Blackboard Notes on Mill, Utilitarianism, chapter 2 opening Mill on the good. For Philosophy 13 After stating the utilitarian principle (the righter/wronger test), Mill says many think that the idea that life has “no better object of desire and pursuit” than pleasure is “a doctrine worthy only of swine.” In other words, the objection is that pleasure is not the only good. Nor is it the highest good. There are other things people reasonably care about. Bentham: “Quantity of pleasure being equal, pushpin [a simple children’s game like spin-the-bottle] is as good as poetry.” The critic of utilitarianism says this is wrong. Mill could uphold some activities as better than others on instrumental grounds. The pleasures of working on engineering projects get bridges built and thus contribute to people’s happiness. The pleasures of drinking excessively yield benefits only for the drinker and may produce the pain of a hangover later for him. Mill agrees, but wants to argue that some pleasures are intrinsically better than others—better independently of any further consequences they might cause, good or bad. Mill makes a flurry of moves. The main one is to distinguish quantity and quality of pleasure. If the pleasure of reading poetry is qualitatively superior to the pleasure of eating candy, then an hour of eating candy might yield a greater amount of pleasure than an hour of poetry reading yet still be less valuable than the latter. Superior quality amplifies the intrinsic value of a given quantity of one or another pleasure. The pleasure of drinking fine beer might be qualitatively superior to the pleasure of drinking cheap beer. But Mill supposes that for the most part, the higher quality pleasures are complex mental pleasures and the lower quality pleasures are those we share with pigs and other animals (eating, drinking, smelling, defecating, fornicating). How do we measure quantity of pleasure? Mill does not say. Maybe the unit is quantity of time experiencing a homogeneous sensation—the pleasure of eating a peach for one minute, when the sensation feels the same throughout the time period. Call that one unit, and measure the quantity of other types of pleasure relative to that. If gulping soda when you are hot and thirsty for one minute is twice as pleasurable as standard peach-eating, then that soda gulping yields two units. Another approach would be via direct measurement of brain states, if we had the technology to do that. In principle there is a fact of the matter here—a person who is having an intensely pleasurable experience has something different going on in his brain than goes on when he has a mildly pleasurable experience. This difference should be detectable by measurement—observation informed by a developed brain science. Mill entertains the possibility that quality could entirely trump quantity. “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.” Socrates (the wise person) is said to prefer a life with just a tiny amount of philosophical contemplation pleasure than a life of any length filled with simple pleasures such as the pleasure a dog gets from scratching its itch. The test of quality of pleasure is the preference of the informed experts. “Of two pleasures, if there be one to which all or almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference, irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, that is the more desirable pleasure.” The experts deciding which pleasure is qualitatively superior must have experienced both and must be capable of appreciating both. Mill does not say whether expert preference is evidence for qualitative superiority or instead expert preference makes it the case that one pleasure is qualitatively superior to another. Mill considers the objection: Some experience the “higher” (complex mental) pleasures and the “lower” (simple bodily) pleasures and then opt for the latter. They read poetry at Oxford and then devote their lives to gin drinking. Mill: by the time one prefers the lower pleasure one has already lost the capacity for the higher. Reply: it might be that becoming fit to experience one type of pleasure makes one unfit to experience other types, so the test for superior pleasure might usually be indeterminate. Anyway one could accept Mill’s doctrine and let the test results be as they may. If pig pleasures are preferred by the qualified experts, so be it. Further objection: The test for expert preference does not seem to be a test of quality of pleasure at all. Someone might prefer the pleasure of working at physics to the pleasure of lying on the beach while recognizing the beach-lying is superior as a pleasure. One might prefer doing physics because one thinks it is intrinsically a more worthy, noble activity. “I prefer the pleasure of physics to the pleasures of the beach even though the pleasures of the beach are superior as pleasures.” This sounds coherent. If so, Mill’s test is not properly constructed.Further objection: Someone might reasonably hold that some things are worth striving for, enhance the life of the person who gets those things, even though they do not involve experience at all, pleasurable or otherwise. Someone may aim to do good work, or write a good novel, or be a loyal friend, or be faithful in love, or achieve athletic excellence. Mill has to claim all these things are intrinsically worthless, and are worth striving for only insofar as they produce pleasurable experiences for self and others. This seems dogmatic. (See the “experience machine” handout.) Another worry: Suppose you accept Mill’s claim that pleasures differ in quality and that the criterion of superior quality is informed preference. There is something weird about Mill’s claim that ithe preferences of other people determine the quality of your pleasures. Suppose you are acquainted with two types of pleasure and capable of appreciating both. Let’s say your informed preference is that eating coffee fudge ice cream is qualitatively superior to eating vanilla ice cream, or that rock climbing is qualitatively superior to listening to symphony recordings. What does it signify that other people, the informed experts, have different preferences? Their tastes may be just different from yours. Given Mill’s general position here, I don’t