A Critical Note on J. S. Mill's Classification of Fallacies

Abstract

Four distinct landmarks of the various attempts to grapple with the problem of error can be discerned from a broad perspective. Aristotle acknowledges and analyses the possibility of error in perceiving the common sensibles, and draws attention to the deceptiveness of appearance. He, however, claims that perception of the specific sensibles is immune to error. On this view, errors originate not only in the application of the senses under abnormal conditions-be they internal or external-but mainly in the transition from sensation to appearance. Bacon starts his new methodology with an analysis of the obstacles to epistemological progress, namely, the idols: fleeting images of reality. He identifies four categories of idols which he orders according to their origin; the first type of idols is innate, whereas the fourth is entirely imposed from without. For Bacon errors are principally prejudices and preconceived ideas which could and should be purged. They have to be eliminated to allow the construction of a true copy of the universe in the human intellect. Descartes examines the mechanism which produces erroneous ideas and finds it to be based on the discrepancy between the scope of the will and that of the understanding. According to Descartes errors occur when one misuses one's free will and forms judgements on matters which the understanding has not conceived clearly and distinctly. In Spinoza's rigid deterministic view there is no room for what may be called absolute errors, that is, errors which arise out of totally misguided ideas. On this view, errors originate in the privation of knowledge which mutilated and confused ideas involve. They are the consequences of knowledge of the first kind, namely, imagination, and would dissolve if they were to be supplemented with true ideas (Hon [1985], pp. 11-27). Notwithstanding the differences, these philosophical systems have in common the belief that knowledge amounts to truth: they all presuppose the possibility of eliminating all errors. Although they acknowledge fallibility they do not regard it as an inherent feature of the systems they propound. John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), who advocates an empirical doctrine, diverges from this dogmatic way. For Mill there is always in natural philosophy some other possible explanation of the same facts: 'some geocentric theory instead of heliocentric, some phlogiston instead of oxygen' (Mill [1859], p.