John Stuart Mill, 1806-1873, was a British philosopher, a political economist, civil servant and Member of Parliament (MP). It has been stated that he may have been the most influential philosophical thinker of the 19th century in the English speaking world. His father, James Mill, a philosopher as well, along with Jeremy Bentham, educated Mill. It was James Mill’s intent to educate his son in accordance with Utilitarian thought, a Bentham construct. Upon Bentham’s and his death, James Mill expected his son to carry on the cause for Utilitarianism. With this in mind, Mill’s educational experience was rigorous and he was intentionally kept away from other children outside the immediate family.
Within the first decade of life, Mill became a prolific reader of classics and was appointed the family schoolmaster at the age of 12…an Interesting concept and responsibility. It appears that while perhaps still a teenager, Mill, in concert with his father, wrote and published Elements of Political Economy. Mill gravitated away from Benthamite thought and was instrumental in the development of the economies of scale, opportunity cost, and comparative advantage in trade concepts.
He believed in personal freedom, and emphasized its importance individually and for society. His admiration for his spouse, Harriet Taylor, may have led or influenced him to espouse the stance that irrespective of gender, all persons should be free to voice and act according to their own needs. This was critical for individual development and would provide for the betterment of a society.
It appears that he was considered at some point a philosophical radical. (I’ll have to investigate this later. Obviously, contextual information is necessary.) He might have been fluent in Greek, Latin, and French. One biography mentions that he was involved in political activities. I wonder at this point what those were. His intelligence might have worked as therapy. He suffered from depression at age 20, and historians believe he had the insight that his father’s instructional emphasis on cognitive diminished his not emotional development. He related this dearth in emotional development to his bout with depression. However, his capacity to analyze led him to the reading of poetry, a remedy for his malady. Mill had the grand opportunity to meet d’Eichtahl and St. Simon and other philosophers’ work, including Comte.
Mill advanced the idea that any new philosophical view needed to be incorporated gradually and slowly. Disregarding all segments of prior philosophical ideas was also dysfunctional. His father’s and Bentham’s ideas surrounding Utilitarianism would not be rejected in whole as new ideas and potential social change based in these new ideas would be integrated.
Mill and Marx appear to have a philosophical foundation similarity: they both believed in the importance of individual development and freedom, whether the person is a laborer or a person of wealth, and once again, a man or a woman. The development includes happiness. It has been noted that Mill moved away, to some degree, from his father, who did not exhibit Epicurean (one who believes in modest pleasures) tendencies at all.
Mill produced several noteworthy works, including On Liberty (1859), his System of Logic (1843), The Principles of Political Economy (1848), Utilitarianism (1861), Considerations on Representative Government (1851), The Subjection of Women (1869), and an autobiography published posthumously by his deceased spouse’s daughter in 1873, the same year of his death.
My initial readings about Mill involve language and logic, induction, and empiricism. I conclude that Mill takes the stance that in our use of logic, or how we go about our lives, we must be reasonable and not reject a form of reasoning that may lead to a conclusion that may be contestable. We must be able to infer from the present to the future, and make predictions to be safe, to be function in a social world, and to survive. We conclude based on experience and we use experience to live effectively. It is imperfect. It is an imperfect method. It includes deductive and inductive reasoning in the context of our experiences. It is fallible. But to have absolutism as a goal in this arena is unreasonable. Mill does point out that some logic, based in this reasoning, is more accurate than another. He mentions the use of superstition, leading to more inaccuracy and other dysfunction.
I, as others may, will conclude that Mill espoused a form of empirical relativism. Others confirm this contention, stating Mill believed that knowledge is relative to our consciousness. Our consciousness includes inferences from our knowledge base (past events of like or similar nature). Our state of consciousness, including our beliefs, is from this inference. For example, when we visit a car dealership and open the door of a new car on the lot, we expect to smell a certain smell before we open the door and smell. If we have done this before, we are conscious of the smell prior to the present-day, about to happen, experience. Our knowledge is not from a direct experience in the present; our conscious awareness of reality is inferred from the past. The thought, or expectation is propositional, as you or I are “proposing” a reality in our thoughts. If we have not had this direct experience, but have heard about it, we have a different reality, belief, or knowledge about, and a different empirical understanding of our world, and therein is the relativity of the matter. This viewpoint also reveals the limits as well as the relativity of thought.
More later.