Philosophy Assignment

Notes on Mill’s Utilitarianism, as excerpted in Arthur & Scalet. 90. WHAT UTILITARIANISM IS What is utilitarianism? It is the moral creed that accepts utility or the greatest happiness principle: actions are right insofar as they promote happiness; wrong insofar as they promote the reverse of happiness. Happiness is pleasure without pain; unhappiness is pain without pleasure. 91. Mill says this is not sufficient: we have to consider the objects that come under the headings of pleasures and pains. Pleasure and freedom from pain are, he says, the only things that are good in themselves, i.e., desirable as ends; all other desirable things are desirable only insofar as they contribute to these goods. Critics say such a doctrine is simply swinish because it makes pleasure the highest thing. But, says Mill, it is quite compatible with the principle of utility to recognize that some pleasures are higher or better or of greater value than others. We must consider quality as well as quantity. But on what grounds? How are we to make such a distinction? Mill has an answer, though it is perhaps less than satisfying: of two pleasures, if there is one that all people or nearly all people who have experienced the pleasure think is superior, then that is the more valuable pleasure. This involves a sort of opinion polling as a guide to judgment, which is to say, then, it does not make a judgment on the basis of principle but only on the basis of opinion. Aristotle suggests that corruption leads us to take pleasure in what is not by nature pleasant; the corrupt would choose the pleasure of the bestial senses, for example, over the pleasures of philosophy. If the corrupt outnumber the philosophers – as they surely do – must we then conclude that pleasure of the flesh are superior to the pleasures of philosophy? Mill must reject the possibility that someone who has experienced both the pleasures of philosophy and the pleasures of the senses could choose the pleasures of the senses. I can grant that philosophic hedonism is superior to vulgar hedonism – but on what grounds can Mill do so? I recognize, with Aristotle, that the rational is superior to the irrational or subrational. Can Mill justify my preference? Mill’s answer is that “those who are equally acquainted with, and equally capable of appreciating and enjoying both, do give a most marked preference to the manner of existence which employs the higher faculties” (91) – but what is this other than a denial that one who rejects this position is truly capable of appreciating, exercising, and enjoying the higher faculties? Mill’s implicit claim is: if one disagrees with my evaluation of intellectual pleasure as superior to sensual pleasure it is because one is incapable of the higher pleasures. Mill says that the “higher” would never seriously consider trading places with the “lower” – “If they ever fancy that they would, it is only in cases of unhappiness so extreme, that to escape it they would exchange their lot for almost any

other, no matter how undesirable in their own eyes.” Mill does not consider the possibility that the very capacities he discusses might make one unhappy. He does concede that such a one might feel more acute pains, but he denies that any such desire could ever be sincere. He asserts this rather than offering a real argument for it; his assertion is not, to me at least, convincing. He offers a number of possible motives:

1. Pride 2. Love of liberty and personal independence 3. Love of power 4. Love of excitement 5. A sense of dignity 6. The possibility that for some intellectual satisfaction is superior to bodily satisfaction

that lower desires are only temporary distractions. This might be said to be the position of the philosophic hedonist

The difficulty is that none of these actually establishes that this preference is worthy. None of these actually establishes that the higher pleasures are in fact superior to the lower pleasures. 91-92. Mill nonetheless calls this view the “verdict of the only competent judges” and suggests that there can be no appeal. We know that the happiness of the philosopher is superior to the happiness of the non-philosophic many because the philosopher prefers it, and only the philosopher is capable of judging – but that judgment is mere preference, as opposed to an Aristotelian version of the claim whereby philosophic activity or contemplation is superior to a life of sensual pleasure because it involves the completion or perfection in action of that which is distinctively human. In Mill’s case, he simply adopts what he presents as a class-prejudice as a standard: philosophers prefer philosophy, so philosophy is higher. But from the point of view of the drug addict, the pleasures of drug-taking are higher than the pleasures of philosophy. Mill asserts that the philosopher is the expert – but on what grounds? Mill is simply saying that the competent judges are those who share his moral prejudice. What makes them right? They are right in virtue of the fact that they share his moral prejudice. The philosopher can know the pleasures of the philosopher and the vulgar, but the vulgar cannot know the pleasures of the philosopher according to Mill. The natural question that might be asked is: can the philosopher truly know – i.e., experience – the pleasures of the vulgar? I can concede that the vulgar might not be able to experience the pleasures of the philosopher. Why must I assume that the philosopher can experience the pleasures of the vulgar? Are the pleasures of the vulgar more universal? Is it a question simply of man versus animal, or of different types of men? If the vulgar cannot judge the pleasures of the philosopher, why assume that the philosopher can judge the pleasures of the vulgar?

92. Mill, having argued that happiness consists in pleasure and the absence of pain, and having dogmatically asserted that the pleasures of the intellect are superior to other pleasures, now adds that because of the imperfections of the world, the readiness to sacrifice one’s own happiness for that of others is “the highest virtue which can be found in man.” The obvious question is the Nietzschean question: Why? Why should I sacrifice my own good for others? On what grounds is the happiness of numerous others to be preferred by me to my own happiness? Mill concedes that such sacrifices ought not be wasteful – only a sacrifice of personal happiness that adds to the “sum total of happiness” is admitted as a good. But again, we must ask: on what grounds? Hence Nietzsche says that the utilitarian – like all of the English moralists – wants to maintain Christian morality on non-Christian grounds. Mill says critics of utilitarianism do not acknowledge that the happiness with which it is concerned is not the happiness of the individual “but that of all concerned.” This amounts to saying that vulgar or selfish hedonism is inferior to collective hedonism, yet it still gives no justification for preferring the good of numerous other people to my own good. He cites Christ as presenting the utilitarian position. He further says that “law and social arrangements” should place the happiness or interest of the individual in harmony with that of the whole, and that “education and opinion” should establish in everyone’s mind the identification of individual happiness with the happiness of the whole. There is an obvious response to this in the American political tradition – Madison’s psychology of faction in Federalist No. 10. Such unity is simply impossible. As Madison writes:

As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. As long as the connection subsists between his reason and his self-love, his opinions and his passions will have a reciprocal influence on each other; and the former will be objects to which the latter will attach themselves. The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government. From the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results; and from the influence of these on the sentiments and views of the respective proprietors, ensues a division of the society into different interests and parties.1

Mill’s suggestion, considered in light of Madison’s presentation of psychology, proves untenable. Mill is speaking essentially of doing away with selfishness. The goal of such shaping of laws and institutions, according to Mill, is rendering the individual “unable to conceive the possibility of happiness to himself” in a way that is inconsistent with the common good. To be clear, this is different from what we might call, following Tocqueville, self-interest rightly                                                                                                                           1  Federalist  No.  10  

understood: in Tocqueville, the common good is pursued by Americans out of selfish interest – in other words, the common good is the means to the private good; Mill wants us to be unable to conceive of our good apart from the common good (Kant, on the other hand, suggests that only action done from duty is moral). What about the objection that this is a godless doctrine? If it is true that God desires the happiness of His creatures, and such was the purpose of creation, then utilitarianism is the most profoundly religious doctrine; Nietzsche might suggest that it is one more element of decaying Christianity. If the objection means that utilitarianism does not recognize revelation as the “supreme law of morals,” Mill says that any utilitarian who believes in God must recognize that because of His goodness and wisdom of whatever He has thought to say on the subject of morals must contribute to utility. 93. There is another objection that is sometimes advanced – this is specifically on the bottom right of p. 92. That objection is that it is impossible to act in accordance with the principle of utility because in the moments when action is required there is no time to make the requisite calculations about the effects of any particular choices. Mill’s response is weak: he says this is like objecting to Christianity because there is no time to re-read the Old and New Testaments anytime a decision must made. The answer to this is, he says, “that there has been ample time, namely, the whole past duration of the human species” to consider such things – to learn “by experience the tendencies of actions.” All prudence and morality depends, he argues, on this experience, and, therefore, indefinite improvement in morals is possible. This point needs to be considered carefully – maximization of pleasure and minimization of pain are the desideratum of all decisions according to the principle of utility. There are no permanent principles of morality other than the principle of utility. We have already seen the difficulty presented by Mill’s claims about the superiority of some pleasures to others. Now we see that there are no permanent restraints on action. Mill tries to offer a response to this criticism, but it is less than effective: to say that happiness is the goal, he says, does not mean that there is not a road or a path that can be laid down to it, or that we are incapable of advising people to take on rather than another direction. “Whatever we adopt as the fundamental principle of morality,” he writes, “we require subordinate princples to apply it by.” So here is our difficulty: the greatest happiness principle is our fundamental principle. Happiness has proved to be pleasure as judged by those who judge pleasures in the same way that Mill himself does, i.e., philosophers. The goal is the same – happiness – but there are no permanent means to that goal, because there is the possibility of indefinite improvement. Thus there are no permanent principles of morality. Additionally, government needs to teach the individual to be concerned with the good of the whole rather than with his or her own good.

Mill also concedes that there may be conflicting moral obligation – but the principle of utility cuts through the Gordian knot of conflicting secondary principles. OF WHAT SORT OF PROOF THE PRINCIPLE OF UTILITY IS SUSCEPTIBLE Mill argues the first principles are not susceptible of proof. This applies equally to both theoretical first principles and practical first principles. Recall St. Thomas in this regard: the first principle of practical reasoning was that all things aimed at the good. What about Aristotle? Would we consider Nicomachean Ethics I.1 to be proof? Perhaps – but if so, it is descriptive rather than proscriptive. Aristotle does not say all things ought to aim at some good; rather, he claims that all things do aim at some good, and then, in the case of the human being, tries to clarify what that good might be. In this regard, perhaps, Mill’s point comes to be seen as somewhat trivial. And, one might add, we still need justification for the claim that utility is the proper first principle rather than, say, Aristotle’s to kalon. Nevertheless, Mill claims that first principles of knowledge can be known by appeal to “the faculties which judge of fact… our senses, and our internal consciousness.” Can we make a similar appeal to justify our claims about the first principles of morality? Mill makes what seems, at first, to be an Aristotelian point, when he says that happiness is the only thing desirable in itself. Why is this not an Aristotelian point? It is not an Aristotelian point because Mill defines happiness as maximization of pleasure and minimization of pain, while Aristotle presents it as the consequence for the bringing-into-action of the virtues and as an activity of the rational soul in accordance with virtue; it is the excellence or perfection of man’s teleological nature for Aristotle. 94. So – what of proof? Mill says that the only proof capable of being given that an object is visible is that it is seen. His argument amounts to the claim that happiness is desirable because people desire it. The natural rejoinder is that people may desire a thing without that thing being good, and that the good and the pleasant are not identical. Mill’s response, already given, is that some pleasures are better than others, but as we have seen, his grounds for making that assertion prove to be somewhat shaky. Here, he states that “No reason can be given why the general happiness is desirable, except that each person, so far as he believes it to be attainable, desires his own happiness.” What does this mean? It means the because each individual desires his own happiness, the collected agglomeration of individual happiness that he names “general happiness” is desirable. This conclusion obviously does not follow: just because my own happiness is desirable, that does not entail the fact that yours is. He continues: “Each person’s happiness is a good to that person,” on the grounds that it is desired, “and the general happiness, therefore, a good to the aggregate of all persons.” The obvious objection to this claim is: what is the general happiness? At the moment, it seems to just be the collection of desires of many human beings. Secondarily, and following from that: what happens when desires are in conflict?

Or, put another way: what if the general happiness proves to be incompatible with individual happiness? If enslaving 10% of the population will increase the happiness of the other 90%, why ought we to refrain from doing so, on Mill’s principles? I hasten to add: Mill would not approve of such a proposal. But does his disapproval stem from utilitarian principle or from his own liberal moral prejudice? Remember David Hume? David Hume said the great difficulty in most systems of morality is the leap the make from the is to the ought (cf. 54). That strikes me as a valid criticism of Mill: just because it is a fact that I prefer my own happiness, does it follow that I ought to prefer, as he says I ought to prefer, the happiness of many others in preference to my own? Mill continues, claiming that the recognition that we desire happiness indicates that it is both an end we pursue in action and therefore a criterion of morality (again – is that second claim justified?). Nonetheless, he says this alone does not prove that happiness or utility is the only criterion. That would require showing that we never desire anything other than happiness or, to use Aristotle’s language, that happiness is the only non-instrumental good we pursue, and that all other both goods in themselves and parts of the end (his examples are music and health.) Virtue, too, he says, though it is not originally part of the end, can become part of the end. For those who live “disinterestedly” virtue is a part of the end, and loved not as a means to happiness but as part of happiness. He provides another illustration – the love of money. Money, he notes, is a means rather than an end, yet the love of money (a means) is one of the “strongest moving forces of human life” and money is often desired as an end in itself rather than as a means. Aristotle, obviously, would say such a view is erroneous, as the one who loves money as an end in itself misunderstands what money actually is. Mill simply notes that money has transformed from a means to an end to an ingredient or component of the end itself, just like virtue. It is part of the end itself. The same, he says, applies to power or fame, with the addition that they bring immediate pleasure as well. If all of the foregoing is psychologically true, says Mill, then conduciveness to happiness is the only true test of human action. 95. ON THE CONNECTION BETWEEN JUSTICE AND UTILITY Historically the greatest obstacle to the utilitarian view has been drawn from considerations of justice (we would have to think about whether or not that is true; very few can be said to have defended the utilitarian view in the past). We can’t really consider this objection until we understand what justice is. Mill adduces 5 considerations in this regard.

First, it is “mostly considered unjust” to deprive people of property, liberty, etc. Mill says this is one usage of justice, namely, “that it is just to respect” and “unjust to violate, the legal rights of any one.” The objections to this view, I should think, are fairly obvious: for instance, Aristotle

would suggest that justice is identical to law-abidingness only in the best regime. In all other, necessarily imperfect, regimes, the good man and the good citizen will differ from one another, and in particularly bad regimes, they will differ wildly.

Second, says Mill, someone might not deserve the legal rights that he or she possesses. Such rights might stem from a bad law. But when we say a law is unjust, it is thought to be so for the same reason a breach of the law is unjust, i.e., a violation of moral right. So, a second sort of injustice involves taking or withholding that to which someone has a moral right.

Third, we think of justice in terms of desert. Each person should get, we think, what he or she deserves, whether good or ill.

Fourth, we think it is unjust to break faith with others.

Fifth, it is unjust “by universal admission” to be partial in situations where partiality ought not to apply (i.e., the apportionment of grades to students).

Perhaps the first thing to note about all of these claims is that Mill simply appeals to common opinion or common moral prejudice. He does not, in fact, justify or deduce them. Nonetheless, he concedes it is difficult to identify the “mental link” that holds them together. Looking at items 1-5 above, Mill says justice is thought of as involving some sort of personal right. “In each case,” he writes, “the supposition implies two things: a wrong done, and some assignable person who is wronged. Injustice may also be done by treating a person better than others; but the wrong in this case is to his competitors, who are also assignable persons.” Justice differs from generosity or benevolence, suggests Mill, because of “a right in some person, correlative to the moral obligation” of some other person or persons. It is a matter of right, unlike generosity or benevolence, to which no person can have a right.

The idea of justice presupposes two things, says Mill:

1. A rule of conduct; this must be “supposed” common to all mankind and intended for the good of all mankind.

2. A sentiment sanctioning the rule – specifically, says Mill, a sentiment that those who violate the rule ought to be punished.

3. There is also a conception that some specific person suffers by the infringement of the rule (in other words, Mill is suggesting all acts of injustice must have specific victims).

What, then, is justice? Mill says “the sentiment of justice appears… to be, the animal desire to repel or retaliate a hurt or damage to oneself, or to those with whom one sympathizes, widened so as to include all persons” by the capacity for sympathy and “intelligent self-interest.” Mill goes on to say that the morality of the sentiment of justice stems from self-interest, and its energy from sympathy. One might ask whether such a view is adequate.

96. Mill says that this treatment of justice treats questions of rights violated by injury as “one of the forms in which the other two elements clothe themselves.” Justice is then: a rule of conduct for human beings supported by a sentiment favoring punishment for those violating the rule of conduct. What makes the rule of conduct legitimate, i.e., just? Is it simply because the rule of conduct finds support in human sentiment? If so, is that sufficient? Aren’t we back to David Hume? Regardless, Mill says that our sense of justice or of the violation of rights really amounts to a demand for punishment in response to a hurt that someone has received. What do we mean by an individual right? Mill says it means that someone “has a valid claim on society to protect him in the possession of” that right, “either by the force of the law, or by that of education and opinion.” Note that this is identical to legal positivism: the just and right are identical in this case to the legal or the customary. What makes the claim valid is that it is recognized by either the law or by custom. This is made clear by Mill in the immediate sequel: “If he has what we consider a sufficient claim, on whatever account, to have something guaranteed to him by society, we say that he has a right to it. If we desire to prove that anything does not belong to him by right, we think this done as soon as it is admitted that society ought not to take measures for securing it to him.” A more blatant statement of Mill’s positivism would be hard to find: the standard of justice is custom and law. To have a right, says Mill (bottom left side) is nothing other than being in possession of something which society ought to defend. This “ought,” however, is based merely on the “general utility” rather than a higher, supra-political standard (such as natural right/natural law or Kantian duty). If Mill’s explanation seems less than adequate, that is because, he says, the “composition of the sentiment” is both rational and animal – “the thirst for retaliation.” This animal passion is connected to the “important and impressive kind of utility” with which such sentiments and considerations are involved: security, which is “the most vital of all interests.” Mill finally takes up the most salient objection to utility: it is an uncertain standard, ever changing. Mill raises the difficulty but does not, strictly speaking, respond to it. Instead he criticizes the social contract theory of a Hobbes or a Locke, in particular the idea that punishment is made just by consent. Of course, neither Hobbes nor Locke would maintain any such thing; Locke is perhaps the clearer case. You should keep Mill’s arguments in mind when we look at Locke’s account of natural law at the end of the semester. Suffice it to say that Mill is guilty of committing the straw-man fallacy here. 97. I will simply note that Aristotle, Aquinas, Hobbes and Locke all have solutions to the difficulty Mill raises.