Mill's Misreading of Comte on 'Interior Observation'

Mill's Misreading of Comte on 'Interior Observation' ROBERT C. SCHARFF MY USE of Comte's phrase 'interior observation' in the title of this essay rather than the more familiar term, 'introspection', is deliberate. For us today, 'introspection ' is something with an official history. We know that this allegedly empirical procedure has a checkered past, and presumably also a questionable future. We remember that it used to have scientific credentials, that James and Titchener and Wundt and Brentano all defended it, that it was once actually regarded as a unique source of information about the human mind. There is, for example, J. S. Mill's early and influential defense of it against Comte's alleged refutation.' I want to argue here, however, that what Comte attacks is not the same thing that Mill defends. Comte's villain is something he calls l'observation int~rieure, a spurious metaphysical procedure. 2 What Mill misreads John Stuart Mill, Auguste Comte and Positivism (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1961), esp. 62-67. In general, Auguste Comte reflects Mill's mature position 0865), viz., that Comte's earlier, no-nonsense, epistemologicallyoriented Cours makes pioneering contributions to the philosophy of science, but that his later social and ethical writings--inspired by his adoration of Clotilde de Vaux--are marked by "almost as much improvement in his feelings, as deterioration in his speculations" 032). This judgment became the received wisdom among Englishspeaking philosophers. There is, however, a Comte-Mill correspondence (184a-1847), initiated by Mill, which shows he was at first a much more enthusiastic admirer of Comte's work generally. See, e. g., Letter i (November 8, 1841), in Lettres in~ditesdeJohn Stuart Mill g~Auguste Comteavec les responses de Comte, ed. by Lucien L6vy-Bruhl (Paris: Alcan, 1899), 1-4. Also, Mill's lifelongexpressions of admiration for Comte's dream (though not his idea of the realization) of a posttheological "religion of humanity" have had considerable influence. Cf. Roger N. Hancock, "A Note on J. S. Mill and the Religion of Humanity," Mill Newsletter 18 0983): 11-14; and T. R. Wright, The Religion of Humanity: The Impact of Comtean Positivism on Victorian Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 44-5 o. This point is insufficientlystressed in W. M. Simon's otherwise more thorough study of Mill's role in promoting Comte's views, European Positivism in the Nineteenth Century: An Essay in Intellectual History (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1963), a72-95- " Cours de philosophie positive, 6 vols. (Paris: Bachelier, 183o-42), esp. Cours l (Lesson 1), 3338 . The three most recent English selections from Comte's Cours are by Stanislav Andreski, The Essential Comte (London: Croom Helm, 1974); Frederick Ferr6, Auguste Comte: Introduction to [559] 560 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 27:4 OCTOBER 1989 him as attacking is the empirical procedure we now call introspection. Since this failure of communication is precisely what I want to discuss, 1 have no desire to begin with the label which symbolizes that failure. In what follows, then, I shall be concerned to distinguish carefully what Comte and Mill each take interior observation to be, so that in the end the nature of Mill's misreading will stand in clear relief. I~ Comte's critique of interior observation is at bottom an expression of his antimetaphysical philosophy of history, not his epistemology of science. Although he does raise some methodological objections to it, he never even considers the possibility that interior observation might be improved or made scientifically useful. Comte's model for interior observation is not something like, say, what Wundt's expert introspectors did. His model is Cartesian "meditation " (at least as Comte construes it), and it is his view that the doctrines which allegedly derive from it are already proof enough that it is spurious. Comte's estimate of Descartes himself is not, however, entirely negative. For two things, he says, Descartes should be praised. 3 By introducing "a vast mechanical hypothesis" for natural knowledge, he "render[ed] to the world the glorious service of instituting a complete system of positive philosophy"; and, along with Newton, he showed that mathematics is less important as a body of knowledge than...