posted
So I decided to take a philosophy class this semester, knowing that I probably wouldn't do well, but that the class itself would be very fun.
Our first assignment is just a summary of John Stuart Mills essay , Of Liberty and necessity. Of Liberty And Necessity
My teacher was very specific in that we could use any resource we wanted, including our "smart friends" he said. You guys are about as smart as they come honestly.
I've read through it a few times and am now looking up words I don't know. I was just curious if anyone had read it, or knew of a analysis of it somewhere to point in the right direction.
posted
I'm glad this essay still gets taught. The central idea that no human action, as a human action, flows regularly in the way of a scientific law can recommend a lot to the behavioral "sciences." I shudder when I think about how much the social sciences place political and economic weight upon explaining behavior through supposedly causal chains. The third section about necessity is especially telling.
I guess we are in better stead than we used to be. Now when people act against type or model, we simply call them irrational, as opposed to saying that their decisions are inconceivable or impossible. You can still see this in evidence in Thomas Frank's book, "What's the Matter with Kansas" Apparently, the good people of Kansas are broken because they don't vote with an eye towards the priorities Franks bases his models upon.
quote:The central idea that no human action, as a human action, flows regularly in the way of a scientific law can recommend a lot to the behavioral "sciences." I shudder when I think about how much the social sciences place political and economic weight upon explaining behavior through supposedly causal chains.
Um...
Mill's point seems to me to be that cause and effect apply perfectly well to human actions, but that "necessity" is a poor choice of synonym for "cause and effect."
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posted
I read through it and Mill says in the second paragraph that he agrees that we react to things, and all our circumstances put together will help us determine what we will do.
It's kind of a free will debate.
And then he talks about necessity.
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quote:The question, whether the law of causality applies in the same strict sense to human actions as to other phenomena, is the celebrated controversy concerning the freedom of the will: which, from at least as far back as the time of Pelagius, has divided both the philosophical and the religious world. The affirmative opinion is commonly called the doctrine ofa Necessity, as asserting human volitions and actions to be necessary and inevitable. The negative maintains that the will is not determined, like other phenomena, by antecedents, but determines itself; that our volitions are not, properly speaking, the effects of causes, or at least have no causes which they uniformly and implicitly obey.
I have already made it sufficiently apparent that the former of these opinions is that which I consider the true one
I guess we don't interpret this section similarly.
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quote: Mill's point seems to me to be that cause and effect apply perfectly well to human actions, but that "necessity" is a poor choice of synonym for "cause and effect."
Kinda. Mill argues more about how free will and causation are not inconsistent together, in that causation need not lead to absolute determination. Mill basically argued that while certain things will happen if unimpeded (cause and effect), causation does not entail a "must", and so social factors and other things influence a human being and it is thus impossible to assign cause A with effect B.
He also equated, in some sense, necessity with causation.
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posted
I should also point out that Mill put forward his own causal, deterministic theory of psychology.
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posted
I haven't read the essay (I hate Mill with a passion), but I'm basically getting from the comments that he was a soft determinist?
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posted
While that categorization *might* be useful comparatively, to simply label him a soft determinist misses the point a bit, I think. What exactly do you "hate"about him?
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posted
Oh, I just severely dislike utilitarianism, and thus hate him by association. I know it's somewhat fallacious reasoning there, but whatever. If a class asks me to read Mill, then I will, but otherwise I won't choose to read him. Utilitarianism was enough.
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