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Liberalism and Epistemic Diversity: Mill's Sceptical Legacy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 January 2012

Abstract

Although John Stuart Mill places considerable emphasis on three information signalling devices – debate, votes and prices – he remains curiously sceptical about the prospects of institutional or social epistemology. In this paper, I explore Mill's modest scepticism about institutional epistemology and compare and contrast that with the attitudes of liberal theorists such as F. A. Hayek and John Dewey who are much more enthusiastic about the prospects of social epistemology as part of their defences of liberalism. The paper examines the extent to which Hayek and Dewey ignore concerns originally raised by Mill. I conclude that Mill's modest scepticism is reflected in the epistemological abstinence of contemporary liberal philosophers such as John Rawls, and that his elevation of philosophy over democracy remains a challenge to contemporary defenders of the political value of social or institutional epistemology.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2006

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References

Notes

1 This criticism goes back to the late nineteenth century and is repeated by Hayek and by liberals inspired by him. See Gray, J., Liberalism, Milton Keynes, Open University Press, 1986, p. 30Google Scholar.

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