Chapter 5 - Mill

Introduction

John Stuart Mill was born in London in 1806 and died in Avignon in 1873. His Scottish father, James Mill, was a distinguished writer and civil servant who, with Jeremy Bentham, was deeply involved in the political reform movement of the 1830s. James Mill and Bentham arranged for John Stuart Mill to be carefully educated, without what they saw as distracting contact with companions of his own age, so as to carry on the work of this movement. In his Autobiography, John Stuart Mill described his education – which most would regard as extraordinarily intensive – as one suitable for any normal child. That said, he also records a period of extreme depression that he suffered as a young man, and many now regard that depression as the direct result of his lack of anything one would count as a childhood. (Aside from its relevance to Mill’s thought, the Autobiography is an interesting account of his political and social context. Moreover, not counting very recent philosophers, proper autobiographies are rather rare in philosophy.)

A central philosophical view of the reformist movement of James Mill and Bentham was known as ‘utilitarianism’, and John Stuart Mill made a major contribution to this doctrine as well as to politics, economics, women’s rights, philosophy and logic. He was by any standards a prolific writer and had an enormous influence on social and political life in nineteenth-century Britain and on the European continent.

Utilitarianism was originally published over three issues of the monthly Fraser’s Magazine in 1861, and then collected together as a short book in 1863. It should be noted that Mill’s aim in Utilitarianism was to expound and defend the doctrine of utilitarianism for the more general public, rather than to construct arguments for narrowly philosophic purposes. It should be remembered that, whatever view one comes to about its philosophical content, in its time the doctrine was, and was seen to be, radical and utopian by both its adherents and its detractors.

Reading

Primary text

Utilitarianism is not long, and you should read it in its entirety. It is obtainable on the internet via Project Gutenberg (www.gutenberg.org), but a particularly useful edition – because of the editor’s introduction and notes – is:

Crisp, Roger (ed.) Utilitarianism by J.S. Mill. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) [ISBN 019875163X].

Recommended essential reading

* Brink, D. ‘Utilitarian Morality and the Personal Point of View’, Journal of Philosophy, 83(8), 1986, pp.417–38.

* Donner, W. ‘Mill’s Utilitarianism’ in Skorupski, John (ed.) Cambridge Companion to Mill. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) [ISBN 0521419875].

* Rawls, J. ‘Two Concepts of Rules’, Philosophical Review, 64(1), 1955, pp.3–32.

* Sayre-McCord, G. ‘Mill’s ‘Proof’ of the Principle of Utility: A More than Half-Hearted Defense’ in Paul, E.F., F.D. Miller and J. Paul (eds) Moral Knowledge. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001) [ISBN 0521006031] pp. 330–60.

* Singer, M. ‘Actual Consequence Utilitarianism’, Mind, 86(341), 1977, pp.67–77.

* Urmson, J.O. ‘The Interpretation of the Moral Philosophy of John Stuart Mill’, Philosophical Quarterly, 3(10), 1953, pp.33–39.

* Williams, B. ‘A Critique of Utilitarianism’ in Smart J.J.C. and B. Williams Utilitarianism: For and Against. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973) [ISBN 052109822X]
pp.77–150.

Wilson, Fred ‘John Stuart Mill’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2012 edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2012/entries/mill/. Especially the sections on Mill’s moral and political views.

Further reading

Foot, P. ‘Utilitarianism and the Virtues’, Mind, 94, 1985, pp.196–209.

Scheffler, S. (ed.) Consequentialism and its Critics. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988) [ISBN 0198750730].

Crisp, Roger Mill on Utilitarianism. Routledge Philosophy Guidebook. (London: Routledge, 1997) [ISBN 0415109787].

Sen, Amartya and Bernard Williams (eds) Utilitarianism and Beyond. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982) [ISBN 0521242967].

Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter ‘Consequentialism’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2011 edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.) http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2011/entries/consequentialism/

Skorupski, John (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Mill. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) [ISBN 9780521419871].

Thomson, J.J. ‘Goodness and Utilitarianism’, Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, 67(4), 1994, pp.7–21.

Defining utilitarianism

Here is Mill’s definition of utilitarianism as offered in Chapter II:

The creed which accepts as the foundation of morality ‘utility’ or ‘the greatest happiness principle’ holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain and the privation of pleasure.

As he notes straightaway, much needs to be filled in before one can fully judge this definition, but even in this form, much can be said.

Three things stand out. First, Mill is not here proposing some new conception of morality, some recommendation for revising in a major way our intuitions about what is right, good and virtuous. What he is offering instead is a ‘foundation’ for morality – an account which will in some appropriate way explain the moral judgments we ordinarily make.

Second, an essential element in providing such a foundation is consequentialism. In the above definition, Mill says that an action is right insofar as it ‘tends to promote happiness’; that is, insofar as the consequences of performing that action have consequences for human happiness. More will be said about consequentialism below, but it is of course unsurprising that it plays a central role. Utilitarianism was championed by Jeremy Bentham and Mill’s father James, and consequentialism is one of the signal characteristics of Bentham’s treatment of the doctrine. As we will see, Mill introduced a more nuanced view of utilitarianism, but he never wavered in maintaining its consequentialist basis.

Third, the other main element in the doctrine is its hedonism, its insistence that the role of human happiness is fundamental in providing a foundation for morality. The above formulation seems wholly in line with Bentham’s hedonism – happiness being itself defined as pleasure and the absence of pain – though there are important differences from Bentham that we will shortly consider. While Mill may well have given a more subtle treatment of consequentialism than Bentham – this will be considered later in this chapter – he most certainly did set out to do so in respect of hedonism.

These three points should serve as the main agenda items for your work on Mill, and in what follows below, I shall outline some of the issues that can be grouped under them. The first one up will be hedonism.

Happiness

Having given a summary definition of the doctrine (see above), the first real task of Chapter II of Utilitarianism is that of clarifying the notion of happiness. Bentham had thought this task rather straightforward, even mechanical. He believed that pleasure could be measured as greater or lesser in quantity (and similarly for pain), and that there were certain dimensions to pleasure which explained these differences. To take one example, some pleasures might be individual, intense and fleeting, while others are ‘fecund’: pleasure, in this latter case, leads to more pleasure. In his typically straightforward way, Bentham proposed a ‘felicific’ calculus – a sort of balance sheet – which we could and should use to work out the hedonistic consequences of actions we might undertake.

Mill very much complicates this picture, and he does so explicitly to make utilitarianism more acceptable, both by recognising the specialness of human beings and by encouraging a better fit between everyday value judgments and those recommended by utilitarianism. These complications are, however, highly controversial.

He claims that the pleasures which define happiness differ not only in quantity, but also in quality. This can sound a bit like Bentham’s notion of pleasures that are, or are not, fecund, but that is misleading. For Bentham, some pleasures might well be better at generating greater quantities of further pleasure, but, at bottom, there is no distinction of quality among them. In contrast, Mill insists that some pleasures are ‘better’ than others – are of a higher quality – and these somehow should count for more in our decision-making. Thus, he clearly regards various intellectual and artistic pleasures as superior to bodily ones. The former are more appropriate to human endeavours; the latter we share with other animals. Motivating this difference, without simply relying on some Aristotelian doctrine of the good for humankind, he offers a decision criterion for it: the higher pleasures are those that would be chosen by subjects who had experienced both.

The several pages in which the quantity-quality distinction is discussed bear careful reading. One issue that doesn’t seem to come up impacts directly on another of the main tenets of utilitarianism: its consequentialism. As is clear in the earlier definition and throughout Utilitarianism, Mill’s consequentialism requires agents to undertake those actions whose consequences maximise happiness (i.e. pleasure or, to use the appropriate word here, ‘utility’). However, it is far from obvious how one can maximise something which comes in two, apparently incommensurable, forms: higher and lower. Nor is this the only source of controversy, for the idea of there being a proper judge of types of pleasure is far from as straightforward as Mill makes it sound. He speaks of the proper judge as someone who has experienced both, but many have felt this both insufficiently clear and even unmotivated.

Greatest happiness

The remainder of Book II gives Mill’s replies to a series of objections to utilitarianism, some of which were clearly made in various public forums, and some which Mill himself formulates. In many of these replies, he stresses something which is crucial for the first of the points we made about his definition: the idea that utilitarianism is foundational, not for some ‘new’ morality, but for morality as we find it. This something is the idea that when the utilitarian speaks of ‘the greatest happiness’, what is meant is the total sum of happiness for all human beings. He writes:

I must again repeat what the assailants of utilitarianism seldom have the justice to acknowledge, that the happiness which forms the utilitarian standard of what is right in conduct is not the agent’s own happiness, but that of all concerned. As between his own happiness and that of others, utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator.

As this last point is often summed up: when considering the consequences of your actions, everyone, yourself and others, counts for one and no more than one.

Mill needs to explain why anyone would be motivated to act in what might well be, in certain circumstances, against one’s own self-interest. But it is worth asking a prior question: what grounds the inclusion of this proviso in the first place? It cannot be simply the principle requiring us to maximise happiness because the implementation of this principle depends on a prior decision about how to sum the happiness of multiple agents. That it is a fair proviso – a moral one – is undoubtedly true, but insofar as utilitarianism aims to offer a foundational explanation of morality, it seems wrong to assume a principle of moral fairness in its very definition.

I have cited several areas of difficulty, but Mill is at his strongest when he considers the politically reformist aspects of utilitarianism. In answering those critics who think that happiness is rather pie-in-the-sky for human beings, or who think that it is not a reasonable goal, Mill eloquently defends the idea that human societies can and should do better for their members. While nothing can prevent the unhappiness that comes from illness and loss, much more can be done, he says, to make life better for the generality of human beings. Increased effort in education, more humane working conditions and the use of resources to improve public health – all recommendations of the utilitarian programme of Bentham and Mill – would further the sum total of human happiness or at least make for less unhappiness than is presently the case.

A further objection that Mill canvasses (and tries to answer) has been a staple of discussions not only of Mill’s utilitarianism, but also of most contemporary offshoots of his account. Indeed, it is an objection that goes to the heart of any account which defines moral goodness in terms of maximising outcomes, whether the maximisation is hedonist or not. Mill writes: ‘They say it is exacting too much to require that people shall always act from the inducement of promoting the general interests.’ The problem here is not simply that utilitarianism demands that we take an interest in others’ happiness – that is something we looked at above – it is that a committed utilitarian is required ‘always’ to plan on the basis of appropriate maximising of consequences. For example, imagine getting up in the morning and asking yourself what you should do today. If you are a utilitarian, the answer would seem to be this: you should set about increasing the sum total of human welfare by whatever means are at your disposal, including the spending of a good portion of your available funds. Were you to resist doing this, this could only be because you counted yourself as more valuable than others, something in clear violation of the utilitarian standard.

Mill has a reply to this objection, and you should decide for yourself if you think it suffices. However, the context in which Mill considers this issue brings us back to the very first point made about his definition of utilitarianism, namely its role in providing a foundation for morality. In rough outline, a foundation for morality would be one which gave us insight into our moral life, but did so while preserving most of the strongly held intuitions we have about that life. I will return to one further aspect of Chapter II below, but it is Chapter V that most thoroughly explores the possible mismatch between everyday moral intuitions and the principle of utility.

Justice

In Chapter V, Mill considers an objection to utilitarianism that is formidable and has turned out to be a perennial issue in discussions of contemporary versions of the doctrine. The objection arises from our sense that justice has a special kind of binding force on us and leads to moral assessments which are quite different from those we would expect a utilitarian to make. Mill writes: ‘…people find it difficult to see in justice only a particular kind or branch of general utility, and think that its superior binding force requires a totally different origin’.

Mill then paints a complex picture of justice as it is ordinarily conceived, and uses elements in that picture to argue that the best grounding we can give to our intuitions of justice is in the end a utilitarian one. Very roughly, the picture can be outlined as follows:

  1. 1. Our sense of justice is best understood as a desire to punish those who seek to harm others. Thus, if someone is lied to, or he is incarcerated, or his possessions are taken from him, and these things are done for no reason except, say, the gratification of someone else, then this person has been harmed, and we have the very strong sentiment that this harm must be made good or, better, prevented.
  2. 2. The best account we can give of this sentiment is one based on what Mill takes to be our natural instincts for self-defence and sympathy. When we are the sufferer of these harms, we react against them from self-defence; when others are seen to suffer, we react because of the sympathy we feel for other human beings.
  3. 3. However, while these instincts might explain the strong sentiment we have that justice must be served and injustice resisted, these sentiments do not explain the underlying basis for the arrangements in society we count as just. For that, Mill thinks, only utilitarianism can help. His idea is that there is a utilitarian foundation to those rules of society which forbid us to harm others in the ways described; the rules of justice, in effect, makes things go better for – increase the happiness of – all members of the society. So while our sense of justice comes from a primitive pair of instincts –self-defence and sympathy – its content has a utilitarian basis.

This picture, some parts of which resemble Hume’s, can seem compelling, and in some form or other it continues to have appeal to many contemporary writers about human social and moral institutions. But it is not without its problems, and the jury is certainly out on the question of whether utility is consistent with justice, let alone whether it offers the best foundation for it.

At one point, Mill briefly mentions the injustice of ‘punishing’ someone who had committed no crime merely because doing so would set an example to others. Imagine a judge who knew a defendant hadn’t stolen anything, but who found him guilty and sentenced him anyway because the judge thought it would deter would-be burglars. Variations on this sort of case have been widely discussed in the literature, and they go to the heart of the issue of justice and utility that Mill didn’t perhaps probe sufficiently. For, as they are set up, these sorts of cases are meant to show that utility – acting so as to increase the sum of human happiness – is something we can achieve by acting against our sense of what is just. For, surely, knowingly sentencing someone for a crime he didn’t commit is unjust.

Rules

A short note should be inserted here about two forms of utilitarianism – forms which Mill didn’t himself discuss at any length, but which are arguably present in Utilitarianism. Moreover, though the main textual source for the distinction in Mill is in Book II, some have argued that the distinction itself might be useful in dealing with the tensions between justice and utility.

In answering an objection near the end of Book II, Mill seems to distinguish between what have come to be called ‘act’ and ‘rule’ utilitarianism. The former – the one which seems simplest and most direct – requires that each act we set out to perform maximises happiness for everyone affected by what we do. In apparent contrast, the rule-utilitarian says that we should act in accordance with rules, which, in being instituted as rules for a society, themselves promise to maximise happiness. Mill’s appeals to a nautical analogy suggest that he himself made some such distinction. Just as sailors consult a nautical almanac rather than calculating its table each time a navigational decision is required, human beings, being rational, ‘go out upon the sea of life with their minds made up on the common questions of right and wrong’.

There is a huge literature on this distinction, and some question whether it is really a distinction without a difference, whether, that is, rule-utilitarianism doesn’t in the end reduce to act-utilitarianism. Those who do think there is a real difference between these two forms think that rule-utilitarianism offers the best hope of defending the utilitarian project from apparent counterexamples. For example, the judge in the case described above should not attempt to promote the general happiness by acting on his estimation of what will happen if he sentences the innocent defendant. Instead he should rely on the established rule that only the guilty should be punished, because the greatest happiness is best served by having this in place, and sticking to it.

Conscience

In the short Chapter III, Mill considers what he calls ‘the ultimate sanction of the principle of utility’. By ‘ultimate sanction’ he means the ground or source of our sense of being bound to act on what we take to be our moral duties. Mill claims that there can be two such sources: external and internal. Fear of losing one’s reputation, or fear of retribution from a deity, are both counted as external reasons for moral obligations. The largest part of his discussion is reserved for internal reasons, and he concludes: ‘The ultimate sanction, therefore, of all morality (external motives apart) being a subjective feeling in our own minds, I see nothing embarrassing to those whose standard is utility…’ He then goes on to describe this subjective feeling as, broadly, conscience.

If conscience is indeed the psychological state that acts as the source of our moral obligations, it isn’t unreasonable to think it could apply to utilitarianism, as well as it does to any other conception of morality. But, in a Kantian spirit, it is worth asking whether a subjective feeling which might well be the source of our feeling obligated could also be its ground. Here is a different sort of example that might help to sort out this difference. If someone insults me, I may well feel aggrieved at this behaviour and respond by, for example, having nothing further to do with the person who insulted me. My feelings in this case certainly explain this response, but would we really want to say that they justify or ground it? I think not; the ground of my response is surely going to be some story about why the insult was unmerited and insensitive. This is what grounds both my response and my having had the feelings I did. Similarly, in a case where I feel the obligation to keep a promise, there is no doubt that I may well feel this obligation. Keeping my promise is not something I would justify by appeal to this feeling but, rather, by appealing to the moral status that I take promises to have. Mill is aware of this issue, but it is unclear how well he deals with it in Chapter III.

Proof

In Chapter IV Mill offers what he calls a ‘proof’ of the principle of utility, and given the way many philosophers have reacted to what Mill wrote, it should perhaps be called the ‘notorious proof’. He begins by asserting: The utilitarian doctrine is that happiness is desirable, and the only thing desirable as an end.’ Can this be proven? Mill writes:

The only proof capable of being given that an object is visible is that people actually see it. The only proof that a sound is audible is that people hear it…In like manner, I apprehend, the sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything is desirable is that people do actually desire it.

Taken at face value, this passage is often cited as the source of a terrible argument. The problem is that ‘visible’/‘audible’ mean ‘can be seen/heard’, whereas ‘desirable’ means ‘is worthy of being desired’ rather than ‘can be desired’. This has been enough for many to condemn Mill’s proof as hopeless. Others have argued that we shouldn’t take this ‘proof’ at face value in this way, and that Mill does have a point. Perhaps what he was suggesting is that the best way to determine whether something is desirable in the sense of being worthy to be desired is by finding that it happens to be desired by most people. Moreover, an interpretation along these lines opens up a larger, and potentially more important, issue, one rather fundamental to the study of value itself. For how one understands the very idea of being worthy of being desired is at the heart of everyone’s theory of value.