MILLER, DICKINSON S.
(1868–1963)

Dickinson S. Miller was an American ethical philosopher and epistemologist who published both under his own name and under the pseudonym R. E. Hobart. He was born in Philadelphia and studied at the University of Pennsylvania, Clark University, the universities of Berlin and Halle, Hobart College, and Harvard University. He held a doctorate in philosophy from Halle and a D.Sc. from Hobart.

At Harvard, Miller was a student of William James, who became his longtime friend and with whom he often discussed and argued points of philosophy. James was instrumental in getting Miller an appointment as associate professor of philosophy at Bryn Mawr College in 1893, the year after Miller's graduation from Harvard.

Miller left Bryn Mawr in 1898 to become first an instructor and then a professor of philosophy at Harvard. He subsequently joined the Columbia faculty, where he remained until the 1920s. He had also received a D.D. at Berkeley (California) Divinity School and in 1911 started to teach apologetics at the General Theological Seminary in New York City.

In his later days he lived for several years (1927–1932) close to his friend the critical realist Charles Augustus Strong, in Fiesole, near Florence, Italy. Strong appreciated Miller's company, especially because of Miller's neorealistic tendencies as opposed to Strong's different epistemological outlook. Their discussions were lively and interminable. George Santayana occasionally joined them, coming to Florence from Rome. Miller was a visitor during 1926 at the Vienna circle of logical positivists; although mostly a silent listener at the circle's sessions, he was an intensely interesting and challenging discussant in individual conversations. During his last twenty-five years he lived in Boston.

Miller's was an extremely penetrating and constructively critical mind. In a number of remarkable articles he addressed himself mainly to such topics as direct realism, the philosophy of mind, and also the controversy between William James and E. A. Singer on behaviorism. Especially interesting is "Is Consciousness 'A Type of Behavior'?" (1911), mainly about the "automatic sweetheart" puzzle. In 1951, Miller wrote "'Descartes' Myth' and Professor Ryle's Fallacy," a sharp critique of Gilbert Ryle's logical behaviorism. He also wrote on David Hume's views on causality and induction, on various topics in moral philosophy, and most notably, on the free-will–determinism issue. Miller's article provocatively titled "Free Will as Involving Determination and Inconceivable without It" (1934), published, for obscure reasons, under the name R. E. Hobart, has become a locus classicus of the free-will controversies. With remarkable lucidity and perspicacity Miller brought up to date the essentials of the point of view of Hume and J. S. Mill. He argued that once we realize the clear distinctions between causality and compulsion and between indeterminism and free will, the traditionally vexing problem disappears, and a fully adequate account of human freedom, responsibility, reward, and punishment can be given. Miller's views on religion and theology were extremely liberal and modern, close to the outlook of Unitarianism (in fact, he occasionally served as a Unitarian minister in the Boston area).

Miller's contributions to the epistemological controversies of his time may now seem a bit old-fashioned, but they are worthy of renewed attention because the same issues are still being debated, albeit in a different style and terminology.

See also Behaviorism; Epistemology; Ethics, History of; Hume, David; James, William; Logical Positivism; Mill, John Stuart; Ryle, Gilbert; Santayana, George.

Bibliography

works by miller

"Is Consciousness 'A Type of Behavior'?" Journal of Philosophy 8 (1911): 322–327.

"The Pleasure-Quality and the Pain-Quality Analysable, Not Ultimate." Mind 38 (1929): 215–218.

"Is There Not a Clear Solution of the Knowledge-Problem?" Journal of Philosophy 34 (1937): 701–712; 35 (1938): 561–572.

"An Event in Modern Philosophy." Philosophical Review 54 (1945): 592–606.

"Hume's Deathblow to Deductivism." Journal of Philosophy 46 (1949): 745–762.

"'Descartes' Myth' and Professor Ryle's Fallacy." Journal of Philosophy 48 (1951): 270–280.

Under the Name R. E. Hobart

"Hume without Scepticism." Mind 39 (1930).

"Free Will as Involving Determinism and Inconceivable without It." Mind 43 (1934): 1–27.

Herbert Feigl (1967)