J.S. Mill’s ‘psychological theory’ of the mind

Journal article

Abstract:: This paper examines John Stuart Mill’s ‘psychological theory’ of the mind, as he set it out in his Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy. After outlining Mill’s theory and the problem he finds with it, the paper discusses four different interpretations that have been suggested, before proposing a new alternative reading. The matter is of intrinsic interest to anyone who sees value in trying to get the bottom of tricky texts about puzzling questions by great philosophers, but I argue also that the investigation may help us with another vexed interpretative issue relating to an even more famous philosopher, David Hume, and that it may hold lessons for the philosophy of mind today.

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Publisher:: Taylor and Francis
Journal:: British Journal for the History of Philosophy More from this journal
Volume:: 31
Issue:: 3
Pages:: 513-527
Publication date:: 2022-10-28
Acceptance date:: 2022-10-03
DOI:: 10.1080/09608788.2022.2132909
EISSN:: 1469-3526
ISSN:: 0960-8788

Copyright holder:: William Mander
Rights statement:: © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis GroupThis is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDer-ivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distri-bution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered,transformed, or built upon in any way.

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