Mill's Fallacy

The main part of this paper will begin with a description of the sorts of circumstances in which one may be said to be giving an explanation of something or other. It will then proceed by a series of steps through an account of the role which the giving of reasons has in this process, focussing in particular on the kinds of reasons a person advances when he explains why something is desirable; and this account will again give way (I hope not unnaturally) to a discussion of the logic of the words “evidence” and “proof,” terms which appear crucially in the much-debated matter in moral philosophy of whether it is possible to prove, as the saying goes, “one's ultimate ends.”

Epistemology · Fallacy · Mill · Process (computing) · Computer Science · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Historical and Scientific Studies · History · Philosophy · Political Theory and Influence