This chapter delves into the concept of scientific pluralism, focusing on its modern philosophical defence by Mill. He argued for tolerating diverse opinions asserting that conflict is essential for understanding truth and that most doctrines reveal only partial truths. His pluralism stems from the rejection of claims to infallible knowledge. Popper, influenced by Mill, endorsed fallibilism but rejected inductivism, proposing falsifiability as a demarcation criterion between science and pseudoscience. He saw the proliferation of competing testable conjectures as the source of conflicts driving scientific progress. Feyerabend initially extended Popper’s pluralism but later radically opposed all methodological rules (‘anything goes’). In particular he argued for the incommensurability of theories due to theory-laden observations and meaning variance across theories. Kuhn introduced the distinction between ‘normal science’ operating within a dominant ‘paradigm’ (or ‘disciplinary matrix’) and ‘scientific revolutions’ marked by paradigm shifts. Kuhn viewed pluralism as characteristic of immature sciences or revolutionary periods. Lakatos attempted a synthesis between Popper and Kuhn, focusing on ‘research programmes’ based on a ‘hard core’ defended by a ‘protective belt’ of auxiliary hypotheses. He adopted the distinction between progressive versus degenerating programmes as a criterion for scientific rationality. In particular, this chapter highlights the ongoing tension between internal and external paradigms of pluralism.

It is a staple of traditional ethical theories that they contain an injunction against causing harm. Indeed, many people hold this to be the most basic principle of morality – “First do no harm”. However, what about harms caused by the market? In this book we are interested in developing the thought that the market is different in the sense that there is room for moral leeway because of the social benefits that markets bring in their wake. In this chapter, we explore the limits of that claim; exactly how different is the market? One important way of doing so is by thinking about the harm caused by markets and the moral significance of that harm. What should we make of market harms? Beyond the most egregious kinds of harms, and conditional upon the establishment and maintenance of various ameliorative practices to soften their negative effects, we argue that society ought to accommodate and accept a large range of harmful behaviours that we wouldn’t normally accept in many other spheres of society.

Following Donald Davidson, we suppose that cause produce their effects in accord with principles, at least wherever we can warrant causal claims. But we differ from Davidson in our view of what such principles are like. These need not be deterministic laws but, following J. S. Mill, ‘tendency principles’. Tendency principles are usually expressed as generics: they may only apply in appropriate contexts, they may not operate every time they apply (e.g. they may need triggering or act in a chancy way) and they don’t describe what actually happens since other tendencies may contribute as well. They can be found during research but can also be general knowledge. Knowing the principle and activity by which a cause produces its effect helps identify other features that can evidence causation.

In this chapter, a Millian justification of intellectual property rights is offered and defended. First, it is argued that a plausible form of utilitarianism endorses flourishing theory and indirect utilitarianism. The flourishing theorist argues that moral value includes pleasure and pain but also liberty, security, privacy, freedom of thought, and the like. The indirect utilitarian is willing to follow strategic rules even in cases where it looks like breaking a rule would get the best consequences. The notion of fallibility is essential to this account of moral obligations. Given that humans are fallible and that the rules we consider are typically tested over decades and in numerous contexts, it is generally the case that we are more certain of our rules than we are of our utility calculating abilities in any given instance. We could call these strategic rules rights, and this will include intellectual property rights.

Although Mill learned Bentham’s utilitarianism literally at his father James Mill’s knee, Mill’s own version of utilitarianism departed from Bentham’s at key points. When Mill tried to live Bentham’s utilitarian doctrine as a youth, he was sent into a deep depression from which he was saved by reading the Romantic poetry and a romantic relationship with Harriet Taylor. This led him to reject Bentham’s “quantitative hedonism” in favor of a “qualitative hedonism” that emphasized intrinsic differences between different kinds of pleasures and held that some pleasures are “higher,” and therefore more valuable, than others. Here Mill’s view recalls Aristotle’s that pleasures resulting from exercising higher, distinctively human faculties and sensibilities are intrinsically better. Unlike Aristotle, however, Mill persisted in holding that his view is a version of hedonism, defended on nonteleological, empirical naturalist grounds. A second important departure from Bentham, was Mill’s holding that the deontic ideas of moral right and wrong are conceptually connected to accountability. This made him a “modern moral philosopher” by Anscombe’s definition and led him to defend, on these grounds, a utilitarian theory of rights and justice as well as a version of utilitarianism that was more like rule utilitarianism than act utilitarianism.

Hume’s critique and English revulsion at the French Revolution dampened interest in social contract theorizing. The rise of utilitarianism was another factor. The cause of a universal franchise was taken up by Jeremy Bentham, a founding utilitarian who was dismissive of the social contract idea as an “anarchical fallacy.” The Chartists, who demanded universal manhood suffrage, held up both Bentham and Tom Paine as heroes. The Reform Act of 1832 expanded the power of the propertied in the burgeoning English manufacturing centers. The reformed Parliament passed the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, which introduced the hated workhouse system. The Chartists’ million-plus petition for universal manhood suffrage was finally received by Parliament, but ignored. John Stuart Mill, another utilitarian, dismissed Locke’s theory as a fiction but found a truth in the social-contract idea: a principle of reciprocity. Reciprocity requires government to benefit all. Mill advocated votes for women and an expanded electorate but retention of the property qualification until workers could be educated sufficiently not to vote for unwise laws favoring their class. As a safeguard, he proposed plural votes for the educated. On the European continent the social contract tradition succumbed to the idealism of Hegel and the materialism of Marx.

In the nineteenth century, European attitudes, both among intellectuals and the public, shifted toward widespread support for imperialism, but the tensions between such views and long-standing values sometimes gave this support a tortuous and melancholy character. This was the case with two eminent liberal imperialists, both famous as champions of liberty, Alexis de Tocqueville, and John Stuart Mill. Each rejected the other’s justifications for foreign expansion and described his own country’s policies in terms so negative that they might have served better to justify opposition, testifying that there was a destabilizing tension in the backing both gave to imperial expansion. One occasion on which harsh and direct criticism of empire was voiced was expressed was at the outbreak of the “Opium War” in 1839, a conflict whose complex origins belie the old myth that it was undertaken to stuff the dangerous drug down Indian throats. The chapter ends by examining reasons why this opposition was unable to hold back the imperial juggernaut and notes that a significant number of non-European anti-imperial activists found London and Paris hospitable places for their activities.

Using the essays of John Stuart Mill and other classical utilitarians as touchstones, this essay tracks some of the most politically charged shifts in the Victorian political essay, underscoring the significance of issues of racism and imperialism for coming to terms with the genre. The first two sections provide introductory historical background on the cultural and literary significance of the utilitarians, and detail some important ethical and political dimensions of Mill’s philosophical framework. The remaining sections analyse two singularly revealing essayistic encounters: Mill’s exchanges with Thomas Carlyle over the so-called ‘Negro’ question, and Henry Sidgwick’s assessment of the work of Charles Henry Pearson on national life and character. The striking difference between the political essaying of Mill and that of his utilitarian disciple Sidgwick on matters of imperialistic racism is indicative of some of the evasive literary tactics that have been all too influential, from their era to ours.

The chapter discusses the influence of utilitarianism on education. It begins by introducing the core principles of utilitarianism. The chapter then argues that it is possible to distinguish between two major strands within the utilitarian view of education: one that focuses on promoting the happiness of each individual, and the other on enhancing the happiness of the greatest number by creating facilitating social conditions for it. Each of these two strands is separately examined. The chapter also maintains that the second strand had a lasting impact on education that finds its clearest current expression in the emphasis on education’s role in economic development. Finally, the chapter suggests that reviving certain traditional forms of utilitarianism has significant potential to improve education.

Although liberals and conservatives tended to disagree about the specific ways in which the franchise might be expanded, both parties accepted by 1860 that reform was inevitable. Yet to whom should the vote be extended and on what basis? These questions animated discussions within and outside the House of Commons. They also informed significant works of nonfiction in this decade, including several of John Stuart Mill’s most important writings, as well poetry and fiction, including many of Anthony Trollope’s parliamentary novels. This chapter constellates Mill’s speculative thought and Trollope’s fiction in order to consider the persistent tensions between thought and feeling that are constitutive features of Victorian liberalism itself.

This chapter highlights the strong relationship between dialogue and political moderation by drawing on the ideas of J. S. Mill’s On Liberty (1859). It makes a plea for cultivating the civil art of disagreement that is vital to our free and democratic way of life.

Chapter 13 returns to Mills inexact deductive method, as developed in chapter 10, concedes that it is too dogmatic, but shows how economics can be scientifically respectable, even though economists appear to conform to this method. The peculiarities of theory appraisal in economics follow more from the difficulties of testing in economics than from an aberrant view of confirmation. Although apparent Millians in practice, economists can be good Bayesians or hypothetico-deductivists in principle. Chapter 13 also considers some of the anomalies to which expected utility theory gives rise and provides an introductory overview of the innovations that behavioral economics has brought into the mainstream. This chapter shows how disconfirmation of basic principles of economics is possible and exposes the large and legitimate role that pragmatic factors play in theory appraisal in economics.