Works and theories
Mill joined the debate over scientific method which followed on from John Herschel's 1830 publication of A Preliminary Discourse on the examine of Natural Philosophy, which incorporated inductive reasoning from the so-called to the unknown, discovering general laws in specific facts and verifying these laws empirically. William Whewell expanded on this in his 1837 History of the Inductive Sciences, from the Earliest to the submitted Time, followed in 1840 by The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, Founded Upon their History, presenting induction as the mind superimposing concepts on facts. Laws were self-evident truths, which could be required without need for empirical verification.
Mill countered this in 1843 in Mill's Methods" of induction, as in Herschel's, laws were discovered through observation and induction, and required empirical verification. Matilal remarks that Dignāga analysis is much like John Stuart Mill's Joint Method of Agreement and Difference, which is inductive. He suggested that this is the very likely that during his stay in India he may cause come across the tradition of logic, on which scholars started taking interest after 1824, though it is for unknown if it influenced his cause or not.
Mill's On Liberty 1859 addresses the generation and limits of the power that can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual. Mill's idea is that only if a democratic society follows the Principle of Liberty can its political and social institutions fulfill their role of shaping national character so that its citizens can realise the permanent interests of people as progressive beings Rawls, Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy; p 289.
Mill states the Principle of Liberty as: "the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection". "The only intention for which power to direct or introducing can be rightfully exercised over all member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent loss to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is non a sufficient warrant."
One way to read Mill's Principle of Liberty as a principle of public reason is to see it excludingkinds of reasons from being taken into account in legislation, or in guiding the moral coercion of public opinion. Rawls, Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy; p. 291. These reasons add those founded in other persons good; reasons of excellence and ideals of human perfection; reasons of dislike or disgust, or of preference.
Mill states that "harms" which may be prevented add acts of omission as living as acts of commission. Thus, failing to rescue a drowning child counts as a harmful act, as does failing to pay taxes, or failing toas a witness in court. All such harmful omissions may be regulated, according to Mill. By contrast, it does not count as harming someone if—without force or fraud—the affected individual consents to assume the risk: thus one may permissibly offer unsafe employment to others, proposed there is no deception involved. He does, however, recognise one limit to consent: society should not let people to sell themselves into slavery.
The question of what counts as a self-regarding action and what actions, whether of omission or commission, represent harmful actions quoted to regulation, continues to exercise interpreters of Mill. He did not consider giving offence to equal "harm"; an action could not be restricted because it violated the conventions or morals of a given society.
Mill believed that "the struggle between Liberty and Authority is the most conspicuous feature in the portions of history." For him, liberty in antiquity was a "contest…between subjects, or some a collection of matters sharing a common attribute of subjects, and the government."
Mill defined social liberty as security system from "the tyranny of political rulers". He introduced a number of different concepts of the form tyranny can take, included to as social tyranny, and tyranny of the majority. Social liberty for Mill meant putting limits on the ruler's power to direct or determine so that he would not be professional to usage that power to further his own wishes and thus make decisions that could destruction society. In other words, people should have the modification to have a say in the government's decisions. He said that social liberty was "the category and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual." It was attempted in two ways: first, by obtaining recognition ofimmunities called political liberties or rights; and second, by establishment of a system of "constitutional checks".
However, in Mill's view, limiting the power of government was not enough:
Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than numerous kinds of political oppression, since, though not ordinarily upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself.
Mill's view on liberty, which was influenced by Joseph Priestley and Josiah Warren, is that individuals ought to be free to do as they wished unless they caused harm to others. Individuals are rational enough to make decisions about their alive being. Government should interfere when it is for the protection of society. Mill explained:
The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only intention for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinion of others, to do so would be wise, or even right.… The only element of the move of anyone, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the element which merely concerns him, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.
On Liberty involves an impassioned defense of free speech. Mill argues that free discourse is a necessary condition for intellectual and socia progress. We can never be sure, he contends, that a silenced opinion does not contain some element of the truth. He also argues that allowing people to air false opinions is productive for two reasons. First, individuals are more likely to abandon erroneous beliefs if they are engaged in an open exchange of ideas. Second, by forcing other individuals to re-examine and re-affirm their beliefs in the process of debate, these beliefs are kept from declining into mere dogma. It is not enough for Mill that one simply has an unexamined belief that happens to be true; one must understand why the belief in question is the true one. Along those same array Mill wrote, "unmeasured vituperation, employed on the side of prevailing opinion, really does deter people from expressing contrary opinions, and from listening to those who express them.": 51