Mill’s canons

a set of five principles of sound experimental science proposed by John Stuart Mill. These principles outline the logical conditions under which observations can establish necessary and sufficient causal relationships between events. Because each of the principles enables the observer to eliminate potential causes, the general approach is often referred to as eliminative induction. Mill’s work in this area is related to both the method of exclusion described by Francis Bacon and the work on the logic of causality of David Hume. It also presages the falsificationism of Austrian-born British philosopher Karl Popper (1902–1994). Mill’s five canons are (a) the method of agreement, (b) the method of difference, (c) the method of agreement and difference, (d) the method of residues, and (e) the method of concomitant variation.

Browse dictionary by letter

a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

Psychology term of the day

November 21st 2024

self-evaluation maintenance model

a conceptual analysis, related to social comparison theory, in which an individual is assumed to maintain a positive self-evaluation by (a) associating with high-achieving individuals who excel in areas with low relevance to his or her sense of self-worth and (b) avoiding association with high-achieving individuals who excel in areas that are personally important to him or her. [developed by U.S. social psychologists Abraham Tesser (1941– ), Jennifer D. Campbell (1944– ), and their colleagues]