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Another issue in Mill’s day pertained to the justification being necessarily true, as opposed to being true only contingently. Philosophers such as Kant and Whewell, who was heavily influenced by Kant’s work, were deductive necessitarians: They held that deductive reasoning is necessarily true, meaning that the conclusion of a deductive argument is universal and necessary. They maintained that inductive reasoning, on the contrary, lead to conclusions that were inevitably fallible, thus implying that Whewell and Kant were critically aware of Hume’s problem. Deviating from Whewell approach, Mill’s empiricism favored inductive reasoning. Although Mill employed terminology such as “invariable” and “unconditionality” when describing logic of scientific justification, he is not a necessitarian as he lived in a post-Humean context. There is ongoing debate to this day whether Mill’s notions can ultimately be reduced to ones requiring a ‘necessary connection.’ If that is so, Mill would be rendered an inductive necessitarian.[[CiteRef::Buchdahl (1971)]]
|Major Contributions====Mill’s Empiricism===
Mill is an empiricist who believes that all our ideas are gained through sense perception. Departing from the rationalist doctrines, which hold reason as the primary source of knowledge, Mill follows a long line the British empiricist tradition of British empiricists such as Locke, Berkeley , and Hume. The ‘source’ of ideas primarily refers to where the ideas come from, as opposed to denying the role that reason plays. As such, Mill holds that the mind is furnished with ideas through experience, and ''then'' reason can use these ideas. His empiricism is thoroughgoing: there There is no source other than experience and or observation that provides us with our ideas.[[CiteRef::Macleod (2016)]] His Indeed, his empiricism is quite radical: in fact, to the degree that it is may be characterized as phenomenalistic. Drawing upon the works of earlier empiricist idealists such as Berkeley, Mill thinks that the mind-dependent reality is all we have access to. That isFor him, there is nothing other than the ideas provided by sensations that the mind has access to. Unlike some earlier empiricists like Locke, Mill thinks holds that the external objects (if any) are not perceivable. Whereas Locke believed that the objects' primary qualities and the ideas invoked by them resemble each other, Mill is more prudent in arguing that the only thing we can perceive perceivable entity is “a set of appearances.”[[CiteRef::Mill (1974b)]] Mill’s position that we cannot know anything about how things are in-themselves, but only know how they appear to us , is called termed the “Relativity of Human Knowledge.”[[CiteRef::Mill (1979)]]
Believing that experience and observation provide us with all knowledge, Mill rejects all forms of ''a priori'' knowledge: the The doctrine that we can have knowledge that is independent of (or prior to) experience.[[CiteRef::Macleod (2016)]] Indeed, this departure is a response to Whewell, and more broadly to Kant, who believed that ''a priori'' knowledge are necessary pre-conditions of the mind that enable experience.[[CiteRef::Losee (1983)]] Not only does he reject that knowledge of extension, substance , and place as ''a priori'', Mill instead argues that this type of seemingly ''a priori'' knowledge is “put together out of ideas of sensation[that are ''de facto'' ''a posteriori''].” [[CiteRef::Macleod (2016)]][[CiteRef::Mill (1979)]] In essence, all of our knowledge, including knowledge that is traditionally thought of as ''a priori'', originates from and is dependent on experience.
===Against the History of Science===
