The education of John Stuart Mill

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston University This item was digitized by the Internet Archive.In studying The Education of John Stuart Mill we have traced and shown how the process of education developed his high mental and moral powers and how he used these in promoting the welfare of mankind. Since the purpose of education should be to fit the individual to the world in which he lives and enable him to progress and make his contribution to the advancement of civilization, the study of Mill's education has been rewarding in having fulfilled this purpose

Theory, Application and the canon: The case of Mill and Jevons

Whatever disputes remain about the nature and content of the canon of economics, it is widely accepted that the boundary of economic science was narrowed throughout the nineteenth century (Winch 1972). This chapter offers a partial explanation for that narrowing in the methodological developments that occurred during the second half of the century. For reasons of practicality in the face of pronounced multiplicity of cause, John Stuart Mill called, In his 1836 Essay On the Definition of Political Economy; and on the Method of Investigation Proper to It, and again in his 1843 Logic, for a separate and specialized science of political economy. The problem of multiple cause implied that the science should be substantially deductive in nature. Yet Mill accorded a role to induction, in the establishment of the basic causal framework, and to the process of verifying the accuracy of the theoretical analysis. Revision of the theory in the light of such verification established a key link between theory, and application

09-03 "Economic Writing on the Pressing Problems of the Day: The Roles of Moral Intuition and Methodological Confusion"

Economists are often called on to help address pressing problems of the day, yet many economists are uncomfortable about disclosing the values that they bring to this work. This essay explores how an inadequate understanding of the role of methodology, as related to ethics and human emotions of concern, underlies this reluctance and compromises the quality of economic advice. The tension between caring about the problems, on the one hand, and writing within the existing culture of the discipline, on the other, are illustrated with examples from U.S. policymaking, behavioral economics, and the economics of climate change and global poverty. Potential steps towards a more responsible, "strongly objective," and policy-useful economics are discussed.

Logic and reality in the philosophy of John Stuart Mill

This study of the leading principles of Mill's empiricist metaphysics and philosophy of logic aims to provide accurate (and often revisionary) exegesis and criticism of his theories, and to show their pertinence to current philosophical debates. Mill's views on the attainment of knowledge by inference, the problems of suasive syllogisms, and the possibility of inductive inference are first discussed, and it is argued that his philosophy of logic is informed by a realist theory of error. Subsequently, attention is paid to his uncompromising rejection of a priori avenues to knowledge about objective reality, and his allegiance to a radical empiricist principle that all knowledge is of phenomena alone. A scrutiny of Mill's theories of the experienced world and of the experiencing self: brings the discussion; to the point at which it emerges clearly that there is a deep tension within his thought between a form of empiricism which approximates to a variety of scientific realism, and another which leans towards sensationalistic reductionism

ECONOMICS, PSYCHOLOGY AND HAPPINESS: VIRTUE THEORY VS. SLAVERY OF THE PASSIONS

The truth of any economic theory ultimately hinges on the truth of its philosophy of man. In this essay I will analyze modern economic thought from two perspectives: firstly, from its criticism and development by experimental psychology; secondly, from the philosophical anthropology and Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. I will argue that although there is much truth in modern economics, its philosophical underpinnings are flawed in important aspects, and this accounts for its inability to explain and understand human behavior in some significant respects. I will try to pinpoint the essential character of the philosophical error, and argue for a better philosophy of the person that can provide a starting point for building a new economics.Economics and psychology, happiness, virtue theory

Cambridge University and the development of Victorian ideas, 1830-1870

PhD ThesisThis thesis reconstructs and interprets the life and writings of the relatively unknown nineteenth century philosopher John Grote (1813-1866). It places his work in the intellectual contexts of the University of Cambridge of his day and discusses his place in the development of Victorian Thought. The thesis argues that John Grote, (brother of the historian George Grote) is a most original thinker in his own right and that historically he holds a crucial place in the debates that make up Victorian thought. Cambridge University between 1830 and 1870 is seen to have nurtured a dualistic intellectual movement called the Cambridge Network which rivalled intellectually, the centres of Edinburgh and London and the movements of Positivism utilitarianism -and common sense philosophy. In developing the Cambridge philosophy of his day in response to developments elsewhere in British philosophy, John Grote (like James Frederick Ferrier in Scotland) is shown to have elaborated a nascent form of indigenous philosophical idealism in England prior to the 1870's and the emergence of oxford Idealism. The introduction argues that a modern understanding and appreciation of John Grote's philosophy is unlikely without the reconstruction of the cultural, intellectual and institutional world which he inhabited. The loss of detail about this world in the twentieth century, explains why past attempts to popularize Grote's work have failed. Conventional accounts of the history of Victorian philosophy are elaborated and attacked in the introduction, as are the methodological assumptions upon which they were written. Chapter one provides details of Grote's life and writings but gives special prominence to his novel, and in retrospect revolutionary, work on language. Chapters two and three provide a historical reconstruction of the intellectual context that attended the production of Grote's corpus. The middle chapters from four to nine reconstruct Grote's analytic philosophical work in the areas of metaphysics, epistemology, ontology, ethics, and politics, revealing Grote's commitment to epistemological and ethical idealism and the production of a 'relational theory of obligation' and a 'jural theory of politics'. My arguments are synthesised in chapter ten and the conclusions and some indications as to John Grote's influence are appended.Social Science Research Council: Teesside Polytechnic

The new utilitarians? Studies in the origins and early intellectual associations of Fabianism

This thesis concerns the intellectual origins and early associations of Fabianism. It concentrates on the period of the 1880's and early 1890's during which time the Fabian Society was founded and its basic doctrines were formed. Its principals are the small group of intellectuals who played the major role in working out its basic theories. The thesis is arranged as a series of studies of five thinkers or schools of thought with whom the Fabians had important intellectual associations. Each of the five studies seeks both to supplement and supply a revision of the received account of the formative influences and intellectual traditions which shaped the development of Fabian Socialism. The importance of Comte and the English Positivists, Marx, J. S. Mill and the Utilitarians upon the formation of Fabian thought is a matter of existing recognition, whereas the apparently paradoxical influence of Herbert Spencer has been previously neglected, to the detriment of a proper understanding of the early development of Fabianism. A recognition of Spencer's importance requires a reappraisal not a rejection of the generally received view of the Fabians as the 'New Utilitarians.' Fabian theory emerged out of a process of blending and modifying the traditions of Radicalism, Positivism and Socialism. The emergence of that theory was conditioned by the experience of middle class intellectuals facing new social and economic uncertainties in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. It is as intellectuals who see themselves as practical men that the Fabians most clearly emerge as the 'New Utilitarians'

A Critical Analysis of Holmes\u27s Theory of Torts

In this Article I will first attempt to describe Holmes\u27s theory of torts in a sufficiently broad context to reveal his methodology, the assumptions underlying his methodology, and the relation between Holmes\u27s methodology and his substantive theory. After placing Holmes\u27s theory within the philosophical tradition of nineteenth-century positivism, I shall attempt a practical critique of Holmes\u27s methodology by analyzing its assumptions, the reasonableness of these assumptions, and the matters the methodology is forced to conclude are irrelevant. I then focus on Holmes\u27s substantive theory to see whether it is internally coherent in light of these methodological assumptions. The analysis concludes by isolating the novel theoretical concepts introduced by Holmes to explain tort liability. This work is a preliminary to further theorizing about tort liability. It is purely critical and analytical