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The Utility of Quality: An Understanding of Mill*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Richard N. Bronaugh
Richard N. Bronaugh*
Affiliation:
University of Western Ontario
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Extract

Henry Sidgwick remarked in The Methods of Ethics regarding pleasure that the “distinctions of quality that Mill and others urge may … be admitted as grounds of preference, but only in so far as they can be resolved into distinctions of quantity.” Sidgwick had not believed that Mill intended that resolution and commented in his history that “it is hard to see in what sense a man who of two alternative pleasures chooses the less pleasant on the ground of its superiority in quality can be affirmed to take ‘greatest’ happiness or pleasure as his standard of preference.” Though Mill's view has been discussed rather often (especially in elementary texts), the state of the criticism has more or less stabilized with Sidgwick's conclusion.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , December 1974 , pp. 317 - 325
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1974

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Footnotes

*

This paper was written with the assistance of a grant from the Canada Council. I should also like to thank Professor Henry West for thoughtful comments on this paper and the members of the Philosophy Department at the University of Edinburgh where a version of this paper was presented.

References

1 (7th ed.; London, 1907), p. 121. His italics.

2 Outlines of the History of Ethics (1st ed.; 1886), ed. Widgery, A. G. (6th ed.; London, 1931 ), p. 247. His italics.Google Scholar

3 Ernest Albee remarked forty years after the publication of Utilitarianism that “there is perfect agreement at the present day” that Mill's use of “qualitative distinctions” is inconsistent with hedonism. From A History of English Utilitarianism (New York, 1902), p. 252.

4 Sosa, Ernest “Mill's Utilitarianism,” in Mill's Utilitarianism, ed. Smith, James M. and Sosa, Ernest (Belmont, Calif., 1969), p. 163.Google Scholar

5 Utilitarianism ( 1861). My references are to the Library of Liberal Arts edition (Indianapolis, 1957). The present reference is top. 67.

6 Ibid., p. 13.

7 Ibid.

8 Ibid., p. 11.

9 Ibid.

10 Ibid., p. 165.

11 Sosa, had declared that “the difference between a shout and a murmur is one of Mill's differences in degree transformed into a difference in kind.” Ibid., p. 163Google Scholar. Yet one would not say that a whisper is a very low shout or a shout a great whisper.

12 Ibid., p. 15.

13 Ibid., p. 124.

14 Sosa, says, “Or is there no difference in kind between joy and bliss?” Ibid., p. 164n.Google Scholar

15 Ibid., p. 17.

16 Seth, James A Study of Ethical Principles (12th ed.; New York, 1911), p. 125Google Scholar. His italics.

17 “Pleasure for Pleasure's Sake,” in Ethical Studies (2d ed.; Oxford, 1927), p. 117.

18 From A System of Moral Philosophy (1755). In British Moralists, ed. Selby-Bigge, L.A. (Oxford, 1897), paragraph 476.Google Scholar

19 Ibid., paragraph 477.

20 Ibid.

21 Ibid., paragraph 478.

22 Dr. Martineau: Hutcheson's, “anticipation of J. S. Mill's well-known doctrine respecting the dimensions of pleasure is here very striking, extending almost to the words of the exposition….” Martineau, James Types of Ethical Theory, Vol. II (Oxford, 1855), p. 550Google Scholar.

23 Methods, p. 128.

24 It has been pointed out to me that Raphael, D. D. in his essay “Fallacies in and about Mill's Utilitarianism,” (Philosophy, XXX [1955], 344–357)CrossRefGoogle Scholar also cites this sentence from Chapter 5 when he discusses the quality in pleasures. Raphael suggests on its basis that “some activities are found by experience to yield a much higher total amount of pleasure than others. These pleasures come thereby to be felt as different in kind.” By this argument he supports the view that quality reduces to quantity, in much the same fashion as MQ2. Like Sosa, Raphael fails to press forward the type of argument, as I shall presently in MQ3, which most naturally flows from the sentence itself and its context in Chapter 5.

25 Ibid., p. 67.

26 Ibid., p. 12. A seldom explained but recurrent amendment used by Mill when speaking of the attitude of competent judges. It gives support to my selection of (6) over (6) in the reconstruction; there is only a moral obligation of non-interference.

27 The situation in which there is a use of moral words, not merely mention, quotation, or a reference to others’ beliefs.

28 In an analysis of Bentham, which Mill published anonymously in 1833 (as an appendix to Bulwer's England and the English; “Remarks on Bentham's Moral Philosophy“), he expressed his anxiety that Bentham (in the spirit not the logic of his ethics) had neglected the class of effects upon men's characters. My thesis about “quality” complements this concern for character, calling attention to those consequences which result from our characters. Essential to an understanding of Mill's relation to Benthamism, then, is the distinction between utilities produced by the influence of our formed attitudes, etc., and those which are produced without them. The ground of Mill's sense that Bentham was insensitive to the human personality is that he declared, as it were, “Put away your personal addictions, your settled dispositions, your moral habits, let us calculate.” Mill, as was stated in his anonymous critique, did not believe that men are often so rational; Bentham requires such a mastery of oneself that in fact no pleasure or pain· results from previous convictions while working through the course set by calculation. That Mill is now the better psychologist and the more complete hedonist cannot be denied. Yet only Bentham's philosophy has the truly radical spirit, since the status quo has no special standing for it and the emotional costs of social and moral innovation are not appreciated. For Mill, however, it seems that, to the extent that it is in our hearts, the status quo always exerts some pressure against innovation.