Utilitarianism John Stuart Mill

When an objection is raised: When some objection is raised to a moral theory, if that objection is a good one, the proponent of the moral theory has a few general options: – Abandon the theory – Modify the theory to accommodate the objection – Accept the objection, but deny that the theory has to be abandoned.

The Swine Objection Aristotle (among others) objected that utilitarianism would be a bad moral theory because it holds that the best life for a person is the life of a pig in slop—the life of physical pleasure only. Mill deals with this objection by modifying Utilitarianism from the form that he inherited from Bentham.

Quality Mill contends that what is good for a pig is not necessarily what is good for a person. He claims that there are “higher” and “lower” pleasures. That is “a beast’s pleasures do not satisfy a human being’s conceptions of happiness” (p.331) He means to say that things like friendship, accomplishment, appreciation of art and culture and humour are all things that people but not pigs are not capable of. This is new. There was no element of the Quality of pleasures in Bentham, only quantity.

How to tell when a pleasure is high or low: Mill offers what is termed the “competent judge” test to determine which pleasures are higher than others. Any person who has a good deal of experience with two kinds of pleasure will prefer one over the other. The one they prefer is then indicated as the higher pleasure. Note that nobody would make themselves stupider or more uncouth, no matter how much pleasure morons or jesters might experience.

What about those who appear to choose low over high pleasures? Everyone at some point chooses to sit on the couch and eat chips and watch TV sometimes, though they could be developing their intellects. What of this? Mill responds in two ways: – Everyone has occasional moments of weakness or laziness, that doesn’t mean that anyone thinks the low pleasures really are better. – Sometimes people in bad circumstances get so used to having only low pleasures that they lose their ability to appreciate higher pleasures. This is tragic.

Some further objections to utilitarianism that Mill thinks aren’t very good: The following are common objections that Mill answers in Chapter 2. He thinks that none of them is a good enough objection to require modifying or rejecting utilitarianism.

People will not share happiness Objection “The objectors…may doubt whether human beings, if taught to consider happiness as the end [goal] of life would be satisfied with such a moderate share of it.” (334) In other words, people won’t regard everyone else’s pleasures to be as valuable as their own, and there isn’t enough to go around. response Read 334 :“Now there is absolutely no reason in the nature of things why an amount…” through “…ample earnest of what the human species be made. In other words, there is more than enough pleasure to go around and every civilized person, of which there are overwhelmingly many, cares for other persons and for society at large.

Are sacrifices morally required? objection For the Utilitarian, it seems that there will be some cases in which someone will create the best consequences by making huge sacrifices of themselves. If that means that those sacrifices are morally required of anyone in that situation, then util. is a tough pill to swallow. Also, we tend to view sacrifice as morally praiseworthy, but not morally required. For Util. there is no such distinction. response Mill grants that sometimes this is the case, and that when it is the case, the good utilitarian will unhesitatingly do what actually makes the world best off, even if it is not best for them. This doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it is not the sacrifice itself that is good or bad, but its consequences. If a sacrifice didn’t make the world better to an extent greater than any other available action, then the sacrifice is wasted. (see )

The Overridingness objection: objection Perhaps the utilitarian demands too much of people. Should every single action of ours be always considering the maximum possible good for everyone else? Can’t a person just make breakfast in the moning without having to make sure that they couldn’t be spending that time incrasing total happiness? response It is rare that any single person can be a serious benefit to society at large. It is better for everyone to consider only their own actions and the people most directly affected. If everyone does this, then happiness multiplies. If people try and consider the whole world, they just get decision paralysis, which does not lead to the best consequences.

The “expediency” objection objection Utilitarianism cannot provide a categorical statement that murder, theft, rape, pillage, and lying are wrong, because sometimes one of these things might lead to the best consequences overall. Choosing when you get to lie (for example) and when you don’t then looks like choosing the more expedient (convenient) option. response The utilitarian’s choice of when to lie or not to lie is anything but arbitrary. Whatever actually makes the world better by adding pleasure to it is the moral action. The only reason we say that lying, murder, rape, pillage, etc. are bad is because these things are overwhelmingly likely to generate bad consequences. In those possible instances in which they don’t, why say they are bad in that case?

Study Questions Is Mill’s ‘competent judge’ test a good test of the quality of pleasures? Why or why not? What is the greatest difference between Mill’s version of Utilitarianism and Bentham’s Bentham once wrote that push-pin (a simple game of petty gambling played by young men and boys of the time) could be better than poetry because it simply produces more pleasure. What would Mill say to this?