Contrast and compare the positions of James Mill and John Stuart Mill on the nature of the mind. Which view had the more lasting impact on psychology?
James Mill had a very strict opinion about illusion of all subjective or psychic activities. He believed the mind to be a complete machine. He took the theory of mind, being a machine to the next level.
According to him, the mind is completely passive and lacked any external stimuli, and out rightly rejected the concept of free will. According to him, the mind worked in the same manner as a machine being predictable in a mechanical way.
He believed that ideas were only mental elements. He believed that mind had no creative function, and it worked on association, which is a totally automatic, passive process. It means that association is automatic and mechanical, and that any idea is, merely an accumulation, of mental elements.
John Stuart Mill, differed from his father, on the basic idea of mind being, a machine He said that higher order complex ideas did not add up from simpler processes. These new ideas had qualities that none of the units building it had. It was called creative synthesis by Mill.