Great Ideas of Philosophy

B. In the final state, we’re all supposed to be Humeans! This is key, because Mill’s philosophy is so closelymapped onto Hume’s that his affinity for Comte was predictable, if not entirely long-lived.C. Note that the term positivism is also used in connection with a certain philosophy of law, as in legalpositivism, the subject of a later lecture.D. A third sense of positivism gets closer to Comte’s use of the term and to what Mill works to develop in hisphilosophy of science.1. Its most cogent defense comes from Ernst Mach, a great figure in physics at the University of Viennalate in the 19 th century.2. His An Analysis of Sensation is part of his larger project of ridding science of all metaphysicalspeculation. In a word, you can tell you’re engaged in a scientific enterprise to the extent that you arenot engaged in metaphysical speculations.III. John Stuart Mill should be understood as promoting a philosophy of science compatible with Mach’s and withthe general positivistic view of science.A. Science is what takes place in the domain of experience. It is an empirical enterprise.B. Mill goes so far as to define matter itself as but “the permanent possibilities of sensation,” meaning that thematerial world is a permanent possibility of sensation. Reality exists insofar as it is the subject ofexperience.1. He rejects rationalist arguments of philosophy, saying that the introspective method employed isfaulty. By reflecting on what we recall from our early years, we fail to come up with any experiencethat might have conveyed an idea and incorrectly conclude that our current awareness is “intuition.”2. Mill places in opposition to this what he calls the psychological method. He argues that we learnthings in the present by being presented with what it is to be learned, being rehearsed through repeatedpresentations, and forming the necessary associations. Mill is very much the echo of Hume in thisargument.C. With Mill, the problem of knowledge solves itself in that well-known empiricistic way, fortified bymethods of experimental inquiry. In Mill’s treatise on inductive logic, he actually sets forth a methodologyfor experimental science.1. According to the principles of concomitance, A is the cause of B whenever, in presenting A, you canbring B about.2. The method of agreement would have the experimenter record all factors present whenever B occurs.3. The method of difference is comparable; now we look to see if there is an event whose presence isalways the case when B occurs, but whose absence is matched by the absence of B.4. There are other “methods” and various refinements of each. In the end, a manipulability hypothesisgrounds the entire approach: A is the cause of B when—taking B to be an empirical feature of theworld—A can be used to manipulate that feature of the world.IV. In the matter of ethics—the problem of conduct, as we’ve called it—Mill says the right test ethically is notwhether something holds up in logic but whether it holds up in life.A. He thinks that, with some significant modifications, Bentham got it right. We do what we do chiefly ascreatures of nature, constituted in such a way as to maximize our pleasures and minimize our pains.B. What Mill concludes is that the most significant sources of human activity are grounded in considerationsof utility. The ultimate test of a course of action is whether it is useful, whether it serves some fundamentalhuman purpose.C. But Mill does not want to be misunderstood in affirming utilitarianism as the standard by which we judgethe ethical content of actions.1. He rebukes those who see utilitarianism as a caricature of the Epicurean: “Eat, drink, and be merry, fortomorrow you shall die.”2. Mill’s thesis is that when people set out to assign utilities to courses of action, what they include iswhat makes life more meaningful, more developed, more purposive, and more under rational control.3. The ultimate pain is a life that is not authentically one’s own, and what is profoundly useful is ameaningful and fully lived life.©2004 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership 15