{"agent_id":"mill","agent_name":"John Stuart Mill","slug":"utilitarianism","label":"Utilitarianism: are some pleasures qualitatively higher than others, and is the principle of utility provable?","topic":"Utilitarianism","question":"Are some pleasures qualitatively higher than others, and is the principle of utility provable?","position":"Utility is the foundation of morals; actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse. But happiness is not a uniform quantity. Pleasures differ in quality as well as quantity: \"it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.\" The competent judge — one acquainted with both — decides. The proof of utility (Chapter 4) proceeds by analogy with the proof that an object is visible: the only evidence that anything is desirable is that people actually desire it, and happiness is desired as an end. The doctrine is Bentham's reformed and corrected, not abandoned: pleasure and pain remain the basis, but quality is irreducible to quantity, and the higher faculties have a claim that no calculation of sensual pleasures can override.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Utility is the foundation of morals; actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse.","n":[1,2]},{"t":"But happiness is not a uniform quantity.","n":[]},{"t":"Pleasures differ in quality as well as quantity: \"it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.\" The competent judge — one acquainted with both — decides.","n":[3]}],[{"t":"The proof of utility (Chapter 4) proceeds by analogy with the proof that an object is visible: the only evidence that anything is desirable is that people actually desire it, and happiness is desired as an end.","n":[]},{"t":"The doctrine is Bentham's reformed and corrected, not abandoned: pleasure and pain remain the basis, but quality is irreducible to quantity, and the higher faculties have a claim that no calculation of sensual pleasures can override.","n":[4]}]],"texts":"Utilitarianism (1861), especially Chapters 2 (What Utilitarianism Is) and 4 (Of What Sort of Proof the Principle of Utility Is Susceptible); Bentham (1838) and Coleridge (1840) for Mill's reformist relation to Bentham; A System of Logic Book VI Chapter 12 on the Art of Life. Reception: Sidgwick's Methods of Ethics (1874) charging the proof with logical errors; G.E. Moore's Principia Ethica (1903) on the naturalistic fallacy; Donner's The Liberal Self (1991) and Riley's Liberal Utilitarianism (1988) defending the higher-pleasures doctrine; Crisp's Mill on Utilitarianism (1997).","works":["Utilitarianism (1861), especially Chapters 2 (What Utilitarianism Is) and 4 (Of What Sort of Proof the Principle of Utility Is Susceptible)","Bentham (1838) and Coleridge (1840) for Mill's reformist relation to Bentham","A System of Logic Book VI Chapter 12 on the Art of Life"],"reception":"Sidgwick's Methods of Ethics (1874) charging the proof with logical errors; G.E. Moore's Principia Ethica (1903) on the naturalistic fallacy; Donner's The Liberal Self (1991) and Riley's Liberal Utilitarianism (1988) defending the higher-pleasures doctrine; Crisp's Mill on Utilitarianism (1997).","status":"The standard internal critique is Sidgwick's, charging the higher-pleasures doctrine with either circularity or abandonment of hedonism. Moore's Principia Ethica accused Mill of the naturalistic fallacy in moving from \"is desired\" to \"is desirable\" — a charge most modern Mill scholars regard as a misreading. Twentieth-century utilitarians split between preference utilitarianism (which abandons quality) and revisionist hedonisms that preserve it. Donner, Riley, and Crisp defend the higher-pleasures doctrine as coherent and central to Mill's liberal individualism.","era":"1806-1873","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Of What Sort of Proof the Principle of Utility Is Susceptible","page":"p. 283","canonical":"","quote":"And hence the opponents of the utilitarian standard deem that they have a right to infer that there are other ends of human action besides happiness, and that happiness is not the standard of approbation and disapprobation. But does the utilitarian doctrine deny that people desire virtue, or maintain that virtue is not a thing to be desired? The very reverse.","label":"Of What Sort of Proof the Principle of Utility Is Susceptible, p. 283"},{"n":2,"work":"ESSAYS ON ETHICS, RELIGION AND SOCIETY","page":"pp. 112–113","canonical":"","quote":"No proof indeed can be given that we ought to abide by these laws; but neither can any proof be given, that we ought to regulate our conduct by utility. All that can be said is, that the pursuit of happiness is natural to us; and so, it is contended, is the reverence for, and the inclination to square our actions by, certain general laws of morality.","label":"ESSAYS ON ETHICS, RELIGION AND SOCIETY, pp. 112–113"},{"n":3,"work":"What Utilitarianism Is","page":"p. 263","canonical":"","quote":"It is quite compatible with the principle of utility to recognise the fact, that some *kinds* of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others. It would be absurd that while, in estimating all other things, quality is considered as well as quantity, the estimation of pleasures should be supposed to depend on quantity alone.","label":"What Utilitarianism Is, p. 263"},{"n":4,"work":"UTILITARIANISM","page":"p. 31","canonical":"","quote":"Of all the tasks before him in the essay, the restatement of what the doctrine is, the freeing of it from the adverse limitations imposed on it by Bentham, is obviously of the utmost importance. And here he can at last present his own interpretation, free of the necessity of either attacking or defending Bentham, at least explicitly.","label":"UTILITARIANISM, p. 31"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"the-harm-principle","label":"The harm principle: when, if ever, may society interfere with individual liberty?"},{"slug":"plural-voting-and-the-qualified-franchise","label":"Plural voting and the qualified franchise: should the educated have more votes than the uneducated?"}]}