James Mill, Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind 2 - Yawns and hiccups

The latter part of the second volume of Mill’s book concerns the active or volitional part of the human mind. Mill notes that the cognitive and volitional sides of human mind share the same structure - for instance, volitional side also deals with sensations and ideas. The difference is, Mill suggests, that while sensations of the theoretical part are, in a sense, indifferent to the mind, the sensations of the volitional part are not, being either pleasant or such that the mind would want prolong, or painful or such that the mind would want to stop them. Mill makes it sound like the trivision of sensations would be hard and fast, while one might object that e.g. a sensation pleasant now might become indifferent and even painful, if it has to be endured too long.

Like indifferent sensations, pleasant and painful - or interesting - sensations can also be revived in ideas, Mill says, and such ideas of pleasant and painful sensations are called desires and aversions. This choice of nomenclature seems peculiar. Mill himself points out one possible point of contention: we also say that we desire things like cake, which are not sensations. In fact, Mill says, in all such cases we ultimately desire some sensation, e.g. the taste of the cake. Yet, there is a more important point of contention, because we can think of a pleasure we’ve had without desiring it. Mill offers the explanation that desires are actually only ideas of future pleasures. This explanation seems insufficient, because we could think of future pleasures and still not yet desire them. Indeed, it seems far more plausible to take desire as a primitive concept, especially as Mill’s explanation of pleasures already implicitly referred to it (pleasure is a sensation we would want or desire to continue).

In case of pleasant and painful sensations, Mill continues, we also make associations to their causes. In fact, thinking about such causes might affect us more than thinking of the pleasures and pains themselves. For instance, we might think of a past stomach ache with indifference, but still avoid the food that we think caused this sickness at the time. Mill appears to think that such affections are not just caused, but also defined merely by such associations, which seems again insufficient - surely they also contain the aspect of us wanting to gain or avoid something.

Mill notes that we often have stronger affections toward more remote causes of pleasures and pains. For instance, people often desire wealth, power and dignity more than, say, food. Mill has a quite convincing explanation for this peculiarity: remote causes, like money, allow us to gain more and a larger variety of pleasures than mere immediate causes.

An important subset of affection toward remote causes concerns other persons. In some cases, Mill notes, such affections are awakened by shared experiences and common interests. Then again, he adds, we also have a general compassion toward all humans, because the similarities with them make us associate their pleasures and pains with our own pleasures and pains. The more similarities we have toward some group of people, the more affection we have for them, for instance, in case of people from the same class (in a pre-Marxist fashion, Mill insists that only privileged classes could have such a class consciousness).

Mill touches also aesthetic affections, but unfortunately, not in any great detail. His main point is that we call sensations beautiful and sublime not because of themselves, but because of associations they convey in us. Thus, the humming of a beetle is found beautiful, not because of any intrinsic feature, but because it awakens in us the notion of summer. Because such associations may vary from one person to another, there is no universal criterion of beauty, Mill concludes: black seems ugly in a culture, where it is associated with death, beautiful in a culture, where it is associated with festivities. What is especially lacking in Mill’s account is the explanation what kind of associations are required for calling something beautiful or sublime.

When we have an idea of ourselves as the only possible cause for gaining some future pleasure or for averting some future pain (or some of their causes), we have a motive, Mill defines. Clearly, this definition works only if we assume, like him, that all thoughts of future pleasures involve desire. In any case, motives can work against one another, and indeed, Mill insists, only another motive can prevent us putting one into action. Different people are affected in different measures by same motives, and a particular affinity to some motive is called disposition. Mill notes that in common parlance we often confuse affections, motives and dispositions: thus, we may speak of lust when speaking of a positive affection toward sex (idea of sex as causing desirable sensations), of a motive for engaging in sexual relations (idea of ourselves as instigators of sex) or of a disposition to engage in sexual relations.

In a Humean manner, Mill considers cause and effect to be nothing more than a name for a regular association of certain events. Thus, he sees no problem in saying that sensations cause certain bodily actions - we can say that a pungent odour makes us sneeze, while a certain sensation in our stomach makes us hiccup. These examples might make Mill’s analysis of causation seem suspect, since it seems more likely that in such cases the sensation is not really the cause of the bodily movement , but merely shares with it a common cause (some bodily process).

In any case, because Mill thinks sensations can produce bodily movements, he sees no difficulty in ideas causing them also. In fact, he points out laughter caused by humour or weeping caused by sadness as examples of this kind of causation. Of course, Mill adds, such uncontrolled weeping is still not voluntary action. What is still required is the presence of a desire: when motives make us act, they are called will.

Mill does not then believe in any motiveless will. He insists also that will cannot awaken its own motives - this would be like baron Munchhausen lifting himself from his own hair. This rather plausible suggestion makes Mill go even so far as to suggest that it has no effect on the train of ideas, being just a process of translating ideas into action. Mill considers two possible objections. First is the notion that we often seem to will to recollect something. Mill’s answer is that actually we always only desire to do so. Similarly, to the second objection that we often will to attend to some sensations or ideas, Mill answers that attending means just that we find these sensations or ideas interesting. Mill’s answers seem just verbal confusions, since he admits that the very element that makes acts into acts of will (desire or interest) is involved also in these two cases. One might even rephrase the objections in a manner suggesting that there is a choice involved. Suppose we are attending to something complex, like a bicycle. The idea we have of it has different aspects, and we may then choose to attend to one of these aspects, say, one of the tires. Couldn’t we then say that we willed or wanted to attend to the tire?

James Mill, Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind 2

Second volume of Mill’s work on philosophy of mind clearly divides into two different parts, and I shall treat the latter part in a writing of its own. The first part continues the discussion Mill started in the first volume, that is, the analysis of common concepts pertaining to human cognition.

The first of these concepts are relational terms. You might remember from my previous post that Mill appeared to accept only monadic predication, which seems, of course, problematic for understanding relations. Mill’s solution is to suggest that relational terms like “parent-child” are actually names for a single phenomenon, consisting of two things. The different names just emphasise different aspects of this same totality. Connected to this notion is Mill’s idea that difference and opposition is necessary at least for such conscious entities as us - we do not really sense or think anything, if there is no change in our sensations and ideas. Together these ideas suggest surprisingly close tendencies with broadly Hegelian philosophers, who view the world as an necessarily interconnected system of oppositions.

Mill goes into great details classifying the various possible relations: difference and sameness of sensations, sensations as preceding one another, spatial relations of objects, temporal relations of objects, quantitative equality and inequality of objects, qualitative likeness or unlikeness of objects, same or different composition of ideas and ideas as preceding one another. A clear fault in Mill’s schema is the ignorance of relations with more than two relata. The closest Mill comes to discussing them comes with spatial relations, as he admits that even the idea of position of an object involves relations to all other objects. Still, even here Mill tries to simplify matters and concentrates on juxtaposition of two objects and such pairs like high and low or front and back.

If we inspect Mill's account of spatial relations in more detail, we find him, in a manner reminiscent of Fichte, reducing the genesis of our experience of space into muscular exertions, by which we move ourselves or things around us. In another sense, Mill’s notion of space reminds one of Leibniz, because just like him, Mill says that space is nothing but an abstraction from all the concrete positions and spatial relations between things. While Kant would object that surely space is prior to positions in it, he might approve Mill’s admission of a subjective element in our notion of space - we always associate a place with a further place, thus making our notion of space infinite.

A further peculiar element in Mill’s notion of space is that when we think of empty space, he insists, we think of something positioned in that space and then the absence of this something. This is a feature of Mill’s general theory of privative statements - he insists that thinking of absence of something, we think of both that thing and its absence (e.g., when thinking of darkness, we think of light and its absence). In case of space, this would mean that by empty space, we always mean space empty of something. Indeed, he confirms, because our experience of space is intrinsically related to the idea of something resisting our efforts, we cannot think of any space empty of everything.

Mills account of time is similar enough to his account of space that we do not have to deal with it in great detail - like space is for Mill just an abstraction of all positions, time is nothing more than just an abstraction from all successions. Reminiscent of Kantian tradition, Mill connects numbers also with successions. In other words, he points out that although numbers are used to count the greatness of synchronously existing objects, the act of counting happens through some successive operation.

Mill also investigates the notion of personal identity, especially over time, and reflection. His basic solution to this conundrum is to point out that personal identity is just a special case of any identity. Identity as such, say, of other persons, we come to know by seeing a person and remembering that we saw her earlier. Similarly, Mill says, we are always conscious of ourselves, remember being conscious of ourselves and hear testimonies of others concerning us at times, which we don’t remember.

Mill’s explanation seems flawed in many ways. Firstly, one might point out that he hasn’t ever really explained what it means of being conscious of oneself, because saying that consciousness in general is just a general name for sensations and ideas explains nothing about self-consciousness - what are we conscious about when we conscious of ourselves? Secondly, Mill’s explanation would at most tell what evidence we use to justify our assertions of self-, or indeed, any identity, but not what it means that something is identical with itself. Finally, while it is undoubtedly obvious that our assertions and experiences of self-identity are particular examples of assertions and experiences of identity, one might wonder, in the manner of Fichte, whether e.g. our experience of self-identity underlies our experience of all other identities (that is, whether we must be able to identify ourselves, before being able to identify anything else).

James Mill: Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind 1 (1829)

In my previous post on James Mill, I noted that he emphasised the need for the study of the human mind as a precondition for planning education. Mill tackles this very topic in his two-volumed Analysis. First volume, which I will be studying now, deals roughly with the theoretical side of the human mind, while the consideration of the practical side is left for the second volume.

Mill’s viewpoint is clearly empiricist and he begins with an assumption of Humean undertones that everything in our experience is reducible to sensations (what Hume would call impressions), ideas, formed on basis of sensations, and groups and trains of ideas, generated from sensations and ideas through association. Starting from sensations, he enumerates the usual smell, hearing, taste and sight, divides sensations of touch into sensations of (moderate) temperatures, sensations of tactile contact, sensations of disorganisation, such as pain or itch, and sensations involving muscular exertion, and adds the sensations belonging to alimentary canal and possibly also to other intestines.

Mill’s portrayal of these various types vary from ordinary to perplexing, latter being exemplified by his insistence that the effects of opium are sensed in the alimentary canal and just strengthened by associated ideas. Indeed, one might argue that Mill should have added a separate class for clearly pleasurable sensations, such as is occasioned by stimulation of various substances and sex. In any case, Mill makes an important remark that when speaking of sensations, at least English has a deplorable lack of distinct words for a) sensation of one kind (say, a smell), b) whatever causes this sensation (also known as smell) and c) the organ for this type of sensation (yet again, smell).

Ideas, Mill continues, are then traces of sensations. While we have some say on what we sense e.g. by changing our position in relation to our environment, he affirms, we cannot control what ideas we will have or think about, because they are generated by sensations and other ideas through association. This association is governed, again in a Humean manner, by habit - if we are used to sensing various sensations or ideas together, either simultaneously or successively, we are bound to think one part of this group when another part is sensed or thought.

Although the account is rather simple, there are some questions that Mill leaves unanswered. For instance, Mill notes that in case of succession we are used to following the train of thoughts to the direction of the process involved: thus, a farmer is used to thinking of first planting the seed and then the seed sprouting. Problem is that we often think such processes in reverse and particularly do so, when looking for explanations, for instance, if we want to explain why plants grow, we think first of their growing and only then the idea of someone planting the seeds. Another problem is that Mill does not point out that there are associations, which appear to be a necessary product of the way we sense - for instance, a combination of colour with extension seems not just coincidental nor even one based on the nature of things sensed, but on a fact that we cannot sense coloured things, which are not extended.

Such groups and trains of ideas can, then, form a single idea out of many individual ideas, Mill says. Thus, since we are accustomed to sensing, say, a distinct rosy smell with a certain kind of sight, we tend to think of them as a single unit (a rose). Similarly, temporal trains of ideas should form complex ideas of processes.

The purpose of language, Mill suggests, is merely to communicate to others or to our future selves these various sensations and ideas, either individually or as complex trains of thought. Later on, he adds another purpose for the language, that is, making it possible to think of such otherwise difficult ideas like a polygon with hundred sides. This seems a very limited understanding of the purposes of language. Particularly, this appears not to note that sentences of a language are meant to indicate e.g. that something happens or happened, not just that we have sensed or thought something. Mill himself appears to be at least unconsciously aware of this, since he notes that all verbs carry with them the notion of existence. Yet, Mill uses “existence” here in a very strong sense, which makes him instantly think of this immediate connection as a detriment to language - if we speak of e.g. what chance is, Mill suggests, we immediately assume that chance is something existent, namely an individual object. It seems obvious that we need not go so far, in other words, when we say that chance is so and so, we truly affirm something about chance without assuming that chance is an individual existent.

The trains of thought we express in language indicate, Mill suggests, causal relations, relations of resemblance or different names for same things. The third option here is the most perplexing, since Mill includes in it such mathematical statements as one plus one equals two. One might accept this classification in such simple cases, but whenever the calculations become complex enough, it is doubtful that we have any concrete idea to name in both sides of the equation. For instance, can we really say we have a distinct idea of what 1000^1000 is meant to say? What this expression indicates is more like a certain task of calculation (multiply 1000 with itself 1000 times), and the sentence connecting this task to its result indicates a certain relation between numbers.

The remaining part of the first volume is dedicated to an analysis of certain central concepts of human cognition in terms of concepts introduced thus far. For instance, Mill suggests that consciousness means no feeling distinct from sensations and ideas, but is simply a general name for both of them: if I am conscious of something, I either sense or have an idea of it. Although one might agree with Mill that consciousness is nothing distinct from sensations and ideas, one might still ask in the manner of Leibniz whether consciousness - or better, conscious sensations and thoughts - could form a subspecies of all sensations and ideas. Indeed, we might assume that different sensations and ideas have various degrees of consciousness and by moving our attention to one aspect of a sensation or an idea we might become more aware of its components.

Of the concept of conception Mill notes that it simply refers to complex ideas. This is undoubtedly true description of how some thinkers have used the word or similar expressions in other language (say, Begriff in German). Yet, other thinkers seem to use concept and conception only in relation to linguistically expressed notions (thus, a mental image of a bicycle would not yet be a concept, whereas a linguistic expression “bicycle”, perhaps also with a definition of the expression, would certainly be). Related to this is the question whether conception is somehow active in comparison with mere sensation and “having an idea”. Mill suggests that the supposed activeness of conceiving is just a misdirection of the active form “I conceive” and that conceiving is as passive an event as dreaming or dying, which can also be expressed in an active form. While Mill’s point is well made, it could be that when philosophers have spoken of the activity of conception, they might have actually meant the relative independence of conceptions from external objects. After all, we can conceive things that do not exist, especially if conception is understood in a linguistic manner.

In case of imagination, Mill goes even farther in his redefinition of words and suggests that imagination is just a new term for having a train of ideas. This seems to go against all ways the word has been used. In an early modern discussion, imagination was closer to what we would nowadays call memory, meaning thinking of anything that isn’t currently present, even if we have perceived it earlier. Nowadays, we are mostly using imagination in the sense that Mill disparages as Dugald Stewart’s redefinition of the word: that is, imagination is a train of new thoughts. “It is implied in every wish of the child to fly”, Mill says, trying to be sarcastic, but we indeed speak of imaginative kids as having such inventive thoughts, often divorced from reality.

Especially confusing is Mill’s discussion of belief. He at first divides belief into three distinct classes: belief in events and real existences, belief in testimony and belief in the truth of propositions. Later he makes a reclassification, saying that belief in testimony is just a special case of a belief in events (those told by other people). Nowadays, many philosophers might want to classify all beliefs as concerning propositions, because the content of belief can be expressed as a proposition. On a closer look, Mill himself might agree, because he thinks that one part of beliefs in propositions, those concerning individual objects, are essentially beliefs in events and real existences (he would just have to make the assumption that all such beliefs can be expressed in propositions). This still leaves the problem that Mill’s account of propositions is too simple, allowing in principle only monadic predication - a problem we already saw in the case of his idea of mathematics.

An even bigger problem lies in Mill’s attempt to describe belief merely in terms of sensations, memories, associations and abstractions. For instance, he says that in the case of sensations and memories, belief means simply having them - if we sense something red or have a memory of it, we believe it. These cases already seem problematic. If Mill means just that having a sensation or having a memory is such an experience we can never doubt, we might accept that this is true, but this is, for the most part, not a very characteristic way to speak of belief (one might even say that only philosophers say things like “I believe I have a sensation of redness”, whereas usually people use the concept of belief only in cases where there is at least a possibility of things not being so). If, on the other hand, Mill would want to use the notion of belief here in a more substantial manner - say, as a belief that there is something that causes this sensation of redness or that there was something that I now remember as red - then we immediately see that belief is definitely not identical with sensation or memory. True, sensation and memory might well be evidence and occasion for such a belief, but there might still be doubt e.g. whether what we remember really was red and not blue.

Mill’s mistake is even clearer in his supposed examples of belief. If we spin around very fast and stop, we get the feeling of the earth spinning beneath us. Mill suggests that we also believe that earth is really spinning, which seems far-fetched. Even more, Mill makes a quick throwaway line that fearing something implies also believing in it - hence, he says, anyone who is afraid of ghosts must believe in them. A quick consideration makes Mill’s statement seem unfounded, even if he thought it so self-evident to need no justification. Picture a person hearing a strange noise in her house during the night. She might be afraid that there is a burglar in her house, but she might still be uncertain whether there is any burglar and thus not really believe in the existence of this burglar.

Indeed, Mill appears to make no distinction between modalities of actuality and possibility, belief being intimately related to the former - we might consider e.g. a sensation or memory, without being sure of its object being real. In the more complex cases, he says that habitual associations just are beliefs - if we tend to think of the sun rising after it has set, we believe that it will rise again after setting. Again, this regular or habitual association might be a ground for believing something, but there are cases where we might still have doubts, whether e.g. the sun will rise everyday for the whole infinity of time.

This is not to say Mill’s book is completely without merits. His account of abstraction is particularly interesting. Mill’s basic point is the difference between what calls notation and connotation. A word like “red” notes a certain property of individual objects, but it also connotes something, namely, those very objects that can be called red. In more modern terms, we might say Mill is here talking about the difference of intension and extension. Abstraction, then, means that we ignore the connotation of the word and think only of its notation: we think of redness without any reference to red things. Mill’s point is that abstractions are then nothing truly existent, but always dependent on the ignored connotation - there is no Platonic redness floating around without red objects.

James Mill

(1773-1836)

Some thinkers have had the misfortune of being overshadowed by both their predecessors and their successors. This is true e.g. of Karl Reinhold, a philosopher known often just as the link from Kant to Fichte. A similar fate has been experienced by James Mill, who is often regarded just as the person to transfer Bentham’s utilitarianism to his more famed son, John Stuart Mill.

Even so, James Mill was an interesting philosopher, with a wide range of interests. Indeed, this variety calls for some selection. I will not look at his role as a historian of India, although this was a work close to his professional interests as an administrator in East India Company. I will also ignore his economic writings, mainly because Mill's main achievement was to inspire David Ricardo to complete his book on economy. Instead, I shall focus on Mill’s political essays, the most famous of which is undoubtedly his essay on government.

Mill begins his look on the best form of government with a conundrum. Clearly, pure democracy is impossible, he says, because every time a governmental decision is required, we cannot go around asking everyone what to do. Then again, aristocracies and monarchies can - and even more strongly, Mill appears to say - tend to devolve into dictatorships where rulers follow their own interests. Sometimes solution was seen to be in mixing democracy with monarchy and/or aristocracy. Mill noted that this would mean merely that the government would not be unified, but a battlefield of the different interests of the nobles and the commons.

Mill’s simple answer is representation - the decision must be made by people representing the real owners of the political power. Evidently, representation is pointless in case of monarchies and aristocracies and does not remove the threat of tyranny. One might naturally ask whether the representational democracies don’t also face the threat of tyranny, in case representatives gain too much power. Mill’s answer is that if the representatives are regularly changed then they will have an incentive to rule for the best of the whole community - after all, they will soon be just regular citizens.

Mill’s account of representation has some notable gaps. First of all, it is a bit unclear whether Mill really suggests that all the representatives will be changed at appointed time, without any chance of same representatives being re-elected. A more important problem is Mill’s somewhat naive assumption that the interests of an individual representative will in every case coincide with the supposed interest of the whole community. Indeed, Mill seems to leave quite out of consideration the possibility that representatives might make decisions benefiting just some factions within the people. Mill does try to prevent this possibility by rejecting all systems where representatives are voted to represent certain professions or class. Yet, even if one would not officially be a representative of certain class, she might still feel the interests of this particular class as aligning with one’s own and make decisions based on it.

Despite his rather republican conclusions, Mill at once takes back his statement that mixed governments could not work and notes that a king and a House of Lords could still be maintained, if the representative government would find some use for them in administration. Mill’s suggestion might have been just a political move, meant to allay concerns that he would be deposing British royalty. Even so, he makes the further conservative move that voting could have an income limit. He doesn’t want the limit to be too great, which would make the system practically aristocratic, but allows a small limit, because, he says, people with little money can take care of the interests of those with no money. Furthermore, although Mill does not want rich people to buy votes for themselves and therefore endorses a secret ballot, he casually notes that representatives will most likely be rich and aristocratic in the good sense of the term, that is, capable men.

My use of the word “men” is quite deliberate. Mill states in clear terms that women are to be treated like children: they do not take part in voting, neither as voters not as candidates, because, Mill says, their interests are taken care of by adult men. Nowadays, Mill’s reasoning seems just preposterous. Even if one would believe that fathers and husbands always have the interests of their children and wives in their mind, the case of orphaned, unmarried women would still need some further solution.

Mill’s system of government has, then, an elitist streak. Indeed, he notes that while even a nation of mere uneducated people would benefit from representational democracy, its true worth is shown in nations with a large, educated middle class. Then again, Mill’s middle class is not a closed club, but people can become part of it by educating themselves. Indeed, Mill endorsed the idea that all people could and should receive education, with the exception of those that have some clear syndrome making learning difficult. This is the part where Mill’s philosophy most closely touches what was classically meant by philosophy, as Mill notes that finding best means of education requires first determining what human mind is like and what makes it happy. We’ll see in a later post what to make of this side of Mill’s philosophy.

In addition to representative government, Mill also spoke for freedom of press. According to him, there are only two cases where it should be restricted. Firstly, press should refrain from publishing slanderous lies told of individual persons. They could still make headlines about true scandals, except in cases where scandals are not true scandals, although irrationally held to be so because of outdated morals. Secondly, press should not hinder the proper activities of government. This does not mean that government could not be criticized, and in fact, Mill takes it to be the duty of free press, because people need to no when a time for a revolution is at hand.