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John Stuart Mill (john + stuart_mill)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	50%

Selected Abstracts

Critical Theorizing: Enhancing Theoretical Rigor in Family Research

JOURNAL OF FAMILY THEORY & REVIEW, Issue 3 2009
Stan J. Knapp
Theory performs vital descriptive, sensitizing, integrative, explanatory, and value functions in the generation of knowledge about families. Yet theory and research can also simultaneously misconceive, desensitize, misdirect, misinterpret, and devalue. Overcoming the degenerative potentialities of theory and research requires attention to critical theorizing, a joint process of (a) critically examining the explicit and implicit assumptions of theory and research and (b) using dialogical theoretical practices. I draw upon the work of John Stuart Mill to argue that critical and dialogical theorizing is a vital and necessary practice in the production of understandings of family phenomena that are more fully scientific and empirical. A brief examination of behavioral research on marital interaction illustrates the importance of critical theorizing. [source]

Théodule Ribot's ambiguous positivism: Philosophical and epistemological strategies in the founding of French scientific psychology

JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES, Issue 2 2004
Vincent Guillin
Théodule Ribot (1839,1916) is regarded by many historians of psychology as the "father" of the discipline in France. Ribot contributed to the development of a "new psychology" independent from philosophy, relying on the methods of the natural sciences. However, such an epistemological transition encountered fierce opposition from both the champions of the old-fashioned metaphysical psychology and the representatives of the "scientific spirit." This article focuses on the objections raised by the latter, and especially philosophers of science, against the possibility of a scientific psychology. For instance, according to Auguste Comte, psychology does not satisfy certain basic methodological requirements. To overcome these objections, Ribot, in his La Psychologie Anglaise Contemporaine (1870/1914), devised an epistemological strategy that amounted to invoking criticisms of Comte's views made by other representatives of the positivist school, such as John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source]

The "Vanity of the Philosopher": Analytical Egalitarianism, Associationist Psychology, and Eugenic Remaking?

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS AND SOCIOLOGY, Issue 3 2008
Andrew Farrant
These comments explore the relationship between analytical egalitarianism, race-blind theorizing, and associationist psychology. Associationist psychology, though making an implicit appearance in Vanity, was central to the egalitarian analysis provided by James Mill and John Stuart Mill. Indeed, associationist considerations lay at the heart of Mill's race-blind analysis of cottier tenure, and his exchange with Thomas Carlyle over the "Negro Question." These comments also note some intriguing comparisons between the debate over eugenics and the debate over socialist calculation. [source]

Henry George and Classical Growth Theory: A Significant Contribution to Modeling Scale Economies

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS AND SOCIOLOGY, Issue 1 2001
John Whitaker
It is widely recognized that the analysis of economic growth in Henry George's Progress and Poverty was considerably influenced by the British classical tradition, especially the writings of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and John Stuart Mill. What has been less clearly perceived is that George made significant extensions to the classical theory. This paper's aim is to provide an interpretation, and to some extent a "rational reconstruction," of George's positive analysis, largely leaving aside the striking normative lessons he drew from it. George's unsatisfactory treatment of capital is disposed of in Section I, while Section II,the core of the paper,follows George's lead in aggregating capital and labor into a single productive factor which is employed in a given natural environment. Section III adds the complication of improvement in the arts of production, and Section IV deals briefly with George's views on land speculation. Section V assesses, comparing George with his contemporary Alfred Marshall. [source]

Holmes, Langdell and Formalism

RATIO JURIS, Issue 1 2002
Patrick J. Kelley
Both Holmes and Langdell believed that science was the model for all human inquiry and the source of all human progress. Langdell was influenced by an unsophisticated scientism, which led him to attempt to identify the true meaning of legal doctrines. Holmes was influenced by the sophisticated positivism of John Stuart Mill, which led him to attempt to reduce legal rules and doctrines to scientific laws of antecedence and consequence, justified only by their social consequences. Both Holmes and Langdell concluded that judges ought to decide a case by applying the rules established by precedent, without appeal to any special claims of justice and without appeal to any higher-order normative principle. [source]

The Strange Career of British Democracy: John Milton to Gordon Brown

THE POLITICAL QUARTERLY, Issue 4 2008
DAVID MARQUAND
Political debate in modern Britain has been structured by four narratives or traditions, called here ,Whig imperialist', ,Tory nationalist', ,democratic collectivist' and ,democratic republican'. The Whig imperialist tradition goes back to Edmund Burke; it is a tradition of responsive evolution, flexible statecraft, genial optimism and abhorrence of dogmatic absolutes. It prevailed for most of the nineteenth century, for most of the interwar period and for most of the 1950s and early-1960s. Its Tory nationalist counterpart is tense, rebarbative and often shrill. At its core lies a primal fear of the dissolution of authority and a collapse of the social order. Its most notable exponents include Lord Salisbury, Enoch Powell and Margaret Thatcher. The democratic collectivist tradition stresses ineluctable progress towards a just and rational society, to be achieved by a strong, essentially technocratic central state, with the power and will to replace the wasteful, unjust chaos of the market place by planned co-ordination. Formative influences on it were the great Fabian socialists, George Bernard Shaw and Sidney and Beatrice Webb; it achieved its apotheosis under the Attlee Government of 1945-51. The democratic republican tradition is much more inchoate: its exponents have been the awkward squad of British democracy. The most glittering stars in the democratic republican firmament were probably John Milton, John Stuart Mill and R.H. Tawney. It stresses active self-government and republican self respect, embodied in a vigorous civil society and strong local authorities. During the ninety-odd years since Britain belatedly acquired a more-or-less democratic suffrage, the first three traditions have all been tested, almost to destruction. But though the fourth has had great influence on social movements of all kinds, governments at the centre have done little more than toy with it, usually for brief periods. The great question now is whether Britain is about to experience a democratic republican moment. [source]