James Mill
Mill, James (1773-1836) According to Mill, the vividness and frequency of associations between sensations glues simple sensations into complex ideas. Mill’s “mental mechanics” accentuated the composite nature of ideas. The concept of a window, for example, is made of smaller ideas (glass, wood, etc.). For Mill, the mind is predictable and passive. He was a enthusiastic follower of utilitarianism. As proposed by Mill’s friend Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), personal and governmental decisions should be based on the usefulness (utilitarianism) of the outcome. Essentially a hedonistic view of the world, utilitarianists sought to maximize personal and corporate pleasure. Right and wrong were replaced with pleasure and pain. Mill’s greatest contribution was not in generating new insights but in providing a thorough summary of associationism. In 1829, he published Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind (revised by his son, John Stuart Mill, in 1869).
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