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Liberalism and Epistemic Diversity: Mill's Sceptical Legacy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 January 2012

Paul Kelly
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Abstract

Although John Stuart Mill places considerable emphasis on three information signalling devices – debate, votes and prices – he remains curiously sceptical about the prospects of institutional or social epistemology. In this paper, I explore Mill's modest scepticism about institutional epistemology and compare and contrast that with the attitudes of liberal theorists such as F. A. Hayek and John Dewey who are much more enthusiastic about the prospects of social epistemology as part of their defences of liberalism. The paper examines the extent to which Hayek and Dewey ignore concerns originally raised by Mill. I conclude that Mill's modest scepticism is reflected in the epistemological abstinence of contemporary liberal philosophers such as John Rawls, and that his elevation of philosophy over democracy remains a challenge to contemporary defenders of the political value of social or institutional epistemology.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Episteme , Volume 3 , Issue 3 , October 2006 , pp. 248 - 265
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2006

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References

Notes

1 This criticism goes back to the late nineteenth century and is repeated by Hayek and by liberals inspired by him. See Gray, J., Liberalism, Milton Keynes, Open University Press, 1986, p. 30Google Scholar.

2 For the origins of the contemporary view that liberalism and utilitarianism are incompatible see Rawls, J., A Theory of Justice, Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press, 1971, pp. 22–27Google Scholar.

3 See Mill, J.S., An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, vol. ix., London, Routledge, 1979, [1865]CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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5 That Mill thought this conception of moral truth might be pluralistic, albeit within a utilitarian justificatory framework, see Riley, J., ‘Defending Cultural Pluralism Within Liberal Limits’ Political Theory, vol. 30, (2002), pp. 68–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar and ‘On Quantities and Qualities of Pleasure’, Utilitas, vol. 5, (1993), 291–300CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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7 Mill, J.S., On Liberty, CW xviii., p. 258Google Scholar.

8 Haworth, A., Free Speech, London, Routledge, 1998, p. 68Google Scholar.

9 Mill, J.S., Principles of Political Economy, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, vols. II and III, London, Routledge, 1965Google Scholar.

10 Mill, J.S., Principles of Political Economy, CW vol. 2, p. 199Google Scholar.

11 Mill, J.S., Considerations on Representative Government, Essays on Politics and Society, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, vol. xix, London, Routledge, 1977Google Scholar.

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14 The Victorian preoccupation with Plato was not unique to Mill, but was prevalent amongst many of the great minds of the mid to late nineteenth-century. See Schultz, B., Henry Sidgwick: Eye of the Universe, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Mill does believe in social unity as solidarity; hence in his controversial argument in Considerations for a sense of national identity as underpinning his democratic institutions, he writes ‘It is in general a necessary condition of free institutions that the boundaries of government should coincide in the main with those of nationalities.’ Considerations, CW, Chap. 16. However, it is equally clear that he believes this sense of national solidarity must coincide with considerable diversity if it is to remain a free society. National identity and solidarity are not sufficient conditions of a free society.

16 For a subtle comparison and contrast of Mill and Bentham on democracy see Rosen, F., Jeremy Bentham and Representative Democracy, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1983, pp. 183–199Google Scholar.

17 Mill is not after all John Gray who regards Mill's belief in progress as a groundless illusion based on nothing more than a wager, see Gray, J., Mill On Liberty, A Defence, London, Routledge, 1983CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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20 For an overview of Hayek's thought see Gamble, A., Hayek: The Iron Cage of Liberty, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1996Google Scholar.

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26 Dewey, J., Creative Democracy: The Task Before Us, in The Later Works of John Dewey. 1925–1953, vol. 14: 1939–41, ed. Boydston, J.A., Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press, 1981, pp. 227–8Google Scholar.

27 This problem is appreciated by those who criticise deliberative democracy such as Chandran Kukathas in The Liberal Archipelago, as well as by those who are more sympathetic to it such as Iris Marion Young. See Justice and the Politics of Difference, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1990Google Scholar.

28 See Nagel, T., ‘Moral Conflict and Political Legitimacy’, Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 16, (1987), pp. 215–40Google Scholar.

29 A fact exemplified in Rawls's thesis about the burdens of judgement, see Rawls, J., Political Liberalism, New York, Columbia University Press, 1993, p. 54–7Google Scholar.