it; they also make us think of the sensation as ‘phenomenal’ or
‘presentational’ —an appearing-to-me-as-if.

What they do not show is any reason to distinguish between the state of feeling and the
perceptual judgement prompted by it. Perhaps these appearings-to-me-as-if are nothing distinct
from judgements, or tendencies to make judgements inhibited by my other judgements. Is there
anything more to their ‘phenomenal’ character than the fact that they have intentional content
(an-appearing-to-me-as-if-p)? But that they share with dispositions to judge (an-inclination-to-
judge-that-p). The essential thing about them is that they are information states. So why not
conclude that perceptual sensations just are these dispositions to judge? That would be consistent
with the objective reasons for postulating mediating information states—it then has to be shown
that nothing in introspective self-knowledge, philosophically examined, is incompatible with it
either.

At first the suggestion seems strained and implausible. Experience is surely not identical with
perceptual judgement—it is precisely what is immediately given and gives rise to judgement.
Can we not bracket off the judging dispositions from the pure sensings, just as we can bracket off
the causal antecedents from the pure sensings? This is not the place to consider this powerful
objection further. What has to be shown is that the concept of pure experience corresponds to
nothing given in consciousness, but is not more than a philosophical model of mental life into
which we are naturally led by a certain kind of philosophical inquiry into consciousness
—‘Cartesian meditation’.

The question then arises whether that model is part of the very language of conscious states—
rather as Mill thinks the idea of an external cause of sensation is part of the language of physical
objects. If it is, then we have to be eliminative materialists: we have to deny the literal existence
of states of consciousness. If it is not, then philosophical analysis can show that there is nothing
more to consciousness than dispositions to make judgements about the environment. Either way
subjectivism—the standpoint of pure consciousness—dissolves.

It is time to conclude a long and intricate chapter. The kind of naturalism we have finally arrived
at differs from Mill’s in two very fundamental ways. It rejects the classical pre-understanding in
the theory of meaning, and the standpoint of pure consciousness in epistemology. This has
profound consequences for our self-understanding. One, the absence of phenomenology, the
radical demotion of the subjective view, we have just been considering. Pure experience on this
view is an illusion, though a very easily and naturally generated one,

The classical pre-understanding is intertwined with another self-incerpretation. Our self-

understanding requires us to see ourselves and each other as rationally autonomous thinkers and
doers. Once again our most natural and spontaneous models of what rational autonomy is seem
to conflict with naturalism. So if naturalism cannot show that these are illusions, it will have to
reject the notion of rational autonomy—the central category of our hermeneutic self-
understanding. That leads us naturally to Mill’s classic discussion of the nature of the moral
sciences, where we shall have to consider the relation between the concept of rational autonomy
and the activity of interpretation further.
8
The Logic of the Moral Sciences
Le seul fondement de croyance dans les sciences naturelles, est cette idée, que les lois générales,
connues ou ignorées, qui règlent les phénomènes de 1’univers, sont nécessaires et constantes; et
par quelle raison ce principe serait-il moins vrai pour le développement des facultés
intellectuelles et morales de l’homme, que pour les autres operations de la nature?1

1 ‘Human conduct as a subject of science’

The scientific study of man was at the centre of Mill’s philosophical and political interests. But
he turns his attention to it only in the sixth and last book of the System of Logic— ‘On the Logic
of the Moral Sciences’.

It is the layout one would expect from enlightenment naturalism’s principal nineteenth-century
heir. For given that the phenomena of mind are, as Condorcet says, ‘operations of nature’ like
any others, it follows that moral science (the branch of science which studies or presupposes the
laws of mind) will be an inquiry into causes just as physical science is.

Causality and explanation are linked by the doctrine of the uniformity of causation, which Mill
has analysed in Book iii of the System. If mind and society are entirely within the causal order,
the model of explanation which he has provided in that book, according to which explanation
involves subsuming the facts to be explained under laws which filiate them to their causal
antecedents, will apply, it seems, to the moral sciences as a special case. It may be hard or
impossible for moral science to live up to the model in practice, in view of the complexity of its
data, but it still stands as an ideal.

If the structure of explanation is identical in physical and in moral science, so too will be the
fundamental methods of inquiry. That still leaves questions for discussion, about the intellectual
strategies best suited to the moral sciences. In dealing with them Mill gives classical answers to
some important issues about the character of, and relationships between, the various moral
sciences. But he does not think that the very idea of a social science raises radically new
metaphysical or epistemological problems.

Even on his own naturalistic terms, it cannot be assumed that he is right. Certainly it follows on
those terms (granting also the doctrine of the uniformity of causation) that consciousness and
action are subject to law. However Mill also makes a more substantive assumption. He assumes
that those laws will be ‘Laws of Mind’—that is to say, that they will be cast in terms of
psychological concepts.

A distinguishing feature of .these concepts is that they are ‘intentional’, in the philosophical
sense—the states or acts they attribute to individuals have an ‘intentional content’—wanting to
buy some flowers, looking for a florist, believing that the shops are closed this afternoon, hoping
to find a booth open in the station—and so on. It is a defining feature of the moral sciences that
they deal essentially in intentional concepts. Everyone can agree on that. What is not so obvious,
even within a naturalistic framework, is that there can be laws of mind—laws couched in terms
of those intentional concepts. Does the intentional, or ‘interpretative’, character of the moral
sciences give rise to new and specific epistemological issues? Can laws of individual behaviour
be formulated in these interpretative terms?

We shall return to these questions, but they do not trouble Mill. His analysis of the moral
sciences takes the primacy of psychology for granted. True to his intellectual inheritance, he
thinks that the ‘laws of motion’ of the moral sciences will be psychological laws of association;
though he was familiar with an alternative view, Auguste Comte’s. Comte held that the
fundamental and irreducible moral science was sociology (the word itself is his). There was no
deeper moral science—no intervening science of psychology: the next level below sociology was
the physical science of biology. Mill rejected that view, yet in another respect he was
enthusiastically on the side of Comte. He gives the idea of a historical sociology a starring role.
Psychology may be the irreducible base-level of the moral sciences, but historical sociology is
the jewel in their crown.

Enlightenment naturalism envisaged a Newtonian science of man in which social phenomena are
shown to arise from underlying causal laws governing the behaviour of individual men. At this
abstract level Mill could agree. However it further assumed—or at any rate was held by its
nineteenth-century critics to assume—that those laws were the laws of an unchanging human
nature, which could explain social facts but need not itself be historically and sociologically
grasped.

At its most radical the nineteenth-century reaction against the enlightenment rejected naturalism
as such: that philosophical impulse was worked out in the classical phase of German idealism
from Kant to Hegel. But the reaction against the eighteenth century’s ahistorical and asocial
models of man did not have to come in such dramatic metaphysical wrappings. It was in fact
common to both of the nineteenth century’s masters of historicism: Hegel, the absolute idealist,
and Comte, the naturalistic positivist. In his essay on Coleridge Mill makes the distinction very
clearly. He rejects Coleridge’s epistemological and metaphysical positions, but he accepts the
accusation laid against the philosophes, that they lacked historical and sociological sense. No
element in his political convictions is more vital to him than his fervent faith in the power of
history and society to shape, and potentially to improve, human character.

Associationist psychology and historical sociology give us the outline of Mill’s purpose in his
Logic of the Moral Sciences. The two driving ideas interlock. Associationist psychology fortifies
Mill’s belief in the mutability of human nature: why should different social and historical
conditions not build radically different structures of association? The bridge between historical
sociology and the constant laws of associationist psychology can be provided, Mill thinks, by an
innovation of his own: a science he calls ‘ethology’, which will study the different forms of
human character in different social formations.

But before proceeding to expound these views, Mill considers himself bound to examine a
fundamental question of principle. Can we assume that mind and action are entirely a part of a
deterministic causal order? Or does the fact of human freedom contradict that naturalistic
assumption? ‘Are the actions of human beings, like all other natural events, subject to invariable
laws?’ (VIII 835)

2 Freedom as rational autonomy

We saw in 1.7 how vital to Mill it was to find a way of reconciling moral freedom and causal
determination. His commitment to the doctrine of the ‘formation of character by circumstances’
was complete. But the conclusion drawn by others from that doctrine, that we have (in Mill’s
phrase) no ‘power of self-formation’ (VIII 842), and hence are not responsible, properly-
speaking, for our character or our actions, would have destroyed the very centre of Mill’s moral
convictions. Power to determine one’s own purposes and hold to them, responsibility for one’s
actions, are at the heart of Mill’s ideal of life. ‘Moral freedom’, the ability to bring one’s desires
under the control of a steady rational purpose—a ‘habit of willing’ —is a condition of self-
realisation, of having a character in the full sense at all. Mill approvingly quotes from Novalis
the statement that ‘A character is a completely fashioned will’ (VIII 842–3).

So he must show how causally conditioned natural objects can also be rationally autonomous
agents. System of Logic, vi.ii, takes on the crucial task. Mill begins with some negative dialectic
against those who think liberty incompatible with determinism. They are misled by a wrong view
of the nature of causality, and they consequently fail to make necessary distinctions between
determinism and fatalism. He then briefly sketches his own positive view of what ‘moral
freedom’ really is— only a few remarks, but penetrating ones, outlining how a purely natural
being can be morally free.

The negative dialectic is pretty much in line with the treatment of the subject by naturalistically
minded philosophers before and since. Like Hume, Mill holds that the determination of actions
by character, motives and beliefs is ‘a mere interpretation of universal experience, a statement in
words of what everyone is internally convinced of’:

We do not feel ourselves the less free, because those to whom we are intimately known are well
assured how we shall will to act in a particular case…. I is not…doctrine that our volitions and
actions are invariable consequents of our antecedent states of mind, that is either contradicted by
our consciousness, or felt to be degrading. (VIII 837)

The doctrine repels us because we think there is more to causation than ‘invariable, certain, and
unconditional sequence’: ‘Even if the reason repudiates, the imagination retains, the feeling of
some more intimate connexion, of some peculiar tie, or mysterious constraint exercised by the
antecedent over the consequent’ (VIII 837–8). And yet of course ‘we know that we are not
compelled, as by a magical spell, to obey any particular motive’ (VIII 838), and so we reject the
idea that the connection between motive and action is a causal one.

The point is worth making, but it does not get to the root of the difficulty. On its own, indeed, it
would be positively misleading. We know perfectly well that some of our behaviour is not free,
that we have no control over it, and could not have acted otherwise. If there was nothing more to
my acting freely than is given by the fact that the antecedents of the action exercise no
‘mysterious constraint’ over it, do not produce it ‘as by a magical spell’, then—since that holds
in every case of causation—all our behaviour would be equally free, and no such distinction
could be made. What Mill must give is a positive account of the difference between the case in
which behaviour is necessitated, in which I could not have acted otherwise, and the case in which
I could.

That is what he tries to do. Calling the view that actions are caused the doctrine of ‘philosophical
necessity’ is, he thinks, misleading. (He suggests ‘determinism’ as a preferable term in the
Examination.) Not because of the general empiricist point about the nature of causation which
we have just noted, but for a more subtle reason; because ‘in common use’ only causes which are
irresistible, whose operation is ‘supposed too powerful to be counteracted at all’, are described
as necessary:

There are physical sequences which we call necessary, as death for want of food or air; there are
others which, though as much cases of causation as the former, are not said to be necessary, as
death from poison, which an antidote, or the use of the stomach-pump, will sometimes avert…
human actions are in this last predicament: they are never (except in some cases of mania) ruled
by any one motive with such absolute sway, that there is no room for the influence of another.
(VIII 839)

A resistible cause is, roughly, one whose action would be checked by a compossible further
condition (the question of what conditions are allowed as compossible has to be settled in
context, relative to the ‘causal field’ under consideration). It is a general distinction, but Mill is
absolutely right in thinking it important for the analysis of free action. It can be applied to
motives; an action caused by an irresistible motive is plainly not free. So it points a route by
which compatibilism can progress beyond the simple Hobbesian view, according to which a man
is acting freely so long as his action issues from his appetites without external impediment.

If the distinction between resistible and irresistible causes is not made, determinism turns into
fatalism. We lose the sense of our own autonomy, which rests on the conviction that the motives
on which we in fact acted were resistible. So we fall into the idea that we have no power over our
character; no ability to resist motives which we dislike or foster those which we admire, by our
own efforts. Mill has the followers of Robert Owen in mind:

In the words of the sect which in our own day has most perseveringly inculcated and most
perversely misunderstood [the doctrine of determinism, a man’s] character is formed for him,
and not by him; therefore his wishing that it had been formed differently is of no use: he has no
power to alter it. But this is a grand error…. We are exactly as capable of making our own
character, if we will, as others are of making it for us.

To this, of course, there is a familiar objection. Mill’s reply to it is interesting:

Yes (answers the Owenite), but these words, ‘if we will’ surrender the whole point: since the will
to alter our character is given us, not by any effort of ours, but by circumstances which we
cannot help; it comes to us either from external causes, or not at all. Most true: if the Owenite
stops here, he is in a position from which nothing can expel him. Our character is formed by us
as well as for us; but the wish which induces us to attempt to form it is formed for us; and how?
Not, in general, by our organization, nor wholly by our education, but by our experience;
experiences of the painful consequences of the character we previously had: or by some strong
feeling of admiration or aspiration, accidentally aroused. (VIII 840–1)
Mill’s last sentence hints at a crucial point. The Owenite will concede that changes in our
character may result from behaviour which is itself caused by the wish to change our character.
But he will not concede that this is a true case of ‘self-formation’, because he thinks the wish to
change our character is heteronomous: it comes from without. And he thinks that follows simply
from the fact that the wish is determined, ultimately if not proximately, by external
circumstances. So Mill has to show that while the wish must indeed be determined, that does not
automatically entail heteronomy. It can still be my autonomous wish.

He cannot answer the Owenite simply by invoking the distinction between resistible and
irresistible motives. For a motive might perfectly well not be irresistible, in that it could be
blocked by other motives— yet still be heteronomous. For example a cat waiting for a mouse at a
mousehole could be diverted by a saucer of milk. Its desire to catch a mouse is a resistible
motive, but that does not in itself make us treat the cat as an autonomous agent. It is a necessary
condition of my acting autonomously that my action flows from a motive which is in this sense
resistible, but it is not a sufficient one.

Something has to be added if we are to move from the idea of my motives being resistible in the
sense that they could be trumped by conflicting motives, to the stronger idea that / have the
power to resist motives. That idea is the idea of rational autonomy: it credits me with the ability
to recognise and respond to reasons. I act freely if I would have resisted the motive on which I in
fact acted had there been good reason to do so (Glover 1970), A motive which I do not have the
power to resist —a ‘mania’ —is one that cannot be defeated by a rationally cogent consideration.
The difference between a heteronomous agent, driven by conflicting motives which are capable
of checking each other, and an autonomous agent who himself resists his motive lies in the fact
that the latter responds to, and acts on, reasons.

But can this Kantian insight be made to stand up in naturalistic form?

Consider a person who wants another drink but stops himself because he knows from experience
that he gets terrible hangovers. Or someone who keeps away from the cliff edge not because he
is overmastered by vertigo, nor because he has been indoctrinated to keep away, but because he
can see that the edge is dangerously crumbly. These are paradigms of autonomous action. The
agent sees a good reason for doing something and does it on just those grounds. His action is
caused by a motive—the desire to avoid a hangover, for example. That motive is itself externally
caused, via his experience of hangovers, whose unpleasantness and inevitability are determined
‘by circumstances which we cannot help’. But it is still free.

Acting autonomously, from good reason, is still acting from a motive which is causally
determined. What matters is how the motive is determined: it must be so related to the facts as to
constitute a good reason. The desire to avoid hangovers arises from well-grounded beliefs about
the unpleasant consequences of hangovers, beliefs which, if true, supply good reason for
avoiding them. And it is not a mania—I am not so obsessed by it that even if I was aware of a
good reason to ignore it (someone has offered me a fortune to take part in his experiments on
heavy drinking) I would still find myself acting on it.

The same holds for the will to alter our character. It must indeed always be caused, and hence
caused ultimately by circumstances we cannot help. But it still satisfies the conditions of
autonomy if it results from our grasping that there is reason to change ourselves, and not, say,
from a puritanical obsession entrenched by childhood indoctrination.

Freedom is rational autonomy: the ability to grasp reasons and act on them, resisting where
necessary those motives which there is reason not to pursue. The Owenite and the Kantian have a
philosophical picture of determinism in common: we are overmastered by motives which do not
issue from the rational self but assail us from without. Even if one such motive can be blocked
by another, the blocking motive remains heteronomous. So the Owenite denies freedom and the
Kantian denies naturalism and postulates a transcendental self.

Mill resists the picture, and so is able to retain the deep liberal insight that freedom is rational
autonomy, but without Kantian transcendentalism. Or one could say that his conception of
freedom is Aristotelian; moral freedom is not a transcendental, all or nothing thing, it is
something I can have to a greater or lesser degree. I am more or less free overall, more or less of
an auronomous agent, according to the degree to which I can bring my motives under rational
scrutiny and control. Heteronomy results from the inability to reflect rationally on motives, or—
where there is that ability—from weakness of will I can make myself more free, by shaping my
motives or at least by cultivating the strength of will to overcome them—

A person feels morally free who feels that his habits or his temptations are not his masters, but he
theirs: who even in yielding to them knows that he could resist; that were he desirous of
altogether throwing them off, there would not be required for that purpose a stronger desire than
he knows himself to be capable of feeling. It is of course necessary, to render our consciousness
of freedom complete, that we should have succeeded in making our character all we have
hitherto attempted to make it; for if we have wished and not attained, we have, to that extent, not
power over our own character, we are not free. Or at least, we must feel that our wish, if not
strong enough to alter our character, is strong enough to conquer our character when the two are
brought into conflict in any particular case of conduct. And hence it is said with truth, that none
but a person of confirmed virtue is completely free. (VIII 841)2

Have we now answered our main question—whether moral freedom or rational autonomy (in
Mill’s view, as in Kant’s, they are the same) can be accounted for in purely naturalistic terms?
We have said that a person is free to the extent that good reasons for him to act can cause him to
act. But that still leaves material questions unanswered: what constitutes a good reason, what is it
to grasp a reason, how can reason be efficacious? The Kantian can rightly challenge Mill to
answer these questions. We shall pursue them further in 8.9. But one must be careful —to
anticipate chapter 9—not to assume that Mill is in the Humean tradition which holds reason to be
a slave of the passions. A careful reading of vi.ii.4—‘A motive not always the anticipation of a
pleasure or of a pain’—puts one on guard against that interpretation. We come back to this
important issue in 9.3–4.

3 Empirical and ultimate laws: explanation and reduction

The initial objection of principle to any science of human conduct having been removed, Mill
proceeds to consider its plan, prospects and method. The groundwork has been laid in Book iii,
‘Of Induction’. There Mill sets out a naturalistic conception of the inductive process, analyses
causation in terms of unconditional uniformity, develops the logic of eliminative reasoning. And
he analyses what it is to give an explanation.3

He is, as we have seen, an inductivist. But that does not blind him to the deductive structure of
scientific theory (cf. 6.8). As science matures it seeks to organise itself into increasingly
sweeping and elegant deductive structures. Mill’s analysis of explanation brings out why that is
so. To explain a phenomenon is to place it under a uniformity; explanation is more powerful, the
fewer the number of fundamental uniformities under which the phenomena can be placed. The
‘whole problem of the investigation of nature’ comes down to the question, what ‘are the fewest
assumptions, which being granted, the order of nature as it exists would be the result? What are
the fewest general propositions from which all the uniformities existing in nature could be
deduced?’ (VII 472). Since there can be no more to explanation than the quest for a maximally
simple and unified deductive structure for the phenomena, explaining a uniformity can only
mean deducing it from other uniformities posited in that ideal structure:

To account for a law of nature means, and can mean, nothing more than to assign other laws
more general, together with collocations, which laws and collocations being supposed, the partial
law follows without any additional supposition. (VII 472)

Explanation gives insight into no sort of necessity other than that which a law has in virtue of its
place in the unified deductive structure:

What is called explaining one law of nature by another, is but substituting one mystery for
another; and does nothing to render the general course of nature other than mysterious: we can
no more assign a why for the more extensive laws than for the partial ones. The explanation may
substitute a mystery which has become familiar, and has grown to seem not mysterious, for one
which is still strange. And this is the meaning of explanation, in common parlance. But the
process with which we are here concerned often does the very contrary: it resolves a
phenomenon with which we are familiar, into one of which we previously knew little or
nothing…. (VII 471–2)

A’law of causation’ is an unconditional uniformity. It either belongs to the simplest set of

ultimate uniformities, or it can be derived from it without any further assumption. There are
however also derivative uniformities which ‘do not depend solely on the ultimate laws’, but ‘on
those ultimate laws, and an ultimate fact; namely, the mode of coexistence of some of the
component elements of the universe’ (VII 518). Mill calls such ultimate facts ‘collocations’.
Since collocations are ‘not reducible to any law’, derivative uniformities which depend on them
‘cannot be relied on beyond the limits of actual experience’;

it is the very nature of a derivative law which has not yet been resolved into its elements, in other
words, an empirical law, that we do not know whether it results from the different effects of one
cause, or from effects of different causes. We cannot tell whether it depends wholly on laws, or
partly on laws and partly on a collocation. If it depends on a collocation, it will be true in all the
cases in which that particular collocation exists. But, since we are entirely ignorant, in case of its
depending on a collocation, what the collocation is, we are not safe in extending the law beyond
the limits of time and place in which we have actual experience of its truth. (VII 519)
We allow an observed uniformity to support an unrestricted counterfactual only where we
consider that it is a law of causation. And a law of causation is a uniformity which either is
ultimate or can be deduced from ultimate uniformities without postulating any collocations.

Mill discusses in detail the ways in which a law may be reduced to other laws; his analysis is
worked out with considerable insight and care. But there is something missing from it: he gives
no adequate recognition to the important theoretical process whereby one level of laws is
reduced to another by the introduction of new theoretical vocabulary, or by the discovery of
theoretical identities relating predicates at different levels of description. This omission is
connected with his instrumentalism about science; it is of some importance for the present
chapter, because Mill’s general analysis of scientific reduction— of ‘the composition of
causes’—gives him the framework for the discussion in Book vi of the relationship between
sociology and psychology, and psychology and the physical sciences.

He distinguishes between what he calls the ‘mechanical composition’ and the ‘chemical
combination’ of causes. Mechanical composition takes place when causes combine in such a way
that their ‘joint effect…is identical with the sum of their separate effects’ (VII 371). He takes the
term from the case of the composition of forces in mechanics: when a body is acted on
simultaneously by a number of separate forces, it ends up in exactly the same position as it
would have done if the forces had acted on it one by one in sequence.

But not every combination of causes, according to Mill, works that way. When substances, such
as hydrogen and oxygen, are chemically combined, the effect, and the properties of the resulting
stuffs, may not be predictable from the properties of the substances themselves. Mechanical
composition is that ‘mode of the mutual interference of laws of nature, in which, even when the
concurrent causes annihilate each other’s effects, each exerts its full efficacy according to its own
law, its law as a separate agent’. But in chemical combination

the agencies which are brought together cease entirely, and a totally different set of phenomena
arise: as in the experiment of two liquids which, when mixed in certain proportions, instantly
become, not a larger amount of liquid, but a solid mass.

The difference is that

between the case in which the joint effect of causes is the sum of their separate effects, and the
case in which it is heterogeneous to them; between laws which work together without alteration,
and laws which, when called upon to work together, cease and give place to others…. (VII 373)

The distinction is intriguing, though Mill’s explanation is hardly rigorous. He does not explain
what in general is to be understood by the ‘sum’ of separate causes. (It is easy to see what is
meant in the case of the parallelogram of forces, but not how to extend it to the general case.) He
shifts from talking about combining causes to talking about combining substances. He does not
analyse just what is meant by saying that the properties of water are not the same as those of
hydrogen and oxygen taken separately.

In fact two intertwined questions are involved: one is whether there are irreducible, emergent
properties; the other concerns the principle of ‘proportionality of effects to causes’, a principle
which rests on an intuitive distinction between homogeneous and heterogeneous effects, and
seems to play a central role in scientific reasoning.

‘Chemical combination’ of causes produces an emergent order of processes or substances

obeying their own irreducible laws. Mill calls such laws ‘heteropathic’; they ‘owe their
existence’, as he puts it, ‘to a breach of the principle of the Composition of Causes’ (VII 374).
Chemical laws are heteropathic in relation to physics, and physiological laws (which deal with
emergent vital properties) are heteropathic in relation to chemistry.

Mill has to hold that chemical laws are heteropathic because he lacks a clear concept of
theoretical reduction—of the reduction of one level of theory to another via theoretical identities.
And he lacks a clear concept of theoretical reduction because of his instrumentalism; because, in
this case, he refuses to take a realist view of atoms and their laws of association.4 Otherwise he
could identify water with H2O and its phenomenological properties or dipositional powers, such
as transparency, with the macro-properties of H2O aggregates, reducing the apparent ‘chemical
combination’ to an underlying theoretically postulated level of ‘mechanical composition’. This is
a case in which his clear grasp of the deductive model of explanation conflicts with his
inductivist rejection of the method of inference to the best explanation.

The distinction between mechanical composition and chemical combination includes, Mill
thinks, what is true in the principle of the proportionality of causes; the principle that ‘effects are
proportional to their causes’, which he says ‘is laid down by some writers as an axiom in the
theory of causation’. But it puts it on a more rigorous basis and limits it to its proper sphere; the
principle corresponds to the requirement that causal laws should always interact by mechanical
composition, and so fails to recognise that chemical combination is an irreducible fact of the
universe.

But Mill himself is failing to recognise something important about the proportionality principle,
to which those who treat it as an ‘axiom in the theory of causation’ are responding—its
regulative role in scientific reasoning. It is precisely our acceptance of a principle of
proportionality that makes us reluctant to accept the existence of irreducibly heteropathic laws
and emergent properties, and leads us into conjectures about underlying levels of law. Where
proportionality seems to be breached, we are strongly inclined to think that we have not got the
fundamental causal level; we search for a theory which eliminates the heteropathic laws by
reducing them to a ‘smooth’ underlying level of theory. It may well be that this expectation of
proportionality is a vague and intuitive one, but then Mill’s distinction between mechanical
composition and chemical combination of causes is no stricter. Consider his example of a body
which when heated first expands, then melts, then decomposes (VII 376). One can say that this
appears to conflict with the proportionality principle, or one can say that it is ‘a case of the
chemical composition of causes’. But the first way of putting it has the great advantage that it
suggests a problem for inquiry—discover an underlying level of description at which
proportionality is not after all infringed—instead of producing a spuriously precise label which
suggests that no further questions remain.

With this sketch of Mill’s account—or lack of an account—of scientific reduction we can take
up his analysis of the structure of the moral sciences.
4 The primacy of psychology: associationism
Scientific inquiry in the human and social domain, as anywhere else, does not start from
disjointed particular data. The starting point is a body of empirical and approximate
generalisations which has grown spontaneously (‘observations concerning human affairs
collected from common experience’ which ‘compose a practical knowledge of mankind’; VIII
861, 848).

Mill is not over-sanguine about how far moral science can replace these generalisations by laws
which enable exact prediction. He does think that it can produce generalisations which are less
approximate, more systematic and comprehensive, and whose limits are better understood (8.6).
But the main point, on which he repeatedly insists, is that whether they result from deliberate
inquiry or spontaneous experience, they become scientific only as they are incorporated (if only
tentatively) within a deductive structure which reproduces them as derivations from a set of
ultimate and strict laws:

approximate generalizations, which in themselves would amount only to the lowest kind of
empirical laws, should be connected deductively with the laws of nature from which they result;
should be resolved into the properties of the causes on which the phenomena depend. In other
words, the science of Human Nature may be said to exist, in proportion as the approximate
truths, which compose a practical knowledge of mankind, can be exhibited as corollaries from
the universal laws of human nature on which they rest; whereby the proper limits of those
approximate truths would be shown, and we should be enabled to deduce others for any new
state of circumstances, in anticipation of specific experience. (VIII 848)

The ultimate laws are laws of mind. Psychology is the fundamental moral science. Intervening
between its principles and the empirical laws of human nature and society will be an applied
science—an invention of Mill’s own, which he christens ‘ethology’, the ‘science of the
formation of character’ by environmental circumstances. The topmost layer is ‘the social
science’, ‘which, by a convenient barbarism, has been called Sociology’ (VIII 895). Mill’s
blueprint for the structure of the moral sciences is somewhat as follows:

Level I: Laws of mind (vi.iv)

Level II: Laws of the formation of character (Ethology) (vi.v.2–6)

Level Empirical laws of human nature (vi.v.1) and of Society (vi.ix.5; vi. x. 1–2)
III:

Level Observation of the behaviour of human beings in concrete historical and social
IV: circumstances.
(The sections in parentheses indicate where Mill’s comments are most readily found.)

Level II is an applied science consisting of ‘corollaries’ derived directly from level I. In

conjunction with facts about human environments it entails the empirical laws at level III—
assuming that there are such, something that Mill is not always entirely sure of—and the
particular observations of level IV. So it provides the middle principles, the axiomata media, of
moral science,

Mill begins his sketch of psychology by considering whether there is such a science at all. By
‘laws of mind’, he says, he understands ‘those of mental Phenomena; of the various feelings or
states of consciousness of sentient beings’. Whatever may be our opinion, he continues,

respecting the fundamental identity or diversity of matter and mind, in any case the distinction
between mental and physical facts, between the internal and the external world, will always
remain, as a matter of classification…. (VIII 849)

But despite the reference to the ‘identity or diversity of matter and mind’, Mill is not here leaving
open the possibility of materialism in the current sense, according to which states of
consciousness are strictly identical with bodily states. That possibility he does not consider at all.
What he has in mind is ‘epiphenomenalism’, the view that the cause of a state of consciousness
is always a physical state, and never another state of consciousness:5

According to this theory, one state of mind is never really produced by another: all are produced
by states of body. When one thought seems to call up another by association, it is not really a
thought which recalls a thought; the association did not exist between the two thoughts, but
between the two states of the brain or nerves which preceded the thoughts: one of those states
recalls the other, each being attended, in its passage, by the particular state of consciousness
which is consequent on it. On this theory the uniformities of succession among states of mind
would be mere derivative uniformities, resulting from the laws of succession of the bodily states
which cause them. There would be no original mental laws, no Laws of Mind in the sense in
which I use the term, at all: and mental science would be a mere branch, though the highest and
most recondite branch, of the science of physiology. (VII 850)

If epiphenomenalism is true, psychology loses its autonomy and becomes a physical science. The
point is not that properties of mind will turn out to be physical—emergent mental properties will
remain as part of the ontology of physical science. However, there will be no laws of mind:

When a state of mind is produced by a state of mind, I call the law concerned in the case, a law
of Mind. When a state of mind is produced directly by a state of body, the law is a law of Body,
and belongs to physical science. (VII 849–50)

On the epiphenomenalist view the mental is causally inert; no state of mind causes another.
Consequently no mental uniformity can be a causal law. Nevertheless it still, Mill thinks,
‘remains incontestable that there exist uniformities of succession among states of mind, and that
these can be ascertained by observation and experiment’; and even if epiphenomenalism is true,
these uniformities cannot presently be ‘deduced from the physiological laws of our nervous
organization’ (VIII 851) nor is it certain that they will ever be deducible: ‘Since therefore the
order of our mental phenomena must be studied in those phenomena, and not inferred from the
laws of any phenomena more general, there is a distinct and separate Science of Mind’ (VIII
852).

This affirms what one might call the weak, or methodological, autonomy of psychology. Mill
claims to leave open the question whether psychology is autonomous in a stronger, substantive
sense—i.e. whether the uniformities linking, as he thinks, irreducibly mental states of mind
constitute fundamental causal laws. In principle he allows that they may be epiphenomenal spin-
offs of underlying laws of physics; in practice he regularly assumes not only that there are such
uniformities of succession, but that they are indeed ultimate causal laws.6

The epiphenomenalist view, that one mental state cannot cause another—that they can be
connected by a fact of causation only inasmuch as they may be joint effects of the same physical
cause—is certainly very counter-intuitive. Moreover the philosophical and psychological
tradition in which Mill was reared, that of associationism, took the strong autonomy of the
mental for granted. By Mill’s time, an intelligent person in that tradition had to begin taking
scientific account of the idea that the mind is a fully embodied thing. But what philosophical
sense one could make of that remained shrouded in darkness—as indeed it still in many ways
does.

Suppose we accept Mill’s underlying assumption—contrary to epiphenomenalism, mental states

do have their own causal powers. Then, given his analysis of causation in terms of uniformity,
and given that the view that mental states just are physical states can be ruled out, the strong
autonomy of psychology follows—there must be ultimate, irreducible, laws of mind. One vital
difference between our standpoint and Mill’s is that we cannot rule out of consideration the strict
materialist view that every mental state is a physical state. On the contrary, it is by now hard to
keep the alternatives more than notionally open. Materialism can fully recognise the causal
efficacy of the mental— perhaps even without guaranteeing sharp type-type uniformities at the
mental level (Davidson 1970). It may yet turn out that so far from being the foundational moral
science, psychology is bisected by the line between the physical and the interpretative. It would
then on the one side be a branch of physiology as suggested by Comte. On the other it would
consist of our ordinary everyday principles of interpretation, and of various attempts to correct,
systematise or supplement these.

To these thoughts we shall return. But it was not unreasonable for Mill to be optimistic about the
prospects for associationist psychology. He saw it as a progressive research programme, and he
thought it had already established some clear-cut laws. Some of them he marshals in vi.iv.3: —
‘every mental impression has its idea— ‘Similar ideas tend to excite one another’—‘when two
impressions have been frequently experienced (or even thought of) either simultaneously or in
immediate succession, then whenever one of these impressions, or the idea of it, recurs, it tends
to excite the idea of the other’—‘greater intensity in either or both of the impressions, is
equivalent, in rendering them excitable by one another, to a greater frequency of conjunction’
(VIII 852).7

In reviewing these laws Mill makes some important points. In particular, he applies to them his
distinction between mechanical composition and chemical combination of causes. Their
operation, he claims, generates ideas by chemical combination as well as by mechanical
composition.

Our idea of an orange really consists of the simple ideas of a certain colour, a certain form, a
certain taste and smell, &c., because we can, by interrogating our consciousness, perceive all
these elements in the idea. But we cannot perceive, in so apparently simple a feeling as our
perception of the shape of an object by the eye, all that multitude of ideas derived from other
senses, without which it is well ascertained that no such visual perception would ever have had
existence; not, in our idea of Extension, can we discover those elementary ideas of resistance,
derived from our muscular frame, in which it has been conclusively shown that the idea
originates. These therefore are cases of mental chemistry: in which it is proper to say that the
simple ideas generate, rather than that they compose, the complex ones. (VIII 854)

The idea of mental chemistry is fascinating but perplexing. Is it possible that states of
consciousness should causally combine to produce emergent states of consciousness with a
wholly new intrinsic or qualitative character? We are, as noted in 8.3, reluctant to accept that
cases of chemical combination are irreducible to an underlying level at which they appear as
mechanical composition. On the other hand, once we take the standpoint of consciousness, there
seems to be no way in which this could be done for states of consciousness. States of
consciousness belong essentially to the subjective view; they do not affect us relatively, they are
as they seem. So we already grasp them in their absolute character: we cannot expect to find a
new description of their ultimate character in which they turn out to interact by mechanical
composition alone.

Perhaps these intuitions show nothing more than the untenability of the standpoint of
consciousness (7.10). However that may be, we must not ignore the importance of mental
chemistry in Mill’s thought. It gives him a clear distinction between philosophical analysis of the
content of a concept, and psychological analysis of its aetiology. So it renders irrelevant, as Mill
rightly points out, a popular argument against associationist analysis: ‘the heterogeneous nature
of a feeling A, considered in relation to B and C, is no conclusive argument against its being
generated from B and C’, The aetiology is established by eliminative methods of induction, not
by an analysis of the conceptual content of the feeling.

Conversely, it means that psychological analysis of the origins of a feeling cannot sustain
conclusions to its conceptual content. Content floats free of origins. For example the concept of
externality—of physical objects as ontologically independent of sensation (7.7)—can be
analysed aetiologically as arising from associations of sensations, without being held to be
analysable philosophically into the Permanent Possibility of sensation. This is a point to bear in
mind when one considers Mill’s associationist accounts of the ‘genealogy’ of such ethical
notions as conscience, justice or desert.

Mill leaves it an open question whether all ‘constituents of the mind, its beliefs, abstruser
conceptions, its sentiments, emotions, and volitions’ are ‘generated from simple ideas of
sensation’ by mental chemistry. But he is plainly optimistic that they can be shown to be.
Associationism was a major category in the language of Mill’s thought. Exercises in
associationist analysis and thoughts on its standing as a general theory of the mind are scattered
throughout his work. And of course it is an important weapon in his philosophy. He uses it to
undermine the epistemological pretensions of the a priori school, be it in logic and mathematics
or in ethics and politics. He deploys an associationist account of our concept of externality
against philosophers who argue from the assumption that it is innate or ‘original’, to the
conclusion that there are external things. And associationism provides the framework, as we
shall see, for his moral psychology—his analysis of happiness, desire and the will.

In his political thought, it sustains his faith in the broad natural equality of human beings, while
simultaneously giving him theoretical grounds for insisting on the historicity of human nature
and human institutions, and the consequent gradualness of social progress. If differences of
interest, motive and mental capacity can be largely explained as arising from different histories
of association, then it is possible to believe, or at least not to rule out, that men are originally
gifted with roughly similar emotional and cognitive dispositions. There is hope of limitless
benefit from evolving institutions which educate men to develop their potentialities ever more
effectively—but there is also the sobering consequence that revolutionary transformations of
human nature and society are impossible.8 Mill’s passion for striking a balance—in this case the
balance between the indefinite mutability and the necessary continuity of human characters and
institutions—underlies his interest in the new sciences of sociology, whose idea he receives from
Comte, and of ethology, his own invention.

5 Ethology: the historicity of human nature

A small and simple set of psychological laws underlies the hugely complex phenomena of man
in history and society. Yet it by no means follows that general laws of human nature, let alone
sociological laws of history or society, can be obtained. Sometimes Mill talks as though the mere
fact that social phenomena are causally determined guarantees the existence of distinctively
social laws:

All phenomena of society are phenomena of human nature, generated by the action of outward
circumstances upon masses of human beings: and if, therefore, the phenomena of human
thought, feeling, and action, are subject to fixed laws, the phenomena of society cannot but
conform to fixed laws, the consequence of the preceding. (VIII 877)

But the fact that social phenomena are determined by underlying physical and psychological
laws by no means guarantees that there are uniformities among them waiting to be discovered by
social science. A derivative science may have exact uniformities to call its own—it may also turn
out that its ‘own brand’ generalisations are highly inexact, or largely nonexistent. There may be
no worthwhile generalisation about where a piece of paper, dropped from a skyscraper on a gusty
day, will land. It may be impossible to predict where a cork dropped from a bridge into rapids
will strike the shore. Or it may turn out that rough uniformities emerge. But the mere fact that
these phenomena are determined by exact physical laws offers no guarantee either way. The
same applies, as Mill himself says, when it comes to uniformities of human nature:

Suppose that all which passes in the mind of man is determined by a few simple laws: still, if
those laws be such that there is not one of the facts surrounding a human being, or of the events
which happen to him, that does not influence in some mode or degree his subsequent mental
history, and if the circumstances of different human beings are extremely different, it will be no
wonder if very few propositions can be made respecting the details of their conduct or feelings,
which will be true of all mankind. (VIII 863)

Conversely, uniformities may be discoverable in macroscopic aggregates even when none

applies to the individual entities which make them up. A phalanx of termites exhibits a highly
exact and predictable pattern, even though there are no laws enabling one to predict the exact
movements of individual termites. The same might hold in the social domain—in which case
Comte’s view that there is a science of historical sociology, but no psychological science of the
behaviour of individual human beings, would be right.

Are there laws of society, or of human nature in society, and if there are, can they be discovered?
Can there be a nomological social science— one with a system of laws to call its own?

There are, Mill thinks, derived laws of human nature. They form the subject of the science of
ethology, whose task is to show how the same few fundamental psychological laws produce, in
different historical and ecological circumstances, widely differing, yet in their context stable,
types of character or personality. There is no constant human nature, but there can be a science
showing how human nature is variously moulded by historical and ecological circumstance. It is
the Science of the Formation of Character, ‘national or collective as well as individual’ (VIII
869). Its laws are derived by stipulating environmental parameters in the universal laws of mind;
so it will be a ‘deductive science…a system of corollaries from Psychology, the experimental
science’ (VIII 872). Since ethology is directly deduced from the fundamental laws of
psychology, without assuming collocations, it may be called, says Mill,

the Exact Science of Human Nature; for its truths are not, like the empirical laws which depend
on them, approximate generalizations, but real laws. It is, however, (as in all cases of complex
phenomena) necessary to the exactness of the propositions that they should be hypothetical only,
and affirm tendencies, not facts. They must not assert that something will always, or certainly,
happen; but only that such and such will be the effect of a given cause, so far as it operates
uncounteracted. (VIII 870)

Mill invokes here an important concept in his analysis of causation: the notion of a tendency law.
A tendency law states that one phenomenon is causally dependent on others, but only under
certain boundary conditions, which are not precisely spelt out. They are left in the form of a
ceteris paribus clause. The law may specify exactly the functional dependence of one variable on
others, but it’ does not specify exactly the conditions under which that function holds. So the
effect expected when only the tendency law is taken into account may be nullified by the
operation of another law which governs variations in the boundary conditions of the first.

In the case of ethology, Mill thinks it possible to derive a set of tendency laws describing the
character-forming tendencies of specific environmental variables. However these variables may
have mutually counteracting effects. A general model of the influence of environment on
character would enable one to compute the results of these interactions. To derive it, one would
need to take out of the ceteris paribus clause of the law of each particular effect, those aspects of
its boundary conditions which are determined by variables whose action is characterised in other
ethological laws, and then make the particular effect studied in that law an explicit function of
those variables. The result would be an explicitly integrated system of interacting laws; but such
a general model, Mill thinks, cannot in practice be derived from psychology alone. The only
route to it is by consilience with the results of sociology.

6 Sociology: the evolutionary science of society

Sociology, the ‘general Science of Society’, studies ‘the causes which produce, and the
phenomena which characterize, States of Society generally’ (VIII 911). By ‘a State of Society’,
Mill means ‘the simultaneous state of all the greater social facts or phenomena’; his list of these
greater social facts is an interesting one:

the degree of knowledge, and of intellectual and moral culture, existing in the community, and in
every class of it; the state of industry, of wealth and its distribution; the habitual occupations of
the community; their division into classes, and the relations of those classes to one another; the
common beliefs which they entertain on all the subjects most important to mankind, and the
degree of assurance with which those beliefs are held; their tastes, and the character and degree
of their aesthetic development; their form of government, and the more important of their laws
and customs. The condition of all these things, and of many more which will readily suggest
themselves, constitute the state of society or the state of civilisation at any giveñ time. (VIII 911–
12)

States of society are like ‘different constitutions or different ages in the physical frame; they are
conditions not of one or a few organs or functions, but of the whole organism’ (VIII 911–12).
That all these ‘greater social facts’ are intricately related is a truism. But Mill means more. He
believes that there exist laws of coexistence and succession among states of society, which
sociology can discover by direct historical inquiry. These laws are, indeed, empirical laws. They
depend on collocations, and are not pure laws of causation, like the laws of ethology. The laws of
particular social formations follow from ethological laws only when these are conjoined with
premises specifying particular historical and ecological antecedents. But that such empirical laws
of history and society do exist, Mill does not doubt. And they provide the data by which the
conclusions of special or hypothetical moral sciences, such as ethology or political economy,
‘must be limited and controlled’ (VIII 911).

His reason for being so confident is none too convincing. Their existence is ‘a necessary
consequence’, he thinks, ‘of the influence exercised by every one of those phenomena over every
other. It is a fact implied in the consensus of the various parts of the social body’ (VIII 912). This
notion, derived from Comte, of the holism or ‘consensus’ of society had made a profound
impression on Mill:

The mode of production of all social phenomena is one great case of the Intermixture of Laws.
We can never understand in theory or command in practice the condition of a society in any one
respect, without taking into consideration its condition in all other respects. There is no social
phenomenon which is not more or less influenced by every other part of the condition of the
same society, and therefore by every cause which is influencing any other of the
contemporaneous social phenomena. There is, in short, what physiologists term a consensus,
similar to that existing among the various organs and functions of the physical frame of man and
the more perfect animals…. It follows from this consensus, that unless two societies could be
alike in all the circumstances which surround and influence them (which would imply their being
alike in their previous history,) no portion whatever of the phenomena will, unless by accident,
precisely correspond; no one cause will produce exactly the same effects in both. (VIII 899)

Now that certainly provides an excellent case against anyone who thinks it possible to derive
sociological laws directly from ethological premises. But it provides in itself no ground for
thinking that there must be such laws. The consensus, Mill argues,

is so complete, (especially in modern history,) that in the filiation of one generation and another,
it is the whole which produces the whole, rather than any part a part. Little progress, therefore,
can be made in establishing the filiation, directly from the laws of human nature, without having
first ascertained the immediate or derivative laws according to which social states generate one
another as society advances…. (VIII 924)

But that assumes that there are such immediate sociological laws. Mill is on better ground,
logically at least, when he simply asserts that although there might, in principle, have been no
detectable uniformities of succession or coexistence stateable at the sociological level, it turns
out in fact that there are:

the influence exercised over each generation by the generations which preceded it, becomes…
more and more preponderant over all other influences; until at length what we now are and do, is
in a very small degree the result of the universal circumstances of the human race, or even of our
own circumstances acting through the original qualities of our species, but mainly of the qualities
produced in us by the whole previous history of humanity. So long a series of actions and
reactions between Circumstances and Man, each successive term being composed of an ever
greater number and variety of parts, could not possibly be computed by human faculties from the
elementary laws which produce it….

If, therefore, the series of the effects themselves did not, when examined as a whole, manifest
any regularity, we should in vain attempt to construct a general science of society…. [But]
History …does, when judiciously examined, afford Empirical Laws of Society. And the problem
of general sociology is to ascertain these, and connect them with the laws of human nature, by
deductions showing that such were the derivative laws naturally to be expected as the
consequences of these ultimate ones. (VIII 915–16)

7 The methods of social science

When we have before us Mill’s general picture of the logic of theory and explanation, and his
substantive hopes for associationist psychology and historical sociology, the strategies he
recommends for inquiry in moral science fall naturally into place. The generalisations of social
science become scientific to the extent that they are derived from underlying laws of mind; but as
he says in the passage we have just quoted, it would be unrealistic to expect to arrive at them by
deduction from laws of mind.

He first dismisses two approaches which he finds naïve. One seeks to draw social and political
laws by direct inductive generalisation from the facts of history. The other seeks to draw them
directly from supposedly unchanging axioms of human nature. They were influentially
exemplified in a famous debate on ‘the logic of politics’ between Macaulay and Mill’s father,
James Mill.9

The first Mill calls the ‘chemical method’, because it assumes, according to him, that social laws
are heteropathic—that they arise by chemical combination from the laws of individual human
nature. That is its grand mistake:

The laws of the phenomena of society are, and can be, nothing but the laws of the actions and
passions of human beings united together in the social state. Men, however, in a state of society,
are still men; their actions and passions are obedient to the laws of individual human nature. Men
are not, when brought together, converted into another kind of substance, with different
properties; as hydrogen and oxygen are different from water, or as hydrogen, oxygen, carbon,
and azote, are different from nerves, muscles, and tendons. Human beings in society have no
properties but those which are derived from, and may be resolved into, the laws of the nature of
individual man. In social phenomena the Composition of Causes is the universal law. (VIII 879)

Yet even though social laws are not heteropathic, it still remains possible that a direct historical
survey of societies can discover some. So Mill proceeds to argue that even a perfect inquirer,
equipped with ‘as much of the facts of history as mere erudition can teach—as much as can be
proved by testimony, without the assistance of any theory’ (VIII 880), has no chance of success.
The methods of induction cannot be applied on the basis of direct observation of phenomena
which are so complex, nor is it possible to experiment under artificial laboratory conditions in
the social sciences.

Here he overreaches himself. He should not be arguing that uniformities in the social process
cannot be discovered by direct historical induction, because he himself, as we have just seen,
accepts that they can be. The most he should say is that such inductions must be made carefully
and tentatively and that one should try to corroborate them by explaining them in ethological
terms. The fact is that Mill is a good deal closer to Macaulay than the shrillness of his attack on
him discloses—and further from his father than his more temperate criticism of the second
method suggests. Partly no doubt, this is a matter of filial piety, or solidarity with philosophic
radicalism, which Macaulay had subjected to withering fire. But it also reflects an underlying
unease, a tension between his native caution and his romantic enthusiasm for the Comtean vision
of a historical sociology—precisely on the question of whether there exist discoverable historical
and sociological laws.

The second method is dubbed by Mill ‘geometrical’, because its practitioners recognise that ‘the
science of society must necessarily be deductive’ (VIII 887), but fail to take into account the
important fact that it deals essentially with ‘causes which counteract or modify one another’
(VIII 888). Mill’s point is that ‘axioms’ about human motives are only tendency laws. No such
‘axiom’ can be regarded as an unrestricted truth, deductions from which hold indefeasibly: all are
restricted by the presence of other tendency laws.

As examples of the geometrical method Mill cites Hobbes’s construction of a complete political
philosophy on the single motive of self-preservation; and the ‘interest philosophy of the Bentham
School, which purports to found its politics on the assumption that human beings act to promote
their own self-interest. Their error is to put forward deductions from the assumption of self-
interest, in areas, such as government, in which that motive cannot safely be assumed to be the
only one at work. For rulers, while they are governed in varying degrees by self-interest, are also
critically influenced by the ‘habitual sentiments or feelings, the general modes of thinking or
acting’ of their community and their class, and the ‘maxims and traditions’ (VIII 891) which they
have inherited.

Mill now turns to the methods he thinks right. Both recognise, with the social ‘geometers’, that
The Social Science…is a deductive science’, which ‘infers the law of each effect from the laws
of causation on which that effect depends’, but they do not try to deduce it ‘from the laws merely
of one cause, as in the geometrical method; but by considering all the causes which conjunctly
influence the effect, and compounding their laws with one another’ (VIII 895). The ‘physical’ or
‘concrete deductive method’, as Mill calls it, deduces sociological laws from ethological
principles, seeking however, to take all of them into account. It then verifies these laws directly
by observation of society. In contrast, the ‘historical’ or ‘inverse deductive method’ begins by
establishing sociological generalisations, and then grounds them by showing them to accord with
ethological laws.

The historical method—practised by the Historical School of continental thinkers, with Comte at
their head—has an important advantage. A general social science would have to compound the
individual laws governing separate aspects of human behaviour into an integrated system of laws
—but that would require spelling out the ceteris paribus clauses in the hypothetical laws of
ethology in such a way as to fix their mutual interactions. The materials to enable one to do that
are not available to the physical deductive method alone. It can deduce only tendency laws:

Sociology, considered as a system of deductions à priori, cannot be a science of positive

predictions, but only of tendencies. We may be able to conclude, from the laws of human nature
applied to the circumstances of a given state of society, that a particular cause will operate in a
certain manner unless counteracted; but we can never be assured to what extent or amount it will
so operate, or affirm with certainty that it will not be counteracted; because we can seldom know,
even approximately, all the agencies which may coexist with it. (VIII 898)

Sociological laws directly deduced from ethology will be hypothetical: ‘They are grounded on
some suppositious set of circumstances, and declare how some given cause would operate in
those circumstances, supposing that no others were combined with them’ (VIII 900).

Such hypothetical, special studies have a place in social science; for despite the fact that all
social phenomena interact in some degree of ‘consensus’, there are some none the less which
largely depend on a few distinctive causes which may be studied on their own. Political economy
is a case in point. It deals with social interactions whose

immediately determining causes are principally those which act through the desire of wealth; and
in which the psychological law mainly concerned is the familiar one, that a greater gain is
preferred to a smaller…. By reasoning from that one law of human nature, and from the principal
outward circumstances…which operate upon the human mind through that law, we may be
enabled to explain and predict this portion of the phenomena of society, so far as they depend on
that class of circumstances only; overlooking the influence of any other of the circumstances of
society…. (VIII 901)
It is however a common error of political economists not to take account of variations in the
extra-economic boundary conditions of their economic theories;

they take for granted the immutability of arrangements of society, many of which are in their
nature fluctuating or progressive, and enunciate with as little qualification as if they were
universal and absolute truths, propositions which are perhaps applicable to no state of society
except the particular one in which the writer happened to live…. (VIII 904)

Nevertheless, so long as such variations are taken into account, the methods of economic analysis
are as universal as the psychological attitudes it postulates.

Unlike Comte, Mill accepts that hypothetical or abstract social sciences have a valuable role to
play in the study of society. But he is persuaded by Comte that there can and should also be a
general science of sociology, a science which provides comprehensive synchronic and historical
models of society. The laws embodied in these models will be empirical, dependent on the
historical collocations of those societies. They have to be discovered directly; they cannot be
deduced by the physical method. At this point the historical or inverse deductive method comes
into its own. It allows one first to establish the sociological uniformities, then to deduce them
from an assumed ethological model, filling in as a result some of the details of how ethological
laws interact and strengthening the whole by a consilience of inductions.

A completed science of man would provide a unified theory of human nature and society, in
which laws of society would be deduced from ethological laws—themselves corollaries of the
ultimate laws of mind— in conjunction with ecological circumstances. This Unified Moral
Science would have to include a general model of the influence of environment on character—an
integrated system of laws spelling out functions relating the various underlying psychological
variables to each other and the environment, synchronically and diachronically, Macroscopic
laws of society could then be deduced from the general ethological system, or from it with
collocations.

The degree to which Mill thinks such a thing possible fluctuates. In cautious moments he
underscores the complexities which in practice rule it out. On the other hand, in criticising the
chemical and the geometrical methods, he often seems to set a standard which assumes the actual
feasibility of Unified Moral Science. This is an important weakness. For if such a standard is no
more than a pipe-dream, then the one-sided or piecemeal inductions and deductions of social
‘chemists’ and ‘geometers’ look far less naïve. Perhaps partial views of the social process are the
best we can rise to. The naïveté then is on the side of prophets of grand sociological theory like
Mill and Comte.

8 Methodological individualism
In discussing Mill’s distinction between chemical combination and mechanical composition, we
doubted whether there is any such thing as irreducible ‘chemical combination’ of causes. If there
is not then there are no emergent properties or heteropathic laws at all. But whatever the truth on
that may be, it should at least be obvious that there is no ‘chemical combination’ of moral
causes: the interaction of human beings in groups generates no heteropathic or emergent facts—
however much yearners after a collective Geist may perennially be tempted to think otherwise.
From the fact that social scientific laws are not heteropathic a scientific imperative seems to
follow—to confirm and delimit their scientific credentials by deducing them from the underlying
psychological laws. If ‘men are not, when brought together, converted into another kind of
substance; if ‘human beings in society have no properties but those which are derived, and may
be resolved into, the laws of the nature of individual man’ (VIII 879), then the objective must be
so to resolve them.

This prescription for social science, classically stated by Mill, has been usefully labelled
‘methodological individualism’. Is it a simple consequence of the ‘ontological’ individualism
which holds that there are no emergent or heteropathic social facts?

That depends first, of course, on what the ‘deducibility in principle’ of the social from the
psychological means in practice. If it is to be a sensible ideal to aim at, then there must be some
reasonable prospect of approximating it. Methodological individualism—understood tightly, as
prescribing the aim of deducing social laws from psychological ones— cannot be justified just
by reference to what an omniscient and logically frictionless reasoner could do. The idea that
such deductions are a reasonable prospect—virtually on the horizon—is one factor which
occasionally gives Mill’s analysis of the moral sciences an abstract and unreal air.

Consider some of the generalisations social science has taken an interest in. Political revolutions
are always preceded by rising expectations on the part of the deprived class. Collective religious
ritual increases social integration. An increase in the money supply produces an increase in the
rate of inflation.

In Unified Moral Science, every aspect of social interaction would be characterisable exclusively
In terms attributing actions and psychological states to individuals and describing features of
their natural environment. Could one literally deduce these generalisations (or tighter versions of
them) from this level of description? Take the generalisation about inflation. If a greater quantity
of money comes into the hands of individual spenders they will have greater purchasing power.
Some of them at least will be able to achieve their ends better if they spend some of that
purchasing power on goods rather than saving it, so the demand for goods will increase. If the
producers of goods cannot increase the supply because of physical or psychological constraints
on production (a big if, of course!), they can increase their revenues only by raising prices. Since
increasing their revenues enables them to achieve their ends better, by giving them a greater
command of limited resources, they will do so. The net effect will be higher prices at the same
level of production.

One can postulate along these lines a simple micro-economic model in which the money supply
law of inflation is strictly deduced from substantive assumptions about the desires and beliefs of
individuals, the quantity of money in circulation, and the physical and psychological constraints
on production. But it will be strictly deducible only so long as the premises are strictly false. To
make them true we shall have to introduce fuzziness—‘Most people’s ends are such that, given
an increase of spending power, they can almost always better achieve them by increasing their
spending’ (which might not apply to leisure-loving hermits), and we will no longer be able to
deduce the law, chough we may be able to make it plausible.

So one can make the generalisation about inflation intelligible in terms of familiar facts about
human motives, perceptions and circumstances, but the hope of deducing it from psychological
laws is a mirage. The same applies even more obviously to the other generalisations.

However this does not go to the heart of the case. It only shows that methodological
individualism should not unrealistically prescribe that statements about society be deduced from
psychological laws. Still, if there are only individuals, their physical environment and
psychological states, and the causal interactions between them—if there are no emergent social
substances with their own causal powers—generalisations of social science should at least be
‘connected’ with psychological principles, to use one of Mill’s looser, but still perfectly
intelligible, ways of putting the requirement (VIII 915). ‘Methodological individualism’ is
simply a call to take explanation as far as it will go.

Yet that is not the end of the story. A further, philosophically more fundamental, issue is raised
by the individualist’s thesis. The generalisations we have been considering contain predicates of
society (‘social predicates’) — ‘revolution’, ‘class’, ‘religious ritual’, ‘social integration’,
‘money supply’, ‘rate of inflation’ occurring in a direct denoting use. Can such predicates, and
laws couched in terms of them, be in principle reduced to predicates of individuals?

They do not have to disappear entirely. They will still appear in the intentional contents of
individual psychological states. To describe the beliefs of a society which believes in witches
one must use the term ‘witch’, but that does not commit one to the existence of witches.
Similarly, to describe the beliefs of social actors one must use the terms in which they
understand their environment—but that is not to employ them denotingly in one’s own theory.

There is a deeper difficulty, which arises from the rule-constituted nature of the social domain.
Political revolution is the seizure of power by unconstitutional means, so the concept involves
the notion of a constitution (written or unwritten). Rituals typically involve prescribed rites. Our
micro-explanation of inflation in terms of the motives and beliefs of, and constraints on,
individuals still referred to money, and hence to the social institutions which constitute the
existence of money. Money, banks, constitutions, rites are rule-constituted forms. For them to
exist is for an appropriate set of rules to exist. So terms denoting them will be definable in the
vocabulary of Unified Moral Science only if the existence of a social rule is constituted by
certain appropriate attitudes on the part of individuals.

It may be held that it is—social rules are conventions and the existence of a convention is
individualistically definable (Lewis 1969). The trouble is that not all social rules are conventions.
Conventionalism about the social is ultimately no more plausible than conventionalism about
ethics or mathematics. In recognising certain social facts of legitimate law and authority we
acknowledge not conventions of our own making—any more than in mathematics or morals—
but requirements of right itself.

The moral constitution of society and the rational autonomy of persons are but two aspects of
one conceptual scheme—the scheme we deploy when we take the hermeneutic view of human
beings and their relations. Once again we are bumping up against a large philosophical difficulty
for the naturalistic view of man. We shall consider it further in 8.10. But first we must consider
more closely Mill’s pivotal moral science: ethology.
9 Can there be a ‘science of human nature’?
Mill’s prospectus for the applied science of ethology is written up in glowingly optimistic terms.
He was convinced that its ‘creation’ was at length ‘practicable’ (VIII 873), but that his
‘ethological reflections’ were not yet sufficiently ‘mature’ (XV 645), and in autumn 1845 turned
his hand to the Principles of Political Economy instead (which he thought would not take him
more than a few months). He never abandoned the idea of writing a work on ethology—though
by 1859 he was thinking in terms of a collection of essays rather than a book—but no systematic
treatment of it ever came from his pen (see Feuer 1976).

This failure to produce anything on ethology is telling. In Mill’s conception of the structure of
the moral sciences ethology is the keystone which never falls into place. We may better see the
significance of this if we step back for a moment and distinguish three strands in nineteenth-
century thinking about the nature of society.

One broad strand is what may be called the organic-evolutionary paradigm, to which both Comte
and Marx in their different ways belonged. It is holistic in its vision of society, and its
explanations fall into functional and historicist moulds. Societies are functional systems, but with
their own internal evolutionary laws. Standing in sharp contrast to it is the analytical paradigm of
association psychology and political economy—the tradition of Hartley, Ricardo and James Mill.
It is individualist and deductive, it has no powerful vision of societies as organic and historical
entities which flourish, reproduce, evolve and decay. Finally, later in the nineteenth century,
there arises among German historians, philosophers and social theorists an interpretative or
hermeneutic paradigm, the historico-anthropological tradition of Schleiermacher, and of Dilthey
on the Geisteswissenschaften. This paradigm rejects the natural-scientific pretensions of the first
two.

All three paradigms are with us still. What Mill was trying to do was to learn from and to
criticise the organic paradigm, while holding to the perspective of the analytic school. He wanted
to show how the idea that human nature is historically conditioned, and the vision of the
historical evolution of societies, could be incorporated within the analytic school’s model of a
mature science as a deductive system in which phenomena are explained by reduction to the laws
of their elements. He was an individualist but he was not an atomist. He believed quite as
passionately as Marx that men make history and history makes men:

It is one of the characters, not absolutely peculiar to the sciences of human nature and society,
but belonging to them in a peculiar degree, to be conversant with a subject matter whose
properties are changeable….

The principal cause of this peculiarity is the extensive and constant reaction of the effects upon
their causes. The circumstances in which mankind are placed, operating according to their own
laws and to the laws of human nature, form the characters of the human beings; but the human
beings, in their turn, mould and shape the circumstances for themselves and for those who come
after them. (VIII 913)

But he had a cooler, philosophically more lucid, view of the relation between individual action
and social process because—though fired by the vision of a determinate historical evolution of
societies—he did not have to clear his mind of residual Hegelian fog about the ‘dialectic’ and its
ineffable historical laws.

The issue between the analytic and the organic school is partly a matter of logical analysis, and
here Mill’s penetration is unrivalled. Ultimately, however, it is a substantive, if vastly general,
question in social theory—with equally vast and indefinable ramifications for political
philosophy. Comte could be right. There could be nothing between biology and historical
sociology—between homo sapiens as a biological species and human beings as active, yet
historically and socially determined, elements in an organically unfolding social being. This
social organism could best be viewed functionally (Mill’s analysis contains nothing about the
status of functional or teleological laws). In this substantive context Mill’s perfectly sound
observation, that the laws of society cannot be heteropathic, is immaterial. An animal is nothing
over and above the cells from whose passing generations and their activities it is made up—but
that does not make it reasonable to try to deduce the properties of the animal from the properties
of its cells, or to deny the autonomous existence of the animal.

Individualism in social theory is a substantive presupposition and not a merely formal truism.
But I am not, in underlining that there is a substantive issue at stake, taking the side of Comtean
or Hegelian historicism on it. The historicist could point out that no new science of ethology has
come striding onto the scene. But then neither has the organic paradigm come up with the laws
of motion of social organisms. The passage of time has in practice confounded all the nineteenth
century’s prophets of a total social science, on both sides of this debate.

The third, hermeneutic, approach rejects visions of Unified Moral Science—be it Comtean
sociology or the Millian structure of a general science of society founded via ethology on the
laws of mind. Yet to reject Mill’s scientific utopianism is not to reject all, or most, of the
important elements in his vision. Compare Mill with Weber. One could argue, surprisingly
perhaps but plausibly, that on the most vital points there is agreement between them. Weber’s
philosophy of social science scales down drastically Mill’s vision of a unified and scientific
study of man and society. And it readjusts Mill’s emphases inasmuch as it focuses on
interpretative understanding as a central category in social theory— which is no more than one
would expect from a historian and sociologist trained in the German philosophical tradition, as
against a logician and economist trained in that of British empiricism.

Yet both combine individualism with a commitment to historical sociology. Weber’s account of
the use of ‘ideal types’ corresponds to Mill’s analysis of the ‘hypothetical or abstract’ (VIII 904)
sciences. Weber’s insistence that sociological generalisations become scientific only when
shown to be ‘meaningfully adequate’ corresponds to Mill’s insistence that social uniformities are
rendered scientific only when connected with psychological laws. Nor is Mill unaware of the
relationship between imagination and historical and anthropological sense. One only has to read
such essays as ‘Coleridge’ and ‘Bentham’, ‘Michelet’s “History of France’”, Thoughts on Poetry
and its Varieties’ — or, come to that, ‘Liberty’, with its emphasis on the imaginative grasp of
other ways of thinking and being, to realise that. The Autobiography is among other things the
history of one man’s imaginative progress towards ‘plenary possession’ of other men’s truths (I
175). Mill in social scientific mode may be dry, he may not indulge in twentieth-century
hermeneutic and phenomenological effusions, but he is remote from any kind of scientistic
philisrinism.
The important difference between Mill and Weber centres on the status of that knowledge of
human nature and its varieties in which both hold social science must be grounded. Where Mill
anticipates a future science of ethology, Weber more realistically sees only the recalcitrantly
unscientific interpretations of common sense. His story of the humorist who ‘produces his most
droll effects’ by intoning such generalisations as ‘whoever is pleased when someone is distressed
makes himself, on the whole, unpopular’ underlines the point neatly. Nor that all interpretative
knowledge is so banal—and when it is, its relevance and importance still have to be
imaginatively appropriated. But such maxims are not waiting to be ‘scientifically’ systematised
or deduced from fundamental psychological laws.

Mill is right to emphasise the ethological dimension, but thoroughly wrong in his Procrustean
scientific ambitions for it. It is not, and will not foreseeably be, a set of deductions from
scientific psychology. It is, rather, as it is conceived to be in the hermeneutic tradition, a
‘philosophical anthropology’: a matter of interpretative phronesis.10 If Mill’s dream of a
scientific ethology helped along the prejudice that there is nothing between science and
‘prejudice’, then the accusation so often levelled at utilitarians and positivists, of spawning the
scientistic fallacies of twentieth-century politics, sticks on him.

Ethology as philosophical anthropology still obeys the usual imperatives of clarity and
answerability to the facts. It still requires one to arrive at some conception of the relative
importance of human interests and tendencies, and their historical variability. If one calls it
intuitive one must immediately concede to Mill that it has no ‘intuitive certainty’: it remains as
conjectural and contestable as any science. But it is not a separate scientific speciality; it is a
practical feel, reflected in the working out of a concrete historical sociology, or in the concrete
interpretation of a culture.

In stressing these points the German hermeneutic tradition teaches a humane lesson. However
that is not to concede that interpretative social science has any special epistemological status.
The distinct and further claim that it has was also made for it in the Kantian tradition on which
Weber drew—for example by Dilthey. Not that Weber himself makes it —at the end of the day
he belongs as securely, if not as happily, in the naturalistic camp as Mill does. But does the claim
have any force?

10 Interpretation
The ‘Geisteswissenschaften—a German translator’s rendering of Mill’s ‘moral sciences’, yet
what a sea-change! In the German intellectual setting, the logic of the moral sciences fuses with
the epistemological critique of naturalism made by Kant. That critique produced a powerful case
for concluding that persons as knowing subjects and moral agents cannot be conceived
naturalistically. The mind—understood individually or socially—constructs nature. Such a
thesis, if true, could hardly fail to have profound philosophical consequences for our
understanding of the moral sciences.

We encountered these issues in 5–9, when we considered whether and in what sense there must
be a priori elements in reasoning, and in 7.4, where we examined the roots of Mill’s inductivism.
The Kantian claim against naturalism is that it inevitably leads to scepticism about our
fundamental principles of reasoning, and thus to disaster. But in 7.4 we suggested a naturalistic
line of reply. There were, we proposed, in fact two premises required to generate that scepticism
—naturalism, and the classical pre-understanding of meaning. If the classical pre-understanding
was rejected in favour of what we called the epistemic conception, it became possible to see how
some principles could have a weakly a priori role in our reasoning; this weak notion of the a
priori was all that was required to deflect the Kantian epistemological critique. Moreover, an
argument for this epistemic conception of what it is to think and to understand language emerged
from the naturalistic conception of the mind itself, when the consequences of its purely causal
analysis of reasoning were fully thought through.

However we also noted in 5.9 that the challenge should not be presented solely as an
epistemological one—of how, on the naturalistic view, we can have reason to believe anything.
Even if we are not driven to transcendental idealism, to the doctrine that nature is synthesised by
mind, in order to show how knowledge is possible, there still remains a further question: whether
on the naturalistic view we can make sense of ordinary hermeneutic categories—reasoning,
inferring, deliberating—at all.

In thinking of ourselves hermeneutically as agents and reasoners, we think of ourselves as

autonomous followers of objectively given rules. That is a central Kantian insight. And it is here
that a clash arises with our naturalistic self-image. We saw in 5.9 how it arises with respect to the
concept of inference. Inference seems to be a causal process and yet something more than, or
incommensurable with, a causal process. It involves the acausal recognition of a rule of reason.
Precisely the same can be said for the relation between motive or deliberation, and autonomous
action or choice.

Freedom of will is rational autonomy. That is a perfectly Millian conclusion (8.2). But can there
be such a thing as a naturalistic analysis of rational autonomy?

When I act because I have a belief and an objective which give me the reason to act, my action is
caused by my having that belief and that objective. If it is not, then I did not act for that reason.
Yet those mental states could cause that self-same behaviour, without the behaviour being a case
of intentional action at all. To take an example: suppose I dislike you so much that, seeing you
on a pedestrian crossing, I have an urge to run you over. It occurs to me that all I have to do is
leave my foot on the accelerator. I am so distracted by the attractiveness of doing that that I
forget to take my foot off the accelerator, with the result that I run you over—quite
unintentionally.11

I do not act for, or on the basis of, a reason, even though my behaviour is caused by mental states
which do indeed provide me with a reason for just that behaviour. The essential point is the same
as in the case of inference (5–9, p. 163)—where adding the belief that (P and P Q) entails Q
into the causal antecedents of the belief that Q did not guarantee that the causal process
constitutes an inference: that the conclusion was drawn on the basis of a reason. So too in the
case of analysing intentional action: adding further entities into the causal chain —such as
‘volitions’—will not help.

There cannot perhaps be a naturalistic analysis of inference or action: a set of logically necessary
and sufficient conditions couched in purely causal terms. We can still hope to state, in
naturalistic terms, the circumstances in which we are ready to apply these hermeneutic
categories: in which we are ready to treat a natural object as a reasoner and a free agent. They are
roughly, those in which its actions and beliefs ‘track’ what, hermeneutically speaking, we
recognise as good reasons for acting and believing.12 But we cannot reduce the hermeneutic
image to the naturalistic one by defining rational autonomy in terms of them.

Rational autonomy is the ability to recognise and act upon rules: rules constitutive of rationality
and society. When we take the actor’s point of view, the social Lebenswelt appears as constituted
by rules which claim our adherence as regulating action and role, just as, when we take the
reasoner’s point of view, rationality appears as constituted by rules which claim our adherence as
regulating thought. The existence of these rules cannot be reduced to the naturalistic level, any
more than responding to them can be. But we cannot conclude that they give us some new, non-
naturalistic domain of fact. The temptation to treat rule-following as tracking a ‘third realm’ of
non-natural fact is an illusion generated when our hermeneutic self-understanding collides with
our attempt to think of ourselves as objects in the world. From it arise the classical pre-
understanding of meaning, and realism about the rule-constituted moral and social domain.

Thus individualism about the social realm may in one respect be regarded as a special case of the
naturalistic view. What is right in it is that there is no domain of rule-constituted social fact. But
it does not follow that there are no objective rules of action, or that their existence can be reduced
to the mental states and physical circumstances of individuals alone, any more than it follows
from the non-existence of a Platonic realm of logical objects that there are no objective rules of
reason. When individuals are interpreted hermeneutically, as reasoners and agents, we already
posit the existence of objective rules to which they and we respond.

If we conclude that there is irreducible disagreement about what rule to apply in some domain,
we are left with two options. We can treat those who disagree with us at the purely naturalistic
level, or we can conclude that there is no objective answer as to which is the right rule. In that
case we take up the naturalistic stance towards our own ‘rule’ — treating it as a fact about us,
rather than an objective requirement.

Seen at the naturalistic level, the only visible fact underpinning the objectivity of rules is our
own ideal convergence on them. But, taking the hermeneutic view, we cannot say that their
objectivity is constituted by ideal convergence. To understand a person interpretatively is to
conceive of him as following principles of inference and action independently, in his own right,
not as exhibiting certain shared dispositions of human nature.

For Dilthey, the epistemology of the Geisteswissenschaften required a critique of historical

reason, deducing its a priori categories of interpretation. Without following Dilthey’s ideas about
what these categories were, we can at least see a certain truth in the idea itself, Interpretation is
indeed an activity with its own irreducible, a priori categories; the categories of rational
autonomy and of a rule-constituted domain to which it responds.

Does the naturalistic perspective conflict with the hermeneutic view— dispersing it into thin air?
Somehow we have to balance three apparently irreconcilable elements: recognising the primacy
of the naturalistic level, we must show how descriptions at the hermeneutic level can simul-
taneously be in some sense acceptable and irreducible. Wittgenstein’s view in his later work—on
a reading which I find plausible—is of this kind: the hermeneutic perspective is ‘all right’, and
irreducible, yet in some sense not fundamental: its status must be philosophically grasped in the
naturalistic perspective. The philosophical challenge is to show how the balancing act is
performed without reducing it to an act.

Let us finally return to Mill’s belief in the primacy of psychology. Must there be laws of mind—
in the sense he envisages? Explanations of human behaviour come at three levels.13 The first
sees human beings as physical systems and describes them purely in terms of the vocabulary of
the physical sciences. The second sees them as ‘black boxes’ and describes the contents of the
boxes in the functional terms of a designer or engineer. At this level human beings are seen as
systems which receive, process, store, retrieve and act on information. Both these levels belong
to naturalistic, or ‘scientific’, psychology. But the third sees them in what I have called the
hermeneutic perspective, as rational agents.

The split between these naturalistic levels of description and the hermeneutic level goes right
through current psychology. Scientific psychology is increasingly a matter of looking for
detailed models of the brain which can explain how human beings—or artefacts—have their
psychological powers—perceiving, remembering, problem-solving, motor skills and so on—in
terms of physical mechanisms which instantiate them. On the other hand, other parts of
psychology—such as ‘depth psychology’, or the study of the interaction of personality and social
context—are extensions of the hermeneutic concepts with which we understand each other and
society.

So instead of Mill’s psychology and ethology we are left with scientific psychology, which
operates at the natural-scientific level, and what I have called philosophical anthropology, which
operates at the hermeneutic level and provides the interpretative basis for the historical and social
sciences. I have suggested that the latter cannot be strictly reduced to the former. Yet even
though it is not deducible from scientific psychology, only the facts studied by scientific
psychology underlie it, and give it the viability as objective discourse that it does have. It has no
distinctive facts, over and above those, to call its own.

We do not know how the relation between the two may eventually be seen. It may be that
scientific psychology will eventually make big substantive differences to our hermeneutic self-
understanding—or it may not. But it cannot deflate the central notion of rational autonomy
without also undermining itself. On that point the Kantian critique of naturalism survives all
challenge.
9
Utilitarianism
1 Introductory
Utilitarianism first appeared in 1861 in Frazer’s Magazine and was published in book form in
1863. It presents and defends the philosophical foundations of utilitarianism; thus, in Mill’s own
estimate, of his entire moral and political views. It was written for the general reader. It is not a
technical treatise of philosophy, like the System of Logic; neither is it a carefully polished piece
of political argument, as On Liberty is. It falls somewhere between, and most of its strengths and
weaknesses stem from that. It is brief, incisive, eloquent. Yet philosophically fundamental points
such as Mill deals with in this essay cannot simultaneously be made with succinct vividness and
also be subjected to patient dialectic. That makes Utilitarianism intensely tantalising: there is a
lucidity and basic rightness of approach which always brings one back to it, but the very things it
gets right seem to cry out for more painstaking explanation and careful defence.

Three cardinal features of Utilitarianism will occupy us in this chapter.

First there is Mill’s conception of well-being, or human good— ‘utility’; his claim that all human
ends are encompassed within happiness as ‘parts’ or ‘ingredients’, and his way of supporting that
claim in its two aspects—that happiness is an ultimate end, and that all other human ends are
valued either as means to or as ‘parts’ of happiness. Much in this is impressive and wise; but the
second thesis, though defended with subtlety and depth, remains a central weakness in Mill’s
philosophy. Admittedly, it makes little actual difference to his substantive ethical and political
views, because his practical recognition of the diversity of human ends outweighs his notional
adherence to the idea of them as all ‘ingredients of happiness’. But we shall see that it vitiates the
substructure of his political philosophy at a strategic point.

A second feature of Utilitarianism is the way Mill argues from an analysis of what is ultimately
desirable or good for an individual, to a conclusion about what the ultimate ‘test’ of all conduct,
and hence, in particular, the ‘foundation of morality’, is. The general strategy—from an account
of individual human good to a conclusion about the object of morality—is thoroughly sound;
there can be no other. But Mill did not see deeply into the pitfalls that lie in its way. His
comments about the transition from individual good to general utility are rudimentary. Mill
always took it for granted that the defence of the Principle of Utility turned on a teleological
view of practical reasoning, and a hedonistic view of human good. Once these two things were
established, the transition to aggregate happiness as the ultimate test of conduct would follow
directly. In this he was quite wrong—the transition raises questions about the foundation of
utilitarianism which came to be analysed only in Sidgwick’s Methods of Ethics. If Mill’s
hedonism is one central flaw in the foundations of his moral and political philosophy, his failure
to see how problematic this transition is, is the other, and more damaging one.

The third main feature of Utilitarianism is Mill’s conception of the Utility Principle as the
ultimate ‘test of conduct’, and ‘foundation of morality’ itself—the very notion, that is, that
morality has such a thing as a foundation—and his distinctive conception of how that foundation
relates to the actual precepts, prohibitions, ideals and goals by which individual life and public
policy are conducted. In particular Mill argues powerfully that intuitively acceptable canons of
justice can be harmonised with the criterion of aggregate utility. The thesis that happiness is the
only end needlessly vitiates the argument, as we shall see. But the whole question of how a
system of practices relates to the ultimate criteria of those practices is a delicate one, and Mill’s
view of it is not as simple as he sometimes allows it to appear. On the contrary, it sets a standard
of civilised maturity which his critics have all too often failed to attain.

In Utilitarianism as elsewhere Mill develops his position as part of the larger battle between the
school of experience and the a priori school: in this case the ‘inductive’ and the ‘intuitive’
schools of ethics (UI3, X 206). His attitude towards the intuitive school is distinctly restrained.
He recognises that a philosophy which takes some moral principles to be intuitively self-evident
is not thereby forced to treat ‘ordinary precepts of morals’ as having ‘a priori authority’. It may
hold that they must be tested by an underlying principle, and that this principle alone is self-
evident. He plainly thinks that in practice all such efforts to rationalise ordinary precepts are
perfunctory, the social effect of intuitionism being simply to consecrate unreflective prejudice.
Still, since his object is to persuade readers of the Principle of Utility, rather than to debate the
epistemology of morality, he hastens to point out that an a priori theorist could endorse the
principle, and even that ‘to all those a priori moraliscs who deem it necessary to argue at all,
utilitarian arguments are indispensable’ (UI4, X 206).

His own case for the Utility Principle must of course be a naturalistic one. But ‘questions of
ultimate ends are not amenable to direct proof’ (UI5, X 207). Hence arises the problem of
method which preoccupies him in the introductory ‘General Remarks’ and in chapter iv. He must
explain in what sense ‘right and wrong’ can be ‘questions of observation and experience’ (UI3,
X 206), and, in the words of the title of chapter iv, ‘of what sort of proof the principle of utility is
susceptible’.

A claim about the summum bonum, about what is ultimately good, ‘is not a subject- of what is
commonly understood by proof’, but

we are not…to infer that its acceptance or rejection must depend on blind impulse, or arbitrary
choice. There is a larger meaning of the word proof, in which this question is as amenable to it as
any other of the disputed questions of philosophy. Considerations may be presented capable of
determining the intellect either to give or withhold its assent to the doctrine; and this is
equivalent to proof. (UI5, X 208)

Mill’s defence of the Principle of Utility is to be understood as a ‘proof’ only in this larger,
suasive sense.

2 The ‘proof’ of the Principle of Utility

The ‘proof is brevity itself; yet examining the issues it raises will take some considerable time.
So let us begin by setting out its structure.

It has three steps. First, Mill argues that happiness is desirable because everyone does in fact
desire it; second, that since each person’s happiness is ‘a good to that person’, the ‘general
happiness’ must be ‘a good to the aggregate of all persons’. ‘Happiness has made out its title as
one of the ends of conduct, and consequently one of the criteria of morality’ (UIV3, X 234).
Finally he tries to show that happiness is the only thing desired, and hence the only criterion of
morality.

His presentation of the first two steps is succinct: he devotes most of the chapter to defending the
third step, rightly supposing that the claim that happiness is the only thing desired will seem
implausible. But the first two steps have come under sharpest attack: Mill stands accused of
committing glaring logical blunders. His brevity certainly does something to invite such
accusations, but they are not justified. As we have just seen, he explicitly states that a proof, in
the commonly understood sense of the word, of the Utility Principle, or any other ultimate
principle, cannot be given. So he is not claiming to present a deductively valid argument—which
is what one must assume him to be doing to pin on him the familiar fallacies.

However, it is one thing to acquit a philosophical argument of simple logical fallacy, another to
vindicate it as suasive. Consider the first step. Mill begins with an analogy which has become
notorious:

The only proof capable of being given that an object is visible, is that people actually see it. The
only proof that a sound is audible is that people hear it: and so of the other sources of our
experience. In like manner, I apprehend, the sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything
is desirable, is that people do actually desire it. (UIV3, X 234)

This polemical tour de force has cost Mill dear. It follows definitionally from the fact that people
see or hear a thing, that it is visible or audible. It does not follow definitionally from the fact that
people desire a thing that it is desirable. ‘Visible’ means ‘capable of being seen’; ‘desirable’
means (by and large—it is not really all that clear-cut) ‘worthy of being desired’. To deny that
the passage trades rhetorically on keeping quiet about the difference between the two would be
disingenuous. Still, analogies apart, the position is strictly as Mill says it is: the only possible
‘evidence’ (note, incidentally, this shift from ‘the only proof’ to ‘the sole evidence’) that
something is desirable is indeed that people desire it—or come to desire it on experience or
reflection. And it is really quite clear that Mill was perfectly aware that the inference, from a
thing being generally desired to its being desirable, is not a definitional or, in his terms, a ‘merely
apparent’ one.

So Mill is not committing G.E.Moore’s ‘naturalistic fallacy’.1 But what then is he doing?
‘Happiness is desirable’ is neither a verbal truth nor an a priori intuition. Nor is it deduced from
the premise that happiness is desired. It is established by an appeal to reflective practice: ‘if the
end which the utilitarian doctrine were not, in theory and in practice, acknowledged to be an end,
nothing could ever convince any person that it was so’ (UIV3, X 234). Mill’s way of vindicating
the claim that happiness is desirable, is exactly analogous to his way of vindicating the claim that
enumerative induction is rational. It may have been unacceptable to his later intuitionistic critics;
but it is what any naturalistic philosopher will rightly regard as sound. The objectivity of
happiness as an end is, and can only be, grounded in reflective agreement; not in this case of
spontaneous reasoning propensities, but of spontaneous desires. Nor, as we shall see, is there
anything trivial about this naturalistic appeal to reflectively analysed desires—though that,
admittedly, hardly emerges in Mill’s treatment.

The second step of the proof is far less happy:

each person’s happiness is a good to that person, and the general happiness, therefore, a good to
the aggregate of all persons. Happiness has made out its title as one of the ends of conduct, and
consequently one of the criteria of morality. (UIV3, X 235)

So far as this goes, it ought again to be uncontroversial. It is obvious in context that Mill is
putting forward a methodological rule, not drawing a would-be deductive inference. At the very
beginning of the ‘proof’ he states the utilitarian doctrine and asks: ‘What ought to be required of
this doctrine—what conditions is it requisite that the doctrine should fulfill—to make good its
claim to be believed?’ (UIV2, X 234). The next paragraph, in which the passage we are now
considering occurs, provides an answer to that question: to establish that happiness is the human
end is to establish that it is the criterion of morality.

Morality is a human institution. The criteria for assessing that institution, and if necessary
changing it, are determined by its purpose. But morality has no supernaturally revealed or
transcendentally given purpose, any more than an individual human being has. There is no point
of view external to human agreement from which this purpose can be determined. So the
question is, what must society— ‘the aggregate of all persons’ —what must we, as a deliberating
human community, recognise as its end? The only possible answer is, the good of individual
human beings. If each person’s happiness is at least one of the elements of his good, then the
general happiness must be at least one end, and hence criterion, of morality.

‘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/ But why should I take the good of
individual human beings taken as a whole, rather than my own individual good, as the ultimate
criterion of my conduct? Mill would undoubtedly have replied that no further reason can be
given. Fair enough—the authority of the general good can be elucidated, but it cannot be
demonstrated; we must not ask Mill for the impossible. However, there still remains a further
question —what is meant by ‘the good of individual human beings, taken as a whole’?

Mill takes it for granted that one aggregates individual goods. But this should not be accepted as
obvious. For there is a vital question at stake: on what principles should the good of individuals
be incorporated into the general good? What is the distributive structure of the general good? If
happiness is a human good, then certainly general happiness is an object of morality. But that
does not tell us that the right way of conceiving general happiness is as a simple sum of the
happiness of individuals. The general happiness must indeed be a function of the happiness of
individuals, but it does not follow that it must be a straightforward aggregative function. These
issues are not broached at all by Mill, but in recent philosophy the spotlight has moved onto
them. One cannot now simply restate or amplify a Millian ‘proof’ of utilitarianism. What
replaces it, if it can be replaced at all, will inevitably be more complex and less rhetorically
effective.

We will now consider the questions raised by Mill’s ‘proof’ in detail. I shall change their order,
leaving the second step, which we have just been considering, till last. So we have the following
stages of argument:

(1) Happiness is a human good; part of an individual’s utility or well-being.

(2) Happiness is the only human good; an individual’s utility or well-being consists of nothing
other than his happiness.

(3) The Greatest Happiness Principle is the ultimate test of all human conduct.

3 The objectivity of ends: (i) Humean scepticism

To see stage 1 in its proper light, we must first notice two connected philosophical
preconceptions about practical rationality. They were no part of Mill’s thought, but they have
had a powerful influence on moral philosophy in this century; if we do not set them explicitly
aside they will cloud our understanding of what Mill is doing.

The first is Humean scepticism. In its properly sceptical form, this denies that there is
deliberation about ends, because it denies that there are objective ends. By the same token, there
are no categorical reasons for acting. A person can only be said to have reason to act relative to
an objective. The truth-condition for such a statement— ‘X has reason to do Y relative to O’—is
factual: ‘X’s doing Y would raise the chance of achieving O’. To that we can only add the brute
fact that people have desires. They will be interested only in those reasons for action which are
directed to states of affairs which they already want to promote.

When I reason about what to do, I reason relative to my objectives. The deliberative ‘should’,
when fully spelt out, is ineliminably indexical: I should do X relative to my objectives. It owes its
practical force to this indexicality. I can of course draw conclusions about what I should do
relative to this or that objective; but so long as I have not identified that objective as mine, the
conclusions carry no commitment to action: they have not been detached as conclusions about
what I should do. Again, when I give a person advice about what to do, it is normally taken for
granted that my reasons are relative to his objectives. If my advice assumes objectives which I
have reason to think are not his, and which are not already implicit, then I should make the fact
clear.

A view of this kind need not simply equate a person’s projects, commitments or objectives with
his desires. A person can distance himself or identify himself with a desire. He can allow it to
affect his behaviour, and even so to speak encourage it, or he can refuse to allow it to influence
his behaviour, ignore it or try to school himself out of it. Both are reflective activities, both
presuppose that one can stand back from a desire, deliberate about whether to promote it, and on
occasion choose to ignore it. That this is possible is a commonplace of self-knowledge. A desire
which I could not refrain from acting on would be obsessive, excusing me to some degree from
responsibility for the action.

The account we have sketched does give an adequate picture of day-to-day, as against reflective,
discussion and deliberation about what to do—just because day-to-day discussion takes an
assumed context of objectives for granted. I do not, in my ordinary deliberation, raise questions
about what my ultimate ends should be, nor, when giving everyday advice, do I raise questions
about whether the other person’s objectives, relative to which I am giving the advice, are the
right ones for him to have. But the mistake comes when we try to transform this account into a
total philosophical conception of practical reasoning.

Certainly there can be no reconstructing Mill’s argument within such a framework. What
possible relevance, on this view, could the fact that everyone desires happiness have to the claim
that happiness is desirable? That claim itself, that happiness is categorically desirable, can have
no content. All that can be said is that if a person makes his own happiness an objective, then
that objective rationalises for him actions which will promote his happiness. But if he makes
anything else his objective, then exactly the same applies.

What Mill wants to establish, by contrast, is the desirability of happiness as such. He thinks that
there is such a thing as a person’s objective good, and he wants to establish that it consists
exclusively in that person’s happiness. Only if that is grasped can one make sense of his
subsequent move: from the notion of an individual’s good, to the Principle of Utility. To describe
something as a part of a person’s good is at least to say that he has categorical reason to pursue
it. That is to say, there is reason for him to pursue it, whether or not he accepts that there is, or
happens at a given time, in given circumstances, to want to pursue it. A person’s good is what
endures, exercising a rational claim on him, through changing moods. It remains to be shown, of
course, that if there is reason for him to pursue it, others have categorical reason to pursue it too.
But that is matter for stage 3 of the ‘proof’. At the moment we are elucidating the relationship
between the claim that everyone desires happiness, and the assertion Mill bases on it, that
happiness is desirable.

4 The objectivity of ends: (ii) the desire-satisfaction model

The properly sceptical version of the Humean position, according to which there is no such thing
as an objective human good, slides easily into something different: the idea that a person’s
objective good consists in the satisfaction of his desires.

If ‘all there is’ is what a person wants—so the argument might go— then one has reason to do a
thing if and only if it promotes the satisfaction of one’s wants. This encapsulates a crucial shift:
from the thesis that a person can be said to have reason to do something only relative to certain
objectives, together with the brute fact that some objectives motivate him while others do not, to
the thesis that he has categorical reason to do something just if it satisfies his wants. On the latter
view, we can indeed talk objectively about a person’s good, or his utility: it is whatever satisfies
his wants. I shall call this the ‘desire-satisfaction’ model of utility, or individual good.

Two preliminary points about it should be made. First, the satisfaction of a desire means nothing
more than that the state of affairs desired obtains. The desire that P is satisfied just if P. Second,
we should distinguish motivated and unmotivated desires (the terms are from Nagel 1970:
chapter V). A motivated desire can itself be explained in terms of further beliefs and desires. I
want to go to the station, because I want to catch a train to London, because I want to spend a
day in London looking around art galleries. I just want to look around art galleries, I do not want
to do it for any further reason. So that is an unmotivated want. On the desire-satisfaction model,
the unmotivated wants—and only the unmotivated wants—that a person has at a time ground his
reasons for acting at that time. So we can state the desire-satisfaction model thus:

DS: (a) The fact that an action X promotes the satisfaction of an unmotivated desire that A has
at a given time rationalises A’s doing X at that time.

(b) Nothing other than a fact of this form rationalises A’s doing X.

How strong a person’s reason to do an action is will depend on the number of desires that action
will satisfy, weighted presumably by their intensity, and by the probability that the action will
satisfy them. If we now define a person’s good, or his utility, along these lines we shall have, as
the basic postulate of practical rationality, that a person should maximise his utility.

An unnoticed shift from Humean scepticism is not the only thing that lends colour to this model.
At least as important is an argument which turns on the two-sided character of the notion of a
reason—the fact that it plays a role in the explaining as well as the justifying of actions. The
argument is influential, but hard to state clearly. One premise is what might be called the
requirement that reasons have motivating force, which states that anything that can in and of
itself constitute a reason for an agent to act, must be capable of being, in and of itself, the reason
why the agent does act. The other premise is the idea that in any full account of a person’s
reasons for acting there must be reference to a desire which he had at that time, and which caused
him to act. Given something like these two premises, the desire-satisfaction model seems to
follow. If it does, then in particular it is going to follow that the desires that ultimately ground
reasons for a person to act at a given time must be reasons that that person has at that time.

To read such a view into Mill’s moral psychology is to interpret him through the spectacles of
twentieth-century philosophy. If the result is to make nonsense of what he says, the fault is the
interpreter’s, not Mill’s. Mill keeps closely to the data of self-knowledge; the desire-satisfaction
model does not.

Assume that DS is correct. We then ask: is happiness to be defined in terms of desire-

satisfaction? Suppose first of all that it is. There would then be no point in arguing that happiness
is desirable, and no point in basing any such argument on the claim that everyone in fact desires
happiness. No point in arguing it, because it follows directly from the desire-satisfaction model,
together with a definition of happiness as desire satisfaction, that I should maximise my
happiness. And certainly no point in arguing it on the basis that everyone does in fact desire
happiness. For what could that assertion mean? It would either be the cautology that everyone
desires whatever it is that they desire, and thus not a matter of fact at all. Or it might be the claim
that everyone has a second-order desire that their first-order desires in general be satisfied.
Neither of these helps to show that happiness—understood as desire satisfaction—is desirable.
That has already been accepted as soon as one accepts DS and the definition of happiness as
desire-satisfaction.

But not only does Mill appeal to the fact that people desire happiness, in order to show that
happiness is desirable—he also devotes a good deal of space to showing, or trying to show, that
as a matter of ‘fact and experience’, happiness is the only thing desired, in order to show that it is
the only thing desirable. On the assumptions we are considering this would be futile. The
assertion that we only desire happiness would, again, reduce either to the irrelevant tautology
that we only desire whatever we desire, or even more absurdly, it would amount to the claim that
the only desire we have is a second-order desire that our first-order desires in general be satisfied.

However happiness is not to be equated with desire satisfaction. It is one thing to say that an
object will be enjoyable, quite another to say that it will satisfy a present desire. A desire I have
may be satisfied without my even knowing it. (Remember that the desire that P is satisfied just if
P.) The point is perfectly compatible with Mill’s claim, which we shall examine later, that ‘to
desire anything, except in proportion as the idea of it is pleasant, is a physical and metaphysical
impossibility’ (UIV10, X 238). In fact it follows from it. Expectations of pleasure are fallible. I
may expect something to be pleasant and turn out to be wrong, or fail to realise that it would be
pleasant and hence fail to desire it. Thus what will make a person happy and what will satisfy his
current desires can diverge. For example, someone who has always liked going on big dippers
may want to go on one, without realising that the medicine he has been prescribed will make him
sick and dizzy if he does. He expects the ride to be fun, and he satisfies his desire to go on it by
doing so, but he does not enjoy the ride.

So let us ask what follows from the desire-satisfaction model if happiness is no longer equated
with desire satisfaction. It might still be said that we do in fact desire our own happiness—we
have an unmotivated desire to promote our happiness as such. That, in combination with DS,
would imply that we have reason to promote it. It might further be argued that, when we
reflectively analyse our motives, we come to see that our happiness is the only thing we
ultimately desire: every other desire is motivated by it. For example, the person who wants to go
on the big dipper has that motivated desire because he expects the ride to be fun and wants to
enjoy himself. It would then follow, in combination with DS, that the one and only thing that
anyone has reason to promote is his own happiness.

It is important again to see that this position is not Mill’s. Mill is, consciously and insistently,
neither a ‘psychological’ nor an ‘ethical’ egoist; in contrast the desire-satisfaction model, on the
present version of it, implies both forms of egoism. Nor does Mill hold the view of motivation
which I noted earlier as being one of the sources of the desire-satisfaction model. He does not
think that whenever we act for a reason, we act out of a desire. Let us consider these three points
in turn.

The desire-satisfaction model, in its present version, subtly falsifies the motives of the man who
wants to go on the big dipper. He does not go on because he wants pleasure and thinks that going
on the big dipper will be pleasant. He simply wants to go on the big dipper. He would not, it is
true, have that unmotivated want if he did not find the prospect a pleasant one. But that does not
mean that the desire to go on the big dipper is motivated by a desire for pleasure as such. It is in
its own right an unmotivated desire.

The importance of this Butlerian distinction is clear if one asks, for example, why a
spontaneously generous person—who gives a present to someone just because he takes pleasure
in the prospect of giving pleasure - is not acting self-interestedly. Mill marks it by distinguishing
between ends pursued as parts of, and as means to, happiness; we shall come to the contrast in
9.5. For the moment I note only that the view which we are presently considering simply
obliterates it.

It is also a consequence of that view that a person has reason to do an action only to the extent
that doing that action will promote his own happiness. So for each person, the test or criterion of
any received moral practice is the degree to which it promotes his happiness. But this is not
Mill’s view. On the contrary, the whole purpose of the ‘proof’ is to establish the general
happiness as the ultimate test of morality—and not only of morality, but of all the departments of
practical reasoning, including prudence. On Mill’s explicitly stated view, the rationality of
prudence is founded on the Principle of Utility, and not vice versa. (See, for example, System of
Logic vi.ii.5, 6, VIII 949–52.)

Finally, while Mill argues, in chapter iv of Utilitarianism, that whenever a person desires a thing,
he desires it as a part of, or means to, his happiness, he rejects in that same chapter the thesis that
whenever a person acts, he acts to satisfy a desire. On the contrary, at the end of it he insists
‘positively and emphatically’

that the will is a different thing from desire; that a person of confirmed virtue, or any other
person whose purposes are fixed, carries out his purposes without any thought of the pleasure he
has in contemplating them, or expects to derive from their fulfilment; and persists in acting on
them, even though these pleasures are much diminished, by changes in his character or decay of
his passive sensibilities, or are outweighed by the pains which the pursuit of the purposes may
bring upon him…. Will, the active phenomenon, is a different thing from desire, the state of
passive sensibility, and though originally an off-shoot from it, may in time take root and detach
itself from the parent stock; so much so, that in the case of an habitual purpose, instead of willing
the thing because we desire it, we often desire it only because we will it. (UIV11, X 238)

‘Moral freedom’, conceived as rational autonomy, is a focal concept in Mill’s thought; and
rational autonomy encompasses the autonomous man’s ability to govern his desires when he has
reason to do so. In this context too—in the discussion of liberty and necessity in the System of
Logic (vi.ii) —we find Mill accepting that every action is caused, but denying that every action is
caused by a desire:

When the will is said to be determined by motives, a motive does not mean always, or solely, the
anticipation of a pleasure or of a pain…. A habit of willing is commonly called a purpose; and
among the causes of our volitions, and of the actions which flow from them, must be reckoned
not only likings and aversions, but also purposes. (VIII 842)

So purposes, habits of willing, are not to be identified with desires, which involve the
anticipation of a pleasure or aversion to a pain.

To be sure, Mill’s efforts in this passage to accommodate the position of Kantian friends do not
get to the bottom of the case. Acting habitually is one thing, acting out of the belief that an action
is right is another. It would be impossible to hold that Mill had a fully clear view of what it is to
act for a reason, as against acting heteronomously, or that he had any full sense of the difficulties
posed for the very notion of rational action by the naturalistic stance (8.2, 8.10). Nor need we
defend his associationist explanation of the distinctness of will and desire. It is enough for
present purposes that he recognises the fact.

If I do a thing, then it truistically follows that I have a motivated desire to do it, but it need not be
the case that there is any unmotivated desire from which I do it. Mill forcefully asserts the
possibility and value of a ‘confirmed will to do right’ (UIV11, X 238), independent of motives of
pleasure and pain. But of course that ‘virtuous will’ cannot for him be an intrinsic good in the
sense in which it is for Kant; it is

a means to good, not intrinsically a good; and does not contradict the doctrine that nothing is
good to human beings but in so far as it is either itself pleasurable, or a means of attaining
pleasure or averting pain. (UIV11, X 239)

His claim, then, is not that we act only out of a desire for happiness, but that in some sense—yet
to be examined—we only desire happiness. Equally clearly, he does not think that the only
reason I have for acting is to promote my own happiness. The whole point of the ‘proof’ is to
establish that general utility provides a reason for acting: the only ultimate reason. He sees
general utility not only as the foundation of morality, but as the foundation of practical
rationality as such.

Mill could not consistently have subscribed to DS, since we are obviously not possessed by an
exclusive desire to promote general utility, nor of course did Mill think that we are. (Or even that
we should be.) Nor is there any basis for ascribing to him an inconsistent allegiance to DS. He
never states any such thesis, nor does he accept either of the positions which I earlier suggested
were sources for it. As we have just seen, he plainly—and rightly—would have rejected the
motivating force argument. He does not think that a consideration can only move me to action if
it interacts with an unmotivated desire by entailing that the action would promote that desire.

Nor is he a Humean sceptic. Like Hume, of course, he takes a rigorously naturalistic view of
ethics. But as was emphasised in chapter 1, the two naturalistic responses—sceptical denial of
objective value, and the defence of objectivity by appeal to ideal convergence—sharply diverge.
On this point there is no reason to put Mill in the camp of Hume, or the modern revival of Hume.
The doctrine that reason is the slave of the passions arises from an alliance between scepticism
about practical reason and a simplistic philosophy of mind. It would be unhistorical to read it
into Mill, because he forms part of a nineteenth-century reaction against precisely such
eighteenth-century positions as these.

5 Hedonism
It is only when Mill gets down to arguing that ‘there is in reality nothing desired except
happiness’ (UIV8, X 237) that the subtlety of his case, which he sacrifices in the first few
paragraphs of the chapter for the sake of incisiveness, begins to show. He concedes that in the
ordinary sense in which people desire happiness, they desire other things too:

it is palpable that they do desire things which, in common language, are decidedly distinguished
from happiness. They desire, for example, virtue, and the absence of vice, no less really than
pleasure and the absence of pain. The desire of virtue is not as universal, but it is as authentic a
fact, as the desire of happiness. And hence the opponents of the utilitarian standard deem that
there are other ends of human action besides happiness, and that happiness is not the standard of
approbation and disapprobation. (UIV4, X 234–5)

The case for happiness as the sole end cannot then rest as straightforwardly on the fact that it
alone is desired as Mill initially made out. He modulates to a more subtle argument.

There are two central points. First, to desire something for its own sake—to have, in our
terminology, an unmotivated desire for it—is to desire it as a ‘part’ or an ‘ingredient of
happiness’. Second, our stock of ‘primitive’ or ‘original’ desires can be enlarged by processes of
association, so that things not originally desired, such as virtue, can come to be the objects of
desires which are strong and permanent, and become principal ingredients of ‘the individual’s
conception of happiness’ (UIV6, X 236)—as the accumulation of money becomes an end in
itself for the miser, and a part of his happiness.

The second point is important and obviously has much truth in it. But it is the first point which
must be elucidated further if we are to understand the logic of the ‘proof’.

Why does Mill talk of things which, either primitively, or through processes of experience and
education, we desire for themselves, in this rather strange way—as ‘parts’ or ‘ingredients’ of
happiness? He wants to resist the rempting but fallacious shift, from saying that a thing is desired
only inasmuch as it is thought of as being pleasant, to saying that it is never desired for itself, but
always as a means to happiness. The distinction involved is important, yet extraordinarily
difficult to elicit in any form of words which is not misleading.

Suppose I am thirsty, and want a drink of water. That is not a desire motivated by my
unmotivated general desire for happiness, or enjoyable experience (as, for example, a desire to
taste a dish which I have never tried before and which you have told me is delicious—frogs’ legs
— might be). Nevertheless, it is only because I see drinking a glass of water as pleasurable that I
want to drink. Remove the idea of the water as pleasant and you remove the desire for it.

The desire is for the particular object itself. It is desired as an end in itself, but it is desired under
the idea of it as pleasant. Consider again the difference between the authentically generous man
and the conscientious giver. The generous man desires to give because he takes pleasure in
giving. It is just the unmotivated pleasure in giving others pleasure that constitutes him a
generous man. Or consider a father playing with his children. He plays with them because he
wants to; he wants to simply because he enjoys it. The act of giving is part of the happiness of
the generous man. Playing with his children is part of the happiness of the father. They do these
things because they enjoy them—but we cannot say that they do them in order to get that
pleasure or enjoyment. That would be to represent the motive involved as egotistic, which is just
what it is not.

Mill’s rejection of psychological egoism is clear-cut. It was one of the points on which he took
himself to be at odds with Bentham, and he laboured to show that the associationist theory of
motivation did not have psychological egoism as its consequence. His most extended criticism of
Bentham, in this respect, occurs in his ‘Remarks on Bentham’s Philosophy’ of 1833 (X 5–18,
esp. 12–15).

Bentham, Mill says, starts from the fundamental principle ‘that the actions of sentient beings are
wholly determined by pleasure and pain’ (X 12). In this essay, Mill does not disagree. (We have
just seen that by the time he wrote the System of Logic he did.) But he objects to Bentham’s way
of putting it; as a ‘philosophical axiom, that men’s actions are always obedient to their interests’.
Bentham, it is true, recognised the motive of sympathy as an ‘interest’, and he distinguished
between the self-regarding and the social ‘interests’. But in ‘vulgar discourse’, as Mill says,
‘interest’ means self-regarding interest, and he thinks that Bentham tends to slide between the
two, assuming in practice that men are necessarily dominated by their selfish interests.

However, Mill also grapples with a more fundamental point, which is directly relevant to the
present issue. He rightly thinks that the doctrine that all actions are determined by pleasure and
pain does not entail that men always act in self-interested pursuit of pleasure or avoidance of
pain. But his way of making the point is less convincing. He distinguishes between acting in
pursuit of an ‘interest’ and acting on an ‘impulse’. In the first case we act to attain or avoid
expected pleasures or pains, ‘to which we look forward as the consequences of our acts’ (X 12),
seeing the acts as means to pleasure; in the second case on the other hand, we do or omit to do an
act out of pleasure or pain at the prospect of it. If I act impulsively, I act because the prospect of
attaining my goal is pleasant to me. But I am not acting selfishly, in pursuit of my own expected
pleasure.

There is certainly something right about this. The man who spontaneously wants to go on the big
dipper, takes present pleasure in the prospect of doing so. So does the father who spontaneously
wants to play with his children. But there is also something wrong. In the first place, the
distinction between impulse and calculated pursuit is not the essential one. There can be selfish
impulses and unselfish calculations. More importantly, it is not the present pleasure which
motivates—in the sense of providing reason to do—the action. (How could my present pleasure
in contemplating a course of action give me reason to do it, as against reason to go on
contemplating doing it?) Pleasure in the prospect of doing something is anticipatory: I take
pleasure in the prospect of doing the thing because I think it would be pleasant to do. The point
that ought to be emphasised is that even when a person does something because he thinks it will
be pleasant—like the generous man who gives a present—it still does not follow that he is acting
selfishly. The generous man does think that the act of giving pleasure will be a pleasant one, and
he wants to do it and feels pleasure in the prospect of doing it, in virtue of thinking that. Yet what
he warms to is the prospect of giving, not the prospect of getting pleasure. His desire to give is
not motivated by the desire to get pleasure. He is not a viveur, pursuing the pleasures of giving.
But if giving was not a pleasure to him, if he did not do it because he enjoyed it, he could not be
called a spontaneously generous—as against a conscientious—man.

That is the point Mill tries to mark in Utilitarianism by means of the distinction between wanting
something as ‘part of’ and as a ‘means to’ happiness.2

As he says, ‘The ingredients of happiness are very various, and each of them is desirable in itself
and not merely when considered as swelling an aggregate’ (UIV5, X 235). To make this
understood was important to Mill: it was essential to enlarge the psychology of utilitarianism,
and humanise its morality. And the distinction also clarifies how it can be true that happiness is
but one of the things desired, while at the same time being true that ‘whatever is desired
otherwise than as a means to some end beyond itself, and ultimately to happiness, is desired as
itself a part of happiness, and is not desired for itself until it has become so’ (UIV7, X 237).
The desire for my own happiness is an unmotivated desire: one among others. At the same time,
on Mill’s view, if one has an unmotivated desire, towards anything at all, it is in virtue of seeing
its attainment as pleasant and privation of it as a pain. That claim, as Mill quite rightly thinks,
does not imply psychological egoism. It is also crucial to Mill’s ‘proof’: ‘we can have no other
proof, and we require no other, that… happiness is the sole end of human action, and the
promotion of it the test by which to judge all human conduct’ (UIV9, X 237). Strictly speaking,
then, it is not the claim that happiness is desired—i.e. as one desire among others—but the fact
that whatever is desired for its own sake is desired under the idea of it as pleasant—as a ‘part’ of
happiness— that counts in establishing happiness as the only good.

To bring out the force of this position more clearly let us contrast it finally with the desire-
satisfaction model.

Consider a man who has been in an accident in which he has been seriously injured and in which
his whole family has been killed. He comes to in hospital and discovers the situation. He is
stunned. Perhaps he wants to take his own life, or perhaps he simply loses any desire to go on
living. But suppose also that his temperament is such that he will recover, if he holds on, and in
the longer run will still live a satisfying and enjoyable life: is that a reason for him to hold on?
On the desire-satisfaction model it is not. If his only desire is to take his own life then that, on the
desire-satisfaction model, is what he ought to do. Suppose that the doctor or a friend persuades
him that he will recover, physically and psychologically. That may arouse in him an impulse for
life—but it is also quite conceivable that it may not. If it does not, there is still no reason for him
to stay alive. It is what he wants now that matters. The fact that if he stays alive he will recover,
be happy, and glad that he did not give up, is neither here nor there unless he now wants to
secure that future happiness.

These absurdities do not follow from Mill’s position. Mill seeks to establish that happiness is an
objective end, which a person has categorical reason to pursue. If a course of action will make
him happy, he has reason to that extent to take it: the more happy it will make him, the more
reason he has. It does not matter when that happiness will come; periods of happiness accruing at
different times of his life are all equally parts of his happiness.

Given the facts as described in the example, the man in the hospital has a reason to hold on—that
is, there is reason for him to do so, whether or not he accepts that there is—even in the extreme
situation in which the prospect of continued life is painful to him, and his only desire is to give it
up. He has it even though his active propensities and purposes—including ‘cool self-love’—have
been stunned: the reason is grounded directly in the fact of future happiness and does not depend
on them.

Utility is ‘pleasure, and the absence of pain’. It is not the satisfaction of desires or preferences. A
person’s preferences are indeed among the best possible sources of evidence as to what will
make him happy, but they are not infallible. More strongly still, even the ‘true’ preferences he
might counterfactually be supposed to have at a given time— ‘the preferences he would have if
he had all the relevant factual information, always reasoned with the greatest possible care, and
were in a state of mind conducive to rational choice’ (Harsanyi 1982:55)—must always remain
defeasible, by information which could become available at a later time, or by further reflection;
and so could not, strictly speaking, define his schedule of utilities at that time.3
To say this is not to sever the link between a person’s good and what he desires. Of course there
has to be some connection between happiness and desire, if happiness is a desirable end. A state
of affairs which no one ever wants for itself, even on reflection and with experience, cannot be a
part of human good. That connection is as Mill presents it in his proof. Happiness is a human
good because it is desired; more exactly, because our particular desires for a variety of objects
rest on our conception of them as pleasant. But none of this brings in the desire-satisfaction
model.

6 The refutation of hedonism

It is certainly true, of a whole range of particular things we want, that the thing is wanted under
the idea of it as pleasant. Take away the idea that this ice-cream will be nice, and you take away
the desire to eat it. But is it true of all the things we want? If it is not, then although Mill has
established that happiness is desirable, he has not shown, ‘by the same rule’ (UIV4, X 234), that
it is the only thing desirable.

Mill rightly approaches this as ‘a question of fact and experience’ which ‘can only be determined
by practised self-consciousness and self-observation, assisted by observation of others’. Such
observation shows, he thinks, that

desiring a thing and finding it pleasant, aversion to it and thinking of it as painful, are
phenomena entirely inseparable, or rather two parts of the same phenomenon; in strictness of
language, two different modes of naming the same psychological fact…to desire anything,
except in proportion as the idea of it is pleasant, is a physical and metaphysical impossibility.
(UIV10, X 237–8)

Evidently Mill had trouble in making his mind up about the relation between wanting something
and thinking of it as pleasant.4 He certainly thought it a factual question: when he says that
‘desiring X’ and ‘finding X pleasant’ are two different modes of naming the same fact, he means
they have the same denotation, not the same connotation. However, the exact nature of that
relation need not trouble us. What is relevant is the ambiguity of ‘finding X pleasant’. It can
mean, feeling pleasure at the thought of doing X, or it can mean, thinking of X as a pleasant
thing to do, or it can cover both. It may be true that whenever one wants to do or get a thing one
takes pleasure in the thought of doing or getting it. But that is not enough for Mill’s ‘proof’. He
needs to show that whenever a person wants something he wants it in virtue of thinking it will be
pleasant.

Suppose that there are caregorial ends other than happiness, under the idea of which we want
things. Let one of them be A. Then, since I spontaneously want a thing whenever I think it will
be A, I will take pleasure in the prospect of doing or achieving a thing which I take to be A. But
that would in no way show that happiness was my only end.

And that in fact is the case. Happiness is not the only organising idea, or categorial end, under
which we want things. A woman who wants to find out what has happened to her son, long
missing in a military campaign, does not necessarily expect that finding out will make her happy.
What she may want is knowledge. It is true that she may be miserable through the lack of it. But
whereas the man in hospital wants to die because he thinks that life will henceforth be
unbearable, the woman’s misery in her ignorance results from her desire to know. She does not
desire to know because she is miserable not knowing; she is miserable not knowing because she
desires to know.

Knowledge of one’s situation is an end which people do pursue, not simply as a part of
happiness, but as an organising category, coordinate with happiness, under which a multiplicity
of particular desired objects fall. So is autonomy: the ability and freedom to determine and
organise one’s own projects. A person who pursues these ends, or particular objects under these
categorial ends, does not pursue them as part of his happiness; but he does pursue them as part of
his good—and not, for example, for the good of others, or in pursuit of an ethical ideal. (Though
of course autonomy, or come to that happiness, can also figure in one’s thinking as an ideal, as
something deserving admiration, as well as something pursued as part of one’s good.)

It is true that in so far as we desire an object under these categories we think that we would be
‘content’, ‘happy’ or ‘satisfied’ with its achievement. We do not expect to find it worthless if
attained. But this is not to reinstate ‘pleasure, and the absence of pain’ as the unique human end.
To be content with one’s state in this sense is not necessarily to be in an enjoyable or pleasant
state. It is, rather, not to want to change it, not to wish that things had fallen out otherwise.

Consider a person visiting a parent’s grave, or a person reading, for example, Kafka’s
Metamorphosis. He may be engrossed in what he is doing, resent distraction, in no way wish that
he was doing something else—nevertheless the experience involved may be harrowing, certainly
not enjoyable. There are forms of experience which one wants to achieve or continue in,
capacities which one wants to acquire—they may by no means be enjoyable, but they are wanted
not for the sake of some further end, but for themselves.

Autonomy and knowledge of one’s own situation—to go no further— are objective elements of
well-being or utility in their own right, and not as ingredients of happiness. Once this irreducible
plurality has been grasped, it becomes much easier to understand how there can be deliberation
and discussion about ends. The objective desirability of categorial ends can indeed only, on a
naturalistic view, be established in Mill’s way, by resting it on a reflective and experience-based
agreement of dispositions. No amount of a priori ‘intuiting’ of the desirability of an end will
substitute for it. And the same applies to debate about the relative importance of categorial ends.
It requires analysis of the categories under which human beings do in fact pursue particular
objects, and experience of the relative motivating importance these categories in fact, and in the
long run, turn out to have. Hence the need for ‘practised self-consciousness and self-observation,
assisted by observation of others’.

The objectivity of certain ends, established in this way, plays a regulative role in our mutual
understanding. For example, if someone were possessed by an ultimate and persistent desire to
mark himself with razor-blades, or to pile jarloads of mud in his bedroom, we should not simply
put that down among his utilities. We would try to understand what he was doing by placing it
under some recognisable human telos. (Do you get pleasure out of it? Yes? Well I can’t see why
—what’s so enjoyable about it? …No? Then what is it about it that makes it worthwhile?) In this
fashion, the person who simply wants to be at his parent’s grave can be understood as pursuing a
recognisable, because shareable, human end (recollection, re-enacted ‘being-with’). The person
who simply wants to mark himself with razor-blades cannot. The correct response might be to
send for a psychiatrist rather than a supply of razor-blades.

Of course the issues touched on here need fuller consideration. They imply a philosophical
anthropology which would analyse the diversity of shared, intersubjectively intelligible human
interests, and the hierarchy of categorial ends which might be rested on them—or the variety of
such hierarchies. But whatever might result from such an analysis, it is available as much to the
utilitarian as to anyone else. Here again there is no reason to tie utilitarianism to a crudely
instrumental view of practical reason.

What then determines, at least in philosophical principle, the utility of a plan of life for a person:
his overall well-being in that course of life? Happiness, in the sense of pleasure net of pain, is a
mode of feeling. There is a difference of experience between being happy and sad, pleased and
depressed or miserable. But when other categorial ends are recognised, things get more
complicated. Such ends as autonomy and knowledge are affected by the external circumstances
and relations as well as the internal, experiential character of a life. Hence they may be frustrated
without one’s knowing it. Perhaps the deepest case for a purely hedonistic conception of the
good is made by pressing the question: how can my own good, what ultimately matters for my
own sake, be in any way affected, except by states of affairs which make a difference to my
experience? How can anything affect my good except by affecting my state of feeling and
consciousness?

One can only reply by reflecting on cases. Consider a patient dying of cancer in hospital. He may
be told or he may be given drugs to alleviate his pain and not be told. Suppose the remaining part
of his life will in fact be happier if he is not told. But suppose also that he is a type of person who
would not care to live out his life in what he would see as a ‘fool’s paradise’. Such a preference
is in no way irrational; even if we do not share it it is perfectly intelligible. If the doctor had good
grounds to think that the patient’s remperamental preference would be of that kind, he could not
assume that he was acting for the patient’s good in not telling him. For he would deprive the
patient of goods—relevant knowledge, unrestricted auconomy—as well as promoting one of his
goods—happiness. (Equally of course, if he had good ground to think that the patient’s settled
preference would be against being told, he might infringe his autonomy by telling him.)

Consider the two situations, (A) in which the patient is told, (B) in which he is not. By
hypothesis, the patient would be happier, overall, in B than in A. He will even be more satisfied
with his life in B than in A. He has not been told he is dying of cancer, and does not know that he
has not been told—and certainly he would prefer a life in which he was hospitalised but not
dying of cancer, to one in which he was dying of cancer. From within the perspective available
to him in B, he is more content with B than he would be with A if he saw things in the
perspective he would have in A. But from within the perspective he would have in A he would
nevertheless be more content with A than with B—he would nor prefer to be in B. He prefers a
life in which he is dying of cancer and knows it, to a life in which that fact has been withheld
from him.

Of course when a person considers hypothetically how he would prefer to be treated in such a
case, he could easily go wrong; for example by romanticising his attachment to knowledge. As
ever, such preferences are not infallible: if he ever ended up in the situation and was told, he
might regret his knowledge, and find that he would have preferred not to be burdened with it;
what is more, other people might have good reason to think that that would be so. Knowledge
might not have the utility for him that he liked to think it did, and others might be in a position to
know that perfectly well. But it is equally possible and intelligible that a person should not be
wrong in such a self-estimate— that knowledge should be just as important for him as he thinks
it is.

Knowledge and autonomy should be recognised as categorial ingredients of well-being, because

people do desire them ‘in theory and in practice’. But in that case well-being is not merely not to
be identified with pleasure net of pain, it is not even identifiable with the distinct notion of a
person’s satisfaction or contentment with life from within the perspective afforded by that life.
Situation A has greater utility for the patient, given his interests and their relative importance for
him, than situation B. Yet his satisfaction with life would no doubt be greater in B than in A.

In principle then, determining the utility of alternative choices for an individual has two levels.
One must determine the relative importance to him, given his character and temperament, of
various categorial interests or ends. And one must determine the overall degree to which a given
outcome (assuming it does not alter his character) would satisfy that balance of interests. In
practice the two can hardly be kept apart. Constructing a person’s utility function can only start
from considering his (‘self-regarding’) preferences under risk. Epistemologically there is nothing
incorrigible about these preferences. But there may still be a moral or political objection to
allowing one person’s preferences to be ignored or overridden, without his consent, by another.
We shall return to that in 10.6.

7 Kinds of pleasure and categorial diversity of ends

Mill’s practical sense of the plurality of human ends is, of course, a main constituent in his
attachment to liberty. But he always saw these diverse ends as so many parts of happiness; he did
not recognise philosophically the irreducible diversity of categorial ends. He came close to it, in
the period of his greatest reaction against Benthamism. Thus when, in the last chapter of the
System of Logic, he talks of

making human life happy; both in the comparatively humble sense, of pleasure and freedom
from pain, and in the higher meaning, of rendering life, not what it now is almost universally,
puerile and insignificant—but such as human beings with highly developed faculties can care to
have (VIII 952).

he effectively retreats from the view of utility or well-being as happiness. For the ‘humble sense’
of happiness—pleasure, enjoyment, contentment —is the normal sense. There is nothing ignoble
about it—it is a perfectly fine and philosophical thing to aim at. Nor does it clarify matters to
introduce a sense of the word happiness which renders it true by definition that any form of life
which a human being with highly developed faculties might care to have would be happy. We
do, it is true, talk about being happy ‘with’ a situation as well as about being happy ‘in’ it. If a
person had comprehendingly chosen that life, he would no doubt be ‘happy’ with it; but it by no
means follows that he would be happy in it. Mill stretches the word ‘happiness’ beyond its
normal sense to cover his enlarged notion of utility. And when in On Liberty he says that he
regards ‘utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions; but it must be utility in the largest
sense, grounded on the permanent interests of man as a progressive being’ (LI11, VIII 952) he
has in mind the variety of ends which human beings come to cherish and aim for as they
develop, over generations, forms of education and society which allow individuality to unfold.
Genuinely progressive social forms reveal ever more clearly the ‘permanent interests’ of human
beings; it is not, I think, unreasonable to equate these ‘permanent interests’ in practice with what
I have called categorial ends.

Nevertheless, whenever it came explicitly to the point, Mill always insisted that all ends are
valued as parts of happiness—understanding that term in its normal sense, as a state of
experience. The underlying reason for his insistence, no doubt, is the psychological theory of
pleasure and desire which is referred to in note 4. He identified desiring a thing with thinking of
it as pleasant. Had he identified it merely with thinking of the thing as good to have, he would
not have been stuck with hedonism, however formal.

It is in this context that one should consider the famous discussion of ‘kinds’ of pleasure in
chapter ii of Utilitarianism (UII4–10, X 210ff.). It has been subjected to the most mechanically
unimaginative pedantries— though as ever with Mill one must add, not without reason being
given on his side.

‘It is quite compatible with the principle of utility’, he says, ‘to recognise the fact, that some
kinds of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others’ (UII4, X 211)—and he goes
on to explain at eloquent length. He could certainly have made the standpoint he wanted clearer
and more comprehensive if, instead of restricting attention only to pleasures, some of which are
‘preferable in kind, apart from the question of intensity’ (UII8, X 213), he had recognised also
that happiness is only one among a plurality of ends. However, in saying this I do not mean to
endorse the charge that Mill is logically inconsistent in holding that pleasures can be compared
in ‘quality’ as well as in ‘quantity’.5 He would be, if he simultaneously formulated the Greatest
Happiness Principle exclusively in terms of quantity of pleasure; but he carefully avoids doing so
(cf. for example UII10, X 214). He always emphasises that human beings’ sources of pleasure
are shifted and transformed by the development of their capacities and sensibilities. These
transformations can be, by the only appropriate test—their own experienced and reflective
judgement—changes for the better. They create enlarged forms of experience which those who
have them do in fact value as more fulfilling and worthwhile than the narrower or shallower
forms which would have been available to them otherwise. But these enlarged forms of
experience are still forms of happiness: the ‘higher’ pleasures are valued as producing a greater,
because finer, enjoyment of life, and to recognise them as such is in no way incompatible with
the Greatest Happiness Principle.

The distinction between ‘quality’ and ‘quantity’ of pleasure may be crude—though it is succinct
and memorable. But it is not here that the real weakness of Mill’s discussion lies. One can see
what Mill has in mind: ‘neither pleasures nor pains are homogeneous’ (UII8, X 213). The
pleasure of a cold beer after a hot day’s climbing is intense. The pleasure of listening to a
Schubert sonata is not in that way intense. But I might still forgo the beer to get to a performance
of the sonata by my favourite Schubert pianist. Nor is it anything other than pleasure that I
expect— absorbing, even demanding, but still a pleasure, and its value lying therein. Mill wants
to fend off the notion that utilitarianism, in philistine fashion, must measure the value of
pleasures only in terms of the former kind of intensity. Not only physical pleasures have that
kind of intensity of course: so does reading a ‘good bad book’. In both cases it is inherent in the
kind of enjoyment involved that it is undemanding and releases one after effort. In contrast
higher pleasures characteristically call for an active effort of attention and the deployment of
absorbing skills; they call on our ‘higher faculties’.

The contrasts between kinds of pleasure are complex, and should be explored more deeply than I
can do here. But there is another kind of issue involved. What makes it possible to say that the
pleasures which call on the use of our developed faculties are ‘higher’ — rather than simply that
many people prefer them? (They are not always preferred to a beer or a good bad book of course
—failure to make that clear, together with a tendency to identify higher pleasures exclusively
with intellectual ones, gives Mill’s discussion its rather priggish tone.) What makes it possible to
say that certain transformations of our mental and physical capacities are developments of our
faculties, or that they constitute a culture of the self—since these ways of putting it are plainly
evaluative?

We are back with the question of objectivity; of what makes possible deliberation about ends, or
—closely related—about discriminations of taste. Only, as ever, the potential agreement of a
community of sentiment: ‘the test of quality’ is ‘the preference felt by those who in their
opportunities of experience, to which must be added their habits of self-consciousness and self-
observation, are best furnished with the means of comparison’ (UII10, X 214).

The agreement must be among ‘competent judges’. ‘From this verdict there can be no appeal’
(UII8, X 213); no appeal to any other, or higher, test than that of a convergence of educated
judgements, that is— defeasible as that agreement always remains. There is no vicious circle
here. I may find, for example, that an experienced judge of pictures agrees roughly with my own
judgements. 1 may further find that as I gather experience my judgements begin to approximate
more closely to his. There may still be discriminations and preferences in which I cannot follow
him, but on which other experienced judges agree. 1 may well conclude that the fault lies in my
insufficiently developed taste rather than in their judgement: because I can recognise a
convergence resulting from experience and reflection, which makes me accept their competence.
(Compare David Hume’s essay, ‘Of the Standard of Taste’.)

There is a plurality of such communities of sentiment, corresponding to the diversity of human

endowments. The fact that I cannot participate in the pleasures of chess, or really serious
mountain-climbing, does not prevent me from recognising that authentically life-enhancing and
absorbing modes of enjoyment, and objective discriminations of quality, are involved. The
diversity is insufficiently brought out by Mill in Utilitarianism, but it is an important point in
Liberty.

These Millian—Hellenic—points about quality of pleasure are perfectly defensible, and

important. But they cannot cover all the ground which Mill tries to encompass in his brief
discussion. The fault lies, as I have said, in his failure to recognise that there are ends other than
that of happiness. When he famously says

Few intelligent human beings would consent to be a fool, no instructed person would be an
ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base, even though they
should be persuaded that the fool, the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they
are with theirs (UII6, X 212)

he says what is true: intelligent human beings of feeling and conscience would not consent to be
these things—not because it is bad for others that they should be so, but because it is bad for
them. But that would be quite inexplicable if the only thing that mattered was happiness, or
pleasure and freedom from pain. This is so, even when we distinguish between qualities of
pleasure. For though the intelligent human being has the capacity to enjoy higher pleasures, he
may not have any to enjoy. And as Mill says, he is ‘capable probably of more acute suffering,
and is certainly accessible to it at more points’.

It would be inexplicable still, if the only thing that mattered were ‘internal satisfaction’ with
one’s life: the degree to which one is happy with it from within the perspective that one has in it.
By this measure, the fool’s well-being may be greater than the intelligent human being’s. Mill
tries to handle this by distinguishing between true happiness and mere contentment or
satisfaction. But that is again to stretch ‘happiness’ beyond its normal sense, to the distinct
notion of what ‘human beings with highly developed faculties can care to have’. There can be no
guarantee that an intelligent man, of feeling and conscience, will live either a happier life than a
selfish and base fool, or even a life which he is bappier with than the fool is with his. But that
does not show that his life has less worth for him than the fool’s has for the fool. Nor does it
show that the fool is better off being a fool. What determines the worth of a course of life for a
person is the degree to which it measures up to the structure of ends mapped out by his
temperament and capacities. If the fool has capacities which, were they developed, would move
him forward to an improved perspective from which he would no longer care to be a fool, then
he is not better off as a fool. And as to the question, what makes a new perspective an improved
one, we have already given it the only answer it can properly require.

Neither happiness, nor even ‘internal satisfaction’, is the only desirable end, as examples such as
that of the cancer patient show; and so utility cannot be defined in terms of either. The utility or
worth of a person’s life is determined by the degree to which it realises the objective structure of
his personal ends: those ends which he has reason to pursue for his own sake. It is in those terms
that utility must be defined—‘utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of
man as a progressive being’. The weakness in Mill’s position is not the idea that pleasures are
heterogeneous and that there are more and less valuable kinds; it is the assertion that all the
ingredients of utility must be parts of happiness—even in Mill’s enlarged understanding of what
happiness is. But to give up even this enlightened hedonism is still not to give up aggregate
utility as the ultimate test of all practices and institutions. It is not even to depart in substance
from Mill’s practical, as against his theoretical, moral stance.

8 Impartiality and agent-neutral reasons

We can now finally turn to stage (3) of the ‘proof. In considering the first two steps we have
been analysing the notion of a person’s good. In the third, Mill makes the transition to general
utility as the foundation of morality.

We have accepted the principle that the sole ultimate criterion of morality is the good of
individuals, as determined by their objective personal interests. On its negative side, this
principle asserts that there are no other criteria. As was noted in 1.5, that is no empty assertion. It
eliminates any notion of a collective whole or trans-individual being with ends over and above
the ends of particular empirical individuals. It eliminates, with that, any functional conception of
individual human ends. It eliminates, finally, all criteria of moral value which are not
teleologically based: desert, absolute ideals of virtue, ‘abstract’ duties and rights.

All of this flows from a naturalistic perspective as such. For both the moral sceptic and the
objectivist can agree on the negative point that, in that perspective, there can be no criteria of
morality other than individual ends. The sceptic disagrees only when we come to the positive
side of our principle, which asserts that human ends are criteria of morality. For him, there are no
such things as criteria of morality.

But even if we accept that there are objective criteria of morality, and that they are determined by
individuals’ ends, what individuals are taken into account, and how? Nothing matters but
individuals’ ends— but everyone’s? Certain people’s? Each person’s to himself? Some people’s
more than others’?

It is here that we come to the unexamined core of Mill’s moral and political outlook. When he
states the utilitarian doctrine (UII2, X 210) before considering what kind of proof can be given of
it, he states it thus: ‘happiness is desirable, and the only thing desirable, as an end, all other
things being only desirable as means to that end’. The emphasis is on the point that happiness is
the only objective human end, and general happiness the only criterion of morality. There is
nothing explicitly said of distributive questions, of how the relative importance of different
individuals should be measured. Only at the end of the last chapter does he make it explicitly
clear that he takes ‘perfect impartiality between persons’ (UV36 note, X 257) to be part of the
very meaning of the Greatest Happiness Principle:

That principle is a mere form of words without rational signification, unless one person’s
happiness, supposed equal in degree (with the proper allowance made for kind), is counted for
exactly as much as another’s. Those conditions being supplied, Bentham’s dictum, ‘everybody to
count for one, nobody for more than one,’ might be written under the principle of utility as an
explanatory commentary. (UV36, X 257)

In a footnote to the paragraph Mill states this requirement of perfect impartiality as follows:
‘equal amounts of happiness are equally desirable, whether felt by the same or by different
persons’. And in a letter of 1868 he explains,

when I said that the general happiness is a good to the aggregate of all persons I did not mean
that every human being’s happiness is a good to every other human being; though I think, in a
good state of society & education it would be so. I merely meant in this particular sentence to
argue that since A’s happiness is a good, B’s a good, C’s a good, &c, the sum of all these goods
must be a good. (XVI 1414)

Let us consider the concept of ‘perfect impartiality’ more closely. A person’s good, or utility,
may be defined in terms of the notion of a reason for acting, of what he has reason to pursue for
his own sake— what he should exclusively promote were he the only person under
consideration. The first part of the ‘proof’ is directed towards showing that there is such a thing
as a person’s good, and what it is: what there is reason for him to pursue for his own sake. Mill’s
discussion would have shown at best that each person has reason to pursue his own happiness,
and has reason to pursue nothing else as far as his own interests are concerned. As he explicitly
says in the letter just quoted, he does not think that ‘every human being’s happiness is a good to
every other human being’, however desirable it is that it should be so. So the argument is not that
everyone has reason to pursue everyone else’s happiness as one of the ultimate parts or
ingredients of his own. It requires more than the tautological principle

(1) If X is part of A’s good then there is reason for A to promote it.

It requires something else—the principle that

(2) If X is part of A’s good then there is reason for everyone to promote it.

Mill takes for granted the principle that a person’s good is, as it might be put, agent-neutrally
good: that there is reason for everyone to promote it whether or not it is a part of their good.
(That is evident from the quoted letter.) The point was made by Sidgwick. As Sidgwick also
recognised, an egoist can perfectly well accept the tautology expressed in (1), and can
consistently state it in its universal form: ‘Everyone has reason to pursue his own good’. What he
cannot claim is that his own well-being is agent-neutrally good: that everyone has reason to
promote his, the egoist’s, good just because it is his good. For there can be no special ground for
holding his well-being alone to be agent-neutrally good. The moment the egoist claims that
everyone has reason to promote his, the egoist’s, good, he can be argued into accepting that there
is reason to promote anyone’s good; by being challenged to produce a characteristic which he
has and others do not, and on which the absolute, agent-neutral desirability of his good could
plausibly be held to supervene.6

The transition from individual good to general utility assumes that all reasons are ultimately
agent-neutral. Whatever gives a person reason to pursue an object must, when properly and
ultimately specified, give anyone reason to pursue that object. It will then follow from the thesis
that everyone has reason to pursue his own well-being as such, that everyone has reason to
promote everyone’s well-being. The negative side of the methodological principle is, that the
only reason anyone can have for doing something is that that action will promote some
individual’s well-being. The positive side is, that there is agent-neutral reason to promote any
individual’s well-being.

9 Philosophical utilitarianism
Let me now sum up now the three key elements of the ‘proof’ as we have reconstructed it.

I There are objective personal ends. Certain ends form part of every person’s good (happiness,
autonomy, knowledge, etc.— their relative importance depending on the person’s interests and
capacities). He or she has reason to pursue those ends.

II Value supervenes entirely on personal ends. There can be no reason for acting other than to
promote some individual’s good.
III Reasons are agent-neutral. If there is something about a specified state of affairs that gives
any one person reason to promote it, then everyone has reason to promote it.

I suggested in 1.5 that II flows from the naturalistic perspective as such. We have examined at
length the case for L It remains to consider III.

I do not know how one could make a positive case for it. The principle is too basic to admit of
being derived from other considerations. But it seems to me that the case against it must
invariably be based on one of the two conceptions of practical reasoning which we have earlier
discarded. On a sceptical view, there are no categorial reasons for acting. A person can be said to
have reason to act only relative to an objective. On the desire-satisfaction model, a person at a
time has categorical reason to promote only the satisfaction of his own desires at that time. His
reasons for acting are categorical but relative in respect of agent and time. Only inasmuch as an
action would promote the satisfaction of his desires at that time does he then have reason to
promote it. It will only be true that everyone has reason to promote everyone’s good, if the good
of everyone else is a part of everyone’s good: if everyone has a desire which is satisfied by the
promotion of everyone’s good.

But once these preconceptions about practical rationality have been discarded, the claim that
practical reason is inherently agent-neutral comes to be seen in its true force. It is the notion that
self-interest possesses a special, underived rationality that seems suddenly to require
justification. Suppose I come upon someone lying injured by the road. Do I have reason to help
him only if I want to help him, or have some other desire which will be satisfied by helping him?
Surely not. Why should what if want be relevant at all? I have reason to help him— whether or
not I want to do so. It does not depend on the state of my desires, on whether I am well or ill
disposed towards him, towards ‘the moral point of view’, or towards anything else. If I have no
compelling cause which prevents me from helping him, then I should help him. And what gives
me or anyone else reason to help has nothing to do with who in particular he happens to be.

At the foundational level—that is, before precepts and concerns which are themselves ultimately
accountable to the test of agent-neutral considerations are brought in—it is the benefit that is
done, not the identity of the person to whom it is done, nor the relation he bears to me, that
matters in determining the strength of my reason for acting. What one can say for III, then, is
what one can say for any other ultimate principle of reasoning: when we reflect without
preconception, we recognise that it implicitly guides our thought.

These considerations lead one to what, borrowing a term from Thomas Scanlon (1982), may be
called ‘philosophical utilitarianism’ as a foundation for morality: i.e. to the notion of a perfectly
impartial concern for the good of all individuals. Philosophical utilitarianism is what the ‘proof’
as reconstructed here establishes—or rather what it articulates, in the form of theses I–III. It
establishes or articulates it as a foundation of practical reasoning in general—of what Mill calls
‘the Logic of Practice’ (System of Logic vi.xii)—and not just of morality. This is entirely
consistent with what Mill everywhere says about the status of the Utility Principle. The
promotion of happiness is ‘the test by which to judge of all human conduct; from whence it
necessarily follows that it must be the criterion of morality, since a part is included in the whole’
(UIV9, X 237). It is the ‘first principle of Teleology’, of which morality together with ‘Prudence,
or Policy, and Aesthetics’ (System of Logic vi.xii.5, VIII 949) are departments.
What Mill means by this will be considered in 9–11 and subsequent sections, where we examine
his view of the interplay between foundational principles and the practices and institutions which
regulate conduct in practice. But for the moment we are abstracting from the issues raised by
indirect utilitarianism and asking whether, at the foundational level, establishing ‘philosophical
utilitarianism’ is enough to establish the Utility Principle as Mill understood it. Scanlon seems
inclined to think that it is:

If all that counts morally is the well-being of individuals, no one of whom is singled out as
counting for more than others, and if all that matters in the case of each individual is the degree
to which his or her well-being is affected, then it would seem to follow that the basis of moral
approval is the goal of maximising the sum of individual well-being. Whether this standard is to
be applied to the criticism of individual actions, or to the selection of rules or policies, or to the
inculcation of habits and dispositions to act is a further question, as is the question of how ‘well-
being’ itself is to be understood. (Scanlon 1982:110)

The key phrase here is ‘no one of whom is singled out as counting for more than others’.
Impartiality in this sense expresses the requirement that reasons be agent-neutral. A person’s
treatment cannot be allowed to depend at the foundational level either (because of the
Sidgwickian requirement of universalisability) on who he is or (because reasons are agent-
neutral) on his relation to the agent. But that kind of impartiality is embodied as much by an
average as by an aggregate utilitarian; and indeed an indefinite number of other possible
accounts of the foundation of morality are as consistent with ‘philosophical utilitarianism’ as
Mill’s aggregate utilitarianism is.7 All of them can accept that ‘the only fundamental moral facts
are facts about individual well-being’ (Scanlon 1982:108) and that no one individual ‘should be
singled out as counting for more than others’.

Philosophical utilitarianism does take one as far as what economists have called ‘Pareto-
optimality’. If all reasons for acting or, indirectly, for adopting a practice, trace back to increases
in the well-being of individuals, then an increase in an individual’s well-being must be, pro
tanto, a good thing. So it must be good overall that someone be made better off where no one is
made worse off. But that gives no guidance about trade-offs between the utilities of different
individuals. What trade-offs are exploitative, what trade-offs just, or indeed whether this is the
way to pose the question at all, remains a separate issue.

So a further step is required to get to the classical utilitarianism of Bentham, Mill or Sidgwick,
which counts all units of well-being equally into a total sum, whatever their relative location may
be. We have not yet justified Mill’s ‘perfect impartiality between persons’ in the strong sense in
which he understands it, that is, as ‘supposing that equal amounts of happiness are equally
desirable, whether felt by the same or by different persons’ —where that means that equal
increments, however located or distributed, provide equal reason to act.

10 Utilitarianism and the distinctness of individuals

It will be useful to approach the issue obliquely by considering, not the distribution of benefits
across different lives, but that of benefits across different time periods within a single person’s
life.
Just as egoism could be universalised in agent-relative terms as:

Everyone has exclusive reason to promote his own good

so an attitude of living for the moment could be universalised in time-relative terms as:

At every moment one has exclusive reason to promote one’s good of that moment.

But if reason must be neutral with respect to time as well as agent, then exclusive concentration
on present benefits, or on benefits accruing in time periods characterised by some specific
relation, such as a discount rate, to the present (and which they therefore have only at present,
from the present point of view), would have to be justified by showing that the agent’s reasons
for acting supervene on some non-time-relative property of those time periods—one which they
have at any time, from any temporal point of view. As with the case of egoism, no such property
is forthcoming. And once again, it is only the desire-satisfaction model which makes sense of the
notion of an irreducibly time-relative reason.

So we are led to a prudential requirement of ‘impartiality’ between time periods within a life, in
the sense of time-neutrality: no one time period is to be singled out as counting for more than any
other. This excludes ‘pure time-preference’, where that is interpreted as expressing a temporally
relative stance. But once again, this type of prudential impartiality is compatible with many
Pareto-optimising principles for distributing well-being across a person’s life.

Can we argue further, to the conclusion that well-being within a life should be maximised? There
is a tempting argument. Periods of well-being accruing at different points within a person’s life
are all equally parts of his well-being. Any strategy other than the maximising one will mean that
he ends up with a lower total sum of benefits.

This tempting argument is in my opinion fallacious. It is true that any strategy other than simple
maximisation may leave a person with a lower sum of benefits over his whole life. But it cannot
be assumed that the worth of his life to him should be determined exclusively by summing the
flow of benefits in it, and ignoring the length and shape of the flow. One might well, for
example, be ready to maximise the aggregate of benefits only within a ‘baseline’ constraint—
subject, that is, to the requirement that no period of one’s life be allowed to fall below a certain
level of misery. (Does a small gain of aggregate well-being justify any amount of temporary
misery? Does an indefinitely long life lived at a level just better than suicide outweigh a shorter
and intensely happy one?)

But even if we accepted the tempting argument, we could not argue similarly for aggregate
utilitarianism. There is an obvious asymmetry between distribution of benefits across time
periods within a single person’s life, and distribution of benefits across different lives. The
different periods within a person’s life are all parts of one life. But the lives of different people
are not all parts of one life. A utilitarian who argues in this way

treats the division between persons as of no more moral significance than the division between
times which separates one individual’s earlier pleasure from his later pleasure, as if the
individuals were mere parts of a single persisting entity. (Hart 1979:80)
It will not help to emphasise the fictional or constructive character of the notion of personal
identity, since it is not clear what ethical significance - if any—such a view of the self carries
with it. It highlights the ‘separateness’ of the various periods within what we conventionally
think of as a single life. For some people, that might serve to undermine the idea that self-interest
has a kind of claim on them that impartial concern for all centres of experience does not have.
But for others it might serve instead not to undermine self-interest but to reduce its scope—
weakening the idea that benefits or costs accruing in future periods of ‘their’ life have as much
present claim on their consideration as present ones do.8

We cannot, in short, assume that whatever principle regulates the distribution of utilities across
time periods in a single life will also regulate their distribution across different lives. And even if
we could, that would not force us from philosophical to aggregate utilitarianism.

Now one could hardly accuse Mill, of all people, of ignoring the distinctness of individuals.
Consider for example his comments on Comte (Auguste Comte and Positivism, X esp. 332–40).
Comte’s notion of the human race as a collective existence, a ‘Grand-Etre’, the object of
veneration in his Religion of Humanity, certainly exercised a powerful fascination on Mill. But
he never took it as more than an inspiring or ennobling metaphor. Understood in this way,
however, it can form no part of a case for aggregate utilitarianism. And when we return to Mill’s
criticisms of Comte’s moral outlook, we find that they all tend towards underlining the
separateness of individuals and—a point associated with it in Mill’s mind—the diversity of their
individual endowments and ends.

The theme recurs frequently in Mill’s writings, as does the idea (one of the master themes of the
Romantic period) of the individual self as a morally self-forming entity. Both are expressed in
the following passage from a letter to Carlyle:

Though I hold the good of the species (or rather of its separate units) to be the ultimate end
(which is the alpha and omega of my utilitarianism), I believe with the fullest belief that the end
can in no other way be forwarded but by the means you speak of, namely, by each taking for his
exclusive aim the development of what is best in himself. (12 January 1834, XII 207)

Mill goes on to explain how he thinks working for others can be a part of developing the best in
oneself. And in other places, he emphasises the need for a framework of social morality within
which individuals work out their personal plans of life.

But to see how Mill, while considering himself a utilitarian, could at the same time take up such
a position, we must examine his conception of the relation between the ‘promotion of happiness’
as ‘the ultimate principle of Teleology’ (VIII 951) and the social moralities, prudential precepts
and individual ideals by which people actually live. That will also lead us to a fuller review of
what can be said for and against aggregate utilitarianism.

11 Indirect utilitarianism9
Our scrutiny of the ultimate principles of practical reasoning has got us only as far as
‘philosophical utilitarianism’, not aggregate utilitarianism. We have agreed with Mill that the
general good, and not the agent’s personal good, is the ultimate principle of Teleology, or the
Doctrine of Ends, which borrowing the language of German metaphysicians, may also be
termed, not improperly, the principles of Practical Reason’ (VIII 949–50). But the structure of
that ultimate end, that is, the question of what function from individual goods to the general good
should be adopted, remains unsettled. All that is required is that any distribution be Pareto-
optimal and agent-neutral.

Still, even if we are not convinced by aggregate utilitarianism, and wish to supplement
philosophical utilitarianism at its foundations by some other theory of distribution, our position
will be like Mill’s in certain important ways. We shall regard these ultimate criteria as criteria of
practical reasoning in general, and we shall have to give some account of how the actual
practices of people in all their aspects— ‘prudential’, ‘moral’, ‘aesthetic’ or whatever—are to be
vindicated, or revised, or reconstructed, in the light of these criteria.

All that has been argued so far is that no direct argument, no strengthened replacement for Mill’s
‘proof’, will get us as far as aggregate utilitarianism. But there .might be indirect reasons for
accepting it. Instead of arguing directly, from certain very general philosophical considerations,
that our practices must be judged by the criterion of aggregate utility, it might be possible to
argue for it indirectly, by showing how that criterion could systematise—while purifying and
revising—received moral practices. This was undertaken, at famous length, by Sidgwick, Both
approaches, the direct and the indirect, are applied in his Methods of Ethics. But both already
appear in Mill’s thought. Mill certainly believed that he could vindicate aggregate utilitarianism
by showing its general consistency with, and ability to systematise, common-sense moral
maxims. (This should not be taken to imply that he was a simple moral conservative—I come to
that complex issue in the next section.)

The crucial test of this strategy, in its application to practical reasoning, is posed by our
conceptions of justice. Hence the chapter on justice in Utilitarianism. But to see what Mill was
doing in that chapter, we must first consider more carefully what the rationale of this ‘indirect’
strategy is.

Reflections on the relation between an ultimate test of conduct, and the goals and practices by
which our conduct is in practice shaped, are scattered throughout Mill’s writings; not only in
Utilitarianism and Liberty, but also, notably, in Auguste Comte and Positivism, in the two essays
on Bentham, in the last chapter of the System of Logic, and in various letters.

Most evidently, Mill is not an ‘act-utilitarian’, where act-utilitarianism is defined as the thesis
that one should always act so as to maximise aggregate happiness. That Is to ‘mistake the very
meaning of a standard of morals, and to confound the rule of action with the motive of it’ (UII19,
X 219)—a mistake of which Mill accuses Comte:

He committed the error which is often, but falsely, charged against the whole class of utilitarian
moralists; he required that the test of conduct should also be the exclusive motive of it. Because
the good of the human race is the ultimate standard of right and wrong, and because moral
discipline consists in cultivating the utmost possible repugnance to all conduct injurious to the
general good, M.Comte infers that the good of others is the only inducement on which we should
allow ourselves to act; and that we should endeavour to starve the whole of the desires which
point to our personal satisfaction, by denying them all gratification not strictly required by
physical necessities. The golden rule of morality, in M.Comte’s religion, is to live for others,
‘vivre pour auttui’ …M.Comte is a morality-intoxicated man. Every question with him is one of
morality, and no motive but that of morality is permitted. (X 335–6)

Mill’s essential objection to this is made a little later—

Why is it necessary that all human life should point but to one object, and be cultivated into a
system of means to a single end? May it not be the fact that mankind, who after all are made up
of single human beings, obtain a greater sum of happiness when each pursues his own, under the
rules and conditions required by the good of the rest, than when each makes the good of the rest
his only object, and allows himself no personal pleasures not indispensable to the preservation of
his faculties? The regimen of a blockaded town should be cheerfully submitted to when high
purposes require it, but is it the ideal perfection of human existence?

This is indeed the obvious objection to ‘act-utilitarianism’. But in considering it we must

distinguish carefully between the utilitarian as observer, reflecting on what concrete practices
and institutions can be justified by the test of general utility, and the utilitarian as agent. For an
educational or legal theorist, the objection is clearly sound. It would be absurd—for this reason
among others—to attempt to inculcate in people an exclusive act-utilitarian motive.10 But when
the utilitarian considers how he personally should act, the situation looks otherwise. In this case,
the actions of other people are simply data of his decision problem. They will go on largely as
before, whatever be does. But he, it seems, could often raise general utility by breaking rules (not
paying on buses and giving the money to Oxfam) by sacrificing his own well-being (taking a
thoroughly unpleasant job, giving very large parts of his income to worthwhile charities), by
abandoning personal ideals such as honest dealing and even by taking part in harmful acts which
would be more harmful still were someone else to take his place. However convinced he may be,
from his disembodied observer’s point of view, of the value of inculcating various social
practices, must his own activities not be those of an act-utilitarian free-rider?

We shall return to this dualism of points of view. But for the moment let us consider the relation
between utilitarianism and a system of practices, as Mill largely does, from the external
standpoint of someone who wants to reform society.

At any given time in any society there will be a web of precepts, prohibitions, as well as
normative attitudes of a more diffuse kind, perhaps expressed in positive laws, or simply socially
sanctioned; there will be admiration or contempt for certain kinds of behaviour; there will be
socially shared or personally determined goals, personal ideals of life, networks of agent-relative
commitment to others, determined by kinship, community or association. This whole
multifarious pattern, viewed as a totality of dispositions, personal or shared, shaping people’s
conduct, is what I shall call, in conveniently abstract fashion, the system of practices in that
society.

Then the question for a utilitarian reformer is which practices should be encouraged, which
reformed or abandoned—and in what areas should it be up to different individuals to develop
their own? Mill’s general view is conveniently summarised in a letter to George Grote from
which it is worth quoting at length:
The general happiness, looked upon as composed of as many different units as there are persons,
all equal in value except as far as the amount of happiness itself differs, leads to all the practical
doctrines which you lay down. First, it requires that each shall consider it his special business to
look after himself…. The good of all can only be pursued with any success by each person’s
taking as his particular department the good of the only individual whose requirements he can
thoroughly know; with due precautions to prevent these different persons, each cultivating a
particular strip of the field, from hindering one another. Secondly, human happiness, even one’s
own, is in general more successfully pursued by acting on general rules, than by measuring the
consequences of each act; and this is still more the case with general happiness, since any other
plan would not only leave everybody uncertain what to accept, but would involve perpetual
quarrelling and hence general rules must be laid down for people’s conduct to one another, or in
other words, rights and obligations must, as you say, be recognised; and people must, on the one
hand, not be required to sacrifice even their own less good to another’s greater, where no general
rule has given the other a right to the sacrifice; while, when a right has been recognised, they
must, in most cases, yield to that right even at the sacrifice, in the particular case, of their own
greater good to another’s less…. [These conclusions] are consistent with recognising the merit,
though not the duty, of making still greater sacrifices of our own less good to the greater good of
others, than the general conditions of human happiness render it expedient to prescribe. This last
distinction, which I do not think inconsistent with the expressions about perfection attributed to
Christ, the Catholic theologians have recognised, laying down a lower standard of
disinterestedness for the world and a higher one for the ‘perfect’ (the saints): but Protestants have
in general considered this as Popish laxity, and have maintained that it is the duty of every one,
absolutely to annul his own separate existence. (10 January 1862, XV 762–3)11

In the main people are to look after their own concerns. The reason Mill gives is that their own
case is the only one they thoroughly know. We shall come back to that reason when we turn to
On Liberty in the next chapter. Next there must be rules, not only in the personal but also in the
social sphere, regulating, as a matter of morality or law, ‘people’s conduct to one another’. The
pursuit of others’ good beyond those rules is admired and encouraged, but not required. That was
a fundamental point for Mill:

There is a standard of altruism to which all should be required to come up, and a degree beyond
which it is not obligatory, but meritorious. It is incumbent on every one to restrain the pursuit of
his personal objects within the limits consistent with the essential interests of others. What those
limits are, it is the province of ethical science to determine; and to keep all individuals and
aggregates of individuals within them, is the proper office of punishment and of moral blame. If
in addition to fulfilling this obligation, persons make the good of others a direct object of
disinterested exertions, postponing or sacrificing to it even innocent personal indulgences, they
deserve gratitude and honour, and are fit objects of moral praise. So long as they are in no way
compelled to this conduct by any external pressure, there cannot be too much of it; but a
necessary condition is its spontaneity; since the notion of a happiness for all, procured by the
self-sacrifice of each, if the abnegation is really felt to be a sacrifice, is a contradiction. (Auguste
Comte and Positivism, X 337–8)

Within the overall system of practices, then, there must be a sphere of socially exacted actions,
failure to perform which is in some way or another penalised. According to Mill, to say that an
action is morally wrong is just to say that the system of practices should in one way or another
penalise it:

We do not call anything wrong, unless we mean to imply that a person ought to be punished in
some way or other for doing it; if not by law, by the opinion of his fellow-creatures; if not by
opinion, by the reproaches of his own conscience…. It is a part of the notion of Duty in every
one of its forms, that a person may rightfully be compelled to fulfill it. Duty is a thing which may
be exacted from a person, as one exacts a debt. Unless we think that it might be exacted from
him, we do not call it his duty. (UV14, X 246)

Strictly speaking, what Mill has defined here is not morality as such but what it is to have a
moral obligation to do an action; what it is for an action to be morally wrong, and its
performance a duty; and by an obvious extension, what it is for a disposition of character to be
an immoral one. Moral education and moral life, as they are properly called, go beyond that. If a
person carries out his moral obligations he has done nothing to incur condemnation. Yet a person
who goes beyond such duties is admired, and the admiration is still a moral one. Moral
education, as Mill profoundly understood, is an education of the affections as well as of
conscience and will. The cultivation of spontaneous concern for others, and of a wish to share
enjoyments, is a part of that: ‘the moralization of the personal enjoyments we deem to consist,
not in reducing them to the smallest possible amount, but in cultivating the habitual wish to share
them with others…’ (Auguste Comte and Positivism, X 339).

However it is undeniably useful, even if potentially misleading, to use the term ‘morality’ in the
restricted sense, to refer to those dispositions and practices, within the total system of practices,
which people should be blamed for not cultivating or adhering to. A society’s positive morality,
in this narrow sense, encompasses only the dispositions and practices which are thus sanctioned.

For reasons of general certainty and security, morality in this narrow sense must be partly a
matter of determinate rules: ‘in a certain description of cases at least, morality consists in the
simple observation of a rule’ (VIII App.H, 1154). But only in a certain description of cases: in
others determinate rules may be of no help, whether because they say nothing which applies to
the case, or because the circumstances are such as to put the applicability of the rules themselves
into obvious doubt. In such cases considerations of utility may come directly into play, and a
person who fails to reflect in these terms on what he should do may be acting morally wrongly,
that is, in such a way as to incur justifiable condemnation. (Thinking for oneself, discretion and
judgement are themselves a part of the system of morality.)

Morality in the narrow sense—the system of practices to which adherence should be exacted on
penalty of blame—is relative to the state of moral (in the broad sense) development of a society:

inasmuch as every one who avails himself of the advantages of society, leads others to expect
from him all such positive good offices and disinterested services as the moral improvement
attained by mankind has rendered customary, he deserves moral blame if, without just cause, he
disappoints that expectation. Through this principle the domain of moral duty, in an improving
society is always widening. When what was once uncommon virtue becomes common virtue, it
comes to be numbered among obligations, while a degree exceeding what has grown common,
remains simply meritorious. (Auguste Comte and Positivism, X 338)
Moral obligations reflect the facts of human nature: the permanent and fundamental facts of
agent-relative commitment, the limits of each person’s interests and knowledge; but also the
variable part of human nature and the customary expectations that people have in a given state of
society about the behaviour of others. The utility of a system of practices must therefore be
considered in its historical context. Foundational principles of practical reasoning are not
relative; but given the historicity of human nature, systems of practice inevitably are.

12 Bentham and Coleridge: conservative holism

A person is morally obliged to do an action, has a duty to do it, on Mill’s definition, if society
should penalize its non-performance, whether through the internal sanctions of educated
conscience, or through the external sanctions of public opinion or positive law. And the criterion
which determines whether it should is aggregate utility, applied in the context of a given state of
human nature and society.

The qualification—that the criterion is to be applied in a given state of human nature and society
—is important. We must briefly return again to that critical assimilation of nineteenth-century
reaction against enlightenment ideas which was so important a part of Mill’s intellectual
formation.

Mill gives his most considered assessment in the essays on Bentham and Coleridge. His
criticisms of Bentham all centre on one point: Bentham’s moral psychology is a collection of
misleading or banal abstractions, uninformed by any mature understanding of human beings.
(‘He was a boy to the last. Self-consciousness, that daemon of the men of genius of our time…
and to which this age owes so much both of its cheerful and its mournful wisdom, never was
awakened in him…’; see chapter 1, note 3.)

In the essay on Coleridge, he develops a wider critique of the philosophes, and by implication, of
the English philosophical radicals. The emphasis here is on their lack of historical and
sociological sense. Mill etches a sharp contrast between Coleridge and Bentham as formative
philosophers of the age:

By Bentham, beyond all others, men have been led to ask themselves, in regard to any ancient or
received opinion, Is it true? and by Coleridge, What is the meaning of it? The one took his stand
outside the received opinion, and surveyed it as an entire stranger to it: the other looked at it
from within, and endeavoured to see it with the eyes of a believer in it…. With Coleridge…the
very fact that any doctrine had been believed by thoughtful men, and received by whole nations
and generations of mankind, was part of the problem to be solved, was one of the phenomena to
be accounted for…. The long duration of a belief, he thought, is at least proof of an adaptation in
it to some portion or other of the human mind; and if, on digging down to the root, we do not
find, as is generally the case, some truth, we shall find some natural want or requirement of
human nature which the doctrine in question is fitted to satisfy: among which wants the instincts
of selfishness and credulity have a place, but by no means an exclusive one…. (X 119–20)

Mill then describes and rejects the epistemological theories of Coleridge, and through him, of the
school of German idealism. But when he turns to Coleridge’s ‘concrete and practical doctrines’,
that is, to his social and political ideas, he finds in them much to approve. The error of the
philosophes was not that they denied the existence of moral feelings, as they were often alleged
to have done. On the contrary, they

believed them to be more deeply rooted in human nature than they are; to be not so dependent, as
in fact they are, upon collateral influences. They thought them the natural and spontaneous
growth of the human heart; so firmly fixed in it that they would subsist unimpaired, nay
invigorated, when the whole system of opinions and observances with which they were
habitually intertwined was violently torn away…. (X 131–2)

They did not appreciate that moral sentiments are developed and stabilised in a historical
tradition and social setting; nor did they sufficiently consider the conditions necessary for society
to cohere as a political unit. Thus they failed to recognise

in many of the errors which they assailed, corruptions of important truths, and in many of the
institutions most cankered with abuse, necessary elements of civilised society, though in a form
and vesture no longer suited to the age; and hence they involved, as far as in them lay, many
great truths, in a common discredit with the errors which had grown up around them. They threw
away the shell without preserving the kernel; and attempting to new-model society without the
binding forces which hold society together, met with such ‘success as might have been expected.
(X 131)

Mill puts forward three preconditions of a ‘permanent political society’: a system of education
which subjects personal impulses and aims to a restraining discipline; a shared allegiance to
some enduring and unquestioned values; and ‘a strong and active principle of cohesion’, or
mutual sympathy, among ‘the members of the same community or state’.

Societies, like organisms, evolve historically, through a complex holism, or ‘consensus’ of

functions (cp. 8.6), by way of adapting, albeit imperfectly, to human needs. This feeling for the
historicity of social formations and the complexity of moral psychology is what gives Mill’s
utilitarianism its classical maturity and depth. They set him at a great distance from Bentham on
the one hand, and from discussions of utilitarianism in twentieth-century philosophy on the
other. In these discussions, whether among critics or defenders, a concrete historical sense of
moral psychology has on the whole been abysmally absent. Yet the vacuum is produced not by
utilitarianism as such, but by a ‘spirit of the age’ whose consequences go far beyond philosophy.

Mill is a utilitarian. But he is also—as in his epistemology of induction—a conservative holist.

The conservative holist in epistemology does not deny that there are purely rational criteria by
which a system of beliefs can be assessed in the light of the data, or that it is the business of the
philosophy of science to codify and refine them. But he thinks that a ‘project of pure inquiry’
along Cartesian lines—bracketing off all old beliefs, and reconstructing the system of beliefs de
novo, by applying purely rational criteria to pure data, is impossible. (Cf. 6.7, p.193, on ‘the
well-meant but impracticable precept of Descartes’.)

Just as Mill thinks there is one ultimate criterion for assessing the system of beliefs—
enumerative induction—so he thinks there is one ultimate criterion for assessing the system of
practices—aggregate utility. But in neither case does that make him a methodological Cartesian.
One cannot think away all old practices, and ‘new-model’ the system of practices by applying
the criterion of aggregate utility to purely general, historically unspecific, factual data. The
Millian reformer does not construct an ideal society from behind a Rawlsian ‘veil of ignorance’.
He does not new-model human institutions from the bottom up; but, from a starting point within
a given social system he identifies the ways in which it fails to produce greatest happiness, and
seeks ways of eliminating them against the background of the system as a whole. Neurath’s
famous metaphor of the floating boat, which one must stand on to mend, exactly expresses Mill’s
attitude towards the existing ‘system of opinions and observances’.

Conservative holism, whether in regard to the system of beliefs or the system of practices, has
presuppositions. In both cases, it is appropriate only if there is reason to think that the system
spontaneously responds, but imperfectly, to its rational goal. The goal in the theoretical case is
truth: there has to be reason to believe that our beliefs generally track, or adapt to, reality. In the
practical case, it is general utility—which Mill defines in aggregate terms. There has to be reason
to believe that our practices track general utility. On the other hand, if there is to be any point in
critical reflection on our system of beliefs or practices at all, there has to be reason to think that
while the system spontaneously tracks its goal with some degree of success, it is not perfectly
successful. Its adaptation can be improved by rational criticism. (The system of practices
responds to ‘selfishness’ and ‘credulity’ as well as to general utility.)12

These considerations apply as much in the ‘agent’s’ as they do in the ‘observer’s’ perspective.
The utilitarian cannot be a pure act-utilitarian, if that is envisaged, as it often is (particularly by
critics), as a position which requires a Cartesian withdrawal from all existing practices, and an
attempt to apply the standard of aggregate utility directly to pure data. He must at any given
moment take the expediency of some of his inherited or accumulated practices for granted,
though there are no practices which he cannot put into question at some time. (The ‘paradox of
information’, remarked on in note 10, forces at least this degree of conservative holism on him.)

It does not follow, however, that the utilitarian agent should simply adhere to the moral practices
which he lays down as an observer. In the first place, as Mill says, there are many situations
where he can go beyond actually accepted moral practices in sacrificing his own for the general
good, and can see that to be so. Since general utility is, on Mill’s view, the foundation of
practical reasoning, it must follow that in these cases he should go beyond them. Of course on
the analysis so far it will be true to say that he has no moral obligation to do so, and has not acted
morally wrongly if he does not. But that is irrelevant to the deliberative question, as it presents
itself to him, of what he should do. In the point of view of the agent, what matters is not What is
my duty?’ but ‘what should I do?’

There may also seem, at first sight, to be a second point, which, unlike the first, Mill has failed to
notice. Are there not cases in which the utilitarian as an agent should go against, rather than
beyond, the moralities he prescribes as an observer? In such cases it would follow that he should
do what is morally wrong to do: an unattractive conclusion. But remember here that on Mill’s
view a direct appeal to utility, in situations which require it, is part of the system of practices.
There is no clear-cut distinction in Mill’s form of indirect utilitarianism between a ‘practical’ and
a purely ‘critical’ level of moral deliberation. If a person can make a serious and thoughtful case
for having gone, in a particular case, against moral precepts sanctioned by aggregate utility for
the general run of cases, then—even if his case was in fact unsound—he may not be
blameworthy.
Now we may not agree that the relevant criterion is that of aggregate utility—that remains
unresolved. But any philosophical-utilitarian position, which measures systems of practices by a
criterion of general good, will have to allow that intelligent breaking of generally prescribed
practices must itself be accommodated within the total system of prescribed practices. The only
argument is about how, and to what degree: and that argument will turn on considerations of
general utility. The fact that philosophical utilitarianism implies these conclusions is no objection
to it. They are perfectly reasonable conclusions to come to.

But what of the first point? Is that an objection to Mill’s position? It is not. It will apply to any
moral philosophy which recognises that we can often do better than simply doing our duty: to
any realistic moral philosophy, which occupies a reasonable position between rigorism on the
one hand, and crudely unreflective endorsement of existing moral expectations on the other.
There will always be situations in which one recognises that one can do better than doing what
one is morally obliged to do: for example in the help given to a person one knows but has no
close ties to. To recognise this is to recognise that in some sense one should do better, even
though not morally obliged or required to do so. No doubt most of us pass over the thought, most
of the time, but we do not do so unproblematically.

There may be reasons for gravitating towards an honourably worldly, rather than a rigorist, view
of how one should lead one’s life. ‘Ought’ implies ‘can’, and romantic or pious illusions about
what levels of self-sacrifice are genuinely within my capacity—especially of distinctive self-
sacrifice, going beyond what is communally expected—can be dangerous to myself and to others
too. Although I can, at any time, attain a higher level of commitment, it does not follow that I
can, all the time, attain that higher level of commitment. The trouble is that it is easy to deceive
oneself conveniently in the opposite, self-underestimating, direction. What balance to strike is a
queasily inescapable problem for any reflective person. Moral and psychological traps stand
ready for anyone who seeks to go beyond intelligent conventional morality. The problem is
there. That it comes up in Mill’s account of the ‘Art of Life’ is no objection to the account.

13 Justice and rights

The discussion so far has considered difficulties which can be raised against any form of indirect
philosophical utilitarianism, whatever its foundational principles may be. It is time to consider
the tenability of aggregate utilitarianism more specifically. According to philosophical
utilitarianism, foundational principles must be agent-neutral and Pareto-optimal. But this says
nothing about trade-offs between the benefits of different individuals. A specific distributive
principle is needed to determine that, Should we accept aggregate utility as providing it? We
have argued that there is no direct argument to that conclusion. But in chapter v of Utilitarianism
Mill argues indirectly, by trying to show that our maxims of justice can be systematised and
completed by the criterion of aggregate utility.

The first part of the chapter is concerned with tracing the origins, that is, the psychologically
primitive elements, of the idea and the sentiment of justice. The sentiment grows, according to
Mill, out of

the animal desire to repel or retaliate a hurt or damage to oneself, or to those with whom one
sympathizes, widened so as to include all persons, by the human capacity of enlarged sympathy,
and the human conception of intelligent self-interest. From the latter elements, the feeling derives
its morality; from the former, its peculiar impressiveness, and energy of self-assertion. (UV23, X
250)

However it is Mill’s analysis of the idea of justice which interests us here. The ‘primitive
element, in the formation of the idea of justice, was conformity to law’ (UV12, X 245). But as
the conception of law as a human artefact developed, the idea that a law itself could be bad or
good emerged. The idea of justice became that of conformity to laws which ought to exist.
However, conformity to law as it ought to exist does not distinguish the idea of an obligation of
justice, from that of moral obligation in general. So there must be a specific feature
distinguishing obligations of justice from moral obligation as such. An obligation of justice is
one to which there exists a correlative right residing in an ‘assignable’ person or persons:

Justice implies something which it is not only right to do, and wrong not to do, but which some
individual person can claim from us as his moral right. No one has a moral right to our
generosity or beneficence, because we are not morally bound to practice those virtues towards
any given individual…. Whenever there is a right, the case is one of justice, and not of the virtue
of beneficence. (UV15, X 247)

What is it, then, for a person to have a right?

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, either by the force of law, or by that of education and opinion. If he
has what we consider a sufficient claim, on whatever account, to have something guaranteed to
him by society, we say that he has a right to it. (UV24) To have a right, then, is, I conceive, to
have something which society ought to defend me in the possession of. If the objector goes on to
ask why it ought, I can give him no other reason than general utility. (UV26, X 250)

But if general utility is all that is involved (Mill imagines someone asking) why are obligations
of justice felt to have a peculiar stringency? The reason, he thinks, is

the extraordinarily important and impressive kind of utility which is concerned. The interest
involved is that of security, to every one’s feelings the most vital of interests…. Now this most
indispensable of all necessaries, after physical nutriment, cannot be had, unless the machinery for
providing it is kept imintermittedly in active play. Our notion, therefore, of the claim we have on
our fellow-creatures to join in making safe for us the very groundwork of our existence, gathers
feelings around it so much more intense than those concerned in any of the more common cases
of utility, that the difference in degree (as is often the case in psychology) becomes a real
difference in kind. (UV25, X 251)

Justice is a name for certain classes of moral rules, which concern the essentials of human well-
being more nearly, and are therefore of more absolute obligation, than any other rules for the
guidance of life; and the notion which we have found to be the essence of the idea of justice, that
of a right residing in an individual, implies and testifies to this more binding obligation. (UV33,
X 255)

Mill cuts through to the rational kernel of the concept of a moral right, and he then analyses
justice as respect for rights. On this point he is at his most incisive; nor has anyone substantially
improved on what he says.13 However, it is one thing to analyse the meaning of the terms,
another to found justice, respect for rights, exclusively on general utility. We may agree with the
analysis but reject the substantive ethical position. Can justice-rights be grounded on aggregate
utility alone? That is a more difficult question than may appear.

On the Millian view, a person has rights to certain fundamental goods which constitute ‘the very
groundwork’ of his existence: shelter, sustenance and beyond that the ability and freedom to
pursue the legitimate goals of an autonomous human agent. To recognise them as rights is to
recognise an obligation to guarantee every individual security of tenure in them. Let us call these
‘essentials of human well-being’ primary utilities. It is perfectly in Mill’s spirit to hold that
primary utilities are relative to a historical state of society—what constitutes a primary utility
will progressively rise, as affluence rises, or through the mechanism of progressive moralisation,
noted earlier, whereby people become increasingly unwilling to allow others to fall below certain
thresholds, or fail to share in certain kinds, of well-being.

Rights are ‘trumps’ or ‘side-constraints’ (Dworkin 1984; Nozick 1974), If a person has a right to
such and such primary utilities, then providing them for him and protecting him in the possession
of them is a requirement entrenched in the system of practices, a requirement which has priority
over the direct pursuit of general utility, or the private pursuit of personal ends. Thus in his
normal assessments of which policy maximises utility, the policy maker must not, it seems, take
into account any policy which violates rights: which either fails to provide a required threshold
of primary utilities for any person, or fails to guarantee that person in the possession of them.
Expediency ‘ought only to be listened to’ when justice ‘has been satisfied’ (UV33, X 255).

Is this compatible with aggregate utilitarianism? Any indirect form of utilitarianism will have to
lay down general principles which can come into conflict with the direct maximising of general
utility; in particular, prescribed canons of justice may do so. That returns us to the dilemmas of a
reflective utilitarian agent, which we discussed in the previous section. However the question of
justice cannot be blandly passed over in this way, for it presents the acutest challenge to
aggregate utilitarianism. It is here that the coherence of Mill’s ethical and political outlook faces
its severest, and most significant, test. But we must be careful to state the challenge level-
headedly and fairly—it is certainly most important not to play it down, but it is important not to
take refuge in pious rhetoric either.

14 Autonomy and distribution

It seems clear that Mill never appreciated the full force of the difficulty. He never analysed in
detail the types of case in which rights as trumps come most clearly into conflict with
maximising principles—cases in which only the sacrifice of one person’s primary utilities can
safeguard the primary utilities of a large number of people.14 Nevertheless, one can go some
distance in defence of the Millian position, which bases a system of rights guaranteeing primary
utilities to all individuals on an aggregate utilitarian foundation—if, as we shall see, one
recognises autonomy as well as happiness as a human end.

A first objection is that if we take aggregate utility as our ultimate criterion we must allow that
sacrificing a person’s primary utilities could always, ‘in principle’, be justified by a small gain of
secondary utilities to sufficiently large numbers of people.

But the aggregate utilitarian may reply that suppositions of this kind are unreal. They suppose a
measurable continuity of benefits, within a person’s life and across persons, far beyond anything
that can realistically be envisaged. Who will say, for example, what small and dispensable
enjoyment must be given to how many multitudes of people, to outweigh, in aggregate utility,
the loss to a person of the primary necessities of life: such as food, shelter or the support of his
fellow-creatures? If we imagine ourselves increasing the quantity and spread of small and
dispensable enjoyments to others, we find no point in the process at which we are willing to say
that, in point of aggregate utility, the increase has outweighed or even balanced the loss of
primary utilities to one person. Perhaps, if, given that a single person’s primary utilities are finite
in aggregate, and if secondary utilities to others can be increased up to any given sum, such a
point must come—though indeed this is not obvious if we allow for commensurable goods (see
Griffin, 1986, ch. V). In any case we cannot in real life base a distributive practice on a merely
abstract fact.

I do not say that this is a fully satisfactory answer; we shall come back to it. However it is in any
case not available when we turn to the difficulty posed for Mill by situations in which sacrificing
one person’s primary utilities preserves the primary utilities of a number of others. Thus, to take
a well-known example (Harris 1975), suppose that the lives of a number of people in a hospital
can be saved by taking one healthy person, and transplanting several different organs, each of
them essential to life, from his body to the bodies of the patients in hospital. Now consider the
following practice: all of us are issued with numbered cards, or tickets. When two or more
patients can be saved by transplants of organs from a single healthy person, a central computer
selects a number at random, and that person’s body is used. This is a ‘survival club’ (Harris calls
it the ‘survival lottery’), and there seems to be a clear utilitarian case for it.

It might be said that it would cause general insecurity and anxiety. Or it might reduce the
incentive to stay healthy (Singer 1977). These things are true but do not identify the real
objection. After all a voluntary survival club, properly organised, could well raise the expected
value of all its players’ lives. For each one, the likely expectation of healthy life would be raised;
an insurance company ought to cut the cost of their life insurance. Why then should joining a
survival club cause any insecurity or anxiety? My primary utilities receive more protection than
they did before. Yet—I would refuse to join the club, however persuaded of its fairness and
reliability. I am much surer of this than I am that it would be prudentially reasonable not to join.
And I suspect that this would be an almost universal reaction.

Perhaps the reluctance people would feel—whether or not it is reasonable—would in itself be

enough to lower the expected value of the joining option for them to the point where they are
better off not joining. But there is a further important factor involved. We saw that autonomy is
itself an independent ingredient of utility. Allow that people’s worries about the survival lottery
are in fact greatly exaggerated. Allow that if they joined, they would soon grow accustomed to
the idea—so joining would offer the prospect of a longer, no less happy life. Then the expected
value to a person of voluntary participation would in fact be—contrary to what he himself
thought— higher than the expected value of not participating. Yet it does not follow that
enrolling him against his will would leave him better off.
That would apply even if he was enrolled without knowing it, so that the felt hurt of being
knowingly compelled to join were wholly eliminated. It is not just that if his number then came
up the cost to him would be even greater, because he would realise, on top of everything else,
that he had been tricked. (Perhaps that could be eliminated too.) The very fact of enrolling him in
the survival club, when he would not wish to take part, infringes his autonomy, whether or not he
knows about it, and as such, reduces his utility. It is an unacceptable practice—even if it could be
instituted as a secret practice —because people would not want to join, and in this matter it is a
violation of their autonomy to go against what they want.

Is there nothing else that makes the practice objectionable? If there is not, then the aggregate
utilitarian’s position has so far been held. (Notice that there is nothing contractarian about this
appeal to infringement of autonomy. Autonomy is a part of utility.) Would there then be
anything wrong with a voluntary survival club? To eliminate all the usual and, within their
limits, sound points which tell against disturbing and bizarre moral innovations, let us put the
question in a wholly alien setting. Suppose we encountered a community of bee-people, among
whom survival clubs were a thriving concern. No one was forced to join, but everyone did, and
went on doing so in the light of general experience of membership. Suppose they found our
reluctance to join such clubs thoroughly irrational. It is an interesting question what we could say
in reply. But is it not at least clear that we could not hold their practices, given their basic
attitudes, immoral?

We must notice another important point. There are situations—call them cases of ‘abnormal
peril’—in which we are willing to accept sacrifices of individuals’ primary utilities to safeguard
the primary utilities of others, sacrifices which would in the normal case, the case in which
ordinary life is going on, be considered unacceptable (Mill’s ‘regimen of a blockaded town’).

Consider the following example. A member of an underground army has been captured by
government forces. They set him free, on condition that he carries a message to the local
underground commander (whose address they do not know). He must deliver the letter through
the letter box, and then go straight on to do some other—as far as he knows— perfectly innocent
job. Unknown to him, the letter contains a lethal bomb, and in the commander’s house are four
or five people, all of whom will be killed. Another member of the underground discovers the
plan through an informer. He rushes to intercept the released prisoner, but arrives too late to get
within shouting distance. The only thing he can do is to shoot the man just before he delivers the
fatal letter.

Whether or not he is wrong to do so, it seems to me at least that he is not doing something
unquestionably wrong in the way that a surgeon who silently killed a patient in order to save the
lives of four or five would be doing something unquestionably wrong. The difference between
the two cases is not that between killing and letting die; important as that general type of
distinction is, and relevant as it is to issues of utilitarianism. Nor is the bearer of the fatal letter
himself at risk from it. If he had not been shot, he would not have died. There is indeed a
difference: the patient is an ‘innocent bystander’, the message bearer is an ‘innocent threat’. His
actions would be causally instrumental in producing the death of the people in the commander’s
house, even though he was not to know that, and could not be held responsible for their deaths.

This last difference between innocent bystanders and innocent threats is certainly relevant to the
distinction we draw between the two cases, but it is not the essential one, as the well-known
‘trolley’ case shows (a trolley is running out of control in a mine; if I leave it many miners will
be killed, if I switch the points some other miners, many fewer in number, will be killed). Again
it would generally be agreed that whether or not switching the points is right, it is not morally
heinous in the way that the surgeon’s act is.

It seems that many people are willing to allow that primary utilities may legitimately be put in
hazard where the case is one of abnormal peril. In such situations, the rules which prohibit the
sacrificing of a person’s primary utilities for the benefit of other people’s may lapse. And even
those who do not think they lapse concede that breaking them is less blameworthy.

These points suggest the outlines of a more general account. An aggregate utilitarian assesses
new practices by their increased yield of aggregate utility. Among such new practices, some will
raise the expected utility of anyone who agrees to take part in them—so long as the agreement is
in every case voluntary. Among these practices in turn, some, like the survival club, do so only at
the cost of creating a risk for each participant that he may be called on to sacrifice a primary
untility for the sake of other participants.

If one is maximising one’s own expected utility, then one ought to join any such practice. But in
fact people’s reactions are mostly more complex. Most, perhaps, would be willing to stake their
primary utilities for a gain of expected utility when they find themselves in a situation of
abnormal peril, But few want to join a survival club, because they draw a line between the
ordinary course of life and cases of abnormal peril. They will be willing to participate in
institutions which put members’ primary utilities at risk for the sake of gains to the common
good only ‘in an emergency’.

We need not here consider whether this response is a prudentially rational one. It is enough that
it is the response people have. The simple fact that a person is unwilling to take part in a practice
means that his autonomy is infringed, and his utility to that extent diminished, if he is made to
take part. Because autonomy is only a part of our utility, it cannot be ruled out that a sufficient
gain of utility in respect of other ends would outweigh a violation of autonomy. But in
proportion as we value autonomy as an important part of our good, so will the prohibition on
paternalistic coercion become increasingly stringent—to the point of becoming ‘practically’
absolute. (We will return to these matters in the next chapter.)

Consider, then, a community of people who value their autonomy very highly, and who have a
rooted objection to taking part in a practice which, were they to cultivate it freely, would be in
their interest. On the line sketched here, the aggregate utilitarian law-giver does not have grounds
for imposing it on them, for that would infringe their autonomy, which is an important part of
their good.

But—the law-giver can be imagined to reply—I impose this practice on you not for your good
but for the good of your fellows. Your autonomy is your liberty to pursue your own good as you
see fit, and that I am not infringing at all. Hence your utility is increased, not diminished, by my
coercion. To this, however, we answer that we are all agreed that we would rather not take part.
We are consenting non-participators. Thus there is no one for whose good we can be made to
join, even though it would raise aggregate utility if we freely joined. Aggregate utility is reduced
if we are made to join.15

This analysis retains the criterion of aggregate utility, it reflects the importance Mill placed on
autonomy as part of utility, and it makes sense of the occasional contractarian-sounding remarks
he makes. Only as we become willing to engage in an institution can that institution become a
part of morality—that is, justifiably sanctionable. The utilitarian law-giver has to work with the
grain of human nature and not against it.

The last remark is relevant to another, classic, set of difficulties encountered by utilitarianism—
stemming from our conception of punishment. The utilitarian, as is often pointed out, must
explain why it is wrong to ‘punish’ innocent people: to harm persons who have done no wrong
where that would cost-effectively reduce wrong-doing. He may reply that as a matter of fact
‘punishing’ the innocent never is cost-effective. But of course that fails to get to the root of the
objection. The objection is that even if it were cost-effective it would be unjust; because
punishment should be a matter of desert.

Utilitarians must accept, as an anthropological fact about us, that many of our basic moral
attitudes—as that visiting evil on innocent people is wrong, or that rewards for effort are
intrinsically justifiable— are grounded in the notion of desert. But no philosophical utilitarian, of
any type, can recognise desert as an ultimate moral category. Still, he can recognise the fact that
we would be unwilling to take part in a ‘punishment lottery’, in which the actions of others could
attract penalties on us—among other reasons, because we hold to a notion of desert. So to
impose any such institution, publicly or secretly, would entail a very high cost in the loss of
autonomy. In contrast, punishment by desert is attracted only by my own actions, and I have it in
my own hands to avoid it. This does not reproduce our reasons for objecting to punishment of
innocent people, since those turn on desert, but it does register them as a datum—as one of our
hardiest moral attitudes. Something like it is perhaps the best a philosophical utilitarian can do—
but of course a fair assessment of his view would have to consider what alternatives are on offer,
and how attractive they are.

However the difficult issues of desert are not closely tied to the question about utility and
distribution which we are pursuing here.16 The question we are considering concerns the
distributive structure of the general good. Granting philosophical utilitarianism—granting, that is
to say, that the ultimate criterion is that of general well-being, we are asking whether the
determinable notion of general well-being should be determined as aggregate well-being. Now
so far we have been considering only practices in which it is known in advance that some
people’s primary utilities will be sacrificed for the sake of others, but in which we cannot tell
whose they will be. But the Millian utilitarian is not new-modelling a whole system of practices
from behind a ‘veil of ignorance’. He proposes new practices within an existing state of society,
to people who know about themselves and their social position. So it may be quite possible to
introduce practices which increase aggregate utility only at the cost of cutting into the primary
utilities of a predictable class of people. Such a practice will not raise the expected utility of
anyone in that class. Is it nevertheless justified?

From the aggregate utilitarian’s standpoint, the autonomy of people in the predictable class is not
infringed by making them take part, because they are compelled to participate not for their own
good but for the good of others. If autonomy is the freedom to determine the pursuit of one’s
own good in one’s own way (10.4), it is not automatically infringed if a person is compelled to
do something for the good of others. (Of course the question of what benefits to others can be
exacted from an individual is crucial to the analysis of autonomy and liberty— we shall take it
up in 10.8.) It is at this point that the potential inconsistency between Mill’s aggregate
utilitarianism, and his theory of justice-rights as side-constraints protecting the primary utilities
of individuals is at its plainest. It arises if aggregate utility can be increased by systematically
sacrificing the primary utilities of an antecedently characterised class of people (it might be
handicapped babies, for example).

One can only say that the inconsistency is potential, because (as ever with indirect utilitarianism)
whether the two do actually conflict depends on the facts. So there is plenty of scope for the
aggregate utilitarian to dwell on the various indirect harms which arise when society fails to
provide a stringent defence of the primary utilities of every single human being. The utilitarian
can continue to argue, in the light of the way human beings are, that the criterion of aggregate
utility justifies entrenching a (‘normally’) absolute protection of primary utilities.

But I do not believe that a contingent justification of this kind is enough. If it could be made, it
would show that Mill’s grounding of justice-rights in aggregate utility is coherent, but it would
not persuade me to be an aggregate utilitarian. I do not find that I endorse the right of individuals
to the primary utilities of life on grounds of aggregate utility. My acceptance of such a right does
not wax and wane with my inclination to suppose it can be justified by aggregate utility alone.
The appeal that persuades me is the familiar and forceful one: to sacrifice some people’s primary
utilities for the sake of others is to use them, impermissibly, as expendable resources.

15 Reflective equilibrium
Certainly the appeal requires more careful statement. As we have seen, there are ‘abnormal’
circumstances in which sacrificing the primary utilities of some individuals for the sake of
greater general good is not obviously wrong. It is important that in such circumstances we seem
readier to drop into an aggregative way of thinking about general welfare. The distinction
between situations of clear and present peril, or urgent collective need, and the normal
circumstances of life—what underlies it and what hangs on it—would have to be examined
carefully in any full exploration of the structure of general good. But in those normal
circumstances of life, trading off the primary utilities of a minority for the sake of aggregate
good is disallowed. In those circumstances we regard each and every individual as a non-
expendable resource.

This refusal to countenance unrestricted trade-offs between the well-being of distinct individuals
survives reflection. In precisely that respect it seems to me to stand in contrast to the idea of
desert, which as we saw poses a problem for any form of philosophical utilitarianism. We
continue, it is true, to operate with that idea, but, in a certain sense, we operate with it only in
‘transcended’ form—we recognise and accept it as a natural sentiment, but we find ourselves
abandoning it as a fundamental category, an ultimate requirement of moral reasoning. To reject
philosophical utilitarianism in favour of a simple reinstatement of the category of desert is to try
to recapture a lost world. In contrast, we are now acknowledging that rights are indeed a
fundamental category of moral reasoning, in so far as they mark constraints on the pursuit of
aggregate utility, constraints which are not themselves justified at some deeper level by
aggregate utility. We do not thereby disagree with Mill’s analysis of the concept of a right—to
say that a person has a right to a thing is still to say no more than that society has an obligation to
guarantee him in possession of it. But we disagree with Mill in holding that the obligation to
guarantee primary utilities cannot itself be founded on ‘general utility’, but is, rather, constitutive
of its very structure.

Let us now review our conclusions. Mill’s case for the Greatest Happiness Principle is two-sided.
He holds that it systematises our best moral practices, and he also gives his famous ‘proof’.
Though only suasive, it is still advanced as ‘determining the intellect’. He certainly means it to
lead the reflective reader to the conclusion that aggregate happiness is the sole ultimate rest of all
conduct. If the two approaches did converge on the same principle, that principle would rest in a
highly stable reflective equilibrium.

They do not. We saw that the ‘proof’ only gets us as far as philosophical, not aggregate,
utilitarianism. And now we see that the indirect approach falls short as well. It is a stubborn fact
that aggregate utilitarianism obliterates feelings that we have, and on reflection want to stand by,
about not using people as resources for the general good. A developed society in its normal state
—not mobilised to avert urgent danger or provide for pressing collective need—must respect
absolutely each individual’s right to the primary utilities: those utilities which are preconditions
of autonomous citizenship and a worthwhile individual life. This view does not derive from a
theorem, that respect for such rights maximises aggregate utility in the normal state. Its status in
the liberal vision is axiomatic. ‘Normal’ is partly normative: the normal, unmobilised,
circumstances of life are what we want to prevail, they are the ones to which we aspire, the
circumstances in which human life should be led.

Mill remains the purest and most powerful source of the liberal vision of justice: of a society in
which people can have the self-confidence to be autonomous and responsible citizens in the
moral community, because they can rely on the resources, freedoms and dignity that they need to
be so. With Mill, our conclusion is that the liberal vision can and should be founded on
philosophical utilitarianism—the criterion of general good. So we reject, with him, the idea that
society can or should be seen as founded on a contract between instrumentally rational
individuals, But, against Mill, we hold that it must be a form of philosophical utilitarianism
which recognises distributive constraints on general well-being at its very foundation.

What constraints, though? And need there be any precise answer? These are questions which call
for more careful and extended inquiry than they can get in a study of Mill. We have seen that the
direct argument to philosophical utilitarianism leaves open an indefinite domain of distributive
principles—the requirement is only that they be impartial and efficient. Of course not all
principles which meet this requirement will be consistent with our practices, or our reflectively
held maxims, of distribution. So an important question of political philosophy remains open: can
any compelling picture be advanced which would lead us to converge reflectively on a single
distributive articulation of the general good?

It certainly cannot be assumed that some single vision of distributive equity will be found
compelling by all impartial and reasonable inquirers. They may agree in excluding many
principles which would satisfy the formal requirements of Pareto-optimality and agent-neutrality.
But they may still be left with an irresolvably contested short list. In fact it is a little hard to
believe that this should not be so. It seems perfectly understandable that the distributive structure
of general good should contain a measure of ultimate indeterminacy. That indeterminacy will
survive in the democratic debate of a liberal society. However debate need not lead to a
fundamental political conflict, imperilling liberal institutions as such, if it respects defensible
limits, both philosophically and, of course, in actual practice.

Philosophy itself obviously cannot ensure that political principles are respected in practice, but it
can do something to make them rational and to keep them—and their limits—before people’s
minds. So it remains a live and important question how far honestly held disagreements about
distribution can be narrowed down by imaginative philosophical inquiry. If the argument of this
chapter is accepted, the inquiry must move on beyond Mill’s aggregate utilitarianism. This does
not diminish Mill as a maker of liberal thought: he is a spring of clarity to which serious political
thought will always return. It will return for refreshment, and it will invariably find much with
which it will vehemently disagree. We must turn to the other great topic on which Mill provides
a perennial source of refreshment and exasperation—the topic of political and social liberty.
10
Liberty
[Liberty] belongs to the rare books that after hostile criticism has done its best are still found to
have somehow added a cubit to man’s stature. (John Morley)

I am reading that terrible book of John Mill’s on Liberty, so clear, and calm, and cold: He lays it
on one as a tremendous duty to get one’s self well contradicted, and admit always a devil’s
advocate into the presence of your dearest, most sacred truths, as they are apt to grow windy and
worthless without such tests, if indeed they can stand the shock of argument at all. He looks
through you like a basilisk, relentless as Fate. We knew him well at one time, and owe him very
much: I fear his remorseless logic has led him far since then. (Caroline Fox)

As if it were a sin to control, or coerce into better methods, human swine in any way;… Ach
Gott in Himmel! (Thomas Carlyle)1

1 The themes of On Liberty

Mill’s essay On Liberty gathers together the ruling preoccupations of a lifetime: individuality as
one of the elements of well-being, liberty of thought and discussion, the limits to the authority of
society over the individual. He described it in his Autobiography as

a kind of philosophic textbook of a single truth, which the changes progressively taking place in
modern society bring out into ever stronger relief: the importance, to man and society, of a large
variety in types of character, and of giving full freedom to human nature to expand itself in
innumerable and conflicting directions. (I 259)

The lesson, he conceded, might seem unnecessary in a period ‘decidedly favourable to the
development of new opinions’. But he thought his time a time of transition, with the openness of
such times. New orthodoxies would come to dominate social opinion, the more surely in a
democratic and equal state. It is then that the teachings of the Liberty will have their greatest
value’.2

Much of what is most passionately felt in Mill’s political philosophy is threaded on this strand—
the idea of a society of human beings fully and variously developed, morally vigorous, self-
determining. He epitomises the liberalism which achieved its clearest statement and purest
influence in the heyday of the nineteenth century—between the Napoleonic period and the
growth of big business, socialism and empire. But he deepens and broadens it into a system of
thought which fuses maturity of historical and psychological insight with firm philosophical
groundings. Liberalism found its philosopher in Mill: only someone with his particular range of
intellectual qualities, and his steadfast clarity of character, could have driven so many windows
onto its innermost commitments.

This classical liberalism of the nineteenth century was born—as Mill was, and as de Tocqueville
was—in that century’s early years, and matured in its first three decades. They were decades in
which rational radicals were learning lessons from the excesses of Jacobinism in the French
Revolution, and of Bonapartism after it; both seemed to them to be rooted in fallacies associated
with the idea of popular sovereignty. They were also the decades of Romantic reaction against
eighteenth-century enlightenment, bringing an unusual depth of debate about the relations
between nature and history, civil society, the state, the self.

The liberal of this period consequently tempers ideals with an understanding of the dilemmas
they create. He views democracy with some ambivalence. He is committed to equality of moral
status, to the responsibility of each individual; so he must in principle support democratic
government— ‘political’ liberty—support it at least as an aspiration. However he pre-eminently
cherishes ‘civil’ liberty; he wishes, that is to say, to limit the authority of government—and not
only of government but of society as such—over the individual. And he believes that the need to
do so is particularly pressing under democratic government; he sees clearly the potential tension
between political and civil liberty, between the ‘liberty of the ancients’ and ‘the liberty of the
moderns’. Precisely this tension is at the centre of On Liberty.3

Liberty of thought and discussion, the other main topic of the essay, gives rise to another—the
other—liberal dilemma. The ideal of moral equality among self-determining individuals implies
unrestricted liberty of criticism. At once, however, other elements in the liberal’s scheme of
priorities pull towards or away from it. Pulling away from it is his awareness that society needs
beliefs and institutions which provide an enduring rallying point of allegiance and inspiration.
How to reconcile legitimation and continuity with total liberty to criticise all sources of
legitimation? Pulling towards it, on the other hand, is his fear of the pressure rowards stagnant
conformism, the bending and stunting of human potentialities, incessantly exerted by a
democratic and equal state. Against this pressure he wishes to guarantee freedom of original and
critical thought. But pulling away from it again is his fear of democracy’s disregard for the
authority of intelligence and balanced judgement; its tendency to bring representative mediocrity,
or the politics of simple-minded causes, into unhealthy influence.

All these dangers could operate simultaneously. It could be that modern democracy chronically
risks falling into a cycle of periods of cultural stagnation—Mill’s ‘Chinese stationariness’—
interrupted by brief phases of undiscriminating assault on its vital traditions and institutions:
dominated in both phases by the intellectually second-rate but socially and politically effective.

These questions were all much in Mill’s mind. After more than a century of social change it may
seem clear that he greatly underestimated the pace of technical and scientific change, and the
creative dynamism it would produce; nevertheless the questions remain central for liberal
democracy still. No single text affords a complete picture of Mill’s views on them; the essay On
Liberty, which we are concerned with in this chapter, constitutes only a small part of his writings
on politics. I am not Implying that it diverges from the overall emphasis of these other writings
—it is a careful statement of Mill’s settled opinions. It deserves its prominence in political
philosophy because it contains the philosophic essentials of Mill’s liberalism; still it is directed to
a particular audience, and emphasises those points which Mill thought it salutary to emphasise to
that audience. It was written not for a period of crisis but for a period of normality, and hence
responds to Mill’s analysis of the normal or chronic dangers of an equal and democratic state.
But when, for example, we read Mill’s defence of liberty of expression we should not imagine
that we are dealing with the opinions of someone to whom the dangers of an unchecked babble
of critical voices had never occurred. Mill thought hard about those dangers, about the tensions
between liberty of discussion, and authority and allegiance, and that fact must be remembered
when we consider that his most extended discussion of the matter comes down so
unambiguously for liberty of expression.4

The introductory chapter of the essay begins by examining the relation between democracy and
liberty.

The struggle between liberty and authority was historically the struggle between subjects and
government; liberty meant ‘protection against the tyranny of political rulers’. But when the ideal
of democratic government arose, limitations on the power of such government seemed pointless:
‘The nation did not need to be defended against its own will. There was no fear of its tyrannizing
over itself’ (LI2? 3; XVIII 217, 218).

The United States made it possible to observe democratic institutions in practice. The misleading
character of such phrases as ‘self-government’ and ‘the power of the people over themselves’
became apparent. It began to be recognised that democracy itself threatened a new form of
tyranny: a ‘tyranny of the majority’.5 That tyranny might express itself through the acts of public
officials, but it might also be practised as a social tyranny which, leaving ‘fewer means of
escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself’ could
be ‘more formidable than many kinds of political oppression’:

Protection…against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough: there needs protection also
against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to
impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on
those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation,
of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion
themselves upon the model of its own. (LI5, XVIII 220)

The question of what rightful limit can be placed on the exercise of power by society and state
arises the more urgently, because its importance and difficulty are little recognised. The likings
and dislikings of society, or of some powerful portion of it’ have generally determined what rules
of conduct are laid down, and these, once established through ‘the magical influence of custom’
come to seem self-evident. Meanwhile progressive thinkers have been more concerned with
deciding what society should like or dislike, than with ‘questioning whether its likings or
dislikings should be a law to individuals’ (LI7, XVIII 222). That question has been raised only in
respect of religious freedom, and in that case only because no religious party could secure
complete victory.

So a central question of political philosophy remains open: what boundary should limit the rules
of conduct imposed on individuals by public opinion or law?

2 The Liberty Principle

Mill’s answer takes the form of ‘one very simple principle’, which I shall call the ‘Liberty
Principle’:

The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the
dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means
used be physical force in the form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion of public opinion.
That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively,
in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That 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. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for
him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinion of others, to do so would
be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with
him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any
evil in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him
must be calculated to produce evil to someone else. The only part of the conduct of any one, for
which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns
himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the
individual is sovereign. (LI9, XVIII 223–4)

Mill immediately goes on to limit the domain over which the Liberty Principle is to apply: it
does not apply to children, nor to ‘those backward states of society in which the race itself may
be considered as in its nonage’:

Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be
their improvement, and the means justified by actually effecting that end. 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. (LI10, XVIII 224)

The principle is stated by Mill in a variety of ways. He aims to convey its kernel idea to the
reader, by showing it from various slightly differing angles. He unfolds its full meaning and
implications progressively in the essay as a whole; nowhere does he put forward a single,
canonical formulation.

An action is protected by the Liberty Principle, as it is stated in various places (usefully listed in
Honderich 1982:505–6), if it does not ‘harm’, or ‘produce’ or ‘cause evil’ to others, if it is not
‘prejudicial to the interests of others’, is not ‘injurious’ to them, or is not such as to result in
‘definite damage, or a definite risk ‘of damage’ to them. Terms such as ‘harm’, ‘cause evil’,
‘injure’, ‘damage’ or ‘hurt’ are not used by Mill in a technical way. On the contrary, he relies on
their ordinary range of meaning, adding such further explanations or qualifications as become
necessary along the way, and closing the essay with a chapter of specimen applications.

This straightforward approach has produced unnecessarily vexed questions of interpretation. Had
it been Mill’s object to minimise misunderstanding among specialists, instead of maximising
understanding among an intelligent general public, he might have done well to proceed
otherwise. He might have fixed on a single statement of the principle, for example ‘An action
which does not harm the interests of others must not be interfered with’, given words like ‘harm’
technical meanings in the light of an examination of difficult cases, and so forth. But this is not
Mill’s approach, and one should not read the essay as if it was.

There is therefore no such thing as Mill’s ‘concept of harm’, and hence nothing which needs to
be ‘pieced together from some of his general remarks'6 by exercises of interpretative ingenuity.
To take an example: when Mill later says that acts which are ‘directly injurious only to the agents
themselves’ may, if done publicly, be ‘a violation of good manners, and coming thus within the
category of offences against others, may rightfully be prohibited’ (LV7, XVIII 295), he is not
claiming that such acts, when done publicly, are harmful to others (cp. Ten 1980:106–7). He is
engaged in spelling out some of the ‘obvious limitations’ (LV6) of his maxim when it is applied
in practice, and adding specimen qualifications in a selective but intelligible way. Acts of
discourtesy, or public nuisance, do not, in normal cases, harm others or injure their interests, nor
does Mill have a technical sense of ‘harm’ in which they can be said to do so.

I am by no means denying that Mill touches here on important questions which are not properly
cleared up by his own statements of the Liberty Principle. They have to do with the difference
between private and public space, and the obligations one incurs simply by being in a public
space. But Mill does not clear them up; he leaves them unresolved. One certainly can and should
ask how the underlying idea of the Liberty Principle might be best extended to give a consistent
account of them; but that is to develop it further than Mill did.

Consider now the overall structure of the essay. The guiding idea is first presented in the passage
I have quoted from chapter i. Two chapters intervene before it is specifically re-examined. The
second chapter is a self-contained defence of freedom of thought and discussion. Chapter iii is an
account of ‘individuality’ as one of the ‘elements of well-being’. The human worth of
autonomous self-development, unforgettably laid out here, gives Mill the grounding he needs in
human interests for a utilitarian vindication of political and social liberty. The chapter presents,
in classic shape, the most characteristic and interesting feature of Mill’s liberalism: he defends
the ‘negative’, enlightenment concept of liberty as freedom from interference precisely in terms
of the ‘positive’, romantic concept of self-realisation. The central Millian claims are that
developed spontaneity and rational autonomy are ‘permanent’ and general human interests; and
that positive freedom flourishes only in conditions of civil liberty.

The essay does not leave matters at that level of philosophical abstractness. In chapter iv (‘Of the
Limits to the Authority of Society over the Individual’) Mill reflects illuminatingly on the ways
in which avoidance or persuasion shade into compulsion, and he refines the distinction between
that part of an individual’s conduct which falls within his private domain—in which he has
‘sovereignty’ over himself— and that part over which society must be granted legitimate
jurisdiction. In the last chapter (‘Applications’), having established a serviceable general
framework for the ‘discussion of details’, he offers ‘specimens of application, which may serve
to bring into greater clearness the meaning and limits’ of the doctrine of the essay (LV1, XVIII
292).

3 Foundations for liberty: utility, natural rights, scepticism

The Liberty Principle is a second-order principle limiting the legitimate scope of morality and
law. But Mill already has a principle—the Utility Principle. And is it not a direct consequence of
that principle that individuals may be required or forbidden to perform acts for their own good,
by sanctions of morality or law—so long as instituting such sanctions optimally promotes
general utility? It most plainly is. Yet the Liberty Principle disallows any law or morality which
imposes conduct on individuals solely on grounds of their own good. More precisely, it strikes
down that form of justification; it rules out any reason for a legal or moral sanction which
justifies it on the basis that it is good for the individuals themselves to be compelled or prevented
from performing a particular kind of act.7 Unless, therefore, Mill has forgotten his utilitarianism
in On Liberty, he must believe that striking down all such justifications for social or legal
sanction does in fact promote general utility—at least in the conditions of modern society, for the
principle is proposed by him only in that case.

There is another possible foundation for the Liberty Principle, not utilitarian at all. It may be
called ‘the natural rights model’: it holds that individuals are endowed, pre-socially, with certain
natural rights: of acquisition and transfer of property, of self-defence, of punishment. Provided
they do not violate the rights of others, they have a liberty-right to do as they wish. They may
protect themselves by force if others seek to violate their rights, and they may exact adherence to
freely entered-into agreements. The model pictures some of these pre-existing, natural, rights
being transferred, by a series of specific contracts, or by some general agreement, to the state; the
motive for each such transfer being that the individual involved gains an advantage from it.

To many, it has seemed to provide the natural home for a liberalism of the kind defended in On
Liberty: that is, one which centres on the idea of an individual’s private domain and his
sovereignty in it. The model does not claim that individuals alienate all their rights to the
sovereignty of the people—in this it differs from the social contract as envisaged by Rousseau. It
therefore offers a very simple grounding for the Liberty Principle: the sovereignty of society, of
the general will, is indefeasibly limited by individual rights which have never been alienated to
society, and which are established by no social power. The state has no rights other than those
which it has acquired by voluntary transfer from individuals, and cannot interfere with or
abrogate rights which were never handed over to it in the first place.

Now we have already argued that the concept of a natural right can find no place in a framework
of philosophical naturalism: because it invokes conceptions of the natural whose very
intelligibility naturalism itself rules out (1.5). But does not Mill implicitly appeal to the idea of
natural rights in his manner of presenting the Liberty Principle? For example when he says that
‘the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with
the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection’ —or asserts that in actions which
concern only himself, the individual’s ‘independence is, of right, absolute’ and that ‘over his
own body and mind, the individual is sovereign’?

To reject natural rights is not to reject the language of rights as such. As we have seen, Mill
recognises that the notion of a right has an important part to play in morality—but he bases the
recognition of rights strictly on general utility (9.13). Immediately after he has stated the Liberty
Principle, and explained the limits of its application, Mill hastens to make himself clear:

It is proper to state that I forgo any advantage which could be derived to my argument from the
idea of abstract right, as a thing independent of utility. 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. Those interests, I contend, authorise the subjection of
individual spontaneity to external control, only in respect to those actions of each, which concern
the interests of other people. (LI11, XVIII 224)

We shall examine what Mill means by ‘utility in the largest sense’, but It is at least clear that he
foresaw that his exposition of the Liberty Principle might seem to be shifting it from utilitarian
foundations—and that he disclaims a non-utilitarian interpretation of his views on liberty as
explicitly and prominently as he can.

It is also important to see that Mill can legitimately appeal to the natural rights model at least in
this sense: he can appeal to the underlying human responses which give it its power. Even if we
reject the metaphysics of natural rights, we can still recognise as a fact the human attitude to
which the natural rights model appeals. ‘Others have no right to tell me what to do, if my action
violates no liberty or just claim of theirs.’ Mill’s formulations of the Liberty Principle repeatedly
rely for their force and attractiveness on an appeal to that deep-seated human response. A
utilitarian can legitimately do that: he can appeal to the attitude, without endorsing the
metaphysics of natural rights which is built on it. He recognises as a datum our natural
attachment to a territory, a space within which our choices are exclusively ours; and the moral
vocabulary of rights within which it is naturally expressed—but he builds it into a utilitarian
framework. The justification for this strategy will be considered when we examine the idea of
autonomy in 10.5. We shall see that Mill’s way of doing it is critically weakened by his
hedonistic analysis of human ends; he would have been in a much stronger position if he had
seen that the deep-seated response requires one to acknowledge autonomy as a human end which
is not simply a part of happiness, but is in its own right a distinct ingredient of well-being.

But it does not follow that the general project of founding the Liberty Principle on utility is itself
flawed. There is no inconsistency in Mill’s position; there is simply a large, substantive claim
about human nature and society: that human nature is progressively educable by history and
social circumstance, and that once it has developed an adequate level of political and social
culture, paternalist interference by state or society in the decisions of individuals cannot promote
general good. Such large propositions are obviously hard to judge; but they are the stuff of
political thought. Politics cannot dispense with substantive assumptions about human nature and
its categorial ends. Whether Mill’s assumptions are tenable matters; it matters, in particular, if
the naturalistic attitude in philosophy forces us to adopt a form of philosophical utilitarianism.
We have argued that it does (1.5, 9.3, 9.4, 9.8, 9–9); that connection pulls together the elements
of Mill’s philosophy—naturalism, utilitarianism, liberalism. In a naturalistic framework the case
for liberalism must in the end stand or fall on the terms of debate defined by Mill—that is, of
‘utility in the largest sense’, together with the claim that for human beings in conditions of
reasonable security, the institutions of liberty do promote general utility in this largest sense. The
argument does not, indeed, have to be made in terms of aggregate utility; but it does have to be
made in terms of the criterion of general good.

Such an approach runs against much twentieth-century dogma. Many who agree in rejecting
‘natural rights’ as metaphysical will hold that what naturalism forces is not philosophical
utilitarianism, but the ‘Humean scepticism’ which was discussed in 9.3. And from this arises a
form of sceptical contractualism which has probably been the dominant strain of liberal political
theory and economy in this century.
It has been a main theme of this book that the sceptical, or Humean, response to naturalism
embodies a deep philosophical error. It is true that the distance between it and what is right can
be represented as very small. The central epistemological consequence of naturalism is the
pressure it places on our notion of objectivity. Yet it is crucial to distinguish, at just this point,
between the conditions which must really obtain if we are to regard our reasoning (theoretical or
practical) as objective, and on the other hand, philosophical pictures of objectivity which have a
certain spontaneous plausibility, but in fact go beyond what is required by those conditions. A
particularly natural and tempting such picture is the ‘relational model’ of recognising a rational
requirement (5.9, 8.10). If we regard that model as inherent in the very idea of objectivity, we
shall think that naturalism undercuts the objectivity or impersonality of reasoning as such. We
will then be tempted to replace the idea of an objective requirement of reason by that of a
convention or contract. ‘Sceptical contractualism’ is a particular case of this very general
reaction.

The reaction can be effectively countered only if it can be shown to stem from metaphysical
preconceptions which have still not been fully dissolved—because the implications of naturalism
have still not been fully thought through. But what remains true is that there is a link which
cannot be severed between objectivity and ideal agreement. Objectivity is regulated by the ideal
of rational convergence. The suggestion in 1.5 was that

Objectivising talk is…empty where there does not exist a potential for unforced (and always
defeasible) agreement of judgements and reactions. But the agreement is one of reactions, not
decisions. We find that we agree in feeling constrained to think or react on a certain pattern; we
do not experience it as a matter for decision or choice.

The recognition of an objective ethical principle is the product of dialogue—the ‘common

pursuit of true judgement’; and the epistemological as well as the political significance of
dialogue is utterly different from that of a process of negotiation—leading to a bargain struck
between instrumentally rational individuals who are pursuing their own projects. Therein lies the
difference between a Millian liberalism founded on general good and that of the modern
contractarian. Mill was no follower of Rousseau; his objections to him were those of a post-
revolutionary liberal like Benjamin Constant. He considered Rousseau a chief source of the
meraphysics of popular sovereignty and natural morality, an enemy of liberal civilisation whose
‘practical conclusions’ were drawn by ‘Rousseau’s disciple, Robespierre’ (‘Coleridge’ X 123).
Yet in this respect his liberalism, like Kant’s, has more affinity to Rousseau than to Hobbes.

The ultimate test of conduct is the general good. But we had to accept that within this criterion of
the general good there remained a large area of uncertainty about what principles should
determine or limit the distributive pattern of individuals’ goods. The question of justice remained
open. That means that even if we grant that liberty is a good, there will be an element of
uncertainty centring on what its just distribution is, and its just provision in relation to other
goods. However one thing at least is clear. Given philosophical utilitarianism liberty must have
value either as a means to or as an intrinsic ingredient —more exactly the political aspect of an
intrinsic ingredient—of human well-being. The value of liberty depends on its importance for us.
A species of beings who did not desire liberty as we do would rightly disagree with us about the
value of liberty—one could not assume that liberalism was the right political stance for them.
To hold that liberty’s value is based on the actual content of human ends is to deny, with Mill,
that there is an ‘abstract right’ of liberty. The priority of liberty cannot be grounded on any
abstract or formal feature of social organisation, or rationality, as such. It is not the tautology that
each individual is a distinct individual, nor the dubiously meaningful assertion that each
individual is ‘born free’, that gives liberty its value: these are merely rhetorical modes of
expressing a commitment to its value. Whatever value it has must rest on its importance as
protecting, or constituting, a real human end. In this respect Mill’s framework for liberalism is—
as he himself held—the only truly philosophical framework.8

4 Individuality
If liberty can only be securely defended as a political means to, or expression of, some ultimate
human end, the analysis of those ends will have to play a central role. The third chapter of
Liberty, the core of the essay, deals with ‘Individuality as One of the Elements of Well-Being’. It
occurs where it does, after the introductory chapter and the interpolated defence of liberty of
thought and discussion, because it provides the essential foundation in utility or human good for
the Liberty Principle—whose implications are then further unfolded in the last two chapters.

The foundation, Mill has said, must be utility, but ‘utility in the largest sense, grounded in the
permanent interests of man as a progressive being’. In chapter iii he sets forth the permanent
interests— individual spontaneity and rational autonomy—on which the human value of liberty
rests.

The existence of a wide variety of characters and ‘experiments of living’ yields up, he observes,
a practical test of the worth of different modes of life, and thereby becomes a means to general
happiness. But individuality is not only a means to happiness. It is one of its chief parts:

If it were felt that the free development of individuality is one of the leading essentials of well-
being…there would be no danger that liberty should be undervalued, and the adjustment of the
boundaries between it and social control would present no serious difficulty. But the evil is, that
individual spontaneity is hardly recognised by the common modes of thinking as having any
intrinsic worth, or deserving any regard on its own account. (LIII2, XVIII 261)

‘Free development of individuality’ and ‘individual spontaneity’ neatly combine two things: the
unfolding or bringing to fruition of a person’s potentialities of thought and feeling, and the
spontaneity of that process. A freely flourishing individuality is neither artificially forced nor
trammelled. Spontaneity, naturalness of development, is an essential part of Mill’s idea of full
personality. His good society is an English garden; human nature is a ‘tree, which requires to
grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the inward forces which make it a living thing’
(LIII4, XVIII 263). Each person’s disposition should take on its natural contour— ‘within the
limits imposed by the rights and interests of others’ (LIII9, XVIII 266).

But spontaneity or naturalness of development is not the only essential. Full personality has a
further, equally important, aspect. Self-development, the central notion of On Liberty, refers to
an activity of the self. It embraces the development of the self, by the self. It is not the cultivation
of human beings according to the conventional wisdom of society or the prescription of an elite
of master-gardeners; but neither is it a process of unexamined, undirected growth. It is self-
governed: each person ‘chooses his own plan for himself’, His character is his own
responsibility.

Free self-culture, Mill thinks, produces a fruitful variety of developed characters. All of them
however have something in common, which grows out of their common endowment, and stamps
it as distinctively human. In Mill’s conception, it is a Hellenic quality of autonomy, rational
balance. There is spontaneity in the development of interests and feelings but there is also
intelligent self-mastery. Intelligence is part of a human being’s spontaneous growth, but when
fully developed it becomes capable of reflecting on and regulating that growth. Autonomy and
spontaneity are responding elements of a single whole. If Mill places a particular accent on
spontaneity, that is a matter of correcting the tendencies of the age, as he saw them, towards a
‘narrow theory of life, and to the pinched and hidebound type of human character which it
patronizes’ (LIII8, XVIII 265):

There is a different type of human excellence from the Calvinistic: a conception of humanity as
having its nature bestowed on it for other purposes than merely to be abnegated. ‘Pagan self-
assertion’ is one of the elements of human worth, as well as ‘Christian self-denial.’ There is a
Greek ideal of self-development, which the Platonic and Christian ideal of self-government
blends with, but does not supersede. It may be better to be a John Knox than an Alcibiades, but it
is better to be a Pericles than either; nor would a Pericles, if we had one in these days, be without
anything good which belonged to John Knox. (LIII8, XVIII 265–6)

Rational autonomy, or intelligent self-mastery—the ‘moral freedom’ we examined in 8.2 — is

the ingredient of self-development which ‘blends with’ the Platonic and Christian ideal of self-
government; it is not Calvinistic self-abnegation, because it responds to the natural potentialities
of the self:

desires and impulses are as much a part of a perfect human being, as beliefs and restraints: and
strong impulses are only perilous when not properly balanced…. Strong impulses are but another
name for energy…. The same strong susceptibilities which make the personal impulses vivid and
powerful, are also the source from whence are generated the most passionate love of virtue, and
the sternest self-control…. A person whose desires and impulses are his own—are the expression
of his own nature, as it has been developed and modified by his own culture—is said to have a
character. One whose desires and impulses are not his own, has no character, no more than a
steam engine has character. (LIII5, XVIII 264)

The last two sentences remind us of the remark of Novalis, quoted by Mill at the end of his
analysis of moral freedom in the System of Logic: ‘A character is a completely fashioned will’
(VIII 843). The elements of that analysis reappear here. Moral freedom requires that one’s
desires and impulses are one’s own in two ways: they are outgrowths of one’s own nature and
not imposed from without, and they are not heteronomous. That is, they are integrated into a
developed character whose fixed ‘purposes’ or ‘habits of willing’ are fruits of self-cultivation
and have sufficient strength to subordinate desires when there is good reason to do so. But those
firm habits of willing can themselves arise only from the raw material of strong natural impulses
and desires.
One could hardly make an absurder mistake than to treat Mill as a prophet of permissiveness,
still less of ‘going with the flow’. He has the high Victorian conception of human impulses, in
their healthy and natural state, as active, assertive, spirited, and the high Victorian obsession with
the virtues of manly energy and strenuous earnestness. The conception is an important part of his
utilitarian argument from individuality to the Liberty Principle, as we shall in a moment see. But
Mill’s vision of the possibilities of human nature transcends stock Victorian assumptions,
because his idea of the two qualities which blend in the Hellenic ideal of self-development—
spontaneity of consciousness and moral freedom—is so firm and clear. Let us examine each of
them a little more.

‘Spontaneity of consciousness’, Matthew Arnold’s phrase,9 points appropriately towards that

side of the ideal which recognises that cultivation of natural activity and spontaneous feeling and
curiosity deepens a person’s resources of happiness. Mill’s account in Liberty belongs with his
discussion of qualities of pleasure in Utilitarianism (9.7). The most fully and truly human—that
which issues from cultivated human spontaneity—is that which yields the finest happiness.

A person of developed individuality is a person whose distinctive modes of thinking and feeling
have been cultivated and deepened, in such fashion as to open up for him those forms of
enjoyment to which his potentialities give him the key. Men are progressive beings, inasmuch as
they have capacities of intellect and susceptibility which can be cultivated and deepened. Such
progress takes place not only within a lifetime, but over generations, as a society develops
cultural forms which increasingly facilitate a ‘greater fulness of life’. And since the potentialities
of different human beings differ, to cultivate them is to proliferate individualities and forms of
experience—and, it follows from that, communities of sentiment, differing among each other in
what forms of experience they find most satisfying:

different persons…require different conditions for their spiritual development; and can no more
exist healthily in the same moral, than all the variety of plants can in the same physical,
atmosphere and climate. The same things which are helps to one person towards the cultivation
of his higher nature, are hindrances to another. The same mode of life is a healthy excitement to
one, keeping all his faculties of action and enjoyment in their best order, while to another it is a
distracting burthen, which suspends or crushes all internal life. Such are the differences among
human beings in their sources of pleasure, their susceptibilities of pain, and the operation on
them of different physical and moral agencies, that unless there is a corresponding diversity in
their modes of life, they neither obtain their fair share of happiness, nor grow up to the mental,
moral, and aesthetic stature of which their nature is capable. (LIII14, XVIII 270)

The other aspect of the ideal of self-development is rational autonomy. Mill’s understanding of
autonomy is vivid, profound—but it is also profoundly flawed. He perceives that moral freedom
is a condition of fully human personality and therefore—by the principle that the truest happiness
is that of a person whose human potentialities are most completely developed—an ‘ingredient of
well-being’. The consciousness of moral freedom is itself a part of happiness. He insists that
moral freedom is a natural human quality which a person can have to a greater or lesser degree;
he does not, as we saw above (8.2, 8.10), properly isolate the key notion of responding to and
acting on a reason, and quite fails to appreciate how serious a challenge it poses for the
naturalistic approach—but then anyone who shares that approach with him faces exactly the
same challenge.
However for present purposes the weakness in Mill’s account lies elsewhere. Moral freedom, or
rational autonomy, is but one aspect of the complex human end of autonomy, which we
considered in 9.6: it is autonomy in its aspect of capacity. But the goal of autonomy has another
aspect of primary importance—autonomy as a freedom, for which autonomy as a capacity is a
precondition. A full understanding of both aspects is necessary for the defence of the Liberty
Principle.

It is of the very essence of Mill’s outlook, of course, to emphasise both the capacity and the
freedom as parts of human happiness. He also often speaks of self-development in general, and
of intelligent self-mastery in particular, in a perfectionist way, treating it as an ideal of character;
as in the passage just quoted— ‘they neither obtain their fair share of happiness, nor grow up to
the mental, moral, and aesthetic stature of which their nature is capable’ (my emphasis). (We
shall come back to this.) But he cannot recognise, because of his commitment to a hedonistic
view of human good, what we argued in 9–6: that autonomy in both its aspects, as capacity and
as freedom, is not only a part of happiness but is a categorial goal in its own right, co-ordinate
with it. Autonomy is a part of human good, and its status as such is supported by the appeal to a
reflective agreement of desires. It is a part of ‘utility in the largest sense’. But it is not a part of
happiness. My autonomy can be infringed without my knowing it. Failure to bring its
independence as an ultimate human end clearly into view weakens Mill’s philosophical defence
of liberalism. We shall presently consider why that is so. But first we must complete our account
of Mill’s own argument.

There remains a gap to be bridged. May it not be that most people’s potentialities develop to
their best state precisely when they accept the tutelage offered by the customary rules and
expectations of their community instead of trying to strike out on their own? May they not also
benefit from the instruction of a wiser few? How does one move from the ‘positive’ conceptions
of self-development and moral freedom, to the ‘negative’ conception of social and political
liberty enshrined in the Liberty Principle?10

Custom does encapsulate the accumulation of human experience, as Mill sensibly allows:

it would be absurd to pretend that people ought to live as if nothing whatever had been known in
the world before they came into it; as if experience had as yet done nothing towards showing that
one mode of existence, or of conduct, is preferable to another. (LIII3, XVIII 262)

But it records human experience imperfectly, because the lessons of experience may not have
been adequately interpreted or expressed. And it has no means of representing the full diversity
of human interests and possibilities: a single set of customs cannot fully cater for the needs of
every different individual.

One might acknowledge these inadequacies of custom—the weakness in this respect of a purely
traditional society—yet still wonder whether the diversity of endowments is not best cultivated
through the guidance of wise and perceptive governors. But here the importance of autonomy as
a capacity, the capacity for intelligent self-mastery, comes to the fore.

He who chooses his plan for himself, employs all his faculties. He must use observation to see,
reasoning and judgement to foresee, activity to gather materials for decision, discrimination to
decide, and when he has decided, firmness and self-control to hold to his deliberate decision.
And these qualities he requires and exercises exactly in proportion as the part of his conduct
which he determines according to his own judgement and feelings is a large one. It is possible
that he might be guided in some good path, and kept out of harm’s way, without any of these
things. But what will be his comparative worth as a human being? It really is of importance, not
only what men do, but also what manner of men they are that do it. (LIII4, XVIII 262–3)

Mill paints a powerful image of spontaneity and autonomy blossoming in a society of diverse
and liberated talents. They blossom most fully, he holds, when individuals determine and follow
their own plans of life. That quintessentially Millian philosophical image is backed up by a
sociology of liberty. Neither a customary society nor a society directed by a mandarin elite gives
adequate scope to creative innovation —‘originality’. Few have the genius to hit on new truths,
or to discover more enlightened forms of conduct or sensibility. ‘But these few are the salt of the
earth; without them human life would become a stagnant pool.’ Genius, however, ‘can only
breathe freely in an atmosphere of freedom’ (LIII11, XVIII 267)—under the ‘despotism of
custom’ it is stifled, because there lacks the diversity of opposing beliefs and practices needed to
stimulate criticism and spark new ideas.

What has made the European family of nations an improving, instead of a stationary portion of
mankind? Not any superior excellence in them, which, when it exists, exists as the effect, not as
the cause; but their remarkable diversity of character and culture…. Europe is, in my judgement,
wholly indebted to this plurality of paths for its progressive and many-sided development.
(LIII18, XVIII 274)

The vital question for modern states is whether plurality can continue to flourish in the new
circumstances of democracy:

No government by a democracy or a numerous aristocracy, either in its political acts or in the

opinions, qualities, and tones of mind which it fosters, ever did or could rise above mediocrity,
except in so far as the sovereign Many have let themselves be guided (which in their best times
they always have done) by the counsel and influence of a more highly gifted and instructed One
or Few. (LIII13, XVIII 269)

The danger is great in the bourgeois democracy of the nineteenth century—its style is sober,
moderate, temperate, respectable, ‘realistic’; it has a leaning towards ‘improvement of morals’ —
such tendencies all combine towards conventional mediocrity of character, drainage of energy
and independent-minded vigour. There is genuine improvement; but progress not founded on
individuality remains no more than a hectic variant of Chinese stationariness.

It is not Mill’s point that the gifted ‘One or Few’ should have power to force their initiatives on
others, He is not Thomas Carlyle—and he is not Matthew Arnold either: he is far from thinking
that the State could play the role of bringing people to their best selves, and making them see
right reason. The point is precisely the contrary one—in safeguarding the freedom of each
individual to draw up his own plan of life, society also safeguards the gifted few and their
experiments of living; it gives them ‘freedom to point out the way’, but not the ‘power of
compelling others into it’.11
This sociology of liberty is, of course, a central pillar of classical liberalism. The scope and the
proper limits of laissez-faire are a major theme of Mill’s thought, from his developing views on
socialism and the economic functions of the state in the Principles of Political Economy, to his
thinking on the social role of an intellectual ‘clerisy’ which reflected the influence of Coleridge,
the Saint-Simonians and Comte. At these classic points political philosophy has to be knitted in
with social and political theory, an interweaving achieved by Mill with firmness and breadth of
vision. The Millian stance is well defined. His defence of liberalism is anti-authoritarian but it is
absolutely not anti-elitist. True liberalism is not populism and the real difference between them is
one of the most important lessons Mill has to teach. He saw as clearly as anyone the fallacies of
populism, and the chronic exposure to them of all mass democracies. But he believed—with
level-headed calmness, or with complacency, depending on one’s point of view—that so long as
the institutions of liberty were rigorously upheld in those same democracies, they would provide
enough openness and freedom for intellectual and moral insight to establish its natural
authority.12

We are being led away, however, from the more purely philosophical threads of the chapter on
individuality. I have said that the most important weakness in Mill’s treatment of the grounds of
liberty lies in his failure to present the notion of autonomy with adequate clarity. We must now
examine it again, in more detail.

5 Autonomy
Autonomy, then, embraces the capacity and the freedom to make one’s decisions—practical or
intellectual—to lead one’s own life. It is a human end, desired in its own right as a categorial
goal, co-ordinate with, and not simply a part of, happiness.

As a capacity it is simply rationality: ‘rational autonomy’ I have called it, to signal the
connection. We examined its reconcilability with naturalism in 8.2 and 8.10, and touched on it
also—in relation to the Humean doctrine that ‘reason is a slave of the passions’ —in 9–4. Mill
calls it ‘moral freedom’. It is the capacity to recognise reasons as such, and to act on them.
Virtue, in its aspect of ‘a confirmed will to do right’ (UIV12, X 238) is moral freedom. It is
implicit in Mill’s view of practical reasoning that a will to do right is a will to do what is
rationally required. His doctrine is that the Utility Principle is the foundation of practical
rationality. To say that ‘none but a person of confirmed virtue is completely free’ (System VIII
841) is no more than to say that none but a person of confirmed rationality is completely free.

Of course for Mill, as against Kant, rationality is not something transcendental. It must be
understood in a thoroughgoingly naturalistic framework. We have recognised difficulties in
doing so of which Mill seems quite unaware; but those difficulties are our difficulties: they will
attend any attempt to understand how rationality can supervene on a pattern of purely causal
processes. Mill’s own attempt to analyse the conditions of moral freedom in terms of the
relationships between character and will, and will, habit and desire, employs the inadequate tools
of associationist psychology. But he is perfectly right in taking it that there is a question here—
the conditions of autonomy—for psychology to address.

Autonomy as moral freedom is an empirical capacity: it can be developed but it requires

resources to develop. And we must not confuse it with a quite different conception of autonomy
—autonomy as the ability to do what one wants. On the contrary, moral freedom is precisely the
capacity to refrain from doing what I want, when I recognise good reason for doing so.

Autonomy as a capacity is a precondition of autonomy as freedom. The autonomy which I value

as an independent part of my own good is the freedom to lead my own life. But this is not just
‘freedom to do as I like’ either. My life is mine in two respects. I do not want anyone else to
direct my life for me—to impose decisions on me for my own good. But neither does my
autonomy encompass a liberty to direct other people’s lives for them—to impose decisions on
them. Autonomy as freedom is sovereignty over my own life, not sovereignty over anyone else’s.
That entails a say in decisions about the use of common ‘space’, but it does not include the
freedom to coerce or manipulate others in what is properly their domain.

So the notion of an individual’s private domain comes in right here. It is inherent in the intuitive
notion of autonomy as a human end: the compatibility of each individual’s full autonomy with
the full autonomy of all others is built in from the start. This is not a concept of freedom in which
each ego is contingently forced to limit its own in order to make room for the claim of others—is
compelled ‘empirically’ to recognise them as subjects in an intersubjectively given world, rather
than as objects in its own. (An infantile freedom, broken in by the whips and scourges of
objectivity and morality.) Autonomy means freedom to make one’s own decisions in one’s
private sphere, and to take part on equal terms in the public sphere. So it must be written into the
notion of a private sphere that the spheres of different individuals do not overlap. Where they
overlap they cease to be private, and become a part of public space. Hence the difference
between what is permissible, for example, in a public park, on a train, and in my house. It is in
this context that one should develop an account of the relation between the Liberty Principle and
the prohibition of public nuisances (10.2). Some acts—for example loud radios on a crowded
train—can be prohibited not because they invade or intrude on private space but because they are
an attempt to privatise or enclose public space.

If we examine what it is that we value, when we respond to autonomy as a categorial human end,
we find that it is the freedom to determine and follow our own projects, free from the
interference of others—to the extent that those projects do not affect others in ways to which
they could properly object. Autonomy is not a pre-moral notion, because it requires the idea of
‘my private sphere’, ‘my own territory’. The territorial idea has the notion of what is not my own
territory—because it is someone else’s, or because it is public territory—written into it. One
cannot specify this human end without specifying a moral context for it. It is an individual end
which inherently presupposes that people are social beings.

That is why it cannot be defined simply in terms of the liberty to satisfy my desires, or the liberty
to do whatever will make me happy. For example I might want to go for a walk and I might want
you to go for a walk. My autonomy would be restricted if I were unable to go. (Ignore strange
cases in which someone is harmed by my going.) But it would not be restricted if I was unable to
get you to go—even though the satisfaction of my desires is restricted, and even though I would
be happier if you went. Whether I go for a walk is my business—whether you go for a walk is
yours. It is my happiness, not my autonomy, that is diminished if you do not come for a walk. I
would step over implicitly understood limits if I tried too pressingly to get you to go. In our
personal relations we spontaneously make and understand such distinctions all the time.
Autonomy as freedom to lead one’s life, unlike autonomy as capacity, makes no explicit entry in
chapter iii of Liberty. Mill certainly makes statements which could most naturally be understood
as appealing to it: ‘If a person possesses any tolerable amount of common sense and experience,
his own mode of laying out his existence is the best, not because it is the best in itself, but
because it is his own mode’ (LIII14, VIII 278). That makes perfectly good sense if one
distinguishes autonomy and happiness as categorial ends. For then even a life which is not ‘best
in itself’ in the sense that another life, if freely chosen, would have been better, may nevertheless
be ‘best’ overall, taking into account that it is in fact the one which was autonomously chosen,
and that to prevent the individual from living it would diminish his autonomy.

But one cannot use such passages to argue that Mill distinguishes between autonomy and
happiness among categorial human ends. He does not make the explicit revisions to hedonism
which would be required to bring autonomy in in this way. There is a difference between
implicitly feeling the force of a consideration and achieving a clear philosophical perspective on
it. To achieve that perspective, Mill would have had to break more radically with the Benthamite
tradition of equating human good with pleasure net of pain: it would not have been enough to
recast and deepen it, as he penetratingly did; he would have had to reject it as such. Autonomy as
freedom, like autonomy as capacity, can only be valuable for Mill as part of happiness—as a
higher pleasure indeed, but still only as a part of happiness.

It is that, and Mill asserts it most powerfully, for example, in The Subjection of Women:

He who would rightly appreciate the worth of personal independence as an element of happiness
should consider the value he himself puts on it as an ingredient of his own. There is no subject on
which there is a greater habitual difference of judgement between a man judging for himself, and
the same man judging for other people. When he hears others complaining that they are not
allowed freedom of action —that their own will has not sufficient influence in the regulation of
their affairs—his inclination is, to ask, what are their grievances? What positive damage do they
sustain? And in what respect they consider their affairs to be mismanaged? And if they fail to
make out, in answer to the questions, what appears to him a sufficient case, he turns a deaf ear,
and regards their complaint as the fanciful querulousness of people whom nothing reasonable
will satisfy. But he has quite a different standard of judgement when he is deciding for himself.
(XXI 336–7)

Autonomy is valuable as a part of happiness—but it is that precisely because it is also a

categorial end in its own right. Because autonomy is an end in its own right the consciousness of
having it makes one happy. The worth of a developed personality must as Mill says be measured
by the ‘greater fulness of life’ which it affords. But it is not only pleasure, however deeply
understood, that constitutes that fullness. A life is fuller the more it realises any categorial human
end; narrower, inasmuch as it fails to realise another. There is no straightforward equation by
which its spread in the various categorial dimensions determines its fullness. That depends on the
relative importance of the various dimensions for a given person, as they would be determined
by his fully developed potentialities.

But when we criticise Mill in this way we are still not departing from philosophical
utilitarianism. On the contrary, to recognise autonomy as a categorial end, is to gain a deeper
insight into how the Liberty Principle can be grounded on ‘the permanent interests of man as a
progressive being’. Let us return briefly to the natural rights model.

The value we spontaneously place on autonomy—on freedom within our own territory, and an
equal say in determining the use of public space—is the deep-seated reaction to which the
natural rights model appeals.13 But autonomy as a human end is a part of utility; whereas in the
natural rights model people have rights which exist independently of their ends, and which are
not grounded in consequentialist considerations about the expediency of instituting rights to
promote the just attainment of those ends.

On the view which treats autonomy as part of an individual’s utility or good, diminishing his
autonomy—his capacity or freedom—is wrong inasmuch as it harms him, impairs his good; not
because it violates an abstract right. On this point the account I am sketching agrees with Mill,
who treats invasions of autonomy as harms or hurts; for example when he characterises the
‘moralities…which compose the obligations of justice’.

The moral rules which forbid mankind to hurt one another (in which one must never forget to
include wrongful interference with each other’s freedom) are more vital to human well-being
than any maxims, however important, which only point out the best mode of managing some
department of human affairs….

…the moralities which prevent every individual from being harmed by others, either directly or
by being hindered in his freedom of pursuing his own good, are at once those which he himself
has most at heart, and those which he has the strongest interest in publishing and enforcing by
word and deed. (UV33, X 255–6, my italics)

However, the latter passage hints that hindering an individual’s freedom harms him only
indirectly. Presumably Mill means that it hinders his achievement of his good, but is not in itself
a diminution of his good. On this view invasions of autonomy do not in themselves count as
harms: they can be harmful only if they diminish happiness. That preserves hedonism but
provides a much less satisfactory way of defending the Liberty Principle. If invasions of
autonomy are not in themselves harms, then prohibiting them as such is itself prohibited by the
Liberty Principle. The fact that what A is doing restricts the autonomy of B, cannot in itself
constitute a prima facie ground for society to prohibit A’s activity, since A is not thereby
barming B. B is harmed only if his happiness is diminished, so an invasion of his autonomy of
which he remains unconscious does not constitute a harm. Thus for example in the case of the
cancer patient who would have liked to be told (9.6), we do infringe his autonomy by not telling
him—but we do not diminish his happiness. But since infringing his autonomy does not in itself
harm him, there can be no requirement arising from the Liberty Principle to tell him. That gives
precisely the wrong result.

So we amend Mill’s analysis of human good by incorporating autonomy as an independent

categorial end. In doing so we fully recognise the entrenched human end on which the natural
rights model is based, but without making liberty an abstract right. Therefore since we are
treating autonomy, at the foundational level, as one human end among others, rather than as an
abstract right, we cannot derive the Liberty Principle from it as a direct corollary. But we may be
able to get to it by combining our account of utility with Mill’s theory of justice. On Mill’s view
justice-rights are side-constraints protecting primary utilities. Therefore we have to argue that
autonomy is so important to human beings as to constitute a primary utility. If that is so, then all
mature persons will ‘have a just claim to carry on their own lives in their own way’ (XVIII 270,
my italics).

We have here the outlines of a philosophical-utilitarian defence of the Liberty Principle. In the
following sections we shall fill it out in more detail.

6 Paternalism
Since autonomy is only one element of well-being, the possibility remains open that an
individual’s overall utility may be increased by diminishing it. The cost of his loss of autonomy
may be outweighed by the gain to other elements of his good. So if autonomy is a part, but only a
part, of a person’s utility, there cannot be, at the foundational level, an absolute prohibition on
what is called ‘paternalism’ — interfering with his autonomy to produce his greater good. It must
be possible in principle, taking only that person into account, that the gains to his utility which
flow from an interference outweigh the costs of that interference. How then can Mill say that ‘his
independence is, of right, absolute’?

We must not evade the question by giving people a spurious infallibility about their own
interests. That is a popular, but altogether too facile, route to liberalism. Some have thought to
guarantee infallibility by definition—by defining utility in terms of revealed preference. But that
only shows the inadequacy of the definition: ‘it must be possible to allow for convictions about
what is good for one that, although unshakeable, are nevertheless mistaken’ (Mirrlees 1982: 69).
On the conception of human ends developed in the previous chapter (9.3–7), that is indisputable.
It is neither true that a person is the only judge of his real preferences at a given time, nor that his
present unmotivated preferences, taken in their totality, are the only criterion of his good. So it
cannot be true just by definition that an attempt to make him do something other than what
would satisfy his present desires will reduce his utility.

Of course it is still a practical and approximate truth that people are often the best judges of their
utility, and in the political context it is a vital one, as Mill rightly stresses. But this cannot by
itself give the utilitarian grounds for an absolute ban on paternalism.

The position changes if we bring in the thesis that autonomy is in its own right a categorial end.
Consider a case in which a person would be better off if he freely chose to do A rather than B.
Suppose also that we have good grounds for thinking that that is so. What then is the objection to
making him do A? Is it only the pain caused him by the act of coercion? Then suppose we can
trick or manipulate him into doing A, in such a way that he does not know it, and suffers no pain
from realising that he has been manipulated. There is still a case against doing so. His autonomy
is infringed, and to that extent his good has been reduced. Should he discover that he had been
tricked in that way he could reasonably be resentful.

What objection could there be to paternalism other than a deeply rooted fact of human nature—
namely, that we vehemently resent being governed and directed for our own good? But that
resentment arises because we value the freedom to live our own lives, value it as a part of our
good. Paternalism is objectionable, precisely inasmuch as it is not Pareto-optimal. It may be true
that a person would have been better off if he himself had freely chosen A rather than B, and yet
still true that he is worse off if forced or manipulated into doing it—even if he does not know
that has happened.

On this analysis there is still no literally absolute ban on paternalism, since autonomy is not the
only good. There can come a point where the benefit to me outweighs the cost of infringing my
autonomy. Can one seriously deny that such cases do indeed exist? There is however an
important difference here between the personal and the public sphere. A person’s close friends or
family may often constrain or manipulate him more or less gently for his own good—only an
excessively prickly person would object in every case. But what is acceptable in the sphere of
personal relations is one thing, what is acceptable in the public sphere, on the part of a stranger,
let alone a public official, is another. The menacing indirect consequences of giving the state or
society powers to interfere may indeed justify a ban on paternalistic moral practices or laws
which is in practice absolute.

That has to be Mill’s position. His opposition to paternalism is consequentialist; based on a fear
of the ‘tyranny of the majority’, and a high estimate of the good consequences of letting people
make their own decisions. If we add into the analysis the independent categorial end of
autonomy, we simply strengthen an essentially Millian case.14

7 Utility and ideals

It is plain, at a number of points in Mill’s presentation of the worth of individuality, that he is
appealing not only to the ends of human life but also to ideals of character. Autonomy and
spontaneity are to be valued not just because they give rise to a ‘greater fulness of life’, but
because they constitute intrinsically admirable qualities in a human being:

It is not by wearing down into uniformity all that is individual in themselves, but by cultivating it
and calling it forth, within the limits imposed by the rights and interests of others, that human
beings become a noble and beautiful object of contemplation. (LIII9, XVIII 266, my italics)

Such an appeal touches something real. We all have ideals of what a human being, a man, or a
woman, should be, and they make a difference to the way we live. Many of the things we value
as ends, we value thus only because we first value them as ideals. We are happy to think we live
up to them, disappointed and self-critical when we think we have fallen short.

To admire something is to think it valuable in some way; to desire it, if one does desire it,
because one finds it worthy of esteem. An ideal of character is a quality valued in this intrinsic
way. The utilitarian can register, as a fact, that people have ideals of character. But can he
himself have ideals—can he esteem a quality of character simply for itself, and not for its utility?
Is it not the case that for him a thing can have value only in so far as it is itself a human end or
promotes human ends?

The tension does not arise for utilitarians alone. Not all ideals are ethical ideals. Nor is
everything we admire about a person an ideal of character. Consider good looks, graceful
manners, taste—and courage, honesty, good faith, generosity. All are admired, but they are
admired in very different ways. To despise a person for his ugliness is crudity. On the other hand
a thoroughly mean person is both despised and condemned. But if we treat a quality as an ideal
of character, then we despise or at the very least disesteem the person who lacks it, but we do not
necessarily condemn or blame him.

Take physical courage. (I am not speaking of moral courage, for example the courage to stand up
for an unpopular opinion, though of course the distinction is not a simple one.) For many people
physical courage is an important ideal of life; they undergo unpleasant and dangerous
experiences to test themselves. Utilitarianism can accept that courage is valuable inasmuch as it
is useful for the general good, or something its possessor is content to have. But its possessor is
content to have it because he values it: he thinks it has some value of its own apart from its
usefulness to others or the satisfaction its possession gives him.

We find the ideal of physical courage perfectly intelligible. Further, we may respond to it
ourselves, in which case we spontaneously admire those who have it, and cannot help
disesteeming those who do not. But we do not lay it down as a moral imperative, as we do, for
example, kindness to others. Imagine a tribal society in which boys are passed through initiation
rites which test their physical audacity, and those who do badly suffer penalty or are socially
disgraced. One can understand, ‘from the inside’, what it is that such a society admires, and
understand why it is that a person should wish to measure himself by it, and feel miserable at his
own timidity. One can also appreciate the utility of bravery in that society, and for that reason,
the appropriateness of measuring a man’s merits by it. But that is not to accept it as a virtue
ourselves. We do not insist on applying that measure of worth to those who have no wish to be
measured by it—even when we spontaneously admire courage and pursue it as an ideal of
character. We do not condemn a physically timid man. But we do condemn an unkind or
dishonest one—even if he is not at all interested in such yardsticks. In fact if he is not interested
in them, we blame him for that too.

The utilitarian characteristically holds that the qualities we value morally—which we are willing
to lay down as universal requirements, and blame people for lacking—are those which we think
to be useful, and which we think a person has some degree of control over, can advance or
develop in himself, (So that praise or blame has utility.) It is true, I think, that our list of moral
virtues does in part track that. But that is not to say that our admiration for them arises from our
belief that they are useful. Some are spontaneously admired (not all equally) as ideals of
character. And not every quality which is admired as an ideal is also considered a moral virtue,

So the qualities we spontaneously admire or despise do not overlap cleanly with the moral
virtues and vices. Philosophical utilitarianism may correct or domesticate spontaneous ideals of
character, reinforcing some, downgrading others. But it is a rightful part of Mill’s Hellenism —
of ‘spontaneity of consciousness’ —to see that there is not the slightest reason to root out those
which are not harmful, and every reason not to. Their presence is part of a truly human social
being. By contributing to our notions of the ‘ideal perfection of human nature’ (LIV5, XVIII
278) they contribute to the fullness of life.

Yet there is an unavoidable element of internal tension in making courage a personal ideal, but
refraining from judging others by it. It involves a dissociation from spontaneous attitudes: one is
applying a kind of scepticism to them, taking an attitude which is ‘sentimental’ not ‘naïve’. Still,
it is a good and clear-sighted attitude, and it is the key to understanding the Millian liberal’s view
of the relation between social morality and individual ideals. He allows for the presence of
different ideals of character, associated with different ways of life. But he also appeals,
substantively, to certain ideals—the Greek ones of self-confident spontaneity and rationality. Nor
is it incompatible with philosophical utilitarianism to do so. It would be incompatible with it to
prescribe them to those who do not share them—except on grounds of utility. But the appeal is to
ideals which we do already share.15

8 Liberty, justice and the private domain

So far we have considered just one side of the Liberty Principle: that side which prohibits society
from imposing a course of action on an individual for his own good. Now we must turn to the
other side: which allows that, when it comes to actions ‘prejudicial to the interests of others’,
society has a legitimate say. At the beginning of the last chapter of the essay, which deals with a
series of detailed questions of application, Mill himself divides the principle, along these lines,
into ‘two maxims which together form the entire doctrine of this essay’:

first, that the individual is not accountable to society for his actions, in so far as these concern the
interests of no person but himself. Advice, instruction, persuasion, and avoidance by other
people if thought necessary for their own good, are the only measures by which society can
justifiably express its dislike or disapprobation of his conduct. Secondly, that for such actions as
are prejudicial to the interests of others, the individual is accountable, and may be subjected
either to social or to legal punishment, if society is of opinion that the one or the other is requisite
for its protection. (LV2, XVIII 292)

This second maxim gives rise to many important new questions, not all of which can be raised
here. A strategic question concerns the relationship between the second maxim and Mill’s
utilitarianism. Mill says that the individual is ‘accountable’ for actions ‘prejudicial to the
interests of others’. But when we try to interpret this last phrase the difficulties are soon clear.
Certainly it must be allowed to cover not only actions which cause harm, but failures to act, or
omissions, which cause harm. More—it only takes a little thought for one to see that it must also
cover some omissions to act for the positive benefit of others. The individual will be accountable
for such omissions; which means that there may be a case, consistent with the Liberty Principle,
for requiring him to perform the actions, and punishing him for their non-performance. This is
accepted by Mill; his examples include giving evidence in court, bearing a fair share in the
common defence, saving a life. Yet if we accept that there are ‘many positive acts for the benefit
of others, which [a person] may rightfully be compelled to perform’ (LI11, XVIII 225), the
Liberty Principle seems set to shrink into nothing more than a prohibition of paternalism. And
that could be compatible with very extensive compulsion. Grant that a utilitarian case has been
made out against laying down compulsions or prohibitions simply for each individual’s own
good; may it not nevertheless be justified to lay them down for the good of others? Is there any
limit to what a person may be required to do for others’ benefit (for example by means of
redistributive taxation) without infringing the Liberty Principle? And if there is, where does the
limit lie?

To require a course of action from a person for the good of others (it might further be argued)
cannot be to intrude on that person’s private domain. So it cannot be said to diminish his
autonomy, because autonomy was defined as freedom within one’s private domain.
Now we have indeed insisted that autonomy is not just the being free to do as one likes. It is the
freedom to do as one likes within one’s private domain, and the scope of that privacy cannot be
determined without taking into account the legitimate claims of others. However we cannot so
draw the boundaries of private space as to make any act which would benefit others fall outside
it; for since there are always acts that a person could be performing for the good of others, that
would collapse individuals’ private space to zero. But our intuitive idea of autonomy equips us
with a substantive notion of private space, one which does not reduce to zero. Certainly it is a
rough notion, and it gives little guidance about where in practice to draw the line between private
and public territory. That is a perennial issue in politics: it is the line we have to draw to
determine what liberal force the Liberty Principle has.

In the framework of philosophical utilitarianism the extent of private space, and the stringency of
the requirement that it be respected, must turn on the importance that an entrenched and
extensive domain of private autonomy has for people’s well-being. Remember the relationship
between Mill’s theory of liberty and his theory of justice (9.13): if primary utilities should be
protected as of right, and if autonomy— freedom to do as one wishes in one’s private domain—
is a primary utility, then it will be protected as of right. A person’s autonomy should not be
traded for the good of others, because a person’s primary utilities in general should not be traded
for the utilities of others. In chapter 9 we rejected Mill’s attempt to base this conception of
justice on aggregate utility, but we did not reject the conception itself. So we are able to use it in
defending his Liberty Principle.

It is true that individuals’ primary utilities are not absolutely protected ‘come what may’. They
may be traded for the general good in circumstances of abnormal peril or urgent collective need
(cf. 9.14). That will apply to autonomy too. No reasonable account of the limit of private space
will guarantee that the autonomy of individuals can be fully protected in circumstances of that
kind. They might justify conscription, for example, or corvées; and it cannot be denied that these
diminish the autonomy of those involved. It is also internal to any system of law, including a
system fully compatible with the Principle of Liberty, that those who break laws may be
punished—that is, have their autonomy restricted by imprisonment or compulsory fines.

What are the limits of the private domain? A first approximation is that my private space is not
infringed by the just claims of others. Our autonomy is not diminished by the obligation to give
what we owe to each other. So liberal principles of political freedom presuppose the context of a
theory of justice. But this is only a first approximation— morality and law may recognise
obligations other than those of strict justice; it is not only considerations of justice that take an
action out of the private domain. In particular, people may be required, if necessary by law, to
play their part in institutions which have been legitimately set up to manage the public domain.
So we need a theory of legitimate collective choice, as well as a theory of justice.

Mill engages with these important and complex issues in a brief but dense and suggestive
passage at the beginning of chapter iv:

Though society is not founded on a contract, and though no good purpose is answered by
inventing a contract in order to deduce social obligations from it, every one who receives the
protection of society owes a return for the benefit, and the fact of living in society renders it
indispensable that each should be bound to observe a certain line of conduct towards the rest.
This conduct consists first, in not injuring the interests of one another; or rather certain interests,
which, either by express legal provision or by tacit understanding, ought to be considered as
rights; and secondly, in each person’s bearing his share (to be fixed on some equitable principle)
of the labours and sacrifices incurred for defending the society or its members from injury or
molestation. These conditions society is justified in enforcing at all costs to those who endeavour
to withhold fulfilment. Nor is this all that society may do. The acts of an individual may be
hurtful to others, or wanting in due consideration for their welfare, without going the length of
violating any of their constituted rights. The offender may then be justly punished by opinion,
though not by law. As soon as any part of a person’s conduct affects prejudicially the interests of
others, society has jurisdiction over it, and the question whether the general welfare will or will
not be promoted by interfering with it, becomes open to discussion. (LIV3, XVIII 276)

Another relevant passage is at LI11, XVIII 225:

There are also many positive acts for the benefit of others, which he may rightfully be compelled
to perform; such as, to give evidence in a court of justice; to bear his fair share in the common
defence, or in any other joint work necessary to the interest of the society of which he enjoys the
protection; and to perform certain acts of individual beneficence, such as saving a fellow-
creature’s life, or interposing to protect the defenceless against ill-usage, things which whenever
it is obviously a man’s duty to do, he may rightfully be made responsible to society for not
doing. A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either
case he is justly accountable to them for the injury….

These passages gesture at the complexities involved in tracing the frontier between private and
public space; we have just seen that detailed examination of that frontier, taking into account the
principles of justice and of collective choice, is one main task which Mill’s essay leaves open for
political theorists who follow him in the liberal tradition. But there is one issue which we must
consider further here.

There is an important type of disutility to others which Mill wishes to discount: the fact that an
action carries this type of disutility does not in itself, he thinks, take it out of the private domain.
We have seen that a central object of the Liberty Principle is to protect the individual from
enforced conformity to the ‘likings and dislikings’ of society. In chapter iv, ‘Of the Limits of the
Authority of Society over the Individual’, Mill spells out in a series of examples the majority’s
tendency to invest ‘its own preferences with the character of moral laws’ (LIV13, XVIII 284)—
Muslims who prohibit the eating of pork in their country, whether by a Muslim or by anyone
else; Catholics who try to enforce celibacy on non-Catholic clergy; the Puritan prohibition of
music, dancing, theatre; the repression of conspicuous spending by public opinion in America;
prohibitions on drinking alcohol; sabbatarian legislation; the persecution of the Mormons.

In all these cases the majority is genuinely shocked, disturbed or offended by the practices it
seeks to repress. Why should such external disutilities not be taken into account? Should the
utilitarian not calculate whether the pains to the majority outweigh the pleasures of the minority?
Evidently Mill does not think so:

There are many who consider as an injury to themselves any conduct which they have a distaste
for, and resent it as an outrage to their feelings; as a religious bigot, when charged with
disregarding the feelings of others, has been known to retort that they disregard his feelings, by
persisting in their abominable worship or creed. But there is no parity between the feeling of a
person for his own opinion, and the feeling of another who is offended at his holding it; no more
than between the desire of a thief to take a purse, and the desire of the right owner to keep it.
And a person’s taste is as much his own peculiar concern as his opinion or his purse. (LIV12,
XVIII 283)

So if a person’s actions or opinions are his own business, part of his private sphere, we are not to
take into account the fact that they may offend the feelings of others—the hurt feelings cannot
enter into a calculation of whether prohibiting the actions or opinions is justified. Mill is
deploying the notion of an individual’s private domain. If an action falls within it the fact that it
offends the feelings of others cannot justify interfering with it.

That gets the basic framework right, but the issues involved are more complex and delicate than
they may at first sight appear. It is hard to say anything useful about them briefly; but we must at
least distinguish cases in which a person’s conduct is disliked because of some intrinsic feature
of it, or because it is believed to be harmful to himself, from those in which it is wrongly felt to
pose a threat to others, and objected to on that ground—for example when eating pork is
believed to be polluting and therefore generally dangerous to the community. Though the belief
that evil consequences will follow is incorrect, the pain and disturbance produced by it is real.16

If the belief that a person’s action is harmful to others is false, then at first sight his autonomy is
infringed by prohibiting it, even though those who prohibit it do not think they are infringing it,
because they think the action harmful. Yet the fear, disturbance or offence caused by it is real. So
does it not harm others after all? A robust attitude is right here: such disturbance of others’
feelings does not necessarily harm them. Still, if it is intense enough it may harm them (for
example make them ill). Can that itself be cited as a ground for prohibition? The answer must be
that it sometimes can.

On the other hand, even if the disturbance of feelings is not enough to be said to harm others,
should the person himself not take account of it? I do not infringe my own autonomy by
refraining from something which others wrongly feel threatened by, even if my autonomy is
infringed if others stop me from doing it. There is some subtlety here. If I ignore their feelings, I
may be blameable. So a moral consideration comes into play: that of due respect or concern for
others’ feelings. Does that then take the action out of my private domain? No: my autonomy is
properly respected by distinguishing the type of moral obligation involved, and being careful
about who can hold me to it. It is not for those whose feelings are hurt to blame me, or to exact
that concern.

There may be an obligation to refrain even if the disturbance is caused by something intrinsic to
the act, or by concern for my welfare. For example: I should not be prohibited from reading
unsavoury magazines, but I ought not to read them in a way which blatantly alerts my sensitive
and old-fashioned aunt to the fact that I am doing so. If I do I could rightly be accused of
thoughtlessly or provocatively disregarding someone else’s feelings.

To ignore my aunt’s real discomfiture and anxiety would be crass. On the other hand, there is no
reason to stop reading, or even to conceal what one is reading, to satisfy the feelings of a prurient
and interfering busybody. Evidently it matters what value is to be placed on the reactions of
other people to what we do; those reactions are themselves objects of evaluation: they are not
just ‘pleasures’ and ‘pains’.

The pains of the envious, prurient or resentful, the pleasures of the malicious, sadistic or slavish,
are discounted. I am inclined to tell a loving person about the good fortune of his friend. I have
no inclination to tell a malicious person about the ill-fortune of his enemy.

Can a utilitarian account for these attitudes, except by reference to the effects on general utility
of encouraging or discouraging various kinds of social feeling? That is certainly part of the story.
Interfering or domineering people, for example, should not be encouraged by having their
feelings pandered to. It is they who mean to intrude on another person’s personal space.

But there is more to it. Some pleasures and pains are to be discounted because they are bad for
the person who indulges them. They deaden and reduce the person who gives himself up to
them; they prevent him from rising to a fuller, more harmonious and serene relationship with
himself and others. Or if we do not believe that—if we think that there are people who cannot
rise above slavish or bullying or bigoted enjoyments to a level which they would themselves be
content with and prefer—then we should stop pretending that there is any reason to deny them
their satisfactions, except in so far as indulgence of them may produce harm to others. (Is it good
for the cat to stop it playing with the mouse?)

To force a mature person into self-developing modes of experience, or to ban him from access to
self-corrupting ones, would be a form of paternalism. But that does not mean that one has any
reason to put self-corrupting forms of experience in his way, just because they would give him
immediate pleasure. Equally, there is no automatic reason to take account of envious or bigoted
pains, if one is not infringing anyone’s autonomy by ignoring them. (There are circumstances in
which one would.)

This is not ‘perfectionism’. Pleasures which stultify or deaden a person, or put him at odds with
himself, are bad not because they make a’worse person’ by some yardstick of goodness in
persons external to considerations of human good, but because they are bad for that person;
because human beings are worse off when they are like that. Honourable dealing, openness,
generous fellow-feeling, etc., are elements of a fully satisfying life. We spontaneously admire
such qualities, and despise those who lack them: because the same disposition is present in him,
a person who senses their lack in himself is prone to self-deception or self-contempt.

9 Liberty of expression: the dialogue model

One of On Liberty’s most memorable things is its glittering paean for liberty of expression. Yet
these august pages persuade rather by inspiration than reasoning. Taken cold as philosophical
argument they can easily stick in the throat. For while they contain, most undeniably, insights
which reach to the heart of the issue, they do not draw out their philosophical significance, or
consider the limits of their application or the order of their importance in the grey compromises
of practical political life. In this they contrast markedly with Mill’s examination of the Liberty
Principle itself, which will always be a model of how to marry philosophical foundations with
practical application and historical sense.
The most obvious question—the relation of the Principle of Liberty of Expression to the Liberty
Principle—is handled with peculiar obscurity. Mill says that his defence of liberty of thought and
of speaking and writing in chapter ii of Liberty is a ‘single branch’ of the ‘general thesis’ (LI16,
XVIII 227)—that is, of the Liberty Principle. He proposes to begin by examining the
‘philosophical and practical’ grounds of these particular liberties, because he thinks that
considering the special case will open the way for a fuller understanding of the foundations of
the Liberty Principle in general. Yet the chapter has a spliced-in appearance, as though Mill had
reflected on liberty of expression at a remove from the framework of the Liberty Principle as
such.

There is more at stake than an issue of interpretation. Only by taking pains to unravel the
relationship between the Liberty Principle and the Principle of Liberty of Expression shall we be
able to reach a true understanding of what makes liberty of expression special: why it has its
special standing in the theory of the liberal state.

The intuitive idea of liberty of expression has substantive and quite definite content. Liberty of
expression is a particular liberty, infringed by particular types of restriction on acts of expression.
It is not the complete liberty to announce any opinion we like in any manner we like. The
obligation not to shout so loudly in a person’s ear as to deafen him is not an infringement of
liberty of expression. Nor is the obligation to refrain from pointlessly hurtful remarks—however
true. Nor on the other hand is the positive duty to give helpful information and advice. The
principle strikes down specific reasons for prohibiting or enforcing acts of expression—the
illegitimate restrictions are those which constrain, or attempt to constrain, what I have called
dialogue,

Public expressions, in which facts, arguments, theories, opinions, judgements or feelings are
communicated to others, are social acts. There is however a morally significant distinction
among the ways in which their social consequences ensue. The audience may react rationally to
what it reads or hears—in its appraisal of the communication it receives and its consequent
actions—or it may not.

One may say, by way of first approximation, that we are reluctant to hold a person responsible
for those consequences of his expressions which are routed through a recipient’s rational
response to what he says. So long as A can be regarded as a rationally autonomous hearer, we
incline against holding B to account for those actions of A which A has taken as a result of
hearing B. A was able to assess rationally what he heard, and he decided for himself how to act
on it. He made his beliefs and actions his own. All that B has done is to feed data into A’s
domain of autonomous deliberation. The consequences of A’s actions remain A’s responsibility.
In this picture we see A as an autonomous agent, rather than as simply part of the causal
mechanism leading from B’s expression to its eventual harmful effects. The buck stops with A.

But this is only a first approximation. One particularly important clarification is brought out by
Thomas Scanlon’s example of a misanthropic inventor who discovers ‘a simple method whereby
anyone could make nerve gas in his kitchen out of gasoline, table salt, and urine’ (Scanlon
1977:159). It is, as Scanlon rightly says, just as clear

that he could be prohibited by law from passing out his recipe on handbills or broadcasting it on
television as that he could be prohibited from passing out free samples of his product in aerosol
cans or putting it on sale at Abercrombie & Fitch.

Similarly, if someone I know to be intent on murder asks me the whereabouts of his intended
victim, it is no restriction of liberty of expression to require that I do not reveal it to him.

The point in each case is that information is being made available to people who will,
foreseeably, use it to carry out an intention to commit a wrongful act. The inventor, it is true,
cannot specifically identify persons who have such wrongful intentions; nevertheless he can
reasonably be expected to foresee that distributing the formula freely sets up a perilous chance of
its getting into their hands. Making the information available in this way is equivalent to giving
such people the means to fulfil their intention and the person who does so is held partly
responsible for the consequence.

In both cases there is undoubtedly a sense in which the evil consequence is routed through the
recipient’s rational response. The response is instrumentally rational, in that it rationally applies
information as a means to the recipient’s pre-given objectives— objectives which were
foreseeable by me, the informant. My responsibility arises because I should have regarded the
situation as one in which I am giving someone a means to carry out his pre-intended wrong-
doing, not as one in which I enter into dialogue.

What then is dialogue? It is an elusive notion, but—as so often in political philosophy—no less
fundamental for that. Dialogue is unconstrained discourse between rational people. Its internal
goal is right action and right belief- truth in a wider sense in which truth is what practical as well
as theoretical reason aim at. To arrive at truth requires discussion, to disseminate it requires
communication. The conditions of dialogue prevail when it is reasonable to assume that our
partners in dialogue intend that goal, have the rational powers to pursue it, and are in a state to do
so. Wrongful restrictions on expression are those which constrain, load, or seek to predetermine
the results of dialogue as such.

Let us then distinguish the dialogue effects of an act of expression from its non-dialogue effects.
Dialogue effects are those which occur through the autonomous response of a recipient who
engages with the expression critically, as an act of dialogue. He has the appropriate rational
powers to do so, and is able to apply them. Consequences which are not thus routed will be non-
dialogue effects.

The distinction is far from sharp, but it lies at the heart of the Principle of Liberty of Expression.
Effects can fail to be dialogue effects in a variety of ways; there are corresponding limits to my
freedom to say what I like in the way I like. The obligation not to damage my hearer’s ear drums
is uncontroversially grounded on a harmful non-dialogue effect. The obligation not to make
hurtful remarks is a more interesting case. The personal content of your remarks about me may
cause me more pain than the hurt to my ear drums. But is their matter, as against their manner,
protected by the Principle of Liberty of Expression? There could be contexts of dialogue in
which it was, because it bore essentially on some particular inquiry. But there is no general
protection, because the effect on feelings is not a dialogue effect any more than the effect on ear
drums. A person may be reasonably or unreasonably hurt, and this makes a difference to the
strength of obligation not to hurt him; but in either case the hurt feelings are a reaction, not an
action mediated by a deliberate, autonomous, response to the expression.

An act of communication may fall short of dialogue—and thus of protection under liberty of
expression—because of a relevant defect in the state of the recipient. He may not have the
relevant rational powers to enter into dialogue on the particular message involved (this restricts,
for example, what we are at liberty to say to children), dialogue may not be his intention (what
the scientist can say to the politician), or he may have relevant rational powers, but not be in a
state to use them (Iago and Othello).

Can we conclude, simply, that any restriction grounded on likely dialogue effects infringes
liberty of expression? That would still not suffice. It is not enough that my audience should be in
the right state for dialogue—there are also obligations on my side. The obligation not to tell lies
does not infringe liberty of expression, although the grounds for it have to do (among other
things) precisely with the harmful dialogue effects of doing so. If I have knowingly told an
untruth I can be held responsible for its dialogue effects. The general obligation is reliability. Its
requirements are two—the statement must not be intentionally misleading, and we must have
considered, to an appropriate degree, whether we are justified in thinking it true. Only if our
expression is in this sense reliable are we absolved from responsibility for its dialogue effects.

Obviously we can play devil’s advocate, argue a case for the purpose of discussion and so forth.
The significance of reliability must be judged against the internal goal of dialogue: common
pursuit of truth. The pursuit of truth is common, but it is essential that each of us pursue it by his
own best lights. The fact of unconstrained convergence on an opinion or attitude carries its
distinctive authenticating weight only to the extent that each discussant responds individually to
the requirements of right reason, as they honestly appear to him. When we respond to evidence
and reasons, we must have our eye on the evidence and the reasons, not on the other respondents.
Only under that condition can convergence be regarded as a mark of correspondence to truth.17

Reference to the internal goal of dialogue, and thus the point of liberty of expression, helps to
mark out its limits. There are, in particular, important obligations centring on the concepts of
epistemic authority, and of personal or official trust, which in no way infringe that principle. My
opinion may be sought in a particular context as someone who has authoritative knowledge on
the subject in question. That is not a situation of pure dialogue. I then typically have certain
negative obligations (for example not to argue a case, but to present a balanced view of current
opinion on the subject), and also positive obligations to impart information. The category of
trust, on the other hand, lies behind such obligations as keeping a confidence, not revealing
private facts about a person which he would prefer not to have revealed. In the public sphere, it
limits an official’s freedom to pass on confidential information. The importance of various kinds
of trust in human communities is the connecting thread running through a variety of legitimate
moral and legal restrictions on discourse.

Limits or requirements on my expression may flow from the fact that I am in a position of
epistemic authority or of trust. I do not, in those circumstances, have unrestricted freedom of
expression—they are not the circumstances of pure dialogue. But where the dialogue model
applies, so does the Principle of Liberty of Expression: so long as we make honest efforts to be
reliable, we cannot be held to account for the dialogue effects of our statements. I am answerable
for the foreseeable non-dialogue effects of my honest expressions, but I am not answerable for
their dialogue effects. Further—and essential to any liberal reading of the principle: I should
assume that the situation is one of dialogue unless there are grounds for thinking otherwise. The
onus is thrown on showing that the conditions of dialogue do not obtain, rather than on showing
that they do.

So the Principle of Liberty of Expression prohibits restrictions on honest dialogue. Of course a

full discussion would have to chase the concept of dialogue much harder than can be done here.
But we must go back to our original question: how is liberty of expression related to the Liberty
Principle?

One might see the connection as follows. The dialogue effects of B’s discourse are not to be laid
at B’s door. So they cannot be cited as grounds for interfering with it. The Liberty Principle is to
be regarded as applying to those consequences of a person’s actions for which he is responsible
—which can be credited or debited to his moral account. It permits society or the state to cite
harmful effects on others, arising foreseeably from the individual’s acts, as grounds for
interfering with them. In particular, it permits interference with acts of expression on the basis of
foreseeably harmful non-dialogue effects. The special point about acts of expression is that their
dialogue effects are not entered into the moral account of the author at all. They are not reckoned
to be his responsibility; so they do not come within the scope of the Liberty Principle.

But the Liberty Principle as Mill states it in a number of places makes no distinction beween
those of our actions for which we can be held responsible and those for which we cannot. It does
not identify the actions which may be interfered with as those having harmful effects for which
the agent may be held responsible. A better approach is to see the Liberty Principle as defining
the domain of actions for which questions of moral or legal sanction may legitimately arise. It
says that an individual cannot be blamed for acts which do not harm others; but it says nothing
about when he may be blamed for those which do. This is a further question, to be decided on
grounds of general utility. Thus at the beginning of chapter v, Mill points out that anyone who
succeeds in a competitive examination ‘reaps benefit from the loss of others’ (LV3, XVIII 292);
but their failure is not something for which the successful candidate can be held to account, since
it is ‘the general interest of mankind, that persons should pursue their objects undeterred by this
sort of consequences’.

On this approach we must see liberty of expression as supplementing the Liberty Principle,
rather than as constituting a special case of it. All acts, including acts of expression, are protected
by the Liberty Principle if they do not harm others. In the case of expressions, however, the
Principle of Liberty of Expression spells out further safeguards, defining limits within which a
certain type of discourse—discussion, honest dialogue—is protected from social sanction.

On the whole, and despite the remarks we have quoted from his introductory chapter, it seems
clear that Mill saw the relationship between the two in this way. Thus at the beginning of chapter
iii he famously says

No one pretends that actions should be as free as opinions. On the contrary, even opinions lose
their immunity when the circumstances in which they are expressed are such as to constitute
their expressions a positive instigation to some mischievous act. An opinion that corn dealers are
starvers of the poor, or that private property is robbery, ought to be unmolested when simply
circulated through the press, but may justly incur punishment when delivered orally to an excited
mob assembled before the house of a corn-dealer, or when handed about among the same mob in
the form of a placard. (LIII1, XVIII 260)

Here he seems to envisage (though the impression is somewhat counteracted by what

immediately follows) tighter restrictions being drawn around interference with expressions of
opinion than around interference with actions in general. He is primarily concerned with the evils
of restricting dialogue as such. The mob before the corn-dealer’s house is not in a state for
rational judgement, and in those circumstances the opinion constitutes a ‘positive instigation to a
mischievous act’. The dialogue model does not apply—but where it does, the opinion remains
unmolested.

Nevertheless, granting that the Principle of Liberty of Expression supplements the Liberty
Principle, and is not merely a special case of it, the two principles might still grow out of the
same underlying philosophical idea. One might see them as growing from the same root —the
autonomy of the individual. That is, one might say with Mill that as long as only the dialogue
effects of expression are being considered, expressions effectively belong as much to the private
domain as thoughts. For the line tracing dialogue effects back to the expression’s author is
broken by the intervention of another person’s autonomous rational powers.

In the introductory chapter of Liberty Mill puts the ‘inward domain of consciousness’—
conscience, thought and feeling—in the sphere of individual liberty, in which society has at most
an indirect interest. He adds that ‘the liberty of expressing and publishing opinions may seem to
fall under a different principle, since it belongs to that part of the conduct of an individual which
concerns other people’—and as such, presumably, would not be underwritten by the Liberty
Principle in cases in which an individual’s expressions threatened harm to the interests of others.
But ‘being almost of as much importance as the liberty of thought itself, and resting in great part
on the same reasons, [it] is practically inseparable from it’ (LI12, XVIII 225–6, my italics). Here
Mill does not say that liberty of expression is a special case of the Liberty Principle. But he does
say that it rests on substantially the same reasons and is practically inseparable from it. So he
seems to derive liberty of expression from the individual right of autonomy, on the grounds that
acts of expression—in so far as only their dialogue effects are considered —belong as surely to
the private domain as thought itself.

But when we consider the way in which Mill divides up the discussion of chapter ii we find no
such line of thought. His first objection to the suppression of opinion is that it must always be
possible that the opinion which is being suppressed is true. Then he considers arguments which
still exist even if the possibility that the suppressed opinion is true is ruled out. Even if we take it
for granted that truth lies with the received opinion, we must still accept that if that received
opinion is not ‘vigorously and earnestly contested’ it will be held ‘in the manner of a prejudice,
with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds’ (LII43, XVIII 258), and its very
meaning may be lost. Finally he considers what he takes to be the commonest case, that in which
conflicting opinions each contain a portion of the truth, and suppression of either would impede
the improvement of the other.

In short, he argues that there should be no restriction on liberty of discussion, because restriction
impedes the progress of truth, and impoverishes the qualities of mind of those whose access to
discussion is restricted. Even where censorship does not positively sustain error and block truth’s
growth, it still draws the life from it, or distorts it by stopping it from flourishing unrestrictedly
on all its sides. The goals to which Mill appeals in defending liberty of expression, and which he
presents with such incisiveness, are the growth of truth and of rational qualities of mind. There is
no reference to the Liberty Principle, or the rights of the individual. Mill defends liberty of
expression by a direct appeal to the internal goal of dialogue.

On the first approach, the heart of the Principle of Liberty of Expression is the individual right of
the expression’s author. If we take it as a matter of individual right, and if we accept Mill’s
analysis of and consequentialist foundation for individual rights—we shall have to say that the
right of liberty of expression is, like other individual rights, a justice-right protecting a primary
utility of the individual.

But this is misplaced individualism—for once the word deserves a critical overtone. For the main
point about liberty of expression concerns the social importance of dialogue. (Though it is also
important to remember the individual rights of the audience, as against the author; its right of
free access to information—see 10.11.) Dialogue—the common and unconstrained pursuit of
right reason—is the essential constitution of a society considered as a Kantian ‘kingdom’ of
rationally autonomous individuals. It is the public forum in which they communally discover
their ends, and the terms for their pursuit. For those ends and conditions can only be discovered
communally, in unconstrained dialogue. Only in dialogue do we discover the features of our
best, truly human, selves.

Liberty of expression is not a special case of the Liberty Principle, nor does it mainly flow from
the same source. On the contrary—whereas the Llberty Principle is founded on the importance of
giving individuality its legitimate scope, the deepest justification for the Principle of Liberty of
Expression is that it gives a hearing to the communal voice—that to which we respond in
common—Arnold’s ‘right reason’. This is the conception which in practice dominates Mill’s
chapter ‘On Liberty of Thought and Discussion’. He is not presenting a special case of the
Liberty Principle; he is defending the dialogue model by appeal to its internal goal. One may
accept his defence of liberty of expression and reject the Liberty Principle, or vice versa.

Of course, given his utilitarianism, Mill still has to show that the dialogue model, which absolves
agents from responsibility for the dialogue effects of honest expressions, is consistent with
general utility— specifically, in Mill’s case, with the Greatest Happiness Principle. He must
argue that the pursuit of right reason is either a part of happiness or conducive to happiness. Mill
never directly addresses the question in these terms; he does not assess the benefits and costs of
dialogue directly by reference to the Greatest Happiness Principle. He assesses them by reference
to the internal goal of dialogue, rationally grasped truth. In the next section we shall follow him
in that. The place of this goal in Mill’s—and our—overall account of human good will be
considered in the section 10.11.

10 Liberty of expression: fallibilism

We have noted that Mill’s argument has three parts, focusing first on the possibility that the
suppressed opinion is true; second, on arguments which remain even if that possibility is
discounted; and finally, on the typical case in which received and unorthodox opinions share the
truth between them. In his discussion of the first part he goes to the heart of the dialogue model.

The discussion is a dialectic which starts from a ‘common argument’:

the opinion which it is attempted to suppress by authority may possibly be true. Those who
desire to suppress it, of course deny its truth; but they are not infallible…. To refuse a hearing to
an opinion, because they are sure that it is false, is to assume that their certainty is the same thing
as absolute certainty. Its condemnation may be allowed to rest on this common argument, not the
worse for being common. (LII3, XVIII 229)

But to the common argument there is an obvious objection. Any action a person takes is based on
his beliefs. He acts on the belief that certain things are true; it does not follow that he takes
himself to be infallible in holding them true. To suppress a proposition because one believes it to
be false is no more than a special case: the censor acts on his sincere belief that it is false—why
should it be implied that he takes himself to be infallible.

If we were never to act on our opinions, because those opinions may be wrong, we should leave
all our interests uncared for, and all our duties unperformed. An objection which applies to all
conduct, can be no valid objection to any conduct in particular. It is the duty of governments, and
of individuals, to form the truest opinions they can; to form them carefully, and never impose
them upon others unless they are quite sure of being right. But when they are sure (such
reasoners may say), it is not conscientiousness but cowardice to shrink from acting on their
opinions…. There is no such thing as absolute certainty, but there is assurance sufficient for the
purposes of human life. We may, and must, assume our opinion to be true for the guidance of our
own conduct, and it is assuming no more when we forbid bad men to pervert society by the
propagation of opinions which we regard as false and pernicious. (LII5, XVIII 230–1, my italics)

Mill’s reply to this objection is a penetrating thrust:

I answer, that it is assuming very much more. There is the greatest difference between presuming
an opinion to be true, because, with every opportunity for contesting it, it has not been refuted,
and assuming its truth for the purpose of not permitting its refutation. Complete liberty of
contradicting and disproving our opinion, is the very condition which justifies us in assuming its
truth for purposes of action; and on no other terms can a being with human faculties have any
rational assurance of being right. (LII6, XVIII 231)

The objector acknowledges the fallibility of human judgements—but understandably he fails to

see any connection between the epistemological doctrine of fallibilism, and the political doctrine
of liberty of expression. A censor after all, like anyone else who acts, requires no more than
‘assurance sufficient for the purposes of human life’. But what he overlooks is that fallibilism
has an important consequence with regard to the conditions necessary for that assurance. I am
warranted in my assurance only if I am warranted in holding that no available and relevant
evidence or argument has been ignored.

There is more to this than immediately meets the eye—as can be shown by stating and
responding to a paradox which brings out the depth of the connection between fallibilism and
liberty of expression. The paradox seems to arise from two premises:
(1) If P, then any piece of evidence, or argument, to the effect that not-P is misleading.

(2) If I am justified in believing that a piece of evidence or argument is misleading, I am justified

in discounting it (suppressing it).

From (1) it seems to follow (given closure of justified belief) that

(3) If I am justified in believing that P, then I am justified in believing that any piece of evidence,
or argument, to the effect that not-P is misleading.

And then from (2) and (3):

(4) If I am justified in believing that P, then I am justified in discounting (suppressing) any piece
of evidence, or argument, to the effect that not-P.

Stated in the italicised phrases the argument presents a paradox about the concept of justified
belief,18 since both premises seem perfectly acceptable, but the conclusion is not. However
justified I am in believing that P, I cannot, simply on that basis, systematically ignore new
counter-evidence or counter-argument.

When the argument is stated with the phrases in parentheses replacing the italicised ones, we
have the objection which Mill is considering, or rather, the reply which the objector might be
expected to make to Mill’s counter-thrust. The two versions are private and social variants on
one theme. If I ignore a datum or an argument, I suppress it from my own consideration. If I
censor it, I suppress it from other people’s.

One might dispute (2). In the social version, the second premise is not so plausible, because if I
suppress a datum from someone else’s consideration, I may be infringing their autonomy—an
issue which does not arise if I suppress it from my own.

We shall return to the point later. But Mill’s counter-thrust does not turn on any asymmetry
between the two arguments. In either version, the argument fails, because it does not allow for
the fact that even a justified belief is inherently fallible. ‘Rational assurance’, ‘assurance for the
purposes of human action’, is not ‘absolute certainty’.

If there could be a thinker who somehow had causally unmediated access to the fact that P, his
belief that P would be infallible, and hence incorrigible by further evidence or argument. He
could justifiably discount apparent evidence or argument that not-P in advance, sight unseen. But
no such access to the facts is available to ‘a being with human faculties’. When cognitive
processes are conceived naturalistically, the idea of causally unmediated knowledge appears as
incoherent. The connection between naturalism and fallibilism was central in our discussion of
Mill’s arguments against a priori knowledge in 5.8. It is of course true that grounds for believing
a proposition can cumulate to the point of practical certainty. But practical certainty remains
defeasible, whatever its degree.

This is the key point. The evidence and argument available to me at a given time may be such as
to justify me in believing that P; it may warrant any degree of rational assurance that P—but it is
always compatible with the possibility that my information may be enlarged, by future evidence
or argument, into a new state in which I am no longer so justified. Justification is a relation
between a belief and a domain of evidence and argument. If the domain is expanded, the relation
may no longer hold. Unlike the mythical thinker with ‘unmediated’ access to the facts (who
perhaps casts a shadow over our concept of knowledge), I cannot rule out that possibility.

Returning to the paradox: given that all beliefs are fallible in this sense, I can be justified in
believing that P only on two conditions: (i) the evidence I have warrants the assertion that P; (ii)
I have not ignored evidence, nor failed to take (in context) reasonable measures to seek it out.
Both conditions may be fulfilled at a given time; but condition (ii) ceases to be fulfilled if new
evidence or argument comes in, and I wilfully ignore it. My justification then lapses. The
argument from (1) and (2) to (3) looks paradoxical because (2) and (3) have not been explicitly
spelt out to take account of the way in which justification is relative to an information state. If
that is done the conclusion reads innocuously as follows:

(3’) If I am justified in believing that P relative to a domain of evidence and argument taken as a
whole, then I am justified, relative to that domain, in believing that any piece of evidence, or
argument, to the effect that not-P within that domain is misleading.

Given that step (3) breaks down in this way, step (4) of either version also fails to follow.

When we apply this to the social case we approach Mill’s point: ‘it is not the feeling sure of a
doctrine (be it what it may) which I call an assumption of infallibility. It is the undertaking to
decide that question for others, without allowing them to hear what can be said on the contrary
side’ (LII11, XVIII 234). But Mill’s emphasis is misleading; the assumption of infallibility does
not lie peculiarly in deciding for others. Undertaking to decide, indefeasibly, for oneself—with
the intention of discounting all further counter-evidence or counter-argument—is just as much an
assumption of infallibility. What is specifically wrong in undertaking to decide for others is not
that it assumes infallibility (I might be willing to rethink my censorship in the light of new
evidence)—but that it ignores the fact that truth must be pursued communally and dialectically:

The beliefs which we have most warrant for, have no safeguard to rest on, but a standing
invitation to the whole world to prove them unfounded. If the challenge is not accepted, or is
accepted and the attempt fails, we are far enough from certainty still; but we have done the best
that the existing state of human reason admits of; we have neglected nothing that could give the
truth a chance of reaching us: if the lists are kept open, we may hope that if there be a better
truth, it will be found when the human mind is capable of receiving it; and in the meantime we
may rely on having attained such approach to truth as is possible in our own day. This is the
amount of certainty attainable by a fallible being, and this the sole way of attaining it. (LII8,
XVIII 232)

Arguing and assessing evidence is a collective pursuit. This is the deepest stratum in Mill’s
discussion, and at this level a link between the two themes, the theme of fallibilism and the
theme that dialogue is necessarily communal, can indeed be found. It is the link between
objectivity of reasoning as such, practical or theoretical, and convergence of unconstrained
reflective judgements. I can have confidence in the objectivity of my reasoning only so long as I
can reasonably hold that in ideal dialogue others would freely converge on it. The roots of Mill’s
fallibilism are explicitly naturalistic. But inasmuch as right reason itself is secured by ideal
agreement, the model of dialogue has a ‘transcendental’ role.19

Not that the argument which we have been exploring is the only one he gives; he spends much
more time on another. It is connected, inasmuch as it turns on the corrigibility of beliefs:
reasonable judgements can turn out to be mistaken—by the same token they can also be
improved. The source of everything respectable in man either as an intellectual or a moral being’
is that

his errors are corrigible. He is capable of rectifying his mistakes, by discussion and experience.
Not by experience alone. There must be discussion, to show how experience is to be interpreted.
Wrong opinions and practices gradually yield to fact and argument; but facts and argument, to
produce any effect on the mind must be brought before it. Very few facts are able to tell their
own story, without comments to bring out their meaning. The whole strength and value, then, of
human judgement, depending on the one property, that it can be set right when it is wrong,
reliance can be placed on it only when the means of setting it right are kept constantly at hand….
(LII7, XVIII 231–2)

C.L.Ten has usefully distinguished what he calls the ‘Assumption of Infallibility Argument’, and
the ‘Avoidance of Mistake Argument’ (Ten 1980:125). The first is the one we have been
considering. But while fallibilism precludes ‘philosophic’ or ‘absolute’ certainty, it is still
compatible in principle with any degree of practical assurance in our existing beliefs. If certain
beliefs have repeatedly been tested against apparent counter-evidence, and have repeatedly won
through, then the probability that they will win through against future apparent counter-evidence
rises, and the practical urgency of examining apparent counter-evidence diminishes. On the other
hand, if the record shows a history of thought in which confidently held—and in particular
socially entrenched and protected—beliefs are repeatedly displaced or corrected by new evidence
and further discussion, then the practical importance of re-examining them whenever they meet
an apparent challenge increases. This is the ‘Avoidance of Mistake Argument’.

The first argument identifies a precondition of collective rationality. Society cannot have rational
assurance in its beliefs if information and argument do not circulate freely, under conditions of
dialogue. It establishes a philosophical foundation, in the epistemological implications of
naturalism, for the defence of freedom of speech. But such connections can never be tightly
drawn and knotted. Mill is quite right to lay main emphasis, as he does, on the Avoidance of
Mistake Argument. There is obvious point in stressing that the record shows entrenched beliefs
to have been catastrophically wrong; whatever the cost of rescrutinising received beliefs may be,
the cost of suppressing or ignoring further dicussion is also great.

Let us pass to the ‘second division of the argument’ —which grants, for the sake of discussion,
that the received opinions are true, and examines ‘into the worth of the manner in which they are
likely to be held, when their truth is not freely and openly canvassed’.

However true an opinion may be, ‘if it is not fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed, it will be
held as a dead dogma, not a living truth’ (LII21, XVIII 243). A fully grounded, living belief
requires that its holder should have considered the case for it dialectically; he must have
encountered the objections and felt their real force: which cannot be done by having them
presented for purposes of refutation by people who do not believe them, but only by attending to
‘persons who actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for
them’. People who have not

thrown themselves into the mental position of those who think differently from them, and
considered what such persons may have to say…do not, in any proper sense of the word, know
the doctrine which they themselves profess. (LII23, XVIII 245)

It is not just that a belief protected from evidence and argument is ‘held in the manner of a
prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds’: properly speaking it is not
held at all, its content is not grasped. Real assent is inherently dialectical.20. Cut off from its
rational context, meaning is ‘lost, or enfeebled, and deprived of its vital effect on the character
and conduct’ (LII43, XVIII 258); ‘the words which convey it cease to suggest ideas, or suggest
only a small portion of those they were originally employed to communicate’ (LII34, XVIII
247).

These themes—the many-sidedness of truth, the dialectical character of real assent—are drawn
out in a section of the chapter devoted to what Mill considers the commonest case, that in which
‘conflicting doctrines, instead of being one true and the other false, share the truth between them;
and the nonconforming opinion is needed to supply the remainder of the truth, of which the
recorded doctrine embodies only a part’ (LII34, XVIII 252). His exposition of them has the sober
incisiveness and liberality of mind which give his philosophical voice its peculiar
impressiveness:

Every truth which men of narrow capacity are in earnest about, is sure to be asserted, inculcated,
and in many ways even acted on, as if no other truth existed in the world, or at all events none
that could limit or qualify the first. I acknowledge that the tendency of all opinions to become
sectarian is not cured by the freest discussion, but is often heightened and exacerbated thereby;
the truth which ought to have been, but was not, seen, being rejected all the more violently
because proclaimed by persons regarded as opponents. But it is not on the impassioned partisan,
it is on the calmer and more disinterested bystander, that this collision of opinions works its
salutary effect. Not the violent conflict between parts of the truth, but the quiet suppression of
half of it, is the formidable evil; there is always hope when people are forced to listen to both
sides; it is when they attend only to one that errors harden into prejudices, and truth itself ceases
to have the effect of truth, by being exaggerated into falsehood. And since there are few mental
attributes more rare than the judicial faculty which can sit in intelligent judgement between two
sides of a question, of which only one is represented by an advocate before it, truth has no
chance but in proportion as every side of it, every opinion which embodies any fraction of the
truth, not only finds advocates, but is so advocated as to be listened to. (LII39, XVIII 257)

11 Liberty of expression: truth, autonomy and the ideal of rationality

It matters to Mill that people should have true beliefs, and that they should have rationally
grounded ones. It matters that they should have the intellectual virtues, that they be intellectually
vigorous and self-reliant, open-minded, aware of the complexity of truth, sensitive to other points
of view. That these things matter will not be disputed. But why do they? Mill’s answer would
certainly be that they are valuable both as means to, and as ‘parts of’, happiness; and he would be
right. But that is not the whole of it; again his hedonism prevents him from bringing to the
surface, and representing clearly, ideals and human goals which in practice he plainly invokes.

Certainly free intellectual inquiry, a mind open to other points of view, and so on, are among the
higher pleasures; no one who has known them would be without them, or willingly give them up
for supine dogmatism. If Mill’s distinction between higher and lower pleasures applies anywhere
it applies here. But they are parts of happiness not least because they are valued as ideals. We
admire them, try to acquire them, and are conrent if we are able to think that we have in some
measure succeeded. The utilitarian can recognise that they are numbered among our ideals, and
he can accept them as such (see 10.7). He can call up our admiration for rationality, open-
mindedness, intellectual vigour, and inspire it by example and eloquence, as Mill does. He can
then appeal to them as parts of our happiness because they are so, and he has helped to make
them such.

To that extent Mill’s defence of liberty of expression can be purely hedonistic. But we have
argued that happiness is not the only ingredient of utility or well-being. Autonomy and
knowledge of one’s situation are too. Both obviously have a vital bearing on liberty of
discussion. Remember again the woman whose son is lost, or the cancer patient. What they want
is the truth about their situation. They want it even if it is unpleasant; because they do not want to
inhabit a fool’s paradise. To possess the truth is a part of their good, even when it militates
against their happiness—though, just because it is a part of their good, and happiness another
part, it is not necessarily reasonable to seek it at any cost in happiness.

What the woman wants is the truth about her son. But consider the following possibility.
Suppose we know that her belief that her son is safe is true, and also know that it is not justified.
We cannot transmit the grounds of our own knowledge of her son’s safety to her—it may involve
secret information—but we can see that she has not considered counter-evidence which she
should reasonably have considered, etc. But she has what she wants, and believes that she has,
even though she has not got authentically good reasons for believing that she has. Might it not be
right to spare her unnecessary complexities? Obviously so. But then in general: if we are
reasonably assured that people have the truth, may we not suppress discussion which might only
lead to their falling into doubt? This might be called the argument of the inquisitor or the
commissar.

But happiness and possession of truth are not the only values at stake; there is also the autonomy
of those whose information is tampered with or pre-selected. Rational autonomy, as ability and
as liberty, is one of my ends. If I want to find out the truth for myself, it diminishes my
autonomy to stop me. My utility or good is reduced, even if the evidence or argument is
suppressed silently, so that I do not know that it has been done. The departure from hedonism is
here crucial. Autonomy as an end constantly hovers in the background of Liberty without ever
breaking through. But it is one of the important strongpoints in the defence of liberty of
expression. People value the freedom and capacity to pursue truth in their own way. To censor
discussion for the purpose of securing their happiness or even their possession of truth is
unacceptable paternalism. But what if we censor a person’s information not for his good but for
the general good? This is after all far likelier. The objection from paternalism may not then
apply. But the arguments resting on the social importance of unrestricted access to dialogue still
apply: they retain all their strength and offset heavily any proximate or immediate social
advantage.

12 Towards liberalism
In any society in which intellectual and cultural progress is made, free dialogue must exist in
some form, if only among small elites. But what characterises the liberal state is that all its
citizens have unrestricted access to dialogue, Liberty of thought and discussion for every citizen
is a ground rule of Mill’s liberalism, along with the Liberty Principle and the baseline conception
of justice, which guarantees each individual’s primary utilities as of right.21 The state promotes
general good within the framework of these principles—which are themselves, in the final
analysis, justified on no other ground than that of general good.

We have pointed out, contrary to Mill, that the notion of general good is not determinate in its
distributive content. It can be spelt out in terms of more than one specific distributive conception.
It does not have to be spelt out in terms of aggregate utility. The considerations which lead to
philosophical utilitarianism—to the view that the general good of individuals, impartially
considered, is the ultimate criterion—are quite compatible with a variety of other distributive
rules, of which maximising well-being subject to protection of primary utilities is one— the one
endorsed here. Rights understood in this sense, that is, as defensive perimeters around vital
utilities, are irreducible features of our particular brand of philosophical utilitarianism. Their
principle is that each individual should have access to the resources which enable (they can never
of course ensure) fulfilment in private life and in citizenship of a moral community. They are not
themselves derived, as Mill implies, from the criterion of aggregate utility.

But to disagree with Mill on this is not to reject philosophical utilitarianism, and therefore the
obligation, if we want to be liberals, of defending liberal principles on philosophical-utilitarian
grounds. The Liberty Principle—or some development of it—can be defended on these grounds,
if we recognise the importance for human beings of the idea of a private domain, and of
autonomy within that domain. Can Mill’s other liberal tenet—that of liberty of expression for
every citizen— also be referred to utility ‘in the largest sense’?

The Principle of Liberty of Expression prohibits restrictions on honest dialogue. Not all
communication occurs in circumstances of dialogue— we have explored its limits in 10.9-
Expressive acts may be constrained or required by considerations of authority, privacy or trust. It
is a weakness of Mill’s account that he does not examine these limits. It is further noteworthy
that Mill does not try to justify liberty of expression directly by reference to the Greatest
Happiness Principle. He justifies it only by appeal to the pursuit of truth through right reason.

Let us allow that unrestricted liberty of expression promotes the growth of truth, of truth
rationally held. What if it simultaneously fosters the dissemination of harmful error—of crazy
beliefs about harmful diets or drugs, enslaving religious cults, paranoid suspicions about the
motives of unpopular minorities, irrational nationalistic obsessions? Are these not possibilities in
a world of imperfectly rational, imperfectly moral human beings? Can there not, moreover, be
harmful truths? Might not the discovery of important racial differences be employed by ignorant
or evil-minded people to stir up hatred between communities? Even if it were granted that in a
world of perfectly reasonable people the truth would never be harmful, we know that we do not
live in such a world.

The defence of unrestricted liberty of expression can usefully be seen as having two parts. The
first asserts that interference with dialogue as such is always harmful. Given the way dialogue
effects have been defined this is not itself a very substantial claim. The substantial question turns
on when it is that we can assume the circumstances of true dialogue to obtain. The liberal
understanding of liberty of expression holds that they should be assumed to obtain unless there is
definite reason to think they do not. So the second step in the defence of unrestricted liberty of
expression must vindicate this doctrine of the onus of proof. It must in general be the case that a
normal discussion between citizens meets the conditions of dialogue: that is, the reasonableness
and good intentions of those taking part. Only then can the assumption that conditions of
dialogue obtain be the normal one, requiring evidence to overturn it.

So the liberal must be ready to rely on the general reasonableness and decency of citizens in a
well-ordered social state. He does not have to be willing to rely on it, unrealistically, in every
possible social state—in a society menaced for example by immense external dangers, or
enduring poverty and affliction, or diseased by exploitation and repression. But his principles go
together as a whole, and must be assessed as a whole— democratic liberty of expression is one,
the institutions of justice and liberty are the others. All this may be granted. Yet the fact remains
that not everyone can be an equal participant in dialogue. Mill himself knew perfectly well that
‘some are wise and some are otherwise’. The more struck we are by human irrationality and
ignorance—and by its unequal distribution—the more we shall find the idea that dialogue is the
normal mode of exchange between all classes of men absurdly optimistic.

Even then there remains a fundamental argument for preserving some element of free dialogue in
any social order. It is that which points out that free discussion between contending intellectual
parties is the only basis for rational assurance; that one’s confidence in the truth of a proposition
can be no stronger than one’s confidence that rational inquirers would converge on it. But can we
not safeguard the objectivity of our thought, its responsiveness to right reason and hard fact, by
giving freedom of thought and discussion to an intelligent elite? Within the elite there could be
unrestricted access to data and collision of opinions, but the dissemination of information and
argument would be regulated. The Catholic Church has traditionally responded in this way:

It makes a broad separation between those who can be permitted to receive its doctrines on
conviction, and those who must accept them on trust…. [The former] may admissibly and
meritoriously make themselves acquainted with the arguments of opponents, in order to answer
them, and may, therefore, read heretical books…. This discipline recognises a knowledge of the
enemy’s case as beneficial to the teachers, but finds means, consistent with this, of denying it to
the rest of the world: thus giving to the elite more mental culture, though not more mental
freedom, than it allows to the mass. (LII25, XVIII 246)

In our time ruling communist parties have applied exactly the same policy.

This—the Bureaucrat’s Fallacy—imagines that sources of evidence and argument are best
controlled by an administrative elite especially well-equipped with good judgement. The
bureaucracy may be religious or secular, and the topic with respect to which truth must be
economically administered may be religious, political or scientific. We have of course
recognised a number of reasons for controlling information. But the reason we are now
considering is the unwisdom of the general public.

Arguments against it mobilise all the philosophical and sociological resources of liberalism. In
the first place any elite is itself no more than a group of fallible and corruptible human beings. It
will itself develop the interests and solidarity of a social class, and uncriticisable ideological
doctrines to sustain those interests. Ideal convergence appeals to the common reason of all
human beings; to leave dialogue in the hands of one group is to provide no mechanism for
eliminating the particular distorting perspectives of that group. In the second place, the
democratic ideal of equality of respect and responsibility for all citizens is something that has to
be implemented. It refers to human beings as they can be, in a good society. Rationality and
responsibility are qualities which are developed by education and practice. A training in the
intellectual virtues which are necessary for the citizens of a well-functioning democracy is
impossible without the educative influence of liberty of expression. People who are shut out of
free discussion are stunted and diminished—they are prone to the diseases of reason, to paranoia,
to the defensive aggression that arises from ignorance and lack of self-confidence, to exploitation
by demagogues.22

Still, to repudiate the Bureaucrat’s Fallacy is not to deny the tension between unrestricted liberty
of expression and the principle of intellectual authority. It is a question of how that authority can
achieve a legitimate and wholesome influence—the question at stake between Mill and Comte,
or Mill and Arnold. We can agree with Arnold: ‘what we want is to make right reason act on
individual reason, the reason of individuals; all our search for authority has that for its end and
aim’ (Arnold 1965: vol. 5, p. 159). But that leaves unanswered the critical question of what role
the state, or a clerisy established in church, university, ministry or party academy can properly
play in making right reason active. In the Millian vision, intellectual or moral authority
commands freely given respect and spontaneous assent.23 A common reaction to this ideal of
democratic intellect is that it requires from people impossibly high standards of integrity and
impartial rationality:

The ordinary mortal, lacking Mill’s mental agility and spiritual firmness (which even he had not
always possessed), cannot but be frightened by the strenuous demands he makes upon the human
mind for a kind of disinterestedness which makes the disinterestedness Arnold asked for seem,
by contrast, unworthy of any but I’homme moyen sensuel. (Alexander 1965:129)

Disinterested, responsible rationality is truly a burdensome and difficult thing. It gets in the way
of other important human goods. Because there are other goods, it is not even rational to try to be
constantly rational. The Kantian ideal of a kingdom of perfectly rational persons is in that respect
at least a misconceived and misleading one.

But it is not necessary for everyone to be rational and impartial all the time. There is a difference
between the Millian liberal and the Rousseauesque or Jacobin tradition. The former is more
stable and resilient just because it does not place so much weight on the wisdom and firmness of
all. The balance between the individual projects and personal ties of private life, and citizenship
in a common moral community, is always a difficult one, but Mill (as it seems to me) comes
closer to striking it rightly than any other political philosopher who recognises it as a difficulty at
all. It is not required that everyone should constantly participate in the political process, taking
equal responsibility on their shoulders all of the time. Politics is not only a means, but it is
equally far from being the only end. The private preoccupations of individual life supply the
overwhelmingly large portion of human well-being. On the other hand, democratic politics is
also, or ought ideally to be, an education in rational autonomy. Even representative democracy
positively requires that enough people should be able to get close enough to the impartial rational
stance when called upon to do so; and that they should have enough self-confidence and freedom
from paranoia to be able to recognise and respect impartiality in others. For that, unrestricted
liberty of thought and discussion is indeed the most vital of preconditions.
Notes
1
The Millian Philosophy

1 The verdict came even from those in greatest sympathy with him. Henry Sidgwick conceded
that ‘Mill will have to be destroyed, as he is becoming as intolerable as Aristeides, but when he
is destroyed, we shall have to build him a mausoleum as big as his present temple of fame’.
Quoted in Winch (1970:47).

2 The most important figure was probably John Stirling. It seems likely that Mill had not actually
read Kant when he wrote the System of Logic (see his letter to Comte, 13 March 1843; XIII 574).
Letters of 1828 and 1829 (XVII 1954, 1956) to Thomas Wirgman, author of the Principles of the
Kantesian or Transcendental Philosophy (London, 1824), give evidence of familiarity with
Kant’s philosophy but no definite evidence of reading Kant himself. By the time of the
Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy Mill’s knowledge of Kant is much more
detailed: he recognises ‘the whole difference of level which has been gained to philosophy
through the powerful negative criticism of Kant’ (X 1), and refers frequently to positions taken
by him.

3 Mill on Bentham’s narrowness of vision:

He was a boy to the last. Self-consciousness, that daemon of the men of genius of our time, from
Wordsworth to Byron, from Goethe to Chateaubriand, and to which this age owes so much both
of its cheerful and its mournful wisdom, never was awakened in him. How much of human
nature slumbered in him he knew not, neither can we know. He had never been made alive to the
unseen influences which were acting on himself, nor consequently on his fellow creatures. Other
ages and other nations were a blank to him for purposes of instruction. He measured them but by
one standard; their knowledge of facts, and their capability to take correct views of utility….
(‘Bentham’, X 92)

But a place was to be assigned to Bentham among the ‘masters of wisdom’; ‘he was not a great
philosopher, but he was a great reformer in philosophy’ (X 82, 83). He epitomised the
enlightenment’s negative critique: ‘he is the great subversive, or in the language of continental
philosophers, the great critical, thinker of his age and country’ (X 79). Hart (1982: introduction
and essay 1, The Demystification of the Law’) compares demystifying critique in Bentham and
in Marx. Harrison shows how Bentham’s assault on mystifying and poisoned speech led into his
theory of ‘fictions’.

4 Described in the Autobiography (I 137–53), and much over-interpreted ever since.

5 Cf. the Autobiography:

I never…wavered in the conviction that happiness is the test of all rules of conduct, and the end
of life. But 1 now [after his mental crisis] thought that this end was only to be attained by not
making it the direct end. Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some
object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of
mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming
thus at something else, they find happiness by the way. The enjoyments of life…are sufficient to
make it a pleasant thing, when they are taken en passant, without being made a principal object.
Once make them so, and they are immediately felt to be insufficient. They will not bear a
scrutinising examination. Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so. (I 145–7)

Mill compares this to Carlyle’s ‘anti-self-consciousness theory’. It applies, he thinks, to all ‘those
who have but a moderate degree of sensibility and of capacity for enjoyment, that is, for the great
majority of mankind’.

6 This part of the Millian scheme has recently been very fully explored by a number of scholars.
See for example the articles by Lyons (1976; 1978; 1982); and most fully, Berger (1984).
Chapter 4 of Berger’s study gives an extended survey of Mill’s treatment of ‘natural
impressions’ of justice— fairness, equality and, particularly in connnection with punishment and
with economic justice, desert.

7 …the Germano-Coleridgean doctrine is…the revolt of the human mind against the eighteenth
century, It is ontological, because that was experimental; conservative, because that was
innovative; religious, because so much of that was infidel; concrete and historical, because that
was abstract and metaphysical; poetical, because that was matter-of-fact and prosaic….
(‘Coleridge’ X 125)

8 The basic principles of associationism are outlined in 8.4.

9 There is a careful account of Bentham’s views on rights, fictions and paraphrasis in Harrison
(1983:60ff. Cf. Hart 1982: ‘Natural Rights: Bentham and John Stuart Mill’). Bentham held rights
to be ‘fictions’, but did not thereby mean to dismiss them:

from the observation, by which, for example, the words duties and rights are here spoken of as
names of fictitious entities, let it not for a moment so much as be supposed, that, in either
instance, the reality of the object is meant to be denied, in any sense in which in ordinary
language the reality of it is assumed. (Quoted in Harrison 1983:99)

10 Cf. Scanlon (1984). Note that a philosophical utilitarian who acknowledges baseline
constraints on maximisation of aggregate welfare does, in one sense, thereby acknowledge
individual rights as primitive, But he is still not endorsing ‘natural rights’ in the sense in which
they are dismissed by Bentham—as metaphysical grounds of obligation; he is simply imposing
one among a number of possible distributive structures on the general good.

11 Clear statements of sceptical contractualism can be found, in political economy, in Buchanan

(1975), and in recent philosophy, in Mackie (1977).

12 …utilitarianism (socialism, democracy) criticizes the origin of moral evaluations, but it

believes them just as much as the Christian does.

(Naïveté: as if morality could survive when the God who sanctions it is missing! The ‘beyond’ is
absolutely necessary if faith in morality is to be maintained.) (Nietzsche 1968: para. 253)

Nietzsche found this guilelessness, or alternatively, hypocrisy or self-deception, to be peculiarly

English: ‘one still believes in good and evil and experiences the triumph of the good and the
annihilation of evil as a task (that is English; typical case: the flathead John Stuart Mill)…. (para.
30). Compare also paras 925, 926 and, on the same theme, Daybreak (Nietzsche 1982), e.g. para.
132.

13 Mill judged it ‘the best chapter in the two volumes’ in a letter to R.B. Fox (14 February 1843,
XIII 569). Compare also his letter to de Tocqueville of 3 November 1843 (XIII 612).

14 His opposition to the secret ballot is one index of this—the vote was not just an individual
right but a public trust, to be exercised in public.

2
The analysis of language

1 The basic ideas were developed by Mill in his early twenties at meetings of the Society of
Students of Mental Philosophy. This was a small discussion group which met twice a week in the
mornings before work (8.30 to 10.00 a.m.), at George Grote’s house in Threadneedle Street. It
discussed political economy and logic. See Mill’s Autobiography.

Books i and ii of the System, dealing with the analysis of language, and the epistemology of
deductive inference, were the first to be written. The earliest drafts date from 1830 or 1831- A
first draft of Book iii, ‘Of Induction’, was completed in 1837; drafts of the remaining three books
were completed by the autumn of 1840. So the System is a work of Mill’s twenties and early
thirties.

The evidence for these dates is collected in the Textual Introduction to the Collected Works
edition of the System.

2 A good many of his remarks would fit the view that the objects of propositional attitudes are
possible propositions—taking a proposition to be a token sentence. Mill often talks of ‘possible
propositions’. On this view, the objects of the attitudes are modal constructs: permanent
possibilities of utrerance or inscription. I seem to quantify over these constructs when, for
example, 1 say, ‘Smith believes something which no one has ever written or said’. But on the
‘construct’ view, what I am saying is that a sentence could be constructed which would express
Smith’s belief.

It would be natural to use the term ‘proposition’ to refer to the constructs; but that is not Mill’s
use of the term.

3 All too often Mill uses an ordinary word in a technical or formal sense and then continues
using it informally:

The predicate is the name denoting that which is affirmed or denied. The subject is the name
denoting the person or thing which something is affirmed or denied of. The copula is the sign
denoting that there is an affirmation or denial; and thereby enabling the hearer or reader to
distinguish a proposition from any other kind of discourse.

In the italicised occurrences ‘denoting’ occurs informally. In Mill’s strict usage the predicate
does not denote but connotes what is affirmed or denied, and the copula neither denotes nor
connotes. Overall, Mill is thoroughly loose and inconsistent in his use of such words as ‘name’,
‘signify’, ‘denote’, ‘imply’ —sacrificing exactness to readability. I have silently tidied up.

4 Mill distinguished general from collective names:

A general name is one which can be predicated of each individual of a multitude; a collective
name cannot be predicated of each singularly, but only of all taken together. The 76th Regiment
of foot in the British Army; which is a collective name, is not a general but an individual name;
for though it can be predicated of a multitude of individual soldiers taken jointly, it cannot be
predicated of them severally. (VII 28)

5 The programme is fraught with difficulty. To mention one: consider ‘White is a colour’. Does
that mean the same as ‘Whatever is white is coloured? It means more: it tells one that a white
thing is, in virtue of its whiteness, coloured.

6 Compare Kripke’s distinction between ‘fixing a reference’ and ‘giving a meaning’, in Kripke
(1980).

7 The problem exercised the associationists, for obvious reasons. Mill’s friend, Alexander Bain,
was one of the first to treat it by analysing belief dispositionally. His analysis, through Peirce,
had some influence on pragmatism. For Mill’s objections to it, see his critical notice of 1859,
‘Bain’s Psychology’ (XI 339–74).

8 Mill also discusses a third view, which takes general names to ‘denote’ classes of objects (with
corresponding modifications to (c)). But he says that this differs from Nominalism only in being
more obscure, and restricts his criticism to an attack on the unclarity of the notion of a class.

9 Compare Reginald Jackson (1941:34, footnote 2): The fundamental mistake is the failure to
distinguish whether “s” from whether “s” is true. Whateley makes the same mistake (Elements
of Logic, iv, iv, sect.1). Who does not?’ Jackson’s book contains many accurate and perceptive
comments on Mill’s logic.

10 The rule for a connotative singular name—e.g. ‘the father of Socrates’ — would again specify
the denotation conditionally, along the following lines: ‘For any object x, “the father of Socrates”
denotes x if Socrates is a son of x and there is no object y, such that x is not identical with y and
Socrates is a son of y.’ But in fact there could not be such a dictionary entry for every
connotative singular name, since their number is infinite. One needs something like Russell’s
theory of descriptions, functioning as a compositional rule. There is, it need hardly be added,
nothing about this point in Mill.

11 I am indebted in this paragraph to McDowell (1977).

The ‘pure’ Millian line would presumably be that the two names have the same semantic content.
The difficulty suggested in the text is that where proper names have the same semantic content
they must be everywhere substitutable without loss of meaning. Consider the following two
sentences:

Gorbachev believes that George Orwell was a novelist.

Gorbachev believes that Eric Blair was a novelist.

May not the sentences differ in truth-value? If they can, ‘George Orwell’ and ‘Eric Blair’ must
differ in semantic content.

If we follow McDowell’s suggestion we would say that the names differ in semantic content,
despite denoting the same thing, because semantic content is fixed by the denotation rule and
their denotation rules differ. In contrast, the pure Millian line must say that the sentences do after
all coincide in semantic content and truth-value (in so far as their content is clear at all). They
could still, by pragmatic but easily intelligible conventions, and with some indeterminacy, be
used to ascribe to Gorbachev non-overlapping ranges of beliefs. Cf. Kripke (1979). The issue
cannot be pursued further here.

12 Not strictly true. Having noted that ‘a conditional proposition is a proposition concerning a
proposition’ (VII 83), Mill adds that other attributes may be predicated of propositions as well,
and gives examples:

We may say, That the whole is greater than its part, is an axiom in mathematics: That the Holy
Ghost proceeds from the Father alone, is a tenet of the Greek Church: The doctrine of the divine
right of kings was renounced by Parliament at the Revolution: The infallibility of the Pope has
no countenance from Scripture. In all these cases the subject of the predication is an entire
proposition. (VII 84)

A few pages earlier Mill comments on modal propositions:

Caesar may be dead; Caesar is perhaps dead; it is possible that Caesar is dead; … [are] properly
asserted not of anything relating to the fact itself, but of the state of our own mind in regard to it;
namely our absence of disbelief of it. Thus ‘Caesar may be dead’ means 1 am not sure that
Caesar is alive’. (VII 81)

Mill’s view of what these sentences would ordinarily be taken to mean is plainly correct. They
assert epistemic, not metaphysical modalities. As we shall see, Mill’s view is that the supposed
‘metaphysical’ distinction between necessity and possibility is empty of content.

13 Not that he was uninterested in language considered, so to speak, as an anthropological

phenomenon. Far from it. Chapters iv.iv-vi, which treat of ‘the requisites of a philosophical
language’ and of ‘the natural history of the variations in the meaning of terms’ are particularly
interesting; e.g. the Coleridgean reflections on the ‘evil consequences of casting off any portion
of the customary connotations of words’. Truths which have degenerated into dead dogmas can
often, Mill thinks, be revived by the imaginative recovery of old meanings in the words which
express them. But the process is imperilled by ‘the shallow conceptions and incautious
proceedings of mere logicians’ who want to tidy up language (iv.iv.6). Mill’s most essential
preoccupations—in this case the loss of old truths not by rejection but by over-ready acceptance
—regularly turn up in unexpected places.

14 Michael Dummett distinguishes a sense and a reference version of the context principle. He
presents the latter as a philosophical defence of mathematical platonism. The defence, as
elaborated by Dummett (and in greater detail in Wright 1983) is deep and challenging. But I
confess that I cannot find it in Frege. See Dummett (1981).

15 The Millian empiricist would have to propose a nominalistic treatment of set theory itself. A
Millian way forward, in terms of a theory of the collectings and orderings of an idealised agent,
is suggested by Kitcher (1983: e.g. 139).

3
Verbal propositions and apparent inference

1 Mill’s first complete draft of Book i (1831–2) of the System of Logic did not contain his theory
of kinds. He was led to it, he says in his Autobiography (I 191, 229), only when in 1838 he
completed the draft of Book iii, on induction:

In working out the logical theory of those laws of nature which are not laws of Causation, nor
corollaries from such laws, I was led to recognise Kinds as realities in nature, and not mere
distinctions for convenience; a light which I had not obtained when the first book was written,
and which made it necessary for me to modify and enlarge several chapters of that book. (I 229)

Mill is referring to iii.xxii, ‘Of Uniformities of Coexistence not Dependent on Causation’.

Properties may be found uniformly coexisting, he thinks (e.g. the various properties of water),
without that fact being explicable by reference to a common cause. Objects which instantiate
such clusters of properties constitute natural kinds. This is exactly opposite to the Lockean
notion of a natural kind, where the multitude of perceptible properties uniformly instantiated by
objects belonging to a natural kind is regarded as traceable to an underlying constitution or ‘real
essence’ which explains their co-presence. Mill notes this Lockean conception of real essence as
‘corpuscular structure’ at i.vi.3 but does not connect it with the idea of a natural kind. (And he
seems to agree with Locke’s conception in a footnote in the early editions of the System (VII
112).)

2 If our account in 2.8 of his view of negation is correct, then Mill ought to say that in a sentence
like ‘No bachelors are married’ the attribute denied is already denied in the subject name.

3 Mill’s picture seems to involve Strawsonian distinctions between a sentence, the use of a
sentence, and the assertion made by its use. It also seems to require a free logic for handling the
semantics of the sentence itself. This does not fit with his analysis of the import of propositions,
as we noted in 2.8 —there is often a conflict in Mill’s thinking betwen intuitions based on
ordinary language and syllogistic principles, and constraints suggested by the attempt to think
systematically about semantic concepts.

4 Particular propositions (‘Some vixens are foxes’), and singular propositions (The vixen in the
barn is a fox’), can be handled along similar lines. In each case they will contain a verbal
ingredient: ‘if x is a vixen then x is a fox’, and a non-verbal existential ingredient: some things
are vixens, there is one and only one vixen in the barn….
5 See White (1978).

6 On Mill’s knowledge of Kant see note 2 to chapter 1.

7 It appears that Kant did not. He remarks that

Analytic judgements really teach us nothing more about the object than what the concept which
we have of it already contains; they do not extend our knowledge beyond the concept of the
object, but only clarify the concept. (Critique A736, B764)

This statement, when applied to judgements which are analytic in the narrow sense, sufficiently
explains how such judgements can be known a priori—they are empty of cognitive content. But
it does not explain how logical principles in general can be regarded as empty of cognitive
content. That the criterion of what we have called ‘connotative inclusion’, or in Kant’s terms, of
the ‘containment’ of one concept in another, could show this to be so is not obvious, and further
analysis shows that it is not the case, So anyone who wants to continue to claim that logic is
empty of cognitive content must supply some other way of showing it to be so.

Kant however took the principle of contradiction to be ‘without content and merely formal’
(Critique A152, B191). And he held that noumena could be thought, and that the laws of logic
provided, as Charles Parsons says (Parsons 1969), a ‘negative criterion of truth’ in our statements
about things in themselves. Had Kant endorsed Mill’s claim that logic as well as mathematics
contains real propositions he would have had to take a transcendental idealist view of the
aprioricity of logic just as he did of arithmetic and geometry, and hence would have had to
conclude that it holds only of things ‘as they are cognisable by us’.

The followers of Kant whom Mill discusses in the Examination also believed that logic holds of
‘things in themselves’. A lot of Mill’s difficulty in getting his position clearly and consistently
expressed comes from the fact that he wants to agree that deductive logic is in some sense
formal, but at the same time to criticise the view that it can be assumed to hold of things in
themselves. The criticism is just only if logic has empirical content, and so ‘formal’ cannot mean
‘empty of empirical content’.

8 The classic texts which have recently brought out the real strength of essentialism are by
Kripke (1971; 1980). Space precludes any full comparison of Mill’s and Kripke’s views.
According to Locke (i) all terms have information content, (ii) there are real essences. According
to Mill, (i) no proper names have information content, (ii) there are no real essences. Thus
Kripke agrees with Mill on the ‘semantic’ point and Locke on the ‘metaphysical’ point.

9 The meaning of a non-connotative abstract name is declared by spelling out the attributes it
denotes.

10 Mill only considers conjunctively complex names, such as ‘vixen’. One can treat ‘vixen’ as
conjunctively connoting each of the attributes, being female and being a fox. But a ‘negative
name’, e.g. ‘immortal’, would have to be analysed as negatively connoting the attribute of
mortality. A disjunctively complex name (examples are hard to find) would disjunctively connote
its attributes. In short, in declaring the meaning of a connotative name, one must specify its
syntactic contribution to determining the structure of propositions in which it occurs. One
specifies, given Mill’s theory of negation, that ‘S is immortal’ would negatively predicate
mortality of S. In the case of a disjunctively complex name, one specifies that predicating it
constitutes the assertion of a compound disjunctive proposition. Even then Mill’s picture of
semantic analysis remains radically incomplete, most notably because he has no proper theory of
relational expressions.

The method of analysing the meaning of names by listing the attributes connoted is in any case
open to objection. It makes the question, whether a connotative name is simple or complex,
appear to turn on an issue of ontology—what attributes are there? (Is there an attribute of
mortality? Or of immortality?) Ignoring the difficulties introduced by abstract names, this
appearance can be avoided by following our alternative ‘Millian’ account in chapter 1. We then
‘declare the meaning’ of ‘vixen’ as follows: “‘vixen” denotes an object if and only if that object
is female and is a fox’; and of ‘white’ as follows: “‘white” denotes an object if and only if that
object is white’. Instead of saying that ‘white’ is semantically simple, because it connotes a
single attribute, we say that it is simple because the denotation rule for ‘white’ uses the word in
stating the condition which an object denoted by ‘white’ must meet. (Assuming that the
denotation rules for the language are given in the same language.) Simplicity is relative to the
resources of a language. And a name will be semantically complex if the proposition on the
right-hand side in the denotation rule, which states the condition for an object’s satisfying the
name, is compound.

11 For example as between the following two passages:

a class is absolutely nothing but an indefinite number of individuals denoted by a general name
(VII 93)

when…we discover that…attributes are possessed by some object not previously known to
possess them…we include this new object in the class; but it does not already belong to the class
(my emphasis, VII 94–5)

12 See chapter 2, note 15.

4
The justification of deduction

1 On that definition, it becomes an inference from A to If not A then B. To prove this as a derived
rule of inference requires use of the principle of reductio ad absurdum: i.e. the principle that if a
premise set entails a contradiction, we may infer the negation of any one of the premises from
the others. But on Mill’s view the law of contradiction, according to which every contradiction is
false, is an a posteriori, inductive truth. The same point holds for the derivation of modus tollens
from modus ponens: it too relies on reductio ad absurdum.

2 This is really just an extension of Mill’s points about geometrical definitions (see 5.2). The
discussion in this section assumes the ‘classical pre-understanding’ of meaning: on the epistemic
conception, it becomes possible to see how principles of reasoning can have a weakly a priori
status even though they are not verbal. See 5.9 and 7.4.

3 Kneale and Kneale (1962:377). One can try replacing ‘things’ by ‘attributes’ and ‘coexist’ by
‘are coinstantiated’ —which is what Mill has in mind; but that makes the second axiom false,
and still does not clarify the relation of the first to the syllogisms it is supposed to sustain.

The chaos is compounded in ii.ii.4, where Mill comes up with a new and single version of the
supposed fundamental axiom—

whatever has any mark, has that which it is a mark of. Or, when the minor premise as well as the
major is universal,… Whatever is a mark of any mark, is a mark of that which this last is a mark
of. (VII 181)

4 The conclusion that it is insurmountable could be said to represent one aspect of Wittgenstein’s
transition from his early to his late philosophy: from the Tractatus to the Remarks on the
Foundations of Mathematics. Cf. Ramsey’s ‘Critical Notice’ of the Tractatus (Ramsey
1931:277), Michael Dummett’s The Justification of Deduction’ (in Dummett 1978) is an
important discussion of the issues. (Dummett considers Mill’s position but his interpretation of
Mill differs from that given here.)

5 Mill on money: Principles of Political Economy. the discussion of the Mercantile System, in
‘Preliminary Remarks’ (II 4–7), and of the ‘Purposes of a Circulating Medium’, (bk.iii, ch.vii,
sec.1, III 502–3).

6 Ramsey (1978:134), ‘General Propositions and Causality’. Ramsey’s attitude in this late paper
(1929) had shifted from his agreement two years earlier with the Tractatus view that general
propositions should be regarded as conjunctions of their instances (‘Facts and Propositions’,
p.54). In the earlier paper he explicitly remarks (p.55) that the advantage of this view is that it
makes the inference from ‘For all x, fx’ to ‘fa’ tautologous. In the 1929 paper, he gives reasons
for rejecting it, and goes on, ‘If then it is not a conjunction, it is not a proposition at all’, in which
case, as he says, ‘the question arises in what way it can be right or wrong’.

7 Fully thought through, the analysis must lead to a dispositional account of general beliefs. Such
an account was applied to beliefs in general by Bain, but not accepted by Mill—see chapter 2,
note 7.

Ramsey’s thinking on generality, causation and induction breathes a thoroughly Millian air. This
is less often noticed than the influence on him of Peirce and of the early Wittgenstein. He, rather
than Russell, represents the classic next stage after Mill in the development of the Anglo-Saxon
tradition of naturalistic empiricism. His early death cut short a rethinking of the tradition which
could have become as influential as the related lines of development pioneered by the later
Wittgenstein and by Quine.

8 Two senses in which deductive inference may be held to be indefeasible should be

distinguished. (1) If a conclusion is a deductive consequence of certain premises, the addition of
further premises cannot defeat the proof (cf. chapter 5, note 15); (2) logical principles are not
revisable. A Millian empiricist cannot accept (2) in the case of those logical principles which he
considers inductive truths. But he must explain in what way (1) is true.

5
Empiricism in logic and mathematics
1 Mill discusses the deductive sciences in System of Logic ii.iv-vii. The question ‘why there are
deductive sciences’ is considered in ii.iv (‘Of Trains of Reasoning, and Deductive Science’).

2 The quotation is from a letter to W.G. Ward, 28 November 1859 (XV 646, no. 423). The habit
of formal conservatism, and the corresponding habit of discovering ‘new’ meanings latent in old
doctrines, is Coleridgean.

3 They could be taken to be regions of space, or of space-time. Treating such regions as entities
is not in itself incompatible with a naturalistic philosophy—so long as they do explanatory work:
that is, if there are grounds for crediting them with causal properties. (Cf. Field 1980:35–6 and
note 23.)

4 Given the finitism which is implicit in Mill’s account of deductive and inductive reasoning, it
might be argued that we can attach no sense to the idea of an actual object without three-
dimensional extension, as distinct from the idea of a potentially infinite sequence of ever smaller
extensions. But Mill does not follow up any such line of thought.

5 Mill explicitly distinguishes, in this footnote, his use of the term ‘hypothesis’ with respect to
geometrical postulates from the general notion of a scientific hypothesis.

Note his claim that geometrical postulates are not ‘literally true’. That will be so only if they are
taken as irreducible assertions about non-existent extensionless ‘points’ and breadthless ‘lines’.
On the other hand, if such terms can be semantically analysed as limit concepts, and paraphrased
out, then the postulates are literally true. There is the same alternative here as with respect to
phenomenalism: do material object statements literally mean the same as statements about actual
and possible sensations, or is it rather that that is all they ‘come down to’?

6 Mill gives two different axioms at VII 258: The sums of equals are equal, The differences of
equals are equal’. This seems to be a slip.

7 Mill tries to establish a further point of analogy between arithmetic and geometry: that the
axioms and definitions of arithmetic, and thus all its propositions, are ‘hypothetical’ in the same
sense in which those of geometry are. But the comparison is strained. Mill admits that it holds
only where arithmetic is applied in measuring operations, that is, in deductions concerning
measured quantities: here the application of arithmetical laws requires the idealising assumption
that every measured-off unit is exactly equal in magnitude. But this is a point about the
application of arithmetic, not about arithmetic as such. On Mill’s own account arithmetic is not
‘hypothetical’ in the way geometry is: aggregates are not ideal-limit entities as points, lines and
planes are.

8 Kessler (1980), in the course of a valuable discussion of some of Frege’s criticisms of Mill,
erroneously takes this to be Mill’s actual position. Frege too (1950:23) takes Mill’s position to be
‘that the number is a property of the agglomeration of things’, though he quotes Mill as holding
that the name of a number connotes that property. It should be noted that Frege had not at this
stage made the distinction between sense and reference.

Remember that Mill thinks singular abstract names can be paraphrased out (2.4); so he could
adopt this analysis of ‘names of number’ and simultaneously hold that all such names could be
eliminated, leaving only general names—‘a three’, ‘three-membered’.

9 On this view the necessity of ‘3=2+1’ is exactly on a par with the necessity of ‘Heat is
molecular motion’. The empiricist has the same problem in accounting for the apparent necessity
in both cases; it is a different problem from that of accounting for the aprioricity of ‘3=2+1’.

10 ‘…it is inconceivable and impossible that, for any individuals a and b, {a, b} and {a, {a,b}}
could have different spatio-temporal locations, or that they could exert different forces or
undergo different changes’ (Burge 1977:103. Cf. p.114).

11 If numbers are taken to be physical properties, the question turns into one about the existence
of such properties. Can a physical property exist without being instantiated? Surely not; and then
the question once again turns, given that aggregates must be ‘first-order’, on the number of
physical individuals.

12 Chapter vii consists of a further examination of objections and doctrines opposed to Mill’s
view that ‘all deductive sciences are inductive’. It was added to the System in 1856.

13 The point of this comment was to undercut Hamilton’s Kantian claim that logic applies
beyond the phenomenal to the ‘noumenal’ domain.

14 The Law of Identity’ initially appears as the principle of the self-identity of objects or ‘A
thing is the same as itself’. But this principle is discarded in favour of a principle about
sentences: that synonymous sentences have the same truth value— ‘Whatever is true in one form
of words, is true in every other form of words which conveys the same meaning’ (IX 374).

15 An inference rule R is defeasible if there is a set of premises P which by R warrants a

conclusion C, but which can be enlarged to a set P’ which does not warrant C by R. P is enlarged
by adding further premises without striking any premises out. Inductive rules of reasoning are in
this sense defeasible, deductive rules are not.

16 It can be found in the System, ii.v.5–6 and ii.vii.1–4; and the Examination, chapter vi.

17 It is said that Gauss attempted to test Euclidean geometry by measuring the angle-sum of the
triangle formed by three distant mountain tops. The experiment might in principle have refuted
Euclidean geometry, but it could not, within the limits of possible accuracy, confirm it as against
Riemannian geometry.

18 Cf. Reid: ‘Experience informs us only of what has been but never of what must be’ (Woozley
(ed.): 405).

19 There is a good discussion of the possibility of a ‘counter-imaginative’ arithmetic in Craig

(1986: section I).

20 Spencer’s

theory of associations added little that was new to the associationism of his time; what was new
was his hypothesis of the inherited effects of past associations, so that in the history of the race—
and not merely in the history of each individual—more and more complex and reliable
associations came to be formed. (Mandelbaum 1971: 300)

As Mandelbaum points out (p. 232) this view would not have been acceptable to earlier forms of
associationism; Spencer argued for it by assuming a correlation between mental habits and
physical changes in the nervous system, and arguing that habit-induced bodily changes could be
inherited. The mechanism was accepted, though in a much more restricted way, by Bain
(Mandelbaum 1971: 232) —a close collaborator of Mill’s, and -a leading figure in associationist
psychology. Evolutionary and physiological perspectives in psychology were accepted by Mill as
perfectly legitimate, but it would be fair to say that he never took their full measure in his
philosophical thought.

21 Husserl (1970), chapter III, ‘Psychologism, its Arguments and its Attitude to the Usual
Counter-Arguments’; chapter V, ‘Psychological Interpretations of Basic Logical Principles’.

6
Induction and inductivism

1 Ramsey (1978:100). The passage is from the 1926 article, Truth and Probability’.

2 The inference from the fact that all observed As have been Bs to the conclusion that all As are
Bs is a special case of the ‘straight rule’: to infer from the fact that n% of a sample of As are Bs
the conclusion that n% of all As are Bs. We shall not need to consider the more general case in
what follows.

3 Cf. Putnam (1975: vol.1, The “Corroboration” of Theories’, sections 1–3). Stove (1985) is a
highly unfair, but witty and penetrating, account of Popper’s philosophy and its sources.

4 The fact is well brought our in Scarre (1983).

5 The confusion is further compounded when in the 1851 edition Mill adds a qualifying footnote
which is in line with his general position but completely throws into doubt his apparent
acceptance of the traditional idea:

But though it is a condition of the validity of every induction that there be uniformity in the
course of nature, it is not a necessary condition that the uniformity should pervade all nature. It is
enough that it pervades the particular class of phenomena to which the induction relates. An
induction concerning the motions of the planets, or the properties of the magnet, would not be
vitiated though we were to suppose that wind and weather are the sport of chance, provided it be
assumed that astronomical and magnetic phenomena are under the dominion of general laws.
Otherwise the early experience of mankind would have rested on a very weak foundation; for in
the infancy of science it could not be known that all phenomena are regular in their course. (VII
310)

(Cf. also the footnote added in the 1851 edition at VII 568.)

6 There are interesting points to be developed here about the way in which distinctions among
spontaneous modes of reasoning, between those which are legitimate and those which are
‘superstitious’, can develop only after a certain stage in the natural history of reasoning—of the
domestication of the savage mind—has been passed.

7 A single instance could never be enough for a purely enumerative induction. When he refers to
a ‘complete induction’ Mill has a use of the eliminative canons in mind.

8 By a phenomenon, in this context, Mill means an observable natural process, not a subjective
appearance.

9 ‘Mill’s account is a great improvement on Hume’s: he explicitly recognises a number of

important complications’ (Mackie 1974:60). Mackie lucidly discusses them in his chapter 3. It is
on the basis of Mill’s analysis that he develops his own notion of a cause as an ‘INUS condition’.

10 There are certain standard prima facie difficulties for this account which cannot be examined
fully here. Consider the two following points.

Mackie (1974:35, 63) points out, following Anderson. (1962), the importance of the notion of a
‘causal field’. In ordinary eliminative reasoning and ascriptions of causality, the assemblages of
sufficient conditions which are identified as causal antecedents are sufficient only relative to an
assumed but undefined background domain of inquiry. That seems incompatible with Mill’s
claim that a cause in the philosophical sense is an unconditionally sufficient cause. But the
tension is only a superficial one. The regulative ideal for scientific inquiry is precisely the
elimination of such relativity to an undefined background field. See also note 12.

If a cause of a phenomenon-type is an assemblage of conditions which it invariably and

unconditionally follows, the proposition that causes precede their effects seems to be merely
verbal. There is something wrong with this: there may be deep reasons which rule out backward
causation, but its impossibility should not be an elementary verbal truth. There ought to be a way
for an empiricist to avoid the conclusion that it is, but this is not the place to discuss the problem.

11 See Mill’s letter to Sir John Herschel, 1 May 1843 (XIII 583) in which he acknowledges his
debt to Herschel on the matter of inductive methods. Also Mill’s comment on Bacon: by pointing
out the insufficiency of enumerative induction alone, he ‘merited the title so generally awarded
to him, of Founder of the Inductive Philosophy… [but the] value of his own contribution to a
more philosophical theory of the subject has certainly been exaggerated…’ (VII 313).

Despite the title of iii.viii—‘Of the Four Methods of Experimental Inquiry’— Mill states five;
naming them the Methods of Agreement, and of Difference, the Joint Method of Agreement and
Difference, the Method of Residues and the Method of Concomitant Variations. The odd man
out seems to be the Joint Method of Agreement and Difference; see the evidence given in the
textual introduction to the Collected Works edition of the System (VII lxviii, note 49).

The methods have been surveyed by Mackie and extensively revised and put on a more general
footing (Mackie 1974: appendix). Mackie has also discussed and neutralised a variety of
objections to Mill’s conception of the eliminative methods. The present discussion follows the
main points of Mackie’s account.

12 Is the fact that a certain meteor, far out in distant space, was not deflected millions of years
ago in such a way as eventually to strike Kennedy’s assassin the moment before he fired, part of
the cause of Kennedy’s death? Mill’s way of trying to cope with this point, i.e. by summing up
the negative conditions ‘under one head, namely the absence of preventing or counteracting
causes’ (VII 332), will not do, at least as an account of the ordinary notion: because we do not
regard absence of counteracting causes as part of the cause. Here again the notion of a causal
field is needed—the field will include some negative conditions (brake failure) but exclude
others.

13 For a discussion of the issues involved, see Mackie (1974: chapter 6, ‘Functional Laws and
Concomitant Variation’, and appendix, section 3, ‘Methods of Concomitant Variation’). The
Method of Concomitant Variations is the basis of factor analysis.

14 Cf. Jackson (1937–8).

15 ‘Inartificial’, like ‘spontaneous’, is Mill’s word. It is obviously designed to avoid the

misleading implications of ‘natural’ or ‘instinctive’: the contrast is with rule-governed, codified
—domesticated.

16 Stroud (1977) suggests that Hume’s inductive scepticism can be interpreted along these lines.
On this view, Hume would not be raising the straightforward question of what reason we have
for accepting EI as a rule of inference. He would, rather, be accepting the rule of inference as
legitimate, but pointing to a feature of it which means that we can never attain the pool of
premises required to apply it. If so then his own empiricism about causation provides the basis
for a reply, as suggested in the text. The reply of course still leaves open the straightforward
question.

17 Mill’s views on the character of hypotheses and their use in science will be found in iii.ii (Of
Inductions Improperly So-called’), iii.xi (‘Of the Deductive Method’) and iii.xiv (‘Of the Limits
to the Explanation of Laws of Nature; and of Hypotheses’).

18 My object was to analyse, as far as I could, the method by which scientific discoverics have
really been made; and I called this method Induction…. That is not exactly the Induction of
Aristotle, I know, nor is it that described by Bacon…. I am disposed to call it Discoverer’s
Induction; but I dare not venture on such a novelty, except in the indirect way in which I have
done. (Whewell to de Morgan, 18 January 1859. In Todhunter 1876: II, 416. The passage is
quoted in Tewari 1980) Notice that in this disagreement about the status of the Hypothetical

Method, Popper in fact stands on the side of Mill, not Whewell. Like Mill he thinks that the
Hypothetical Method cannot be regarded as an independent way of justifying belief. Unlike Mill,
of course, he thinks that is true of any inductive reasoning.

Peirce, in contrast, stands on the side of Whewell. The underlying issue between Mill and Popper
and Whewell and Peirce is that of metaphysical realism. We take it up in 7.4.

19 The impossibility of arriving at the right description by direct observation is, Mill thinks, a
contingent limitation: if the planets left visible tracks, an observer suitably placed in space could
directly perceive them to be elliptical. There are important weaknesses in Mill’s discussion of
this example (iii.ii.3–5), the main one being the false contrast he draws between ‘description’
and ‘induction’. Kepler’s first law may in an intelligible sense be termed descriptive rather than
explanatory; but that does not mean that it was not arrived at by inductive inference, nor does
Mill really deny that it was.

The point Mill wants to resist is Wheweil’s idealism-tending claim that hypotheses introduce ‘a
conception of the mind, which did not exist in the facts themselves’ (quoted by Mill, VII 294).
Whewell ‘expresses himself as if Kepler had put something into the facts by his mode of
conceiving them. But Kepler did no such thing… Kepler did not put what he had conceived into
the facts, but saw it in them’ (VII 295). This cries out for restatement. Obviously Kepler neither
put the planetary ellipse in the heavens nor saw it there. But Mill’s polemic always deteriorates
when he feels under pressure, and he seems to have felt that way whenever he argued with
Whewell.

7
Induction, perception and consciousness

1 The terms ‘manifest image’ and ‘scientific image’ are taken from Wilfrid Sellars (1963).

2 Mill discusses the term ‘positivism’ in Auguste Comte and Positivism (e.g. X 263–7). For the
general nineteenth-century agreement on the phenomenal relativity of knowledge see
Mandelbaum (1971). The decline of the ‘method of hypothesis’ in the eighteenth century, and its
resurgence in the nineteenth, is discussed in Laudan (1981).

3 ‘Whewell’s critics often pointed out his failure to perceive that something like Kant’s
“transcendental deduction” was required to justify the “Fundamental Ideas” as the conditions of
all necessary truths’ (Tewari 1980: 114).

The quotations from Whewell are from his article ‘On the Fundamental Antithesis of
Philosophy’, printed as Appendix E in Whewell (1860). The aphorism in full is ‘Man’s
intellectual progress consists in the Idealization of Facts, and his Moral Progress consists in the
realization of Ideas’.

4 If Whewell

reduces the undulations to a figure of speech, and the undulatory theory to the proposition which
all must admit, that the transmission of light takes place according to laws which present a very
striking and remarkable agreement with those of undulations… Ive no difference with him on the
subject. (VII 504, footnote)

5 Michael Dummett has made a penetrating exploration of the contrast between the classical pre-
understanding of meaning and the epistemic conception of it; or, to use his terms, between
‘realism’ and ‘anti-realism’. See especially Dummett (1978).

6 The positions of the natural realist and the scientific realist—who both in their own way think
that something can be known about things as they really are—seem to be ignored in this
dichotomy. But Mill is accurately reflecting the nineteenth-century consensus, in which pre-
Kantian versions of these forms of realism were no longer possible. Hamilton is a good example
of this: he does not simply endorse Reid’s natural realism in a pre-Kantian way. The alternative
to phenomenalism was an empirical realism (natural or scientific) which stepped the
unknowability of things-in-themselves up to a transcendental level. Thus Mill places Kant in the
second school. A Kantian can, he recognises, accept the scientific realist’s distinction between
primary and secondary qualities, but only in a way which respects the doctrine of relativity—the
unknowability of things as they really are:

Such properties as the objects can be conceived divested of, such as sweetness or sourness,
hardness or softness, hotness or coldness, whiteness, redness or blackness—these it is sometimes
admitted, exist in our sensations only. But the attributes of filling space, and occupying a portion
of time, are not properties of our sensations in their crude state, neither, again, are they properties
of the objects, nor is there in the objects any prototype of them. They result from the nature and
structure of the Mind itself: which is so constituted that it cannot take any impressions from
objects except in those particular modes. We see a thing in a place, not because the Noumenon,
the Thing in itself, is in any place, but because it is the law of our perceptive faculty that we must
see as in some place, whatever we see at all…. Time and Space are only modes of our
perception, not modes of existence, and higher Intelligences are possibly not bound by them….
(IX 9)

We return to the relationship between Mill’s phenomenalism and transcendental idealism in 7.9.

7 In fact Reid does not always use ‘perceive’ to signify a relation between subject and external
objects. He also uses the term in such a way that the mere occurrence of a sensation which gives
rise to appropriate beliefs counts as an ‘act of perception’. Perceptions can therefore be
erroneous:

Nature has connected our perception of external objects with certain sensations. If the sensation
is produced, the corresponding perception follows, even where there is no object, and in that case
is apt to deceive us. (Reid 1846:315; Mill, IX 173)

Compare Hamilton on Reid:

It is palpably impossible that we can be conscious of an act [of perception] without being
conscious of the object to which that act is relative. (Quoted by Mill, IX 111)

An act of knowledge existing and being what it is only by relation to its object, it is manifest that
the act can be known only through the object to which it is correlative; and Reid’s supposition
that an operation can be known in consciousness to the exclusion of its object, is impossible. For
example, I see the inkstand…. Annihilate the inkstand, you annihilate the perception; annihilate
the consciousness of the object you annihilate the consciousness of the operation. (IX 111)

8 There is a remark which may seem incompatible with this in one of Mill’s letters to W.G.
Ward (No.423, 28 November 1859, XV 648):

Memory I take to be the present consciousness of a past sensation. It is strange that such
consciousness can exist; but the facts denoted by was, is, & is to come, are perhaps the most
mysterious part of our mysterious existence, as is strikingly expressed in the well known saying
of St Augustine.
However it is not clear whether the phrase ‘present consciousness of a past sensation’ is meant to
imply that there is no present ‘memory-datum’ which I am aware of in having that
consciousness.

9 The relevant sections of the Examination are chapters xi-xiii; including the important appendix
to chapters xi and xii.

The term ‘phenomenalism’ was not used by Mill, though W.G. Ward described Mill’s position
as ‘phenomenism’. It could appropriately be used, as it is by Maurice Mandelbaum, to refer to
the doctrine that all knowledge is phenomenal, in the nineteenth-century sense; but here I am
using it in its usual current sense.

10 No. 863, 12 August 1865, Mill is referring to Spencer (1865)—and the argument he is
addresssing is an old and influential one. (It is approved by Mandelbaum: see Mandelbaum
1971:496, note 43). Spencer points out that arguments for subjective phenomenal relativity rest
on ‘physicalistic’ or ‘objectivist’ premises. But this does not show, contra Spencer and
Mandelbaum, that phenomenalism is untenable. On the contrary, if these arguments are valid,
then they constitute a reductio of the objectivist position, or at least its knowability.

11 Bradley (1927:39–40, footnote) sums it up with a characteristically grating sneer:

with the…fact before him, which gave the lie to his whole psychological theory, he could not
ignore it, he could not recognise it, he would not call it a fiction; so he put it aside as a ‘final
inexplicability’, and thought, I suppose, that by covering it with a phrase he got rid of its
existence.

12 There are of course other complex issues in the offing. Reflection on our criteria of
continuing personal identity across time may force us to recognise a fictional element in our
notion of persons. An eliminative materialist view of mental states would force on us the
conclusion that there is no subjective bearer of these non-existent states. But these lines of
thought should be distinguished from the matter at issue in Mill’s discussion—the relativity of
our knowledge of the self.

13 A further question is whether the ‘series’ view of the self involves denial of active
intelligence. This is Alan Ryan’s view:

Mill’s philosophy required an active mind which would construct an external world out of
sensations, and order it according to rationally organized theories; and yet he had no way of
accounting for the existence of such an active intelligence. If the external world was to be
constructed out of experience by a self which tried out inductive hypotheses about the course of
its experience, then this presupposed a unitary self to do the experiencing, and to make the
inferences. Yet the atomistic theory to which Mill was attached seemed to rule out any such self.
This means that the metaphysics to which Mill was committed had a contradiction at its heart.
(Ryan 1974:226)

But the contradiction is at least not obvious. It is true that Mill’s psychology can make no sense
of the idea of an irreducible ‘agent causality’. (Mill on agent causality: IX 441, footnote.) But
who can? If recognising agent causality is a precondition of making intelligible the notion of a
rational knower and agent, then that concept itself is in bad shape. The problems here are posed
by naturalism as such, not by this or that version of it. See 8.2 and 8.10.

14 I take the term ‘plain’ from Clarke (1972).

15 For the reason given by Descartes in Meditation VI and restated forcefully and illuminatingly
by Kripke (1971; 1980). See also Nagel (1979).

The central issue is not what the essential properties of the ‘material’ or ‘physical’ are. The point
is that pure experience cannot be identified with anything that can be characterised objectively.
This gives us a fresh description of naturalism: it is the view that human beings can be fully
characterised objectively.

8
The logic of the moral sciences

1 From the epigraph of Book vi of the System of Logic, taken from Condorcet’s Esquisse d’un
tableau historique des progrès de I’esprit humain.

2 In the Examination, chapter xxvi, ‘On the Freedom of the Will’, Mill rightly emphasises that
we could not have a direct self-knowledge of fireedom: ‘Consciousness tells me what I do or
feel. But what I am able to do, is not a subject of consciousness’ (IX 449). He notes the
‘pretended inconsistency’ alleged by a commentator as between this statement and the references
in the System to a ‘practical feeling of Free Will’ and ‘a feeling of Moral Freedom which we are
conscious of’, and comments:

When I applied the words feeling and consciousness to this acquired knowledge, I did not use
those terms in their strict psychological meaning, there being no necessity for doing so in that
place; but, agreeably to popular usage, extended them to (what there is no appropriate scientific
name for) the whole of our familiar and intimate knowledge concerning ourselves. (IX 450, note)

3 Relevant chapters in the System: iii, vi: ‘Of the Composition of Causes’; xii-xiii: ‘Of the
Explanation of Laws of Nature’, ‘Miscellaneous Examples of the Explanation of Laws of
Nature’; xvi: ‘Of Empirical Laws’; xxiii: Of Approximate Generalizations, and Probable
Evidence’.

4 Mill’s several references to Dalton’s theory (VII 221, 375, 473) show a marked reluctance to
accept it as evidencing an underlying atomic reality. He refers to ‘the principle of Dalton, called
the atomic theory, or the doctrine of chemical equivalents’ (VII 221) and again to ‘Dalton’s
generalization, commonly known as the atomic theory’ which established a ‘table of the
equivalent numbers, or, as they are called, atomic weights, of all the elementary substances’ (VII
473–4).

5 Mill takes it for granted that if the phenomena of mind can be shown to arise from physical
laws, it will be by chemical combination not mechanical composition, and that is because he
does not consider the possibility that they may be discovered to be physical phenomena:

To whatever degree we might imagine our knowledge of the properties of the several ingredients
of a living body to be extended and perfected, it is certain that no mere summing up of the
separate actions of those elements will ever amount to the action of the living body itself. The
tongue, for instance, is, like all other parts of the animal frame, composed of gelatine, fibrin, and
other products of the chemistry of digestion, but from no knowledge of the properties of those
substances could we ever predict that it could taste, unless gelatine or fibrin could themselves
taste; for no elementary fact can be in the conclusion, which was not in the premises. (VII 371–
2)

The last sentence shows up clearly the lacuna in Mill’s account of scientific reduction. It is true
that a sentence containing the term ‘taste’ cannot be deduced from sentences not containing it (or
a synonym for it). But the moral has to be drawn with care. What if tasting something sour, say,
can be identified with a particular physical process in the central nervous system? The premises
from which the sentence ‘It tastes sour’ is deduced will then still contain the phrase ‘rastes sour’,
because they will contain a theoretical identity which identifies ‘tastes sour’ with ‘stimulates
activity in such and such neural fibres’. But that will not show that there are irreducible laws of
taste in the sense envisaged by Mill.

On the other hand, if states of consciousness cannot be strictly identified with physical states
then the mental will indeed be emergent, and its laws, if any, heteropathic.

The term ‘materialism’ was used by Mill and more generally in the nineteenth century to refer to
epiphenomenalism. See Mandelbaum (1971: 21).

6 He never links the issue with his phenomenalism. No doubt he would insist that
psychophysical laws must be further reducible to causal laws holding between sensations and
permanent possibilities of sensation.

7 This not a complete list of associationist principles. Associationism is essentially a theory of

concept-formation. There is a further question about how these concepts become contents of
intentional attitudes. One aspect of this is the problem of how associationism generates belief
(see chapter 2, note 7). Another is how it generates desires, emotions or volitions. There have to
be laws postulating natural or innate feelings, and then explaining how ‘affect’ is transferred
from the conceptual content of these to new conceptual contents.

8 There is a reply to Comte’s criticism of the method of introspection in Auguste Comte and
Positivism.

The importance of associationism for Mill’s belief in the malleability and progressiveness of
man has been stressed by Maurice Mandelbaum. (In itself, of course, associationism need not
entail a doctrine of inherited cognitive and emotional equality among human beings. Bain
thought Mill’s desire to believe such a doctrine his greatest error as a ‘scientific thinker’: Bain
(1882:146).)

9 The main texts in this controversy are collected in Lively and Rees (1978), which also contains
a useful introduction.

10 Weber’s example comes from Weber (1975:171). I have altered the wording. The view of
interpretation as phronesis is interestingly developed in Gadamer (1979). Gadamer also quotes a
marginal comment from Dilthey’s copy of Mill’s System: ‘Only in Germany could the practice
of an authentic experience be substituted for an empiricism which was dogmatic and burgeoning
with prejudices; Mill is dogmatic for lack of historical erudition’ (Gadamer 1979:118). It would
be a lengthy but worthwhile business to disentangle what is right and what is wrong in that.

11 Donald Davidson has brought out clearly the relevance of such examples. See, for example,
Davidson (1978:153ff-).

12 There is a discussion of the idea of ‘tracking bestness’ and its relation to the issue of free will
and determinism in Nozick (1981: chapter 4, section II).

13 Dennett (1973). See also the whole of Dennett (1977). Much fascinating work is currently
being done on these matters in the frontier area between psychology and philosophy.

9
Utilitarianism

1 ‘Mill has made as naive and artless a use of the naturalistic fallacy as anybody could desire’,
etc. (Moore 1948:66).

On 18 March 1868, Mill’s German friend and translator wrote to him about the translation of
Utilitarianism he was preparing:

Let me conclude by expressing my regret that you did not in the later editions of the
Utilitarianism remove the stumbling block (to any reader and more especially to the translator)…
(audible, visible-desirable) which when pointed out to you by me, you said you would remove.
Your argument looks like a verbal quibble, far as it is from being one and has besides to me the
serious disadvantage of being utterly untranslatable. (Quoted at X cxxvi)

Mill replied on 23 April 1868:

With regard to the passage you mention in the Utilitarianism I have not had time regularly to
rewrite the book & it had escaped my memory that you thought that argument apparently though
not really fallacious which proves to me the necessity of, at least, further explanation &
development. I beg that in the translation you will kindly reserve the passage to yourself, &
please remove the stumbling block, by expressing the real argument in such terms as you think
will express it best. (XVI 1391)

It is curious to compare the small importance Mill attached to his formulation with the mountain
of literature it has produced.

2 The example of the loving father comes from Peter Winch’s ‘Moral Integrity’, in Winch
(1972). Kantian obsession with conscientiousness arises from the idea that what is done from
inclination must be done for one’s own sake, and hence cannot have moral worth. Neither can an
act done from inclination be authentically autonomous. So for the Kantian the categories: acting
from inclination, acting selfishly and acting heteronomously, collapse into each other. It is an
important feature of the humanistic tradition of ethical thought to which Mill belongs that it does
not collapse them.
The similarity between Butler’s discussion of self-interest, and Mill’s, is pointed out by Maurice
Mandelbaum (1968a: 39). Cf. also Mill’s remarks on the hedonistic fallacy, cited in chapter 1,
note 5.

An interpretation of Mill’s ‘proof’ which attempts to read it in accordance with the views on
pleasure and desire Mill expressed in his early article on Bentham is given by Berger in his
excellent study of Mill’s moral and political philosophy. I have criticised this approach in my
review, to which Berger has replied (Berger 1985).

3 For this reason among others—i.e. the possible gap between what I am justified in holding to
be true, on any feasible improvement of my information, and what is true—the conception of
well-being proposed by James Griffin, in which well-being is conceived as ‘the fulfillment of
informed desire’ (Griffin 1986:75), cannot be right.

It will not help to define informed desire as what I would desire if I believed all relevant truths
and formed rational preferences in response. In the first place the concept of informed desire is
then doing no real work. Second, to get the right results about what my actual utility schedule is,
such an account might well have to equip me with information about what my actual beliefs are
together with information showing these beliefs to be false—but that could well cause
psychological changes producing a changed utility schedule. See also Hurka (1988: part I).

But though the conception of well-being developed here is not an ‘informed-desire’ account, it
does not blankly lay down an ‘objective list’ of ends either; categorial ends are so because
desired in theory and in practice, that being established by the method of reflection and self-
examination Mill uses. Of course the relative importance of categorial ends for a particular
person is a matter of individual character, discoverable only by experience— on this as on many
other points (e.g. about incommensurability, and about the foundations of liberalism) I am in
agreement with Griffin.

4 In chapter XIX of the Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind, James

Mill says:

The term ‘Idea of a pleasure,’ expresses precisely the same thing as the term, Desire. It does so
by the very import of the words. The idea of a pleasure, is the idea of something as good to have.
But what is a desire, other than the idea of something good to have? (Mill 1869:191–2)

A little later he qualifies this.

The idea of a pleasurable sensation with the association of the Past, is never called Desire. The
word Desire, is commonly used to mark the idea of a pleasurable sensation, when the future is
associated with it. The idea of a pleasurable sensation, to come, is what is commonly meant by
Desire. (193)

J.S.Mill added an editorial comment to the chapter in which he comments that ‘Desire is not
Expectation, but is more than the idea of the pleasure desired, being, in truth, the initiatory stage
of Will’ (104). In other words, Mill is prepared to grant that one might think of something as
pleasant without having the disposition to act to get it. But he does not disagree with the points—
vital as far as his ‘proof’ of hedonism is concerned—that (1) the idea of pleasure is identical with
the idea of ‘something as good to have’, and (2) that desiring something at least necessarily
involves thinking of it as ‘good to have’. The second point is true, but the first is false.

On Mill’s use of the word ‘metaphysical’, as in the passage in the text, to mean ‘psychological’,
see Mandelbaum (1968a: 39).

5 Early criticism of this type is documented in Schneewind (1977: chapter 5, sec.v, ‘Mill’s
Utilitarianism and its Reception’, esp. 185–6).

6 Mackie (1976b). For more on Sidgwick’s argument see also Schneewind (1977) and Skorupski
(1979). I take the distinction between agent-neutral and agent-relative reasons, but not the terms,
from Nagel (1970). (He calls them ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ reasons; chapter X.)

7 In particular, the ‘lexical’ version of Rawls’ difference principle is compatible with it:

first maximise the welfare of the worst-off representative man; second, for equal welfare of the
worst-off representative, maximise the welfare of the second worst-off representative man, and
so on until the last case which is, for equal welfare of all the preceding n-1 representatives,
maximise the welfare of the best-off representative man. (Rawls 1972:83) Cf. Gauthier (1982).

8 The interconnections between prudence, utilitarianism and a ‘reductionist’ view of persons are
very fully explored in Parfit (1984: chapters 14 and 15).

The unity and distinctness of an individual life are obviously both central to the liberal vision,
via notions involved in auconomy such as a plan of life and a private domain. (See 9–4, 10.5,
10.8.) But it is far from clear that they are undermined by a rejection of metaphysical notions of
self-identity. For a liberalism based on utility, they would be undermined only if such rejection
in practice caused a reduction in the desire for autonomy; a reduction in its importance in relation
to such categorial ends as happiness or knowledge. It is not obvious that it would or should.

9 Mill’s indirect utilitarianism is discussed in Mandelbaum (1968a). John Gray summarises the
reasons why Mill should not be classed as either an ‘act’ or a ‘rule’ utilitarian, and defends Mill’s
indirect utilitarianism against objections (chapter II, section 2, ‘Acts, Rules and the Art of Life’).
The clearest recent discussion is Berger (1984: chapter 3, The Greatest Happiness Principle and
Moral Rules’).

10 Other reasons: mistaken do-gooders, problems of co-ordination etc. There is also a problem
about how to state the act-utilitarian position without lapsing into incoherence. Acquiring
information and making calculations are acts, as, strictly, is taking one’s beliefs for granted. The
cost-effectiveness of these acts themselves could therefore be calculated. But that again is an act,
whose cost-effectiveness could be calculated…. This is the ‘paradox of information’. Not that I
mean to suggest that act-utilitarianism can be refuted by being shown to be incoherent. We know
what is meant by it.

11 The section of Grote’s letter to which the quoted passages are a reply unfortunately seems not
to have been preserved. Relevant comments are found throughout Mill’s letters (e.g. XVI 1254,
1327). The following passages from ‘Taylor’s Statesman’, which Mill co-authored with George
Grote, are noteworthy:

To admit the balance of consequences as a test of right and wrong, necessarily implies the
possibility of exceptions to any derivative rule of morality which may be deduced from that
test…. The evil of departing from a well-known and salutary rule is indeed one momentous item
on that side of the account; but to treat it as equal to infinity, and as necessarily superseding the
measurement of any finite quantities of evil on the opposite side, appears to us to be the most
fatal of mistakes in ethical theory….

moral rules are perpetually liable to clash with one another, and actually do so clash in all those
exceptional cases now under consideration, so as to leave us no resource except in a direct appeal
to the supreme authority from whence all moral rules are derived…. (XIX 638–40)

12 The balance is nicely struck in the following passage from Utilitarianism;

There is no difficulty in proving any ethical standard whatever to work ill, if we suppose
universal idiocy to be conjoined with it; but on any hypothesis short of that, mankind must by
this time have acquired positive beliefs as to the effects of some actions on their happiness; and
the beliefs which have thus come down are the rules of morality for the multitude, and for the
philosopher until he has succeeded in finding better. That philosophers might easily do this, even
now, on many subjects; that the received code of ethics is by no means of divine right; and that
mankind have still much to learn as to the effects of actions on the general happiness I admit, or
rather, earnestly maintain. (UII24, X 224)

13 I say ‘rational kernel’, because the unreconstructed concept of a right presents it as something
which a person possesses and in virtue of which an obligation exists—which is not reducible to
the obligation but on the contrary explains its existence. This dimension is lost in Mill’s analysis.
Nor is it possible to retrieve it. The ‘explanatory’ dimension in concept of a moral right really
does dissolve when pressed, in the way in which Mill (wrongly, in this latter case) thinks that the
explanatory dimension in the concept of a physical object dissolves when pressed (see 10.3).

Berger (1984) examines Mill’s application of the notion of justice and rights across a wide span
of substantive political issues. (He comments that he knows ‘of no place outside of
[Utilitarianism] where Mill explicitly invoked his theory of rights’ (Berger 1984:191). There is
an interesting, though brief, discussion of the concept of a moral right in ‘Use and Abuse of
Political Terms’ (1832), XVIII 3–13; Mill comments, ‘Right is the correlative of duty, or
obligation; and (with some limitations) is co-extensive with those terms. Whatever any man is
under an obligation to give you, or do for you, to that you have a right’ (XVIII 8). This is cruder
than Utilitarianism, where the analysis is considered enough to be called a theory, but on the
same basic lines.)

14 He considers such a case in a letter to William Thomas Thornton of 17 April 1863 (XV 853–
4). Mill first refers to the example Thornton had given, of Agamemnon and Iphigenia. He then
introduces an example of his own: should the Carthaginians have surrendered Hannibal to the
Romans in order to safeguard the security of the city? He thinks ‘there can be no doubt that the
morality of utility requires that the people should fight to the last rather than comply with the
demand’ —because of the indirect utility of resisting tyrannous aggression.
15 In reality things are more complicated of course (they always are)— unanimity is the
exceptional case. Typically some will want to join a new practice and others will not. If you,
coolly rational, want to join the survival club, but don’t have enough fellow-members, do I have
some obligation to you to rethink my primitive aversions and consider joining it too?

16 Mill’s views on punishment and desert are considered by Berger (1984: 134–46). Interesting
comments on punishment are to be found in an 1834 review by Mill, ‘On Punishment’ (XXI 73–
9):

You do not punish one person in order that another may be deterred. The other is deterred, not by
the punishment of the first, but by the expectation of being punished himself: and as the
punishment you threaten him with, would have no effect on his conduct, unless he believed that
it would really be inflicted, you are obliged to prove the reality of your intention, by keeping
your word whenever either he, or any other person, disregards your prohibition….

The only right by which society is warranted in inflicting any pain upon any human creature, is
the right of self-defence…our right to punish, is a branch of the universal right of self-defence;
and it is a mere subtlety to set up any distinction between them…. (78)

10
Liberty

1 Morley: quoted in XVIII lxix, from Recollections, I, 61. Fox: Caroline Fox, Memories of Old
Friends, p. 347, quoted in Alexander (1965:129). Carlyle: New Letters of Thomas Carlyle, II,
196, quoted in Packe (1954:405).

2 There is an interesting difference of tone between this retrospective statement in the

Autobiography and the note of urgent relevance to the times which is characteristic of the essay
itself. Mill may have been responding to his early critics who almost universally felt that he had
greatly exaggerated the degree to which unconventional opinions were under pressure. See Rees
(1985: chapter 3, ‘On Liberty and its Early Critics’).

3 Madame de Staël contrasted ‘civil’ and ‘political’ liberty:

Political liberty is to civil liberty as the guarantee is to the end for which it stands, security; it is
the means and not the end and what contributed especially to make the French Revolution so
disorderly was the displacement of ideas which took place in this respect. They wanted political
liberty at the expense of civil liberty…. Political liberty is of consequence to ambitious men who
desire power. Civil liberty interests peaceful men who only do not want to be dominated. (From
‘Reflexions sur la paix intérieure’, quoted in Dodge 1980:40)

Her lover Benjamin Constant expressed the same distinction in his contrast between the ‘liberty
of the ancients’ and the ‘liberty of the moderns’ (from ‘De la liberté des anciens comparée a celle
des modernes’ quoted in Dodge 1980:38–9). Liberty, to moderns,

means for every one to be under the dominion of nothing but the law, not to be arrested,
detained, or put to death, nor maltreated in any way as a consequence of the arbitrary will of one
or more individuals. It is for every one to have the right to express his opinion, to choose and
exercise his occupation, to dispose of his property and even to abuse it, to go and come without
having to obtain permission, and without having to give an accounting of his motives or actions.
It is the right of each person to associate with other individuals, either to discuss their interests,
or to practice the form of worship they prefer, or simply to fiil the days and hours in a way which
best suits their inclinations and fancies.

4 Mill was always conscious of the potential harms of free discussion: compare the passages
from the 1842 review, ‘Bailey on Berkeley’, quoted in 1.6, p. 37. It is, I think, true that he placed
greatest weight on these dangers in the period when he was most influenced by Coleridge and
Comte; on the other hand, there was no time when he did not come down on the side of free
expression, and the dangers are still recognised and balanced in the essay On Liberty. The ‘two
Mills’ thesis is put forward by Gertrude Himmelfarb (1974); see Ten (1980:151–66) for a
rejoinder.

5 The phrase is de Tocqueville’s. Not that Mill was opposing democracy: as he remarks in ‘De
Tocqueville on Democracy in America’ (1840) (XVIII 156),

This phrase was forthwith adopted into the Conservative dialect, and trumpeted by Sir Robert
Peel in his Tamworth oration…. And we believe it has since been the opinion of country
gentlemen that M. de Tocqueville is one of the pillars of Conservatism, and his book a definitive
demolition of America and of Democracy. The error has done more good than the truth would
perhaps have done: since the result is, that the English public now know and read the first
philosophical book ever written on Democracy, as it manifests itself in modern society.

6 Ten (1980: chapter 4, section II, ‘Mill’s Concept of Harm’, p. 55). I should add that Ten
generally sets an admirable standard of interpretative common sense.

7 I follow Ten (1980: chapter 2) in taking it that the Liberty Principle functions to test the
eligibility of reasons for interfering with an act, so that the question becomes one of finding
criteria which qualify some reasons for interference as eligible for consideration, and disqualify
others. That elegantly sidesteps well-worn, and often factitious, controversies (see Rees 1960;
1985) about the possibility of distinguishing ‘self’ and ‘other-regarding’ acts.

This is not to deny however that the latter distinction is present in Mill’s thinking. Nor is it to
deny its relevance, or that of cognate intuitive notions such as the notion of an individual’s
private domain, or of what is his business and no one else’s. We shall appeal to these in
discussing autonomy, but that is consistent with holding that the formulation in terms of reasons
is basic to the interpretation of a principle for political and social liberty.

8 For Mill’s definition of ‘philosophical radical’ see ‘Fonblanque’s England under Seven
Administrations’ (1837) (VI 353), where he compares ‘Philosophic’, ‘Metaphysical’ and
‘Historical’ Radicalism.

9 Arnold 1965: vol. 5 (Culture and Anarchy}, 176–7. To a considerable extent Culture and
Anarchy is a response to On Liberty; Arnold initially regardcd ‘Millism’ as a debased form of
Hellenism, though he later came to recognise a greater affinity between his own position and
Mill’s than he had at first perceived. There is a perceptive comparison of Arnold’s and Mill’s
ideals of self-development in Mandelbaum (1971: chapter 11, section 1).
10 This was a common theme among Mill’s earliest, as well as among his later idealist, critics.
See Rees (1985:86ff.).

11 The contrast in this respect between Arnold and Mill is brought out in detail by Alexander
(1965), especially in his last two chapters, The Best that is Known and Thought in the World’
and ‘Culture and Liberty’.

12 Two excellent guides for pursuing these fundamental questions in Mill’s thought further are
Duncan (1973) and Ryan (1984).

13 The love of liberty, in the only proper sense of that word, is unselfish; it places no one in a
position of hostility to the good of his fellow-creatures; all alike may be free, and the freedom
has no solid security but in the equal freedom of the rest. The appetite for power is, on the
contrary, essentially selfish; for all cannot have power; the power of one is power over others,
who not only do not share in his elevation, but whose depression is the foundation on which it is
raised. (‘Centralisation’, IX 610)

Mill’s view of the relative importance of this human want is interestingly set out in the
Principles of Political Economy (11:208), also Winch (360); in a discussion of the prospects of
communism:

After the means of subsistence are assured, the next in strength of the personal wants of human
beings is liberty; and (unlike the physical wants, which as civilisation advances become more
moderate and more amenable to control) it increases instead of diminishing in intensity, as the
intelligence and the moral faculties are more developed. The perfection both of social
arrangements and of practical morality would be, to secure to all persons complete independence
and freedom of action, subject to no restriction but that of not doing injury to others: and the
education which taught or the social institutions which required them to exchange the control of
their own actions for any amount of comfort or affluence, or to renounce liberty for the sake of
equality, would deprive them of one of the most elevated characteristics of human nature.

If the desire for liberty increases with affluence and moral education, there is utilitarian ground
for ‘priority of liberty’ in advanced societies. (Note that Mill seems to envisage two effects: a
utility trade-off between material comfort and liberty, and also a shift in the indifference curve in
favour of liberty, resulting from education. Note also the perfectionist appeal in the last
sentence.)

14 So a paternalist restriction on the validity of certain self-injurious contracts, as in Mill’s

extreme example of a person who freely sells himself into slavery (LV11, XVIII 299), would be
justified: liberty is not an unqualified side-constraint.

15 Cf. Mill LIV4–6, on the obligation human beings owe to each other ‘to distinguish the better
from the worse’. The ‘self-regarding virtues’ should be encouraged by conviction and
persuasion, not compulsion. ‘I do not mean’, Mill goes on,

that the feelings with which a person is regarded by others, ought not to be in any way affected
by his self-regarding qualities or deficiencies. If he is eminent in any of the qualities which
conduce to his own good, he is, so far, a proper object of admiration. He is so much the nearer to
the ideal perfection of human nature. If he is grossly deficient in those qualities, a sentiment the
opposite of admiration will follow. (XVIII 278)

The ‘self-regarding virtues’ should not be assumed co-extensive with general ideals of character,
but the same points apply.

Incidentally it might be thought that ‘self-regarding’ virtues cannot be strictly moral virtues,
given Mill’s analysis of strictly moral obligation (9–11), and his insistence that the Liberty
Principle applies to social as well as legal compulsion. I believe this to be broadly right (waiving
further matters about broader and narrower meanings of ‘moral’) —but the issue cannot be
followed through here. See, for example, Berger (1984), Brown (1972), Copp (1979).

Ronald Dworkin provides an extreme example of the identification of liberalism with neutrality
between moral positions when he suggests that liberal political theory

supposes that political decisions must be so far as possible, independent of any particular
conception of the good life, of what gives value to life. Since the citizens of a society differ in
their conceptions the government does not treat them as equals if it prefers one conception to
another. (Dworkin 1978:127)

In so far as the sphere of morality is distinguished from the sphere of ideals of character there is
an ingredient of truth in this (Cf. Strawson 1961). But overall it seems to me a very misleading
description, at least of classical liberalism as represented by Mill. Liberalism of that kind is, on
the contrary, founded on a very clear conception of what gives value to life, and would have no
truck with the bizarre (or, alternatively, truistic) idea that if we prefer one man’s conception to
another’s we are not treating them as ‘equals’.

16 A community as well as an individual can be said to have a private domain. I am discussing

the relations between a community and one of its members. Different principles govern the
relations between a community and a visitor to it. The visitor may have an obligation to respect
its customs which a dissenting member may not have.

17 In Kant’s words:

The experiment…whereby we test upon the understanding of others whether those grounds of
the judgement which are valid for us have the same effect on the reason of others as on our own,
is a means, although only a subjective means, not indeed of producing conviction, but of
detecting any merely private validity in the judgement…. (Kant 1929: A821, B849)

I consider the underlying relationships between convergence and correspondence further in

Skorupski (1986b).

18 I heard a version of this argument discussed in a talk at Cambridge by Saul Kripke. Kripke
presented it in terms of knowledge, not justified belief. In that version it is much harder to deal
with; bringing out real tensions between the concept of knowledge and fallibilism. The
application to Mill is of course my own.
19 Transcendental’: there are evident similarities between the position which emerges when the
connection between fallibilism and liberty of expression is pressed, and Jürgen Habermas’s
notion of the ‘ideal speech situation’. (My use of the word ‘dialogue’ is also intended to bring
some of these similarities to mind.) See also 1.6 and 1.7.

20 Mill sees the tension between this dialectical doctrine of understanding and the growth of
knowledge:

Is the absence of unanimity an indispensable condition of true knowledge? Is it necessary that

some part of mankind should persist in error, to enable any to realize the truth? Does a belief
cease to be real and vital as soon as it is generally received—and is a proposition never
thoroughly understood and felt unless some doubt of it remains?… The cessation, on one
question after another, of serious controversy, is one of the necessary incidents of the
consolidation of opinion; a consolidation as salutary in the case of true opinions, as it is
dangerous and noxious when the opinions are erroneous. But though this gradual narrowing of
the bounds of diversity of opinion is necessary…we are not therefore obliged to conclude that all
its consequences must be beneficial. (LII31, 32; XVIII 250–1)

There is an absence of positivist utopianism in Mill’s thought, a feeling for the disadvantages of
consensus and uniformity. But does requiring ‘Socratic dialectics’ cater for the point Mill
himself makes, that criticism must come from those who genuinely disagree?

21 But neither truly universal one-person one-vote suffrage, nor individual property rights, are
among these ground-rules. Mill’s complex and changing views on democracy and on property
and socialism are unfortunately beyond the scope of this book; they can be found mainly in
Considerations on Representative Government, Principles of Political Economy and Chapters on
Socialism. See also Ryan (1974; 1984) and Gray (1979).

22 David Marquand describes two conceptions of politics and social change, the ‘communal’ and
the ‘exchange’ mode: ‘Society is either a kind of hierarchy, held together because those at the
bottom obey those at the top, or it is a kind of market, held together by the calculating self-
interest of its members’ (Marquand 1987:251). He sets against them a third mode, the
‘preceptoral’, ‘persuasive’, ‘educational’ or ‘moral’, quoting Mill—‘We do not learn to read or
write, to ride or swim, by merely being told how to do it, but by doing it’ (XVIII 63, and
Himmelfarb (ed.) 1963:186).

Certainly the third mode captures Mill’s view of the relationship between democracy and
intellectual and moral authority: moral authority has a preceptoral role, but it can play it by
persuasion—so long as background education, free institutions and access to political
responsibility produce citizens who can make rational decisions because they have been
exercised in making rational decisions. So this mode assumes, as Mill does, that cohesion can be
maintained without appeal to non-rational bases of authority and allegiance such as faith,
prejudice or deference to descent.

23 He was willing to load the dice in favour of it in practice, by means of plural voting for the
educated—but never by allowing it to control the flow of expression, information and debate.
Bibliography
This bibliography contains all works cited in the text, together with a small selection of other
interesting or important works on Mill.

Citations of works by Mill all refer to The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, general editor
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The following volumes have been published:

I (1980) Autobiography and Literary Essays

II, III (1965) Principles of Political Economy

IV, V (1967) Essays on Economics and Society

VI (1982) Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire

VII, VIII (1973) System of Logic: Ratiocinative and Inductive

IX (1979) An Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy

X (1969) Essays on Ethics, Religion and Society

XI (1978) Essays on Philosophy and the Classics

XII, XIII (1962) Earlier Letters, 1812–1848

XIV, XV, XVI, XVII (1972) Later Letters, 1848–1873

XVIII, XIX (1977) Essays on Politics and Society

XX (1985) Essays on French History and Historians

XXI (1984) Essays on Equality, Law and Education

XXII, XXIII, XXIV, XXV (1986) Newspaper Writings

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Arnold, Matthew (1965) The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold, ed. R.H. Super, Ann
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Index

act utilitarianism 316–17, 324, 410

Agamemnon 411

aggregates 137ff., 398, 399

Alcibiades 349

Alexander 388, 412, 414

allegiance 18, 27, 35ff.

analyticity see Kant

Anderson, John 401

apparent inference see real inference, real proposition

aprioricity 5–10, 29–31, 35, 39, 79, 84, 101, 127–8, 135, 143ff., 147, 152ff.;

as indefeasibilicy (strong) and prior rationality (weak) 40–1, 162, 196, 218–19, 279;

synthetic a priori 5–8, 162;

see also Germano-Coleridgean school

Aristeides 389

Aristotle, Aristotelian 24, 46, 78, 254

arithmetic 2, 10, 127, 135ff., 146–7, 156, 395, 398

Arnold, Matthew 46, 350, 353, 376, 387, 414

assertion 70–1

associationism xiii, 7, 22, 45, 128, 154, 157–9, 226–9, 232–4, 249–50, 259–64, 294, 295, 296,
355, 390, 400, 407;

see also school of experience and association

attribute 52–3, 67, 90, 92ff., 141, 145

Augustine, St. 404

authority 339, 354, 387, 416–17

autonomy, and causal determinism 42–3, 250–5;

as end 13, 20, 46, 300–3, 329ff., 345, 354ff., 383–4, 388, 410;

as freedom 21, 250, 327, 354ff., 364–5;

and rationality 162–3, 246–7, 275, 348–9

Bacon, Baconian xii, 170, 199, 401, 402

Bailey, S. 37, 413

Bain, Alexander 392, 397, 400, 407

Bell, David A. xiv

benevolence, impersonal or rational 36–7

Bentham, Benthamite, Benthamism xiii, 12, 15–17, 19, 20, 25, 26, 32, 45, 76, 270, 296, 303,
313, 321–3, 356, 389, 390, 391, 409

Berlin, Isaiah 4

Berkeley, Berkeleian 37, 205, 240, 413

Berger, Fred 390, 409, 410, 411, 412, 415

Bradley, F.H. 405

Britton, K. 165

Brown, D.G. 415

Brown, Thomas 224

Buchanan, James 391

Burge, Tyler 141–2, 399

Butler, Bishop, Butlerian xii, 14, 36, 292, 408

Byron 389
Carlyle, Thomas 315, 337, 353, 390, 412

Carroll, Lewis, 163

causation xiii, 42, 175ff., 231–2, 243, 248–9, 251–5;

agent causality 405:

‘chemical combination’ and ‘mechanical composition of, 257–9, 263, 269, 273, 406;

law of universal causation 44, 167, 171, 175ff., 187–91, 214;

resistible and irresistible 43, 252–3;

uniformity of nature 9, 170–4

character 42–3, 349, 355

Chateaubriand 389

Clarke, Thompson 406

classes 77, 88, 97–8, 104, 137

coherentism 10, 41, 160–1

Coleridge, Coleridgean 1, 17, 78, 250, 321–2, 347, 354, 390, 398, 413

communism 414

compositional thesis, compositional rules 60, 63–4, 66, 71, 75

Comte 11, 17, 176, 249, 250, 262, 264–5, 267, 270–4, 277, 314–17, 354, 387, 389, 407, 413

conceivability 7

Conceptualism 49–50, 53, 59ff., 70, 76, 85, 96–7, 164

Condillac 90, 105

Condorcet 248, 406

connectives 72–4

connotation and denotation 50–1, 53ff., 137;

of general names 55, 57ff.;

of individual abstract names 54, 56;

of proper names 54, 55–6, 61–3, 67ff., 81–3, 88;

and sense and reference 76–7

connotative inclusion, criterion of 79–85, 101–2, 395

conscience 27–8, 36, 264, 320, 321

conscientiousness 14–15

consciousness 10–11, 244ff.;

interpretation of, 220ff.;

introspective and psychological method of analysing 225ff.;

standpoint of 11, 208, 222, 245–6, 263

see also subjectivism

conservatism 22, 31, 37, 413

conservative holism 321ff.

consistency 121–5

Constant, Benjamin 347, 412

contractualism 20, 32, 35, 45, 336, 344;

‘sceptical contractualism’ 20, 33–5, 45, 346–7, 391

contradiction, law of 103, 124;

see also thoughts, laws of

convergence, consensus, ideal of 34–5, 40, 415

‘Copernican revolution’ 5

Copp, D. 415

Craig, E.J. 145, 399

criticism, critique 30, 35ff.

custom 352–3
Dalton 406

Davidson, Donald 262, 408

de Morgan 402

de Vigny, Alfred 22

deduction 2, 8, 99ff.

definition 79, 90ff., 130–3

democracy xiii, 338ff., 353, 388, 391, 413, 416

Dennett, D. 408

denotation see connotation

denotation rules 66, 68

Descartes, Cartesian 60, 193, 194, 200, 203, 323–4, 406

desert 264, 308, 333, 335, 390, 412

desire 264, 285ff., 349–50, 355, 409

dialogue 35, 369–76, 385, 416

dictum de omni et nullo 103ff.

Dilthey 276, 279, 281, 407

distribution see justice

Dodge, G.H. 412

Dummett, Michael 394, 397, 403

Duncan, G. 414

Dworkin, R. 328, 415

egoism 25, 292, 296–7, 309–11, 313

eliminative methods of induction see induction

empiricism 5–12, 21–2, 30–1

enlightenment 2, 5, 12–13, 22, 47, 248–9

enumerative induction see induction

epiphenomenalism 261

essence 23, 78–9, 87ff., 394, 395

ethology 250, 260, 264–7, 271–2, 275–6, 278, 282

Euclid, Euclidean 130–2, 135, 146–7, 154, 211, 399

excluded middle 124,

see also laws of thought

explanation 255–9

expression see liberty of expression

fallibilism 10, 46, 161, 194, 376ff.

Feuer, L, S. 276

Feyerabend, P.K. 47

Field, H. 143, 398

foundationalism 18

Fox, Caroline 337, 412

Fox, R.B. 391

freedom, political 16, 20–1;

‘moral’ 43, 250, 254–5, 293, 349–52, 354–5;

of the will 42–3, 250–5;

positive and negative 343, 352

Frege, Fregean, 44, 50, 70–1, 74–7, 82, 121, 137–40, 143–5, 164, 394, 398

Gadamer, H.G. 407–8

Gauss 399

Gauthier, David 410

geometry 2, 127, 128ff., 156, 395, 398;

geometrical intuition see imagination

Germano-Coleridgean 5, 17, 390;

school 21ff., 41, 284

Glover, Jonathan 253

Goethe 1, 389

Goodman, Nelson 212

government, representative 37

Gray, John 410, 416

Green, T.H. 170

Griffin, James 329, 409

Grote, George 124, 147, 150–2, 318, 391, 410

Guttman, A. 46

Habermas, J. 416

Hamilton, Sir William 11, 121, 147–8, 158, 207, 212, 222–4, 229, 245, 399, 403, 404

Hannibal 411

happiness 8, 12–17, 20–1, 25, 46, 264, 283ff., 292ff., 350–1, 390;

finer 15, 23, 24, 39, 303–7, 350–1, 357, 383;

higher meaning 24, 304;

part of and means to 14–15, 293, 295ff.

harm 341–2, 358, 367

Harris, John 329

Harrison, Ross 390

Harsanyi, John 299

Hart, H.L. A. 314, 390

Hartley 276

hedonism see utility

Hegel, Hegelian 24, 159, 277

Hellenism 46, 348, 350, 414

hermeneutic see interpretation

Herschel, Sir John 401

Himmelfarb, G. 413, 416

historicity, historical sense 13, 17, 45, 249–50, 264, 276–7, 321–4

Hobbes, Hobbesian 20, 33, 62–3, 252, 270, 347

Honderich, Ted 341

Hume, David 4, 8, 170, 295, 401, 402

Humean conception of practical reasoning 13, 33–4, 288–91, 295, 310, 354

Hurka, T. 409

Husserl 164–5, 400

hypotheses 10–12, 44, 116, 128–30, 134–5, 160, 197ff., 209ff., 239, 242, 398, 402, 403

idealism 5, 7, 44–5, 50, 220, 223, 234, 243–5, 279, 322, 395

ideals 25, 300, 308, 315, 360–2, 415

identity propositions 67ff., 81–5, 136–7, 141

imagination, and historical sense 278;

perceptual and geometrical 152–5

impartiality 16, 29, 32, 308–13, 385

inconceivability see conceivability

indirect utilitarianism 315ff., 410

individualism 45, 276–7, 281, 375;

distinctness of individuals;

methodological 45, 273–5

individuality 20, 342–3, 347ff.;

as individual spontaneity 46

induction 8, 35, 36, 39–41, 44, 78–9, 99, 110–15, 126–7, 143, 157ff.;

eliminative methods of xiii, 9, 171, 175, 178ff.;

enumerative 8–10, 13, 25, 44, 116, 127, 135, 144, 154, 157, 170–5, 194–6, 208ff., 239–40, 286,
323;

Hume’s problem of 4, 8,

see also scepticism, inductive;

inductive logic 44, 167ff.;

inductivism xiii, 10–11, 44, 117, 127, 135, 160, 169–70, 206ff., 212ff., 228ff., 242, 244

inference to the best explanation see hypothesis

innateness 23, 27–30

interpretation 42–3, 45, 113, 247–9, 262, 276–82;

hermeneutic self-conception 162–3, 220, 246, 275, 280–2

introspective method see consciousness mtuition 7, 146, 152ff., 284

intuitional school see Germano-Coleridgean

Iphigenia 411

Jackson, Reginald 392, 402

Jacobin 388

justice 16, 18–20, 34, 40, 264, 287, 390;

‘baseline conception’ of 19, 21, 284, 316, 325ff., 358–9, 364–5, 384, 386

Kafka 301

Kant, Kantian 5–7, 12, 14, 30, 35, 36, 40–1, 44–5, 77, 123, 146, 155, 159–63, 196, 207, 212,
216–17, 230, 253–5, 279–82, 294, 347, 354, 388, 389, 395, 399, 403, 404, 408, 415;

on analyticity 6, 85–6, 218–9, 395

Kepler, 199, 200, 209, 211, 402, 403

Kessler, Glenn 398

kinds see natural kinds

Kitcher, P.S. 142, 394

Kneale, W; & M. 397

Knox, John 349

knowledge, as an end 13, 20–1, 300–3, 383

Knowles, Dudley xiv

Kripke, Saul 392, 393, 395, 406, 416

Laudan, Larry 403

law, empirical and ultimate 255–9;

heteropathic 258–9, 269, 273, 277, 407

Lehman, H. 145

Leibniz 60, 63

Lewis, David 275

liberalism xiii, 2, 3, 13, 20–1, 25, 34, 40, 45–7, 335–6, 343–7, 351, 353, 384–8, 410, 415

liberty see freedom

liberty of expression 20, 37, 40, 369ff.

Lively, J. 407
Locke, Lockean xii, 20, 32, 60, 87–8, 97, 203, 216, 394, 395

Lyons, David 390

Macaulay 269–70

McDermott, Frank xiv

McDowell, John 393

McKay, Angus xiv

Mackie, J.L. xiii, 177, 179, 180, 182, 391, 401, 402, 410

McRae, R.F. 164

Makin, Stephen xiv

malleability of human nature 22–3, 25, 29, 45

Mandelbaum, Maurice 400, 403, 405, 407, 408, 409, 414

Marquand, D. 416

Marx 23, 24, 276, 390

materialism 11, 260–2, 407

matter 230ff., 236–7, 260

meaning;

classical pre-understanding of 12, 216–20, 242, 244, 279, 281, 396, 403;

and cognitive or information content vs. semantic content 57–9, 61, 66, 68, 75–6;

epistemic conception of 12, 44, 196, 218–20, 279, 396, 403;

of propositions/sentences 6, 48ff., 59ff., 75–6

memory 228–9, 236, 238, 404

Methods of Experimental Inquiry:

see induction, eliminative methods of Mill, James 269, 276, 409

mind 7, 236ff., 260–4

Moore, G.E. 3, 44, 286, 408

morality 15, 26–8, 35, 284, 287, 293, 295, 311–12, 317–21, 343, 344, 358, 415

Morley, John 337, 412

mutability see malleability

Nagel, Thomas 290, 410

name:

collective vs general name 392;

defining a name 90ff.;

proper name see connotation and denotation;

as technical term in System of Logic 50ff.

natural kinds 78, 394

naturalised epistemology 8–9, 192–6

naturalism xiii, 2, 5–12, 21, 24, 35, 44, 77, 127–8, 142–3, 192, 214–15, 216ff., 345–7, 406;

and the a priori, 158–63, 196–2;

and criterion of general good, 30ff., 286;

and moral sciences 248–50, 279–82;

and natural agreement 8, 10, 23–4, 26–8, 286, 295, 346–7;

and natural sentiments 37, 306–7;

and objectivity 38ff., 281;

and phenomenalism 240ff.

necessary, necessity 7, 128ff., 155ff.;

doctrine of philosophical 42, 251

Neurath, Otto 323

Newton, Newtonian 199, 211, 241

Nietzsche 32, 36–7, 391

nominalism 44, 77, 142–4;

and Nominalism 49–50, 59ff., 76, 95ff., 135ff., 147–8, 164

Novalis 251, 349

Nozick, R. 408

numbers 135ff.

objectivity of principles 34–6;

of ends 288ff., 306–7;

and naturalism 38ff., 281, 346, 380–1;

subjectivism 10–11, 92, 208–9, 220ff., 244ff.

Orwell, George xii

Owen, Robert, Owenite 252–4

Packe, M. 412

Pareto-optimality 19, 312–13, 315, 325, 336, 360

Parfit, Derek 410

Parsons, Charles 395

Passmore, J. 166

paternalism 359–60

Peel, Sir Robert 413

Peirce 10, 166, 192, 392, 402

perception 223, 279

Pericles 349

phenomenal relativity of knowledge 203ff.

phenomenalism 11, 221ff., 226, 229ff., 240ff.

philosophical anchropology 28–9, 278, 282, 301

philosophical utilitarianism 16, 20–1, 29, 31–5, 40, 45, 310–13, 385

phronesis 278

Plato 98

pleasure 13–15, 17, 21, 24–5, 292–4, 295ff., 350–51, 409;

finer see happiness

political economy 267, 271–2

Popper, K. 169–70, 400, 402

positivism 198, 206, 278, 416

potentiality, human 15, 20, 22–3

pragmatism 12, 192, 217

predication 69–71

primary and secondary qualities 204ff.

private domain 20

progress 20, 21

progressiveness of human nature, of institutions 13, 22–23, 42

propositions, compound 71–4;

general 99ff., 100, 108ff., 117ff.;

meaning of see meaning;

proposition set 73–4;

see also real inference, real proposition

psychological method see consciousness

psychologism 3, 44, 50, 76, 164ff.

psychology 11, 30, 45, 249, 257, 259–64, 269, 282

punishment 319, 332–3, 390, 412

Putnam, H. 67, 400

Quine, W.V.O. 4, 8, 40, 98, 129, 161, 192, 243, 397

Ramsey, Frank 44, 70, 99, 120–1, 125, 167, 175, 397, 400

Rawls, John, Rawlsian 19, 323, 410

real inference, real proposition 6–8, 49, 78ff., 127, 152ff.

realism 41, 44, 49, 53, 76, 97, 127, 203, 206ff., 214ff., 223–4, 281, 402, 403

reduction, scientific 255–9

Rees, John 407, 412, 414

reflective equilibrium 30, 35, 39–40, 334–6

Reid, Thomas 207, 222–8, 399, 403, 404

relations, relative names 75

relativity of knowledge see phenomenal

relativity of knowledge

republicanism 20, 46

Ricardo 276

rights, moral 18–21, 32–3, 308, 325–8, 334–5, 358–9, 390, 391, 410;

natural 18, 21, 32–3, 45, 343–7, 357–8, 390, 391

Robespierre 347

romanticism 2, 22, 45, 47

Rousseau, Rousseauesque 20, 344, 347, 388

rule-following 280–2

Russell, Bertrand 4, 50, 208, 392

Ryan, Alan 405, 414, 416

Saint-Simonians 354

Sandel, M. 46

Scarre, G. 400

Scanlon, T. 16, 311–12, 390

scepticism 5–12, 31–3, 35, 161, 279;

inductive 192ff., 212ff.;

Humean about ends see Humean conception of practical reasoning

Schelling 159

Schier, Flint xiv

Schleiermacher 276

Schneewind, J.B. 410

school of experience and association 21ff., 42

Sellars, Wilfrid 403

Shaw, Patrick xiv

Sidgwick, Henry 10, 27, 36, 162, 284, 309, 312–13, 316, 389, 410

Singer, Peter 329

socialism 353, 391

Society of Students of Mental Philosophy 391

sociology 28, 30, 45, 129, 249–50, 257, 264, 266–9, 270–1;

of liberty 352–3

Spencer, Herbert 129–30, 157–9, 234–5, 399–400, 405

Stael, Mme. de 472

Stewart, Dugald 134, 224

Stirling, John 389

Stove, D.C. 400

Strawson, P.F., Strawsonian 394, 415

Stroud, Barry 402

subjectivism, subjectivity see objectivity

syllogism, syllogistic theory 5, 6, 12, 74–5, 79, 86, 99, 103ff., 120–5, 129, 147

synthetic a priori see aprioricity

Ten, C.L. 342, 381

Tewari, R. 402, 403

Thornton, W.T. 411

thought, laws of 6, 127, 147ff.

Tocqueville, A. de 338, 391, 413

Todhunter, I. 402

transcendental school see Germano-Coleridgean

utility 15, 17–20, 25, 27, 283ff., 343ff.;

desire-satisfaction model of 290–5, 298–9, 409;

hedonism xiii, 13–16, 21, 45, 284–5, 295ff., 383–4, 409;

principle of aggregate 13–16, 19–21, 26, 29, 45, 284, 309, 311–15, 321ff.;

principle of average 19, 312;

welfare 16, 19;

well-being 2, 18, 20, 24, 32, 46, 283, 327, 345, 347, 388, 409;

see also indirect utilitarianism, philosophical utilitarianism

verbal inference, verbal proposition see real inference, real proposition

verificationism 217

virtue 15, 24–5, 46, 293–5, 354, 415

Ward, W.G. 130, 398, 404, 405

Weber, Max 45, 277–9, 407

welfare see utility

well-being see utility

Whately, R. 72, 107, 172, 392

Whewell, W. 10–11, 135, 153, 155, 160, 162, 187, 197, 202, 211–12, 402, 403

White, Roger 395

will 13–14, 42–3, 163, 250–1, 293–4, 320, 349–50, 354–5, 409

Williams, Bernard 47

Winch, D. 389, 414

Winch, P. 408

Wirgman, Thomas 389

Wordsworth 389

Wittgenstein 35, 44, 68, 70, 77, 84, 125, 282, 397

Wright, C. 394