History of Western Philosophy

4.12.2 John Stuart Mill [1806 1873]

Mill threads together empiricism and positivism [Mill's philosophy is significantly positivist even when it is not overtly so]: Later day British Empiricism [this includes Mill] has much in common with positivism [and herein lies the weakness of Mill's method of empirical logic and inductive inference, his law of causation, and rejection of a priori truthsdespite his great prolificacy and practical influence]

Mill's interest in science, like Saint-Simon's and Comte's, is motivated by his interest in social reform

4.12.2.1 The external world and the self

Mill holds that we can know only phenomena [though he admits the thing-in-itself]Mill's metaphysics is too limited to hold present interest

4.12.2.2 Mental and moral sciences

For social reform Mill calls for a reform of the mental and moral sciences

4.12.2.3 Psychological determinism

[^1] cause and effect, [^2] humans are free regarding inner desires, [^3] the will is not always hedonistic

4.12.2.4 Ethology

Science of formation of character

4.12.2.5 Social science

Mill's method would be complex: more like that of the complex physical sciences than of geometry: predictions are tendencies rather than positive statements

Science of government is part of the science of society

History when judiciously examined illustrates the empirical laws of societywhich can be checked verified by psychological and ethological laws

Social stasis and stability result from consensusdynamics is progression

4.12.2.6 Ethics

The greatest good of the greatest numberunlike Bentham: the quality of pleasure is important. Mill vacillates between [^1] the empirical hedonistic egoistic deterministic, and [^2] the intuitionistic perfectionistic altruistic free-willistic. This accommodating feature of Mill's theories made them attractive to many and useful in practice: his utilitarianism instituted a critical and intelligent conformity to conventional morality for a blind one

4.12.2.7 Liberalism

Mill fought intellectual battles for democracy and the rights of womenpointed out the "importance to man and society, of a large variety of types in character, and of giving full freedom to human nature to expand itself in innumerable and conflicting dimensions."

4.12.3 Herbert Spencer [1820-1903]

Subscribed to a synthetic unity of knowledge whose evolution is a compromise between intuitionism [the a priori] and empiricism His major work is First Principles 1860 1862. Spencer is sometimes regarded as the originator of Darwinism as the idea that Darwin's principles of evolution by natural selection is of universal application. Spencer published ideas on the evolution of the species before the publication of the works of Alfred Russell Wallace and Charles Darwin on the same topic but his theory of evolution was originally Lamarckian. He later accepted the theory of natural selection and in Principles of Biology, 1864, coined the phrase "survival of the fittest."

His evolutionary philosophy was Lamarckian, passive, mechanistic and noninteractive. Absolute uniformities of experience generate absolute uniformities of thoughtexternal uniformities over generations lead over generations [by evolution] to fixed association of ideas and necessary forms of thought. He does not tell "how it was possible for connections to be made at the dawn of knowledge which today are [or seem] impossible without an a priori synthetic mind."

4.12.3.1 Laws of evolution

Concentration differentiation formation

4.12.3.2 Biology

Adaptation of internal to external relations

4.12.3.3 Psychology

Consciousness is adaptation of serially ranged inner states to outer states

4.12.3.4 External world

Idealism is a disease of language"realism forced on us by the basal law of consciousness, the universal law of reason." "Ontological order and relation are the source of the phenomenal."

4.12.3.5 Ethics

Welfare of units and groups, not society, is the end [target] of morality:

4.12.3.6 Justice

The limit of evolution in which all humans achieve ends in harmony

Beneficence: mutual aid

4.12.3.7 Optimism

Life brings more happiness than misery

4.12.3.8 Hedonism

Good is the pleasurable

4.12.3.9 Politics

Spencer is against socialism and state interference; he is for competition and laissez faire in social, economic and political spheres

5 THE RECENT PERIOD: LATE 19TH TO 21ST CENTURY

I think of the recent period as the 20th and 21st centuries but not to the exclusion of the 19th century. The recent period can be seen this will be given an intrinsic refinement below as that period in which we are immersed to the point that it is difficult to have the objectivity that comes from distance and un-involvement. This is not to imply that objectivity is otherwise impossible or that there is an absolute value to distance and un-involvement

Recent tendencies grow out of the developments to this point and the cultural influences these include the cultural trends of the West including such main influences as Cartesianism, science and, within philosophy, the dualism of rationalism vs. empiricism and all its twists, turns and divisions. Philosophy starts from realism but by criticism [the conflict of] realism is found to be not absolute but depends upon the common culture the common paradigms, pictures, symbols and stories or myths. Cultural influences also include those from other modern, ancient and native societies and civilizations.

These influences are detailed below

5.1 INTRODUCTION

5.1.1 Influences on recent philosophy First, I outline some influences on recent philosophy. The "internal" influences are the trends arising in the history of philosophy until the recent period. "External" influences are the ascent of science and analysis, cultural influences, and the culture of the individual. This system of complex influences are the sources of influence upon recent philosophy. The development of a discipline is not deterministic recent philosophy may be better understood by an inclusion of the influences in the understanding; however the development of philosophy is not determined by the influences and contains its own elements of novelty. In order to continue as a vibrant discipline, philosophy must contain its own elements of novelty

5.1.1.1 The history and nature of philosophy: Thales to the modern period

What is accepted as philosophy in any age may be subject to the Kuhnian concept of the paradigm: the paradigm that defines acceptable practice includes implicit elements that are not fully spelled out that is not to say that they could not [or could] be spelled out.

5.1.1.1.1 Paradigms

There is also an explicit reflection upon practice and ideals that interact with the implicit attitudes in constituting the paradigm. However, it is not in the nature of philosophy to approach some delimitation or definiteness of subject matter in the way that science does.

The concept of paradigm is also somewhat paradigmatic. Kuhn held that different paradigms are incommensurable meaning that, while the words might be the same, the actual differences among alternate paradigms are so great as to constitute an insurmountable barrier to communication and understanding. Kuhn also held that the truth of each paradigm was relative to the culture and that paradigms contained no absolute truth; this point was emphasized by Paul Feyerabend. Given that each culture negotiates a world that is not entirely of their own creation and that different cultures live in worlds that are not completely alien, it follows that the different paradigms have some measure of truth and that they may share enough truth for there to be common truth and sharing of understanding.

Further, paradigms are not flat but multi-layered with elements of but not full hierarchy. For example, paradigmatic attitudes to truth in philosophy which are not the same as but not completely different from truth in philosophy are affected by and affect attitudes to the possibility of truth in general.

The possibility and nature of disciplines is thus complex and attitudes to this possibility are affected by realism, the pendulum [pendulums] of opinion, happenstance and fashion.

5.1.1.1.2 What is philosophy?

There is a limitation on defining or specifying the nature of any discipline. First, that such fields of activity are paradigmatic in the sense of Thomas Kuhn, i.e., that the definition is through practice and unwritten or unspoken or, in part, through at most partially explicit and definite norms. A second difficulty is that a purpose of definition is not only the understanding of the past but to understand and navigate the future. What is science? A difficulty of definition is that science adapts, within a broad framework, to the needs of the discipline or problem Subsequent

what is found in philosophy is a tailored formalization. As an example, there is a strong similarity between the transcendental method and what, in physics, has been called the Anthropic Principle. Argument from effects to causes, which lies at the heart of the scientific "method" of theory formulation, is a form of hypothesis-test, is also similar to the Kantian transcendental analytic.

I will list two candidate approaches to timeless, certain thought. The first seeks the ideal by balancing loss of information in generalization by abstraction; the second, the Kantian analytic, seeks the ideal by seeking the given in the immediate and asking what this must imply for any depth explanation, rather than seeking the given in the depth which is the preferred ideal of science. These two approaches are "point and counterpoint," they balance each other; in many areas of thought they occur in tandem. An example is Darwin's theory of evolution; in the direct method we seek a theory as an explanatory principle; alternatively, the theory is a mere organizing principle. In linguistics there are the synchronic and the diachronic approaches.

Generalization and abstraction: In formulating and criticizing a systematic metaphysics, generalization may be balanced by abstraction to avoid loss of certainty. Further, abstraction may introduce certainty. Consider, for example, the assertion that the world is equivalent to nothing[ness.] If that were true, we could deduce that there must be indeterministic processes. This question of the fundamental problem of metaphysics has been discussed in On Mind and Metaphysics and related essays.

The transcendental analytic of Kant: Kant asked, "What are the necessary conditions of the very possibility of an experience [including perception, knowledge, certainty] the formal features of which are space, time and the categories?" Kant's reply was, "Experience is possible only on the assumption that the formal features formed in experience are a priori conditions of existence." From this point, Kant was able to answer the challenge of Hume to show how knowledge was possible and to give an analysis of the forms of perception and knowledge. See Immanuel Kant, above.

Wittgenstein employed this idea in Tractacus Logico-Philosophicus. Wittgenstein argued that language must have an atomic form and from that to an atomic formulation of the nature of the world. Wittgenstein later abandoned this argument not as result of a deficiency of the method but because he abandoned the independence of atomic sentences.

Related to the transcendental analytic is a delineation and study of the forms of experience: space, time, causation, objecthood [which implies object constancy,] categoreality.

The transcendental method of Heidegger or the second transcendental method: see Martin Heidegger

The third transcendental method or transcendental logic