Utilitarianism

I do not believe that those who undergo this very common change coluntarily choose the lower description of pleasures in preference to the higher. I believe that, before they devote themselves exclusively to the one, they have already become incapable of the other. Capacity for other nobler feelings is in most natures a very tender plant, easily killed, not only by hostile influences, but by mere want of sustenance; and in the majority of young persons it speedily dies away if the occupations to which their position in life has devoted them, and the society into which it has thrown them, are not favorable to keeping that higer capacity in exercise. Men lose their high aspirations as they lose their intellectual tastes, because they have not time or opportunity for indulging them; and they 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.

In a world in which there is so much to interest, so much to enjoy, and so much also to correct and improve, every one who has this moderate amount of moral and intellectual requisites is capable of an existence which may be called enviable; and unless such a person, through bad laws, or subjection to the will of others, is denied the liberty to use the sources of happiness within his reach, he will not fail to find this enviable existence, if he escape the positive evils of life, the great sources of physical and mental suffering- such as indigence, disease, and the unkindness, worthlessness, or premature loss of objects of affection. The main stress of the problem lies, therefore, in the contest with these calamities, from which it is a rare good fortune entirely to escape; which, as things now are, cannot be obviated, and often cannot be in any material degree mitigated. Yet no one whose opinion deserves a moment's consideration can doubt that most of the great positive evils of the world are in themselves removable, and will, if human affairs continue to improve, be in the end reduced within narrow limits. Poverty, in any sense implying suffering, may be completely extinguished by the wisdom of society, combined with the good sense and providence of individuals. Even that most intractable of enemies, disease, may be indefinitely reduced in dimensions by good physical and moral education, and proper control of noxious influences; while the progress of science holds out a promise for the future of still more direct conquests over this detestable foe. And every advance in that direction relieves us from some, not only of the chances which cut short our own lives, but, what concerns us still more, which deprive us of those in whom our happiness is wrapt up. As for vicissitudes of fortune, and other disappointments connected with worldly circumstances, these are principally the effect either of gross imprudence, of ill-regulated desires, or of bad or imperfect social institutions.

According to Mill, utilitarianism is the principle that “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness” (7). Mill defines “happiness” as “pleasure and freedom from pain” (7), and the “happiness” as called for by the utilitarian principle is not just one particular agent’s, but “the greatest amount of happiness altogether” (of all human beings) (11). Mill accords utilitarianism with the status of the fundamental “first principle” (i.e. the ultimate standard) by which the rightness or wrongness of every action can be determined. (3, 26) This fundamental principle takes precedence over all the rest of moral principles (which Mill deems as “secondary principles”, 26) and decides between these principles when they are in conflict. In my opinion, the strongest objection to utilitarianism is that it degrades human nature by supposing that life has no higher/nobler end than pleasure (7). Mill responds that this accusation wrongly assumes human beings as incapable of enjoying pleasures which are “higher” than the pleasures from mere sensation (8). For his response to hold true, Mill has to differentiate higher pleasures from lower pleasures in the first place. This ranking/differentiation of pleasures (not in terms of quantity, but in terms of quality, or the “intrinsic nature” of pleasure, insofar as Mill’s attempt goes, 8) inevitably calls for some other more fundamental index/standard than pleasure/utility itself, by which different pleasures can be evaluated, compared, and ranked insofar as their quality is concerned. But Mill has already established pleasure/happiness/utility as “the ultimate end, with reference to and for the sake of which all other things are desirable” (12). If so, how can there be some other underlying standard, presumably representing an end that is even more ultimate than pleasure/utility itself, by which some pleasures are judged as having higher quality than others, hence worthier for us to strive for? Mill indeed anticipates the question “what makes one pleasure more valuable than another” (8). His initial answer is: higher pleasures are those pleasures “to which almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference” (8). What draws almost all human beings under the same conditions to the unanimous preference of the so-called higher pleasures? On P9, Mill continues to explain higher pleasures as the kind “which employs their higher faculties” (9). One is left to ask, what makes a higher faculty “higher” than other faculties? Should the concept of a “higher” faculty be explained in terms of some other value that overrides utility/pleasure (Mill’s insistence on the primacy of the utilitarian principle, then, is at the risk of being overturned), or circularly explained in terms of the susceptibility of such faculties to (higher) pleasures? In either case, I find Mill’s answer unsatisfactory. In sum, the objection on P7 is strong in the following way: this objection assumes that there are aspects of human nature which are higher, or nobler than those aspects in animals, an assumption which Mill does not reject. Human beings, according to Mill, are superior to animals in that they can appreciate higher pleasures. Either there are pleasures inherently higher than others, or nobler pleasures are those which human beings alone, with their higher faculties, can experience. The former observation requires Mill to acknowledge the existence of some other underlying principle according to which we can rank pleasure, and this principle therefore represents a more fundamental value than pleasure/utility. The latter observation constitutes a circularity: human beings are superior because of their susceptibility to higher pleasures, and these pleasures are higher because human beings are superior creatures, i.e. they have superior faculties that are susceptible to such pleasures.

"Happiness...was not a life of rapture; but...many and various pleasures, with a decided predominance of the active over the passive, and having as the foundation of the whole, not to expect more from life than it is capable of bestowing."