John Stuart Mill did his writing in the mid 19th century

Kevin McMahon

Phil 341 Prof. Greenspan

Final paper 5/22/00

John Stuart Mill wrote the bulk of his philosophy in the mid 19th century. He was a brilliant thinker who started as a child prodigy. After having a nervous breakdown early in his twenties he went on to become one of the most well known philosophers in history. He was known not only for his work in ethics, but also in logic, mathematics, and the philosophy of science. He was generally considered a representative of British Empiricism.

Mill was definitely not the first person to base an ethical theory on utility. He was the first person, though, to widely use the word "Utilitarianism", which he got from another book he had read. Utilitarianism, as Mill saw it, was really Jeremy Bentham's philosophy of utility with just a few additions to it.

Jeremy Bentham's moral philosophy was based on the greatest happiness principle. The greatest happiness principle and the principle of utility are roughly equivalent. According to Bentham this is "the principle which approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever, according to the tendency which it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question."[1] Anything that causes only pain would thus be bad and anything that causes pleasure would be good.

This is a teleological theory because it is based on the ends that are reached. The ultimate aim is happiness or pleasure in this case. Little attention is given to the motives of the person performing an act. The morality of an act is based solely on the outcome of the act. This is the opposite of Kant, who was much more interested in the act and the reason for performing it rather than in the outcome of the act.

For Bentham and Mill, this was not a license to act in a totally self-absorbed manner. The greatest happiness principle refers to happiness in general, or to Mill, "happiness altogether."[2] Therefore, an act would then be good if it produces not only the greatest amount of good, but also the greatest amount for the greatest number of people. For example, assume in situation A that the "units of good" are divided equally five to five between the upper and lower classes. Also assume that in situation B the "units of good" are fourteen to the upper class and only one in the lower class. According to Utilitarianism, situation B would be the better situation because the overall good was higher. This was not necessarily egalitarian, but Mill did have an aristocratical notion of human worth so it was not really an issue for him.

Bentham's philosophy was referred to by some as swinish, or the pig's philosophy because it endorsed hedonism wholeheartedly. If the ultimate end was pleasure then bodily pleasures such as gluttony, carousing, and wallowing could ultimately be the best acts. This is a degrading picture of humans; ultimately we do not view ourselves solely as animals out for pleasure anyway that we can get it. This criticism came about due to what was known as "the happiness calculus."[3] Bentham's theory was "a purely quantitative calculus in which the sheer amounts of pleasure and pain that result from an action were the measure of its goodness or badness."[4]

Mill saw the swinish charge as one of the biggest objections to theories of utility over the ages. His goal was to solve this with his version of Utilitarianism. Mill was insulted that anyone would imagine humans in such a light. He considers it an "ignorant blunder"[5] that many people have confused different theories of utility by linking them ultimately to hedonism. It is obvious to him, and he feels should also be to all enlightened people, that more is meant by the term "pleasure" in these theories than in the common usage. Mill wants to push the idea of general happiness over the idea of pleasure. "Pleasure itself, together with the absence from pain"[6] over time leads to the happiness that Mill sought.

Mill adds to his Utilitarianism a qualitative feature in addition to the quantitative feature of Bentham's theory. He attempts to distinguish between higher and lower pleasures. He then gives more value to the so-called higher pleasures. Mill justifies this by saying, "It is quite compatible with the principle of utility to recognize the fact that some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others."[7] By doing this, Mill was attempting to give less emphasis to the pleasures of the flesh, which are the pleasures that tend to lead to the charge that utilitarianism is swinish. He contends that a life of excess in the lower pleasures is not on the same level as a life spent in the higher pleasures. The life spent in the higher pleasures will lead to a much higher level of overall general happiness both for the individual and society at large. It would have an effect on society at large in the sense that by not staying in the so-called lower pleasures the individual would contribute more to society; thus giving everyone the opportunity to share in their pleasure.

Mill felt that the swinish idea did not suit utilitarianism because he felt that beastly pleasures alone do not equal the natural human conception of happiness. He said, "Human beings have faculties more elevated than the animal appetites and, when once made conscious of them, do not regard anything as happiness which does not include their gratification."[8] He feels that not only should more than beastly pleasures be included, but that they have to be included; otherwise, happiness is not attainable.

Mill goes on to explain exactly how to tell the difference between a higher and lower pleasure. Assume that we have two pleasures between which we are trying to decide which is more desirable and therefore the higher pleasure. Mill contends that the one that most of the people that have experienced both would pick, is the higher pleasure. He further says that if the first of the two pleasures would be picked as the most pleasurable, even if given in incredibly smaller amounts compared to the second, then the second pleasure is rendered "of small account."[9] In other words, some pleasures are so much lower than the so-called higher pleasures that the lower ones need not even be mentioned.

Next Mill states that it is an "unquestionable fact that those who are equally acquainted with and equally capable of appreciating and enjoying both, do give a marked preference to a manner of existence which employs their higher faculties."[10] The higher faculties to which Mill refers are things like philosophy and the appreciation of fine art and literature. He would possibly have included sophisticated games like Chess, as well.

Mill does admit that not everyone that has experienced both the so-called higher and lower pleasures will agree with his assessment. There will be some that will pick the lower pleasures on occasion over the higher pleasures. He dismisses this by saying that anyone that would pick the pleasure of lower quality has simply lost their ability to experience the higher pleasures. "It may be questioned whether anyone who has remained equally susceptible to both classes of pleasures, ever knowingly and calmly preferred the lower…"[11]

At first glance Mill's Utilitarianism sounds like a pretty sound theory. It is one of the few theories that are still accepted today as having a possibility of being correct. Unfortunately for Mill, on several occasions he introduces certain ideas with no justification at all. He merely says that it is something obvious to anyone, or simply an "unquestionable fact."[12] He has a habit of begging the question in his own arguments for the valuation of pleasure. It is at some of these points that Mill and I differ.

Mill and I agree that there is a sad misunderstanding that many people have had about utilitarianism over the ages. Sad things can be said about the people who think the only pleasures that human beings can enjoy are bodily. There are other pleasures that are just as good as bodily pleasures; pleasures that may indeed be more satisfying. Why must one assume that utilitarianism should only be confronted with those bodily pleasures? Why must one assume that humans will automatically choose the bodily pleasures simply because we admit that the ultimate goal is happiness via pleasure?

Mill and I disagree when it comes to actually differentiating between the higher and lower pleasures. He makes Utilitarianism sound like an elitist position which is just as bad as being swinish. He comes across as if he only cares about the higher pleasures and does not care at all about the lower pleasures. In his own words he considers the lower pleasures to be "of small account."[13]

He makes several mistakes when he informs us of what the higher pleasures are. First of all, he assumes that he knows what everyone thinks. He claims that the majority of people that have tried two pleasures will pick the more intellectual, or higher, of the two. It is very likely that in his upper class circles the bodily pleasures would have been looked at as somehow beneath them. His mistake, though, is that the general populace would not necessarily agree with his ultimate conclusion. Since utilitarianism is ultimately concerned with "happiness altogether,"[14] then he must include all people that have experienced both. An empirical example of this would be television ratings. According to United States' Census Bureau data, more than 27 percent of Americans have a college degree.[15] We should be able to reasonably assume that having a college degree should have given one the opportunity to experience both so-called higher and lower pleasures. With such a high percentage of Americans with a college degree we should be able to assume that among cable televisions top programs should be intellectual shows on channels such as The History Channel, The Learning Channel, and The Discovery Channel. According to recent Nielsen Ratings, however, the top three programs on cable television are professional wrestling shows.[16] None of these channels show up anywhere in the top listings.

Mill did admit that not everyone who has experience with the two types of pleasures would necessarily choose the same ones. Mill did claim, though, that no one who "has remained equally susceptible to both classes of pleasures, ever knowingly and calmly preferred the lower."[17] He says that anyone who does not choose the higher of two pleasures has simply lost the ability to indulge in said higher pleasures. Here he is merely begging the question in two different ways. That is to say, he assumes the truth of his conclusion and uses that in answering the objection. First, he says that it must be true that people would choose the higher pleasures over the lower pleasures. Then, if someone were to pick the lower pleasures there must be something wrong with them. Hence he concludes that they have lost the ability to experience the higher pleasures. This is a very weak argument.

Another weak argument that can be picked out of his response was briefly mentioned earlier. He assumes that he knows what everyone would pick out as the higher of the two pleasures. When he assumes that one has lost the ability to indulge in a higher pleasure he is presupposing which of the two pleasures is the highest. Again he is caught begging the question. He set forth his criterion for evaluating pleasures in such a manner that should any responses fall outside what he was looking for, he would discard them by saying that the person is simply no longer able to appreciate the higher pleasures. If we do not agree that his assumptions of the higher pleasures are correct, then we do not have to agree that the individuals in question have lost any ability. Perhaps those that disagree with Mill's distinctions are correct, and those that agree with Mill have simply lost their ability to appreciate the lower pleasures.

Another interesting point that Mill does not seem to touch on is why exactly the higher pleasures are considered higher. He says that once someone experiences the higher pleasures they will not have a happy life without them. "Human beings have faculties more elevated than the animal appetites and, when once made conscious of them, do not regard anything as happiness which does not include their gratification."[18] The only real criterion that Mill puts forth is the idea that the higher pleasure is the one everyone picks, that is, everyone that has tried both. Since he was begging the question and assuming that the pleasures he saw as higher would be chosen by everyone, he did not take the time to explain exactly why they were higher. He asserts that no "intelligent person would consent to be a fool"[19] by giving up his ability to experience the so-called higher pleasures. Since he does not give us any reason why an "intelligent person" would not give up the higher pleasures, he leaves it open for us to insert our own reason. We can assume then that the only reason the higher pleasures would be consistently chosen over the lower pleasures is because they are simply more pleasurable, nothing more.

The idea that the higher pleasures are merely more pleasurable than lower pleasures leaves us in exactly the same place that Bentham put us, with a "purely quantitative calculus."[20] It does help us to minimize the criticism that led to the use of the term "swinish" because we are now considering intellectual pleasures as more pleasurable than bodily pleasures. Giving more weight to intellectual pleasures will lead away from the swinish charge because, although utilitarianism is no longer demanding the choice of intellectual over bodily, it is recommending that choice. Utilitarianism will still recommend the higher pleasures since they will lead to more overall pleasure, which is the end goal of Utilitarianism.

Many of the arguments against his theory that I initially felt, such as, his differentiation between higher and lower pleasures, Mill attempted to answer in his book. Although he felt as though he answered them, I do not think that he did. In many of his responses he subscribed to a logical fallacy by allowing himself to rely on the truth of his premises in justifying his conclusions. Utilitarianism, though, still has an appeal to it. Even if Mill did not get it exactly right the idea is not completely unsalvageable.

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[11] Mill in Solomon and Greene, pg. 314 (Italics not Mill's, added for emphasis)

[16] Nielsen ratings week of 4/24/00 - 4/30/00