Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Mill, John Stuart

  • Toleration Extremism: Notes on John Stuart Mill

    Given the extreme polarization in the political sphere, the Left's totalitarian crack-down on free speech gives aid and comfort to the opposite extreme and the notion that all speech must be tolerated. One finds this extremism in John Stuart Mill. I show what it wrong with it in a penetrating entry enshrined at MavPhil: Strictly…

  • Toleration Extremism: Notes on John Stuart Mill

    Should absolutely all speech be tolerated? I return a negative verdict at Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical.

  • The Pig, the Fool, and Socrates

    Millian meditations over at Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical. (The 'over' is redundant; but I like the sound of it.)

  • Giles Fraser on A. C. Grayling on Voting

    Here, with a tip of the hat to Karl White: John Stuart Mill was another philosopher who believed something similar. In 1859 he published his Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform, in which he proposed a voting system heavily weighted towards the better educated. “If every ordinary unskilled labourer had one vote … a member of any profession requiring…

  • Lukas Novak Against the Millian Theory of Names

    Lukas Novak in a comment writes, It seems to me that the theory [the Millian theory of proper name] must fail as soon as its psychological implications are considered (those about beliefs are among them). In a judgement "Peter is wise" Peter must be somehow represented, not just linguistically but mentally. And since we are…

  • What Exactly is Kripke’s Puzzle About Belief?

    I will try to explain it as clearly and succinctly as I can.  I will explain the simplest version of the puzzle, the 'monoglot' version.  We shall cleave to English as to our dear mother. The puzzle is generated by the collision of two principles, one concerning reference, the other concerning disquotation.  Call them MILL…

  • Ortcutt and Paderewski: Against the Millian Theory of Proper Names

    Saul Kripke's Paderewski puzzle put me in mind of a rather similar puzzle — call it the Ortcutt puzzle — from W.V. Quine's seminal 1956 J. Phil. paper, "Quantifiers and Propositional Attitudes" (in The Ways of Paradox, Harvard UP, 1976, pp. 185-196).  Back to Ortcutt! The ordinary language 'Ralph believes that someone is a spy' …

  • Toleration Extremism: Notes on John Stuart Mill

    In the wake of the murderous rampage by Muslim terrorists at Charlie Hebdo in Paris on 7 January, many have embraced a form of extremism according to which any and all (public) expression must be tolerated.  This entry questions this extremism as we find it in John Stuart Mill. Here are two passages from Chapter…

  • The Pig, the Fool, and Socrates

    A reader opines: I like animals because I think they're a higher form of life. They have no pretenses about what they are; a dog can achieve levels of serenity and fulfillment of which I cannot conceive by merely being a dog and doing dog things. Myself, on the other hand, I could be the…