Was in the class of psychological philosophy known as associationism. He regard the mind as a natural thing, governed alike to the world by deterministic laws. Our actions are causally determined, but nevertheless, Mill maintains, we are free (Ryan 1987: 103–131).
Thoughts are considered to be, "spontaneous" yet, "representational."
His best known work is On Liberty, published in 1859. His most important work as far as science and psychology are concerned is A System of Logic, first printed in 1843 and going through many more editions through the rest of the 1800's.
He began with the basics established by Hume, his father James Mill, and others:
1. A sensory impression leaves a mental representation (idea or image);
2. If two stimuli are presented together repeated, they create an association in the mind;
3. The intensity of such a pairing can serve the same function as repetition.
But he adds that associations can be more than the simple sum of their parts. They can have attributes or qualities different from the parts in the same way that water has different qualities than the hydrogen and oxygen that compose it. So J. S. Mill's associationism is more like "mental chemistry" than mental addition.
On his father's view, a complex idea produced by association is simply a collection is its associated parts. Thus, the idea of a house consists literally of the ideas of bricks, mortar, windows, etc., and the idea of everything consists of the ideas of every thing. This is surely a case of theory over-riding our clear experience. So it seemed to the younger Mill. On the latter's view, as he explained both in the Logic and his introductory notes to the second edition of his father's Analysis of the Phaenomena of the Human Mind, there is a sort of mental chemistry in which the parts fuse, as it were, into a new sort of mental whole.
The causation is like that of chemistry, where, for example, water is the product of the fusion of oxygen and hydrogen, and unlike the mechanical causation of mechanics, where (as Mill saw it — not quite) the product of several causes is merely the additive sum of the effects of those causes taken separately. These new sorts of mental unity emerge from associational processes and have properties which are not among the properties that appear in the genetic antecedents. Analysis of ideas is still possible, but it is not the simplistic sort of thing, a literal taking apart, that his father would have it be.
As Mill explained in his Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, the genetic antecedents are not integrates or real parts, as his father supposed, but only (as he put it) metaphysical parts; as metaphysical parts, they are present but only disposition-ally. They can, however, through association (under the appropriate analytic set) be recovered, and brought to consciousness.
Mill came to see that there are qualitative distinctions among pleasures: the "higher" pleasures do result from association but they are different in kind from the "lower" pleasures out of which they arise, and as a matter of fact turn out to be more satisfying forms of pleasure. (2)
What is directly present to the mind are not external objects, but only “a set of appearances” (System, VIII: 783). We have unmediated access only to the impression that are generated in us—we are directly aware only of our own mental content.
We know of objects in the world only to the extent that they affect us and give rise to conscious impressions—and such impressions will only ever be presented by way of the mediating sense faculties. Mill claims that we cannot know anything of objects in themselves, but only as they appear to us, and terms this position the “Relativity of Human Knowledge” (Examination, IX: 4).
[A]ll the attributes which we ascribe to objects, consist in their having the power of exciting one or another variety of sensation in our mind […] our knowledge of objects […] consist[s] of nothing but the sensations which they excite. (Examination, IX: 6)
Cognition, in any sentient creature must be mediated by some method of cognising—and if even if we came to possess new ways of cognizing the world, “[w]e should not, any more than at present, know things as they are in themselves” (Examination, IX: 8, my emphasis).(1)
Mill distinguishes between the a posteriori and a priori schools of psychology. The former “resolves the whole contents of the mind into experience.” (CW, XI.341). The latter emphasizes that “in every act of thought, down to the most elementary, there is an ingredient which is not given to the mind, but contributed by the mind in virtue of its inherent powers.” (CW, XI.344).
Mill, as many other psychological and moral philosophers, defines happiness as “intended pleasure, and the absence of pain” (Mill 55). This Is a hedonistic theory. Every person desires his own happiness; but since everyone does desire his own happiness, the general happiness is desirable (Mill 81). The good life provides the maximum amount of happiness, but the test for how one should act is whatever creates the maximum amount of happiness for the most people.1. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mill/#MindWorlPsycEthoFree
2. https://stanford.library.sydney.edu.au/archives/spr2008/entries/mill/#SciPsyAss
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