Academic misconduct is a problem of growing concern across the tertiary education sector. While plagiarism has been the most common form of academic misconduct, the advent of software programs to detect plagiarism has seen the problem of misconduct simply mutate. As universities attempt to function in an increasingly complex environment, the factors that contribute to academic misconduct are unlikely to be easily mitigated. A multiple case study approach examined how academic misconduct is perceived in universities in in Australia, New Zealand (...) and the United Kingdom via interviews with academics and administrators. The findings show that academic misconduct is a systemic problem that manifests in various ways and requires similarly diverse approaches to management. Greater consistency in policies and procedures, including a focus on preventative education for both staff and students, is key to managing the mutations of academic misconduct that continue to plague the higher education sector globally. (shrink)

Between the later views of Wittgenstein and those of connectionism 1 on the subject of the mastery of language there is an impressively large number of similarities. The task of establishing this claim is carried out in the second section of this paper.

The idea of different folk psychologies is the idea that among the world's cultures there are those whose folk, or commonsense, psychologies differ in theoretically significant ways from each other and from western folk psychology. This challenges the claim that folk psychology is a 'cultural universal'. The paper looks first of all at what are called 'opulent' accounts of folk psychology, which employ a wide-ranging and more complex set of psychological concepts, and 'core' accounts, which employ a much more restricted (...) set of such concepts. With respect to both kinds of account it is argued that field studies of the folk-psychological concepts of a number of ethnic groups indicate significant differences between the concepts used by those groups and those of western folk psychology; and hence do not support the view that folk psychology is a cultural universal. (shrink)

Connectionism: Debates on Psychological Explanation, Volume Two Edited by Cynthia Macdonald and Graham Macdonald Blackwell, 1995. Pp. xvii + 424. ISBN 0-631-19744-3. 50.00 (hbk). ISBN 0-631-19745-1 16.99 (pbk). New books on the philosophy of religion Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason By J.L. Schellenberg, Cornell University Press, 1993. Pp. 217. ISBN 0-8014-2792-4. $36.50 (hbk). Reason and the Heart By William J. Wainwright, Cornell University Press, 1995. Pp. 160. ISBN 0-8014-3139-5. $28.50 (hbk). The Rationality of Belief and the Plurality of Faith Edited (...) by Thomas D. Senor, Cornell University Press, 1995. Pp. 291. ISBN 0-8014-3127-1. $39.95 (hbk). (shrink)

The theory which holds that in the Tractatus a thought is a psycholo-gical entity is foundational to important interpretations of Wittgens-tein's philosophical psychology. The view that the theory receives poweful support from Wittgenstein's 1919 letter to Russell has been challenged by Peter Carruthers. This paper argues that Carruthers's challenge fails.

The theory which holds that in the Tractatus a thought is a psychological entity is foundational to important interpretations of Wittgenstein's philosophical psychology. The view that the theory receives poweful support from Wittgenstein's 1919 letter to Russell has been challenged by Peter Carruthers. This paper argues that Carruthers's challenge fails.

Stephen Nathanson's clear-sighted abridgment of Principles of Political Economy, Mill's first major work in moral and political philosophy, provides a challenging, sometimes surprising account of Mill's views on many important topics: socialism, population, the status of women, the cultural bases of economic productivity, the causes and possible cures of poverty, the nature of property rights, taxation, and the legitimate functions of government. Nathanson cuts through the dated and less relevant sections of this large work and includes significant material omitted (...) in other editions, making it possible to see the connections between the views Mill expressed in Principles of Political Economy and the ideas he defended in his later works, particularly On Liberty. Indeed, studying Principles of Political Economy, Nathanson argues in his general Introduction, can help to resolve the apparent contradiction between Mill's views in On Liberty and those in Utilitarianism, making it a key text for understanding Mill’s philosophy as a whole. (shrink)

Punishment and Reparations are sometimes held to express retaliatory emotions whose object is to strike back against a victimizer. I begin by examining a version of this idea in Mill's writings about natural resentment and the sense of justice in Chapter V of Utilitarianism. Mill's view is that the ?natural? sentiment of resentment or ?vengeance? that is at the heart of the concept of justice is essentially retaliatory, therefore has ?nothing moral in it,? and so must be disciplined or moralized (...) from without by the desire to promote the general welfare. I argue to the contrary that if ?reactive attitudes? like resentment and moral blame are understood as Strawson analyzed them, as essentially ?interpersonal? or ?second personal?, they have a different content and function. They implicitly demand respect in a way that also expresses respect for the victimizer as a member of mutually accountable community of moral equals. Some implications of this idea are discussed for the ?expressive theory of punishment? and ?civil recourse? theories of torts. (shrink)

Stephen Nathanson's clear-sighted abridgment of _Principles of Political Economy_, Mill's first major work in moral and political philosophy, provides a challenging, sometimes surprising account of Mill's views on many important topics: socialism, population, the status of women, the cultural bases of economic productivity, the causes and possible cures of poverty, the nature of property rights, taxation, and the legitimate functions of government. Nathanson cuts through the dated and less relevant sections of this large work and includes significant material omitted (...) in other editions, making it possible to see the connections between the views Mill expressed in _Principles of Political Economy_ and the ideas he defended in his later works, particularly _On Liberty_. Indeed, studying _Principles of Political Economy_, Nathanson argues in his general Introduction, can help to resolve the apparent contradiction between Mill's views in On Liberty and those in _Utilitarianism_, making it a key text for understanding Mill’s philosophy as a whole. (shrink)

"The Philosophy of the Future" which has cost the author 'more than half a century of toil', is a stout defense of the principle of Causation both against the philosophical scientists who, following Hume, would reduce cause to customary sequence among our sense-impressions, and against the subordination by many writers on logic of the notion of cause to that of reason or ground. To cancel causality is to efface all distinction between truth and falsehood. Scientia est cognoscere causas. "The sole (...) essential function of all thinking is to discriminate between cause and effect." "There is no known form of thought which is not ultimately reducible into an assertion of cause and effect." From the vantage ground of this theorem, with its corollary that "a cause cannot be known except through its effects, or an effect apart from its cause", Mr. Hebberd trains his guns upon the systems of Hume, Kant, Hegel, Mill, and other logical writers. He reviews successively Space, Time, the Concept, Judgment, and finally Induction, defined as "the discovery of causal processes by means of physical and mental experiment", in the attempt to show that all categories are but species and derivative forms under the supreme and all-embracing category of causality. The logical discussion is followed by chapters on God, Freedom and the Soul, in which the metaphysical application of his principles is made. The causal concept is utilized to strengthen the ontological argument. "The conception of a sufficient cause, fully understood, is identical with the theistic conception of God." This conception of a sufficient cause involves unity, infinitude, freedom and love (if an infinite being acts at all, or causes any changes, it must be for the sake of others). The fact again that the causal nexus is "a reality imperceptible to the senses" discredits materialism and positivism, and is used in demonstration of the existence and immortality of the soul. Mr. Hebberd attempts no exact definition of cause, but this, as he says in the appendix, is because he regards it as incapable of ordinary definition, "there being no wider genus under which it can be ranged as a species" (p. 214). He omits also any discussion of the origin of the causal concept. While frequently inveighing against innate ideas and Kantian apriorities, and rejecting impartially "the Scottish philosophy of 'common sense', with its short and easy method of 'intuitions', the French and English empiricism, the Teutonic illusionism" (p. 95) he yet declares: "Man does come into the world equipped, not with intuitions, but with the means of attaining to an assured knowledge of the world as the workmanship of an infinite and benevolent Being. For he comes endowed with the prerogative of thought; but to think is to affirm causality" (p. 157). What is this but intuitionism? Mr. Hebberd's work, it will be seen, is a discussion at once ambitious and concise of the deepest problems of logic and metaphysics. His book, in our judgment, is well worth the attention of the philosophical reader, who cannot but enjoy its incisive style, its trenchant criticisms, its wide outlook upon philosophic thought, and its original insights into its problems. -The Princeton Theological Review, Vol. 12 [1914]. (shrink)

Saul Kripke in his revolutionary and influential series of lectures from the early 1970s (later published as the book Naming and Necessity) famously resurrected John Stuart Mill's theory of proper names. Kripke at the same time rejected Mill's theory of general terms. According to Kripke, many natural kind terms do not fit Mill's account of general terms and are closer to proper names. Unfortunately, Kripke and his followers ignored key passages in Mill's A System of Logic in which Mill enunciates (...) a sophisticated and detailed theory of natural kind terms that anticipates and is in some ways superior to Kripke's. (shrink)

Within the small body of philosophical work on strikes, to participate in a strike is commonly seen as to refuse to do the job while retaining one’s claim upon it. What is the relationship, though, between liberalism and the right to strike? This is our main question.

The Empiricists represent the central tradition in British philosophy as well as some of the most important and influential thinkers in human history. Their ideas paved the way for modern thought from politics to science, ethics to religion. _The British Empiricists_ is a wonderfully clear and concise introduction to the lives, careers and views of Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Mill, Russell, and Ayer. Stephen Priest examines each philosopher and their views on a wide range of topics including mind and (...) matter, ethics and emotions, freedom and the physical world, language, truth and logic. The book is usefully arranged so that it can be read by thinker or by topic, or as a history of key philosophical problems and equips the reader to: recognize and practice philosophical thinking understand the methods of solving philosophical problems used by the British Empiricists appreciate the role of empiricism in the history of Western philosophy. For any student new to philosophy, Western philosophy or the British Empiricists, this masterly survey offers an accessible engaging introduction. (shrink)

Why is ethics part of philosophy? Stephen Darwall's Philosophical Ethics introduces students to ethics from a distinctively philosophical perspective, one that weaves together central ethical questions such as "What has value?" and "What are our moral obligations?" with fundamental philosophical issues such as "What is value?" and "What can a moral obligation consist in?"With one eye on contemporary discussions and another on classical texts,Philosophical Ethics shows how Hobbes, Mill, Kant, Aristotle, and Nietzsche all did ethical philosophy how, for example, (...) they sought to gain insight into what has value through understanding what value itself is. After an introductory section, and one on main approaches to metaethics, chapters discuss "modern" philosophical moralists Hobbes, Mill, and Kant and pre- and postmodern philosophical approaches to ethics in Aristotle, Nietzsche, and the ethics of care. Throughout, the reader is invited to do rather than just read about philosophical ethics and, in doing so, to think through questions that face all thoughtful human beings. Themes include the nature of value and moral obligation, freedom and choice, human flourishing, excellence and merit, radical critiques of morality, and the importance of relationships for human life. (shrink)

Francis Hutcheson's An Inquiry Into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, published in 1725, arguably contains the first broadly utilitarian theory of rights ever formulated. In this essay, I argue that, despite its subtlety, there are crucial lacunae in Hutcheson's theory. One of the most important, which Mill seeks to repair, is that his theory of rights lacks a conceptually necessary companion, namely, a corollary account of obligation. Hutcheson has no theory of fully deontic obligations, much less (...) an account of the relational obligations that, as Hohfeld famously argued, are the conceptually necessary correlates of claim rights of the kind Hutcheson wishes to theorise. Like Hume, Hutcheson subversively redefines ‘obligation’ as a motive of self-interest or the approval of morally good motives by moral sense. This leaves Hutcheson without any account of the obligations that are the necessary correlates of claim rights. Mill does significantly better on this score but ends up giving a pragmatic ‘reason of the wrong kind’ for rights and obligations. Hutcheson thus begins a line of thought shown by him to have been powerless to ground rights without independent deontic premises from the start. (shrink)

The essay examines Mill's proof of the utilitarian principle in Utilitarianism and attempts to articulate what Mill himself would have regarded as the proof. It is suggested that the easiest construction of the proof would involve Mill in conflating the proof with the sanction for the principle. Other possibilities--including, in the end, the possibility which this essay favors--require that important steps in the proof be regarded as immediate or intuitive, rather than supported by reasons. Questions are raised concerning what Mill (...) is trying to prove, what "the utilitarian principle" is which functions in the proof, and what the relation is between duty and sanction. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to describe some of John Stuart Mill’s views about property rights in land and some implications he drew for public policy. While Mill defends private ownership of land, he emphasizes the ways in which ownership of land is an anomaly that does not fit neatly into the usual views about private ownership. While most of MiII’s discussion assumes the importance of maximizing the productivity of land, he anticipates contemporary environmentalists by also expressing concerns about (...) excessive exploitation of land for productive use. I extrapolate from these remarks to suggest changes that Mill might have favored regarding ownership rights ina world in which people aimed to decrease productivity. And, I suggest, it is a virtue of utilitarianism that it so readily supports changes in important principles when circumstances change significantly. (shrink)

Can we conceive cogently of all knowledge – in particular, all knowledge of truths – as being knowledge-how? This paper provides reasons for thinking not only that is this possible, but that it is conceptually advantageous and suggestive. Those reasons include adaptations of, and responses to, some classic philosophical arguments and ideas, from Descartes, Hume, Peirce, Mill, and Ryle. The paper’s position is thus a practicalism – a kind of pragmatism – about the nature of knowledge, arguing that all knowledge (...) is knowledge-how to act – to do this, to do that. Such a conception can include, too, a distinctive view of the metaphysical relation between knowledge and belief. We see that, contrary to what most contemporary epistemologists say, knowledge need not be a form of belief. Instead, a belief that p can be a way simply of enriching or strengthening knowledge that p. It can do this in a paracticalist way, by allowing one to do more with the knowledge. (shrink)

Collegiality among nurses is necessary for the accomplishment of the tasks of care, for safety and quality improvement and for professional self‐regulation. Nurses, especially in hospitals, are more likely to work in groups than other professionals, yet those relationships have not been well explored. Bullying, intimidation and fear are frequently identified, while respectful disagreements are rarely described. In this paper, a single story by a nurse about her conversational conflict with another nurse is given a close reading. I use the (...) ‘triadic line’ of William Carlos Williams to format an extended excerpt of interview text, in order to make visible the rhythms and organization of spoken language. Mills' concept of a ‘vocabulary of motives’ is used to examine the rhetorical strategies deployed by each nurse. Finally, I analyze the narrative structure of the story, highlighting the ways that moral certainty and uncertainty function to involve the reader in the story, and the complex role of virtue in nursing discourse. (shrink)

Creating education systems that promote democratic sustainability has been the concern of political thinkers as diverse as J. S. Mill, Dewey, Benjamin Barber and Derek Bok. The classic dichotomisation of democratic theory between deliberative democrats and Schumpeterian democrats suggests that education in the service of democracy can be constructive—that is, provide a student with the skills necessary to elect her leaders without changing her nature—or reconstructive—that is, fundamentally and radically reshape the student to produce a citizen whose goals are transformed (...) to be congruent with society. Michael Oakeshott, who has written extensively both on political regimes and on the purpose of liberal education, offers a third way to assess the connection between government and education. Despite his own dismissal of civic or political education as fundamentally vocational and thus beyond the boundaries of the liberal arts, this paper provides a potentially surprising Oakeshottian defence of political education within the liberal arts with reference to the importance he places on experience as a pedagogic tool. Thus, Oakeshott's educational philosophy has a certain resonance with the recent calls to locate the relevance of liberal arts within the burgeoning development of experiential civic engagement programmes in American universities. (shrink)

Stephen Turner has explored the ongms of social science in this pioneering study of two nineteenth century themes: the search for laws of human social behavior, and the accumulation and analysis of the facts of such behavior through statistical inquiry. The disputes were vigorously argued; they were over questions of method, criteria of explanation, interpretations of probability, understandings of causation as such and of historical causation in particular, and time and again over the ways of using a natural science (...) model. From his careful elucidation of John Stuart Mill's proposals for the methodology of the social sciences on to his original analysis of the methodological claims and practices of Emile Durkheim and Max Weber, Turner has beautifully traced the conflict between statistical sociology and a science offactual description on the one side, and causal laws and a science of nomological explanation on the other. We see the works of Comte and Quetelet, the critical observations of Herschel, Buckle, Venn and Whewell, and the tough scepticism of Pearson, all of these as essential to the works of the classical founders of sociology. With Durkheim's essay on Suicide and Weber's monograph on The Protestant Ethic, Turner provides both philosophical analysis to demonstrate the continuing puzzles over cause and probability and also a perceptive and wry account of just how the puzzles of our late twentieth century are of a piece with theirs. The terms are still familiar: reasons vs. (shrink)

Originally published in 1980, this is a study of the 'romanticism' of Coleridge and Wordsworth. Their concern with creativity, and the conditions that helped or hindered their own artistic development, produced a new concept of mental growth - a 'modern' view of the mind as organic, active, and unifying. In particular, we see how their aesthetics evolved from a personal and intuitional need to reaffirm 'value' in their own lives. Their discovery of the fundamental ambiguity of such intuition is discussed (...) in relation to some ideas of Empson, Gombrich, and Ehrenzweig. As well as an essay in criticism, this is a contribution to the history of ideas, drawing together points in the background of philosophical and psychological theory from Hartley and Wesley to John Stuart Mill. Since many of our ideas about imagination, symbolism, and creativity are ultimately derived from Coleridge and Wordsworth, this is a book for students of romantic and modern literature. (shrink)

Stephen Nathanson's clear-sighted abridgment of Principles of Political Economy, Mill's first major work in moral and political philosophy, provides a challenging, sometimes surprising account of Mill's views on many important topics: socialism, population, the status of women, the cultural bases of economic productivity, the causes and possible cures of poverty, the nature of property rights, taxation, and the legitimate functions of government. Nathanson cuts through the dated and less relevant sections of this large work and includes significant material omitted (...) in other editions, making it possible to see the connections between the views Mill expressed in Principles of Political Economy and the ideas he defended in his later works, particularly On Liberty. Indeed, studying Principles of Political Economy, Nathanson argues in his general Introduction, can help to resolve the apparent contradiction between Mill's views in On Liberty and those in Utilitarianism, making it a key text for understanding Mill’s philosophy as a whole. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of whether there might be secular analogues of the theological virtues. Beginning with a Kierkegaardian account of the unity and structural underpinnings of Christian accounts of faith, hope and love as distinct from moral virtues more generally, it utilizes ideas from Stanley Cavell, John Stuart Mill and Jonathan Lear to develop a phenomenology of familiar moral experiences whose underlying logic points us in the direction of an essential role that might be served by secular inflections (...) of the theological virtues in living out a full awareness of our finitude. I argue that they help embody a perfectionist orientation to the world, one in which the experience of women is pivotal, and which places great emphasis on the moral value of a certain kind of vulnerability. (shrink)

Leslie Stephen, author, literary critic, social commentator and the first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography, published his two-volume History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century in 1876. This led him to further investigation and study of utilitarianism, whose proponents believed that human action should be guided by the principle of ensuring the happiness of the greatest number of people. While working on many other projects, especially the Dictionary, and haunted by domestic tragedy in the sudden death (...) of his second wife in 1895, Stephen struggled for two decades with this undertaking, calling it the 'utilitarian bog': the long-awaited three-volume work was finally published in 1900. Volume 2 examines the life and political background of James Mill whose writings were influential in the dissemination of utilitarianism. (shrink)

Leslie Stephen, author, literary critic, social commentator and the first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography, published his two-volume History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century in 1876. This led him to further investigation and study of utilitarianism, whose proponents believed that human action should be guided by the principle of ensuring the happiness of the greatest number of people. While working on many other projects, especially the Dictionary, and haunted by domestic tragedy in the sudden death (...) of his second wife in 1895, Stephen struggled for two decades with this undertaking, calling it the 'utilitarian bog': the long-awaited three-volume work was finally published in 1900. Volume 3 examines John Stuart Mill, the son of James Mill, philosopher, economist and a proponent of utilitarianism who was influential in the development of political liberalism. (shrink)

The subject of this chapter is the complex and confusing course of the discussion of cause and teleology before and during the period of Mill and Comte, and its aftermath up to the early years of the twentieth century in the thinking of several of the major founding figures of disciplinary social science. The discussion focused on the problem of the sufficiency of causal explanations, and particularly the question of whether some particular fact could be explained without appeal to purpose. (...) In response to such questions, the defenders of the new conception attempted to replace older terminology with new (“function” for “purpose,” for example), sometimes muddling the issues, sometimes turning them into terminological disputes, and sometimes making the different positions difficult to distinguish. The problem of methodological unity in the social sciences is rooted in the discussions of the time. (shrink)

Call the proposition that the good life consists of excellent, distinctively human activity the Aristotelian Thesis. I think of a photograph I clipped from the New York Times as vividly depicting this claim. It shows a pianist, David Golub, accompanying two vocalists, Victoria Livengood and Erie Mills, at a tribute for Marilyn Home. All three artists are in fine form, exercising themselves at the height of their powers. The reason I saved the photo, however, is Mr. Golub's face. He (...) is positively grinning, as if saying to himself, “And they pay me to do this?”. (shrink)

In this collection of essays on the core values of liberalism, Stephen Holmes—noted for his scathing reviews of books by liberalism's opponents—challenges commonly held assumptions about liberal theory. By placing it into its original historical context, _Passions and Constraints_ presents an interconnected argument meant to fundamentally change the way we conceive of liberalism. According to Holmes, three elements of classical liberal theory are commonly used to attack contemporary liberalism as antagonistic to genuine democracy and the welfare state: constitutional constraints (...) on majority rule, the identification of individual freedom with an absence of government involvement, and a strong emphasis on the principle of self-interest. Through insightful essays on Hobbes's analysis of the English Civil War in _Behemoth_, Bodin's writings on the benefits of limited government, and Mill's views on science and politics, Holmes shows that these basic principles provide, to the contrary, a necessary foundation for the development of democratic, regulatory, and redistributionist politics in the modern era. Holmes argues that the aspirations of liberal democracy—including individual liberty, the equal dignity of citizens, and a tolerance for diversity—are best understood in relation to two central themes of classical liberal theory: the psychological motivations of individuals and the necessary constraint on individual passions provided by institutions. Paradoxically, Holmes argues that such institutional restraints serve to enable, rather than limit, effective democracy. In explorations of subjects ranging from self-interest to majoritarianism to "gag rules," Holmes shows that limited government can be more powerful than unlimited government—indeed, that liberalism is one of the most effective philosophies of state building ever contrived. By restricting the arbitrary powers of government officials, Holmes states, a liberal constitution can increase the state's capacity to focus on specific problems and mobilize collective resources for common purposes. _Passions and Constraint_ is an assessment of what that tradition has meant and what it can mean today. (shrink)

With great energy and clarity, Sir James Fitzjames Stephen (1829-1894), author of History of the Criminal Law of England, and judge of the High Court from 1879-91, challenges John Stuart Mill's On Liberty and On Utilitarianism, arguing that ...

Covenant Theology brings together a number of perspectives on this important feature of Christian tradition from across the theological discipline. Based on four lectures delivered at the University of Liverpool, each address is followed by a response, allowing respected scholars of the field to engage in lively and public debate. The progression from Old Testament to New Testament, then to systematic theology and pastoral theology is intentional, as readers are encouraged to view theology as an integrative discipline rather than a (...) series of fragmented specialisms with little or no relation to one another. With contributions from Stephen Clark, James Dunn, Gary Badcock, and Robin Gill, this academic book combines fresh insights with more traditional approaches and makes for an informed and interesting read. · Lively public debate from key scholars responding to each point. · Discussions from the full length of the Bible. · Practical in its application. · Wide view of theological debate. · Links theology to other disciplines. · Encourages everyone to join the debate. (shrink)

The beginning of the 20th century coincides with the establishment of the modern disciplines of the social sciences, chiefly in the United States but on a smaller scale in Western Europe as well. These disciplinary structures, which varied from country to country, provide the organizing principle of this handbook.The immediate context of the disciplinarization of sociology was the transformation of two fields, statistics and history, which shed large chunks of content as they took their current shape. The principal body of (...) thought that is excluded from the discipline of history, for example, was philosophy of history. Émile Durkheim provided the earliest and most coherent reconciliation of this fundamental tension, and it is striking how similar the lists of intellectual sources and problems actually were between these principal solutions to the common problem of constructing a “science” out of the materials and topics in question. Durkheim's analytic strategy in this chapter relies on the preexisting methodological tradition about cause and statistics that was established in Mill's System of Logic, but rejected Mill's own understanding of the role of probability in favor of the method of concomitant variation, which Mill had thought was inapplicable in social science. (shrink)

Experts and intellectuals in the social sciences have a long history of relating to the state and the public. These relations vary in kind from those based on technical knowledge applied to policy to cults to social scientists in organic relations to social movements to organized attempts to develop public policyguided by social science knowledge. The most successful early attempts were cameralism and official statistics, but intellectuals like John Stuart Mill also reached a wide public audience in the nineteenth century. (...) In the late nineteenth century, social reformmovements claimed expert knowledge. As the social sciences entered the university, however, the forms of influence changed. Under the influence of the Rockefeller philanthropies, social science became more ‘realistic’ and the emphasis shifted to creating professions dependent on academic knowledge and certification. Think tanks and other forms of knowledge intervention developed which relied on academic social science. Public intellectuals, however, speaking not to professions or bureaucrats, remained important. (shrink)

The model of social science established in methodological writings of the 1830s and 1840s formed an ideal that has endured to the beginning of the twenty-first century. Subsequent authors have been obliged to excuse the social sciences for their failure to achieve this ideal model of science, to reinterpret the successes of social science in terms of it, or to construct alternative conceptions of social science in contrast to it. The ideal was worked out in two closely related texts, Auguste (...) Comte’s Cours de Philosophie Positiveand John Stuart Mill’s A System of Logic. The positive achievement of these texts was to clarify the application of the notion of “law” to the subject matter of social science. Their negative achievement was to eliminate, as much as possible, the role of teleological thinking from the study of the social realm. The subject of this chapter will be the reformulation of the ideas of cause and teleology before and during the period of Mill and Comte, and its aftermath up to the early twentieth century in the thinking of several founding figures of disciplinary social science. The discussion to be examined here focused on the problem of the sufficiency of causal explanations, and particularly on the question of whether some particular fact could be explained without appeal to purpose. In response to such questions, the defenders of the new conception attempted to replace older terms with new ones, replacing “purpose” with “function,” for example. (shrink)

_ Consequentialism_ collects, for the first time, both the main classical sources and the central contemporary expressions of this important position. Edited and introduced by Stephen Darwall, these readings are essential for anyone interested in normative ethics. Edited and introduced by Stephen Darwall, examines key topics in the consequentialist branch of moral theory. Includes seven essays which respond to the classic sources. Includes an insightful discussion of central topics in consequentialism by John Rawls and Amartya Sen. Includes classic (...) articles by key figures such Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Henry Sidgwick and G. E. Moore; and recent reactions to this work by philosophers including Philip Pettit, Derek Parfit, Samuel Scheffler, Peter Railton, R. B. Brandt, J. C. Harsanyi, and Robert Adams. (shrink)

_ _ _Consequentialism_ collects, for the first time, both the main classical sources and the central contemporary expressions of this important position. Edited and introduced by Stephen Darwall, these readings are essential for anyone interested in normative ethics. Edited and introduced by Stephen Darwall, examines key topics in the consequentialist branch of moral theory. Includes seven essays which respond to the classic sources. Includes an insightful discussion of central topics in consequentialism by John Rawls and Amartya Sen. Includes (...) classic articles by key figures such Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Henry Sidgwick and G. E. Moore; and recent reactions to this work by philosophers including Philip Pettit, Derek Parfit, Samuel Scheffler, Peter Railton, R. B. Brandt, J. C. Harsanyi, and Robert Adams. (shrink)

Leslie Stephen, author, literary critic, social commentator and the first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography, published his two-volume History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century in 1876. This led him to further investigation and study of utilitarianism, whose proponents believed that human action should be guided by the principle of ensuring the happiness of the greatest number of people. While working on many other projects, especially the Dictionary, and haunted by domestic tragedy in the sudden death (...) of his second wife in 1895, Stephen struggled for two decades with this undertaking, calling it the 'utilitarian bog': the long-awaited three-volume work was finally published in 1900. It examines the background to utilitarian theories and their development in Britain, focusing on the work of Jeremy Bentham, James Mill and John Stuart Mill. (shrink)

Leslie Stephen, author, literary critic, social commentator and the first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography, published his two-volume History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century in 1876. This led him to further investigation and study of utilitarianism, whose proponents believed that human action should be guided by the principle of ensuring the happiness of the greatest number of people. While working on many other projects, especially the Dictionary, and haunted by domestic tragedy in the sudden death (...) of his second wife in 1895, Stephen struggled for two decades with this undertaking, calling it the 'utilitarian bog': the long-awaited three-volume work was finally published in 1900. Volume 1 gives the social and political context of the rise of utilitarianism and examines its leading theorist, Jeremy Bentham. (shrink)

John Stuart Mill is known as the first canonical Western philosopher to espouse a stationary state of economic growth, and as such he can be seen as an important totemic figure for reformist strategies in environmental ethics. However, his reputation among environmental thinkers has been rendered more ambiguous in recent years by increased attention to his essay “Nature.” The “Nature” essay has been much used lately by critics to oppose claims that independent nature may properly be seen as important in (...) any way as an ethical guide or inspiration, and that Mill’s philosophy may feasibly be viewed as pro-environmentalist. This use of Mill’s essay is mistaken, and has undermined appreciation of the potential significance of Mill’s thought for environmental philosophy. When examining the most detailed of the critical treatments of the essay, reading “Nature” as an anti-environmentalist text badly distorts the essay’s meaning by ripping it from the context of Mill’s intentions as well as from the very specific and significant historical circumstances and biographical conditions of its production. Attending properly to these factors shows that the essay is unrepresentative of Mill’s general position and rather philosophically weaker than its reputation. Reading the text as a definitive statement of Mill’s supposed anti-naturalism is thus mistaken and fails to recognize different modes and significances in “following nature,” some of which Mill supported. The “Nature” essay is an aberrant outlier in the Mill canon, and one which should no longer be allowed to undermine Mill’s strong and important environmentalist credentials. (shrink)