The Position of Induction in John Stuart Mill’s Logical System

Authors
Zahra Esmaeili
Seyed Mohammad Hakkak
Imam Khomeini International University
10.61186/mi.4.2.193
Abstract
Mill's emphasis on the denial of a priori knowledge caused him, as same as empiricists like Hume, to put a psychological account to explain many of his beliefs. In his opinion, the intellect is a whiteboard on which observation and experience draw patterns. In the next stage, the human psyche gets to work and forces a person to accept repetitive phenomena. This belief is reconfirmed over time and after repeating the monotonies in nature repeatedly; it is as if the discovery of any new law not only proves that law itself but also helps to establish other laws that have been obtained using this method. This research aims to reveal the place of induction in the logic of John Stuart Mill and also show that his efforts to justify induction were not enough. For this purpose, Mill's book” The System of Logic” has been studied and the opinion of some commentators has been expressed about it. During the discussion, Mill's opinion on analogy has been tried to be expressed and finally, a general picture of John Stuart Mill's logic has been presented.
Keywords
Induction
Mill
empiricism
causality
Induction by Simple Enumeration
Induction by Elimination
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Metaphysical Research
Volume 4, Issue 2 - Serial Number 8
December 2023
Pages 193-222