Mill’s Empiricism

Mill’s notion of logic allows for the definition of certain predicates that signify features that are not present in things we obtain through ordinary experience. These types of predicates have no sense in themselves, and any proposition regarding their existence appears false. Mill also struggled with the logic of subject terms possess definite meaning, but do not specifically symbolize something. Mill's argument seems to be that language’s purpose is to state matters of fact about the world. He believes in both logical terms, such as ‘is’ or ‘is not’ or ‘and’, and non-logical terms. The subject and predicate terms of propositions, some of which are ancient to this language, construct non-logical terms. Mill follows that these are the ones that are not are defined on the basis of these primitive terms, while all others are somehow defined by them. Thus, meanings result from the connection of subject terms and predicate terms to things and their attributes. Despite this observation, Mill remains unclear on the specific relations between such things. It is through Mill's empiricism that these things and attributes to which the primitive terms of language are connected and presented to us in ordinary experience, either through sensory experience or inner awareness of our own states of consciousness.

For Mill, subject terms and predicate terms construct propositions together. As Mill assumes thoughts themselves to be propositional, it is thus the propositions themselves that set the limits of thought. In other words, Mill's conception of empiricism establishes the limits of what is thinkable. It follows that all knowledge is relative to us, or rather to our own consciousness. As there are inevitably parts of the world that we have not experienced, our minds may possess beliefs and knowledge of things of which we are not conscious. In addition, there are parts of things too small or too far to observe solely through ordinary sense, as well as things that we seem to be unable to see, but which we could see if we performed certain actions on the object itself. Such knowledge or belief is not obtained through direct experience, but rather through deduction from direct experience. Regardless, as our knowledge of such things and our beliefs about them cannot be thought of except as similar to, or resembling, things or attributes of which we are conscious of through sense experience or inner awareness, they remain relative to us.

Mill rejects the idealism of some philosophers that argues that the only grounds that justify beliefs about ordinary things is direct consciousness. Rather, he holds there is nothing in the being of attributes of things that ontologically determines that such things must be sensed when they exist. Mill maintains that material objects, as the permanent possibilities of sensation, exist independently of being sensed. But, provided that the observer is correctly positioned, these are capable of being sensed; though un-sensed they are still part of the world of sensory experiences.

Mill also rejects the view of other philosophers that there exists things or entities beyond the phenomenal world. According to such a viewpoint, phenomena are in fact the effects of such things, but those things, as outside of ordinary experience, are different from those phenomena. Unlike material things as the permanent possibilities of