Mill: Utilitarianism
This is, I think, the fifth time in three days I've tried to write this essay. I knew what it was I wanted to write, but just couldn't get it on paper in a way I wanted. The current iteration seems satisfactory enough, and so I'm going to say hell with it and throw it on here.
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That which we know as ethics is about the ‘ought’ of humanity. Ethics asks what it is right and wrong for human beings to do in their lives. It tells us that there is a way of living that is itself somehow better than another, and tries to determine which way of life is the best, the “good life.” To find this way of life, ethical theories posit a source of right and wrong, a standard or rule by which one can judge an action or a person according to its moral rightness (or wrongness). Before one can choose the right path, one must know what is right and what wrong.
Yet, unlike the earlier ages of philosophy, the modern distrust of broad ontologies and metanarratives means that one must not only attempt to justify a moral theory (say, that one should value honor above all else) against other moral theories, but against the idea that there is no morality at all. Today the question is asked whether there is any such thing as ‘morality’ to be discovered, whether the idea of morality reflects something real in our nature or the world’s, or is rather purely subjective, a concept born of psychology and defended by stubbornness in the face of modern critique. It must not only be asked whether honor, for instance, is the highest value, but whether it is a value at all, or if it is really something made up by an animal species in the course of history, and whether all moral concepts are not like this.
In fact, what is it that we mean when we talk about “honor?” What is honor, exactly? We can all talk about instances of people being honorable, and often enough we agree. But when it comes to saying what honor itself is, we find ourselves at a loss for words. Honor itself, like virtue, fairness, or justice, is a moral concept that we have grown up with but rarely try to explain in its core. We grow up familiar with exemplars and examples, but the concept itself remains vague. As long as this is the case, it is difficult, if not impossible, to defend the claim that our ideas about morality have a real backing. After all, how can we defend that which we barely understand ourselves?
Utilitarianism is an ethic that appears to open a path around these questions. While values such as “honor” or “justice” sound good on paper but on reflection are vague and subjective, utilitarianism appears to offer as straightforward an ethical base as you can get: “The utilitarian doctrine is that happiness is desirable, and the only thing desirable, as an end; all other things being only desirable as a means to that end,” (35) according to John Stuart Mill in his treatise of the same name. Happiness is should be sought; everything else is good in proportion as it promotes happiness. While honor and virtue sound nice, they should only be of concern insofar as they make us happier as a whole.
Challenges from other moral theories aside, utilitarianism seems to have quite an edge in terms of providing a clear, consistent, believable foundation for the development of a universal morality. While individuals and cultures can disagree fiercely on what honor, virtue, or justice are, and disagree even further as to what amongst them takes priority, utilitarianism gives us a very straightforward guideline. People like to be happy; in fact, I would say that everyone likes to be happy. Happiness is good, unhappiness bad. The best world would be one where everyone is happy (who would disagree?). Therefore, let us choose the moral theory tells us to increase overall happiness.
But does utilitarianism really offer us a solution? True, everyone is a fan of being happy. But everyone is also a fan of being, for example, just. What makes happiness (thus utilitarianism) different? Mill argues that what separates happiness is its universal power, something which he thinks is lacking in every other ethic. For example, ask people about what is just. Everyone could tell you about just people and the traits they have. But these people come to very different answers when asked about the virtue they know. “Justice is the will of the stronger,” in the words of Thrasymachus. (Plato, Republic Book I) Or justice is fairness (John Rawls). The opinions of non-philosophers often come back to, “Justice is doing what’s right,” which does nothing but take us back a level, for what is right? Justice, concept that appears to be straightforward, that everyone understands, quickly, upon analysis, falls into a mess on intuitions and instincts about what should be done, with many of those intuitions having no middle ground.
While justice has great intuitive power, one cannot claim truth based upon unscrutinized opinions. One needs a coherent defense for one’s principles and why they are held, a demonstration that will show people that the end suggested really is good and worth pursuing. According to Mill, only utilitarianism supplies this need. “Each, from his own point of view, is unanswerable; and any choice between them, on grounds of justice, must be perfectly arbitrary. Social utility alone can decide the preference,” (58) he says. When we justify our ethic of choice, on what grounds do we justify it? What makes justice and virtue worth following? Is it some intangible value that emanates them like the Platonic Forms? Such a defense no longer works in this day and age. Rather, we tend to say that following a given path is the best way, that it makes for the best world where humanity can live to its fullest. When we don’t resort to divine sanction or to circles of words (justice is fair, fairness defends freedom, freedom is just . . .), we find ourselves falling back to the argument that justice, fairness, etc. make for the best world to live in. What is the best world? The one where everyone can be happy. In other words, ideals such as justice are in reality chosen because of their utility, because of their ability to promote happiness. People believe that their particular conceptions of justice and the like are those through which the world will be the best, the one worth living in, the one people would want to live in if they understood. But this is the world with the most happiness. In other words, the other ethical theories are in reality already utilitarian; “all cases of justice are also cases of expediency . . . .” (64)
What lies hidden behind our moral values, according to Mill, is happiness, the idea that humanity will get the most enjoyment out of life if it follows a certain set of moral principles. The pursuit of justice, we believe, or of virtue, makes the world happier overall, and in practice seeing justice or virtue pursued makes us happy. Because of these facts, all ethics really boils down to questions about happiness. Such an argument is one that tends to repel, if not lead to outright rebellion. Not everyone pursues happiness; some still have honor! Mill accepts this. It is true, he says, that we don’t always consciously choose actions because they will make everyone as happy as possible. “This, however, is but an instance of that familiar fact, the power of habit, and is nowise confined to the case of virtuous actions.” (40) Habit, as we all know, causes us to do things that often make no sense in particular cases, simply because we do the same thing so often that we come to do it without thinking. We prefer a certain range of acts (for example, giving everyone privacy and free reign to do what they want) in the first case because it seems to lead to the most happiness. Yet, we can become so used to the idea that we stubbornly defend it even when it no longer makes sense (when, for example, it seems likely that someone is murdering people, and “invading” their privacy could find evidence to arrest him or her). “What was once desired as an instrument for the attainment of happiness has come to be desired for its own sake.” (37) Thus do we lose sight of our own goal and become caught up in habit.
If Mill is right, if it really is happiness that we are pursuing at the core of it all, then it not only makes sense to argue that happiness should be our real goal; it basically must be so. As the saying goes in ethics, “ought implies can;” that is, if you ought to do something, then it is necessary that you are actually able to do it, that you can. If, as Mill says, all we can pursue is happiness, if that’s the only thing that we can all agree is the goal worth pursuing, then pursuing happiness is what we ought to do.
While this sounds sensible, there is, I think, a problem that remains unaddressed, indeed unrecognized. People, Mill says, should pursue happiness. But what is happiness? It’s a bit of an odd question. On the face of it, knowing what happiness is seems like the easiest thing in the world. We all know what happiness is; we experience it ourselves. There’s certainly no question that everyone thinks happiness is a good thing, if not the best thing (those who think otherwise are, as Mill said, just victims of habit and forgetfulness). So why is there need for further discussion?
There is a need for more discussion because, like we all know what happiness is, we also ‘know’ what justice is. As we’ve discovered, what that really means is that we have intuitions about justice which developed in our upbringing and have stuck with us ever since. In reality, our ideas about justice, virtue, and so on, according to Mill, have another source outside of themselves, namely, happiness. Happiness apparently stands above the rest as a true universal. But is it really exempt from this critique?
If happiness it really is the hidden universal guiding our ethical decisions, then it must stand across the borders of individuals as the single, uniting idea. It must do what subjective values such as justice cannot; that is, speak a universal name. Everyone should, upon reflection, be able to reach an agreement about what is pursued in happiness. In fact, they do not. Mill himself admits this, though not explicitly; “there is as much difference of opinion, and as much discussion, about what is just as about what is useful to society.” At first glance, this does not appear to be about happiness, but about utility. People differ, Mill agrees, about what most useful for society. But he also says that what people really want, whether they acknowledge it or not, is happiness. Justice, fairness, and the rest are used by people because of their supposed positive effect on happiness. Utility is no different here. For example: some people think that what is most “useful” to society is to provide people with material wants (the welfare, socialistic, and communist states). Some people think that people should be allowed maximum freedom (libertarian, anarchist, and related theories). Some people think the best way is security and control (police states). These ways have their supposed “utility,” but for what? By Mill’s argumentation, for happiness.
But do they all reach towards the same thing? Does security give one the same happiness that freedom does? What about cultivation of the arts versus material wants? Are they pushing towards the same happiness? Is happiness found in the individual, or the group? Is there a real thing such as ‘group happiness?’ What these questions show us is the fact that there is indeed a great controversy about what happiness actually is. A different sort of happiness corresponds to each of these conceptions; the happiness that comes from reading a book is very different than that which comes from scratching one’s itches. Even biologically speaking, the happiness of repose is different from adrenaline-induced happiness, which is different from happiness inspired by vicodin, all of which fall under the general heading of happiness. But are they all the same phenomenon, the single source which grounds our ethics? As long as this is still a problem, we have not solved our problem of giving ethics a single, universal ground.
Mill might respond that these differences are just products of psychology, as he did when addressing theories opposed to utilitarianism. But even Mill himself makes an untenable distinction in defining happiness. Mill defines happiness as (1) pleasure and (2) the absence of pain: “By happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain and the privation of pleasure.” (7) He then further distinguishes between higher and lower pleasures, between which there is not a quantitative, but a qualitative difference. Higher pleasures are those which come from such nice things as philanthropy, reading books, and being a nice guy all around; the ‘intellectual’ virtues. Lower pleasures are, as Mill puts it, the pleasures of pigs; scratching one’s itches. Between these, the choice is (for Mill) obvious: “Human beings have faculties more elevated the animal appetites and, when once made conscious of them, do not regard anything as happiness which does not include their gratification.” (8) It already was obvious with the names given to them. Pleasures of the mind are better than those of the body.
Happiness, says Mill, is pleasure (and the absence of pain), plain and simple. Yet it is not so simple, because some pleasures are less “happy” than others. The pleasures of the mind take priority. This, of course, makes sense for Mill the philosopher, the man of cultivated mind. But is he justified? How can we be sure he is not, like those he accuses, just using his intuitions to make moral judgments, rather than finding a real source for morality? According to Mill, the answer is that higher pleasures are better because those who have experienced them both choose the higher pleasures: “Now it is an unquestionable fact 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 their higher faculties.” (9) Those who have lived lives of hedonism and sin, as well as lives spent cultivating themselves and living in stability, always go back to what is stable and secure, what gives them better reason to live, the pleasures of the mind. “And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides.” (10) When the two choices are understood, the right path is obvious. Thus we not only allows us a proof of the promotion of happiness, it also allows us to find judges to resolve our conflicts: “the test of quality and the rule of measuring it against quantity being the preference felt by those who, in their opportunities of experience, to which must be added habits of self-consciousness and self-observation, are best furnished with the means of comparison.” (12)
This accords well with what we think of conventionally. We consider ‘recovered’ those who have dropped their lives of sin and put themselves in a position to move up in society. The church helps those who live for nothing but the body, and returns them to a good, stable living. We trust these people to be the judges of what is right. They tell us how we should act, since they are wise and know the best ways to secure a satisfying life. Yet this is again, I think, only our intuitions talking. For there are times when people “who know better” don’t make the right choice. Mill uses psychologically-based arguments to refute them. “Capacity for the nobler feelings is in most natures a very tender plant, easily killed, not only by hostile influences, but by mere want of sustenance.” (10) “[T]hey addict themselves to inferior pleasures, not because they deliberately prefer them, but because they are either the only ones to which they have access or the only ones which they are any longer capable of enjoying.” (10) There are wise, aged, learned people who prefer the pleasures of the body, but we call them weak-willed or foolish. Are we justified in doing so? Might they not have a point? They certainly do pursue happiness. Further, it is not in total ignorance; they are aware of the other side, yet somehow “fall into temptation.” Can we just call them foolish and move on?
We must, if we are to follow Mill’s argument for utilitarian ethics. He depends upon it, both for his ought and his can. For while the ‘can’ is fulfilled by his claim that people pursue nothing but happiness, upon which his arguments against other moralities depends, his ‘ought’ depends upon happiness being what he describes it as being, something which has its higher and lower side, not merely a psychological fact but something ethical that allows for judgments of right and wrong. It is here that I think Mill runs into difficulty. He uses psychology well to explain human behavior, and indeed, he may be right. Even if there is disagreement about what exactly is entailed, it may be the case that people really do pursue only happiness, provided that we understand “happiness” on an individual basis. But that alone does not give us an ethic, because it does not tell us what happiness really is. All it tells us is that people pursue what they think want, without telling us what that is. In order to provide an ought, and with it an ethics, we have to know what that thing is, so that we know how to increase it as much as possible. But Mill does not do this, because he does not think there is any dispute about what ‘happiness’ is. In fact, happiness is such a vague idea that we are able to get almost nothing from it, besides (I think) letting people do what they want to be happy, insofar as it also allows others to be happy. (This is, of course, close to Mill’s argument in On Liberty; I do actually agree with Mill on a number of things in practice.) But as it stands, we can only say that
And if this is all we can say, than utilitarianism has no provided any better ground than the theories it claims to stand beyond.
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That which we know as ethics is about the ‘ought’ of humanity. Ethics asks what it is right and wrong for human beings to do in their lives. It tells us that there is a way of living that is itself somehow better than another, and tries to determine which way of life is the best, the “good life.” To find this way of life, ethical theories posit a source of right and wrong, a standard or rule by which one can judge an action or a person according to its moral rightness (or wrongness). Before one can choose the right path, one must know what is right and what wrong.
Yet, unlike the earlier ages of philosophy, the modern distrust of broad ontologies and metanarratives means that one must not only attempt to justify a moral theory (say, that one should value honor above all else) against other moral theories, but against the idea that there is no morality at all. Today the question is asked whether there is any such thing as ‘morality’ to be discovered, whether the idea of morality reflects something real in our nature or the world’s, or is rather purely subjective, a concept born of psychology and defended by stubbornness in the face of modern critique. It must not only be asked whether honor, for instance, is the highest value, but whether it is a value at all, or if it is really something made up by an animal species in the course of history, and whether all moral concepts are not like this.
In fact, what is it that we mean when we talk about “honor?” What is honor, exactly? We can all talk about instances of people being honorable, and often enough we agree. But when it comes to saying what honor itself is, we find ourselves at a loss for words. Honor itself, like virtue, fairness, or justice, is a moral concept that we have grown up with but rarely try to explain in its core. We grow up familiar with exemplars and examples, but the concept itself remains vague. As long as this is the case, it is difficult, if not impossible, to defend the claim that our ideas about morality have a real backing. After all, how can we defend that which we barely understand ourselves?
Utilitarianism is an ethic that appears to open a path around these questions. While values such as “honor” or “justice” sound good on paper but on reflection are vague and subjective, utilitarianism appears to offer as straightforward an ethical base as you can get: “The utilitarian doctrine is that happiness is desirable, and the only thing desirable, as an end; all other things being only desirable as a means to that end,” (35) according to John Stuart Mill in his treatise of the same name. Happiness is should be sought; everything else is good in proportion as it promotes happiness. While honor and virtue sound nice, they should only be of concern insofar as they make us happier as a whole.
Challenges from other moral theories aside, utilitarianism seems to have quite an edge in terms of providing a clear, consistent, believable foundation for the development of a universal morality. While individuals and cultures can disagree fiercely on what honor, virtue, or justice are, and disagree even further as to what amongst them takes priority, utilitarianism gives us a very straightforward guideline. People like to be happy; in fact, I would say that everyone likes to be happy. Happiness is good, unhappiness bad. The best world would be one where everyone is happy (who would disagree?). Therefore, let us choose the moral theory tells us to increase overall happiness.
But does utilitarianism really offer us a solution? True, everyone is a fan of being happy. But everyone is also a fan of being, for example, just. What makes happiness (thus utilitarianism) different? Mill argues that what separates happiness is its universal power, something which he thinks is lacking in every other ethic. For example, ask people about what is just. Everyone could tell you about just people and the traits they have. But these people come to very different answers when asked about the virtue they know. “Justice is the will of the stronger,” in the words of Thrasymachus. (Plato, Republic Book I) Or justice is fairness (John Rawls). The opinions of non-philosophers often come back to, “Justice is doing what’s right,” which does nothing but take us back a level, for what is right? Justice, concept that appears to be straightforward, that everyone understands, quickly, upon analysis, falls into a mess on intuitions and instincts about what should be done, with many of those intuitions having no middle ground.
One would suppose . . . that on questions of justice there could be no controversy; that, if we take that for our rule, its application to any given case could levae us in as little doubt as a mathematical demonstration. So far is this from being the fact that there is as much difference of opinion, and as much discussion, about what is just as about what is useful to society. Not only have different nations and individuals different notions of justice, but in the mind of one and the same individual, justice is not some one rule, principle, or maxim, but many which do not always coincide in their dictates, and, in choosing between which, he is guided either by some extraneous standard or by his own personal predilections. (55)
While justice has great intuitive power, one cannot claim truth based upon unscrutinized opinions. One needs a coherent defense for one’s principles and why they are held, a demonstration that will show people that the end suggested really is good and worth pursuing. According to Mill, only utilitarianism supplies this need. “Each, from his own point of view, is unanswerable; and any choice between them, on grounds of justice, must be perfectly arbitrary. Social utility alone can decide the preference,” (58) he says. When we justify our ethic of choice, on what grounds do we justify it? What makes justice and virtue worth following? Is it some intangible value that emanates them like the Platonic Forms? Such a defense no longer works in this day and age. Rather, we tend to say that following a given path is the best way, that it makes for the best world where humanity can live to its fullest. When we don’t resort to divine sanction or to circles of words (justice is fair, fairness defends freedom, freedom is just . . .), we find ourselves falling back to the argument that justice, fairness, etc. make for the best world to live in. What is the best world? The one where everyone can be happy. In other words, ideals such as justice are in reality chosen because of their utility, because of their ability to promote happiness. People believe that their particular conceptions of justice and the like are those through which the world will be the best, the one worth living in, the one people would want to live in if they understood. But this is the world with the most happiness. In other words, the other ethical theories are in reality already utilitarian; “all cases of justice are also cases of expediency . . . .” (64)
What lies hidden behind our moral values, according to Mill, is happiness, the idea that humanity will get the most enjoyment out of life if it follows a certain set of moral principles. The pursuit of justice, we believe, or of virtue, makes the world happier overall, and in practice seeing justice or virtue pursued makes us happy. Because of these facts, all ethics really boils down to questions about happiness. Such an argument is one that tends to repel, if not lead to outright rebellion. Not everyone pursues happiness; some still have honor! Mill accepts this. It is true, he says, that we don’t always consciously choose actions because they will make everyone as happy as possible. “This, however, is but an instance of that familiar fact, the power of habit, and is nowise confined to the case of virtuous actions.” (40) Habit, as we all know, causes us to do things that often make no sense in particular cases, simply because we do the same thing so often that we come to do it without thinking. We prefer a certain range of acts (for example, giving everyone privacy and free reign to do what they want) in the first case because it seems to lead to the most happiness. Yet, we can become so used to the idea that we stubbornly defend it even when it no longer makes sense (when, for example, it seems likely that someone is murdering people, and “invading” their privacy could find evidence to arrest him or her). “What was once desired as an instrument for the attainment of happiness has come to be desired for its own sake.” (37) Thus do we lose sight of our own goal and become caught up in habit.
If Mill is right, if it really is happiness that we are pursuing at the core of it all, then it not only makes sense to argue that happiness should be our real goal; it basically must be so. As the saying goes in ethics, “ought implies can;” that is, if you ought to do something, then it is necessary that you are actually able to do it, that you can. If, as Mill says, all we can pursue is happiness, if that’s the only thing that we can all agree is the goal worth pursuing, then pursuing happiness is what we ought to do.
While this sounds sensible, there is, I think, a problem that remains unaddressed, indeed unrecognized. People, Mill says, should pursue happiness. But what is happiness? It’s a bit of an odd question. On the face of it, knowing what happiness is seems like the easiest thing in the world. We all know what happiness is; we experience it ourselves. There’s certainly no question that everyone thinks happiness is a good thing, if not the best thing (those who think otherwise are, as Mill said, just victims of habit and forgetfulness). So why is there need for further discussion?
There is a need for more discussion because, like we all know what happiness is, we also ‘know’ what justice is. As we’ve discovered, what that really means is that we have intuitions about justice which developed in our upbringing and have stuck with us ever since. In reality, our ideas about justice, virtue, and so on, according to Mill, have another source outside of themselves, namely, happiness. Happiness apparently stands above the rest as a true universal. But is it really exempt from this critique?
If happiness it really is the hidden universal guiding our ethical decisions, then it must stand across the borders of individuals as the single, uniting idea. It must do what subjective values such as justice cannot; that is, speak a universal name. Everyone should, upon reflection, be able to reach an agreement about what is pursued in happiness. In fact, they do not. Mill himself admits this, though not explicitly; “there is as much difference of opinion, and as much discussion, about what is just as about what is useful to society.” At first glance, this does not appear to be about happiness, but about utility. People differ, Mill agrees, about what most useful for society. But he also says that what people really want, whether they acknowledge it or not, is happiness. Justice, fairness, and the rest are used by people because of their supposed positive effect on happiness. Utility is no different here. For example: some people think that what is most “useful” to society is to provide people with material wants (the welfare, socialistic, and communist states). Some people think that people should be allowed maximum freedom (libertarian, anarchist, and related theories). Some people think the best way is security and control (police states). These ways have their supposed “utility,” but for what? By Mill’s argumentation, for happiness.
But do they all reach towards the same thing? Does security give one the same happiness that freedom does? What about cultivation of the arts versus material wants? Are they pushing towards the same happiness? Is happiness found in the individual, or the group? Is there a real thing such as ‘group happiness?’ What these questions show us is the fact that there is indeed a great controversy about what happiness actually is. A different sort of happiness corresponds to each of these conceptions; the happiness that comes from reading a book is very different than that which comes from scratching one’s itches. Even biologically speaking, the happiness of repose is different from adrenaline-induced happiness, which is different from happiness inspired by vicodin, all of which fall under the general heading of happiness. But are they all the same phenomenon, the single source which grounds our ethics? As long as this is still a problem, we have not solved our problem of giving ethics a single, universal ground.
Mill might respond that these differences are just products of psychology, as he did when addressing theories opposed to utilitarianism. But even Mill himself makes an untenable distinction in defining happiness. Mill defines happiness as (1) pleasure and (2) the absence of pain: “By happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain and the privation of pleasure.” (7) He then further distinguishes between higher and lower pleasures, between which there is not a quantitative, but a qualitative difference. Higher pleasures are those which come from such nice things as philanthropy, reading books, and being a nice guy all around; the ‘intellectual’ virtues. Lower pleasures are, as Mill puts it, the pleasures of pigs; scratching one’s itches. Between these, the choice is (for Mill) obvious: “Human beings have faculties more elevated the animal appetites and, when once made conscious of them, do not regard anything as happiness which does not include their gratification.” (8) It already was obvious with the names given to them. Pleasures of the mind are better than those of the body.
Happiness, says Mill, is pleasure (and the absence of pain), plain and simple. Yet it is not so simple, because some pleasures are less “happy” than others. The pleasures of the mind take priority. This, of course, makes sense for Mill the philosopher, the man of cultivated mind. But is he justified? How can we be sure he is not, like those he accuses, just using his intuitions to make moral judgments, rather than finding a real source for morality? According to Mill, the answer is that higher pleasures are better because those who have experienced them both choose the higher pleasures: “Now it is an unquestionable fact 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 their higher faculties.” (9) Those who have lived lives of hedonism and sin, as well as lives spent cultivating themselves and living in stability, always go back to what is stable and secure, what gives them better reason to live, the pleasures of the mind. “And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides.” (10) When the two choices are understood, the right path is obvious. Thus we not only allows us a proof of the promotion of happiness, it also allows us to find judges to resolve our conflicts: “the test of quality and the rule of measuring it against quantity being the preference felt by those who, in their opportunities of experience, to which must be added habits of self-consciousness and self-observation, are best furnished with the means of comparison.” (12)
This accords well with what we think of conventionally. We consider ‘recovered’ those who have dropped their lives of sin and put themselves in a position to move up in society. The church helps those who live for nothing but the body, and returns them to a good, stable living. We trust these people to be the judges of what is right. They tell us how we should act, since they are wise and know the best ways to secure a satisfying life. Yet this is again, I think, only our intuitions talking. For there are times when people “who know better” don’t make the right choice. Mill uses psychologically-based arguments to refute them. “Capacity for the nobler feelings is in most natures a very tender plant, easily killed, not only by hostile influences, but by mere want of sustenance.” (10) “[T]hey addict themselves to inferior pleasures, not because they deliberately prefer them, but because they are either the only ones to which they have access or the only ones which they are any longer capable of enjoying.” (10) There are wise, aged, learned people who prefer the pleasures of the body, but we call them weak-willed or foolish. Are we justified in doing so? Might they not have a point? They certainly do pursue happiness. Further, it is not in total ignorance; they are aware of the other side, yet somehow “fall into temptation.” Can we just call them foolish and move on?
We must, if we are to follow Mill’s argument for utilitarian ethics. He depends upon it, both for his ought and his can. For while the ‘can’ is fulfilled by his claim that people pursue nothing but happiness, upon which his arguments against other moralities depends, his ‘ought’ depends upon happiness being what he describes it as being, something which has its higher and lower side, not merely a psychological fact but something ethical that allows for judgments of right and wrong. It is here that I think Mill runs into difficulty. He uses psychology well to explain human behavior, and indeed, he may be right. Even if there is disagreement about what exactly is entailed, it may be the case that people really do pursue only happiness, provided that we understand “happiness” on an individual basis. But that alone does not give us an ethic, because it does not tell us what happiness really is. All it tells us is that people pursue what they think want, without telling us what that is. In order to provide an ought, and with it an ethics, we have to know what that thing is, so that we know how to increase it as much as possible. But Mill does not do this, because he does not think there is any dispute about what ‘happiness’ is. In fact, happiness is such a vague idea that we are able to get almost nothing from it, besides (I think) letting people do what they want to be happy, insofar as it also allows others to be happy. (This is, of course, close to Mill’s argument in On Liberty; I do actually agree with Mill on a number of things in practice.) But as it stands, we can only say that
whether there be any other ground of moral obligation than the general happiness or not, men do desire happiness; and however imperfect may be their own practice, they desire and commend all conduct in others toward themselves by which they think their happiness is promoted. (28)
And if this is all we can say, than utilitarianism has no provided any better ground than the theories it claims to stand beyond.
posted by Derek at 9:36 PM
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