Abstract

This paper examines John Stuart Mill’s ‘psychological theory’ of the mind, as he set it out in his Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy. After outlining Mill’s theory and the problem he finds with it, the paper discusses four different interpretations that have been suggested, before proposing a new alternative reading. The matter is of intrinsic interest to anyone who sees value in trying to get to the bottom of tricky texts about puzzling questions by great philosophers, but I argue also that the investigation may help us with another vexed interpretative issue relating to an even more famous philosopher, David Hume, and that it may hold lessons for the philosophy of mind today.