Mill's Antirealism

Philosophical Quarterly 66 (263):261-279 (2016)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

One of Mill's primary targets, throughout his work, is intuitionism. In this paper, I distinguish two strands of intuitionism, against which Mill offers separate arguments. The first strand, a priorism, makes an epistemic claim about how we come to know norms. The second strand, ‘first principle pluralism’, makes a structural claim about how many fundamental norms there are. In this paper, I suggest that one natural reading of Mill's argument against first principle pluralism is incompatible with the naturalism that drives his argument against a priorism. It must, therefore, be discarded. Such a reading, however, covertly attributes Mill realist commitments about the normative. These commitments are unnecessary. To the extent that Mill's argument against first principle pluralism is taken seriously, I suggest, it is an argument that points towards Mill as having an antirealist approach to the normative.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,593

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Arguments For Global Antirealism.Stanisław Judycki - 2010 - Studia Philosophica Wratislaviensia 5 (2):17-32.
Antirealism and universal knowability.Michael Hand - 2010 - Synthese 173 (1):25 - 39.
A DNA Account of Propositions as Events: Dummett, Nāgārjuna, Aristotle.Khristos Nizamis - 1999 - The Paideia Project Online: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy 1998.
Indeterminism and antirealism.Donald Davidson - 1997 - In C. B. Kulp (ed.), Realism/Antirealism and Epistemology. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 109--122.
The Return of James Mill.Mariangela Ripoli - 1998 - Utilitas 10 (1):105-.
Consciousness and realism.David Leech Anderson - 2007 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 14 (1):1-17.
James Mill on Peace and War.Ryuji Yasukawa - 1991 - Utilitas 3 (2):179.

Analytics

Added to PP
2015-09-01

Downloads
52 (#272,957)

6 months
2 (#668,348)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Christopher Macleod
Lancaster University

Citations of this work

Truth and assertion: rules vs aims.Neri Marsili - 2018 - Analysis 78 (4):638–648.
Mill's Metaethical Non-cognitivism.Peter Zuk - 2018 - Utilitas 30 (3):271-293.

Add more citations

References found in this work

Two Dogmas of Empiricism.W. Quine - 1951 - [Longmans, Green].
Two Dogmas of Empiricism.Willard V. O. Quine - 1951 - Philosophical Review 60 (1):20–43.
Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking.William James - 2019 - Gorham, ME: Timely Classics in Education. Edited by Eric C. Sheffield.
Moral realism: a defence.Russ Shafer-Landau - 2003 - New York: Oxford University Press.

View all 37 references / Add more references