Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham was born in London on February 15, 1748 and died on June 6, 1832, also in London. Bentham was known as the founder and advocate for the famous Utilitarianism. Both Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, who is much younger, were indeed child prodigies although they are close associates. Bentham was interested in philosophy, reading Greek and Latin when he was very young. When Jeremy was 13 years old (!?), being troubled by the requirement of reconfirmation of his faith in the Thirty Nine Articles of the Anglican Church in order to be admitted to Oxford, he after all entered the University of Oxford.
Jeremy's father expected him to proceed to study jurisprudence after his graduation from Oxford, and yet ultimately gave up that hope, when Jeremy Bentham's first book, Introduction to The Principles for Morals and Legislation, printed in 1777 anonymously, instantly made him famous (the opus was officially published in 1789). This book was written to support a new proposal for a certain penal code. Despite Jeremy's effort with his friends, the proposal was turned down by the then Tory government. Jeremy Bentham, with a strong aspiration for social reform, was greatly disappointed by the politicians, particularly the leaders of his time. Jeremy Bentham had thought indeed that once a certain idea be made public, then it would be immediately put into practice.
Having realized that books and paintings would not reform society "automatically" to a better one, Bentham, his friends and associates formed a political party called "Philosophical Radicals." Despite its strange name, the party elected a number of capable spokespersons for their programs to Parliament. This success was supposed to be not attributed to the able politicians elected from the party, but rather due to the clear, evident vision for such a reform advanced by Bentham and his comrades. Later, with such an unpopular name for the political party, John Stuart Mill proposed calling themselves "Utilitarians" and the principle for such political, legislative reform was called "Utilitarianism."
Strange as it may sound, Bentham hoped that ethics would become as exact and precise a science as physics and mathematics. In order to actualize such a vision, Bentham endeavored to describe his thought in such plain terms to propound the greatest happiness principle for the greatest number of people as the criterion for choosing a moral decision as well as certain legislation. Bentham writes at the beginning of his Introduction to The Principles for Morals and Legislation:
Nature has placed man under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand, the standards of right and wrong, on the other chain of cause and effect, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all that we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjections, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. The principle of utility recognizes this subjection and assumes it for the foundation of that system the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and law.
What is indubitably obvious from this is Bentham's unmistakable declaration of the principle of hedonism. Now Bentham defines the principle of utility as an explicit hedonist:
By utility is meant that property in an object whereby it tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good or happiness (all this in the present case comes to the same thing) or to prevent the happening of mischief, pain, evil or unhappiness, to the party whose interest is considered.
To Bentham, it was absolutely not questionable to assert that pleasure is the good. Among the choices, the one which will produce the most amount of pleasure and the least amount of pain ought to be chosen as the right. Thus, Bentham is not only a Eudaimonist, but also an explicit, full fledged hedonist. Bentham therefore continues:
Of an action that is conformable to the principle of utility one may also say either that it is one that ought to be done, or at least that it is not one that it ought not to be done. One may also say that it is right it should be done, at least that it is not wrong that it should not be done. When thus interpreted, such words as ought, and right and wrong, and others of that stamp, have a meaning: when used otherwise, they have none.
Thus, Bentham accepted the presupposition of hedonism unquestionably. What concerned him was to make the criterion for choosing the right action more exact and precise such that it may be easily calculable.
Bentham proposes his famous hedonistic calculus, which has the seven elements to be taken for consideration. They are:
In order to make this calculus more easily memorized, Bentham devised the following rhyme:
Intense, long, certain, speedy, fruitful, pure-
Such marks in pleasures and in pains endure.
Such pleasures seek if private be they end:
if it be public, wide let them extend.
Such pains avoid, whichever be they view.
If pains must come, let them extend to few.
Bentham further writes:
To take an exact account, then, of the general tendency of any act, sum up all the values of all the pleasures on the one side, and then of all the pains on the other. The balance, if it bears on the side of pleasure, will give the good tendency of the act, if on the side of pain, if bad tendency....
This approach proposed by Bentham clearly indicates the possibility of pleasure and its amount exactly quantifiable. Thus, because of its emphasis on duration and purity, Bentham's hedonism is closer to Epicurianism than Cyreniacs.
The greatest difference between early hedonism and this Utilitarianism lies in the fact that Bentham positively considered the extent, the number of people who are affected by such a pleasure. Thus the great amount of pleasure is also to be for the greatest number of people. It is important to point out here that Bentham universalizing hedonism is not altruistic at all, but rather collective egoism. This distinction has been overlooked by many moral philosophers.
Bentham believed that first of all, the human being as an individual is determined by the pleasure and pain principle, which is no other than egoism. Now however, Bentham considered that the human being also think of the other and their well being (pleasure). To be sure, Bentham thinks that most people think of the other and of their happiness, too. This does not mean so-called altruism, because if so, Bentham must advocate that the human-being is not egoistic, but considers the other a higher priority than oneself, which Bentham did not hold. Therefore, Bentham's universalized hedonism is indeed the collective egoism of the masses constituent of the given society.
By considering the extent, Bentham advanced his conviction that intelligent legislators create laws which will entail more suffering and pain to those who would disregard the welfare of other people, and such suffering or pain must outweigh any pleasure they would derive from their (unlawful) actions. In other words, the legislators' responsibility lies in exactly calculating the amount of pleasure and pain should someone commit a crime, and set up legislation such that the pain and discomfort which derive from the punishment should always outweigh the pleasure of the unlawful conduct. This political thought was a step forward from the natural rights theory advocated by John Locke. Instead of hypothesizing the three states, the state of nature, the state of war and the civil state, Bentham simply pointed out that we are under the governance of the laws of nature (which purport that any human-being chooses pleasure over pain). To support this, Bentham refers to the natural human tendency to choose pleasure, whereby he contends that to subsume oneself under this law of nature is to follow our desires and the anticipation of the high probability of fulfillment. Thus, whichever act follows the principle of utility to the fullest extent is indeed natural and is thus to Bentham the only natural and rationally intelligent human tendency. In order to most properly choose such an act of self subsumption under the law of pleasure and pain, Bentham devised hedonistic calculus ,which is most effectively accomplished by genuine intelligence. The gravest problem of this approach by Bentham, which appeared later to Mill, lay in the quantitative, and non-qualitative deliberation of the maximum amount of pleasure.
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill was born in London on May 20, 1806, the son of James Mill, a close associate of Bentham and a senior member of The Philosophical Radicals. He died in Avignon, France on May 8, 1873. His philosophical contributions are in two areas: The one is the theoretical justification of empirical generalization or induction on the basis of association psychology in epistemology and the other is in the field of ethics, where John Stuart Mill, following Bentham's footsteps, further developed Utilitarianism. We should not forget his contribution to politics as a member of the lower house for two terms, creating some legislation for the sake of political reform of the lots of the poor and lower classes of people. In this sense, Mill also followed Bentham's vision and put it into practice.
John Stuart Mill was one of the greatest souls that the United Kingdom ever produced. James Mill, his father, was a very close and leading associate of Bentham and the most able follower of Bentham and his philosophy, not in ethics, but rather in social philosophy and politics. Perhaps his greatest contribution to philosophy and political theory was his pedagogic "experiment," giving his son John Stuart Mill the most effective humanistic education that was conducive to the child prodigy. According to John Stuart Mill's autobiography, he began to learn arithmetic and Classic Greek at the age of three. At the age of eight, he started Latin. Now he was reading all the great classics of the Ancient Western Civilization, The Iliad, The Odyssey, the Greek tragedies and comedies, Plato, Virgil's Aneneid, Lucretius, Cicero's Orations, etc. Throughout his teenage days, he got up at 6 a.m., studied liberal arts two to four hours before breakfast and five more hours after breakfast, and in the evening he continued by studying the great classics for three to four hours. The curriculum was designed by his father, who did not allow John to play and associate himself with other boys of his own age. His father's explicit aim was to create a genius thinker who would be able to advance the cause of utilitarianism and its application.
Most boys or youths who have had much knowledge drilled into them, have their mental capacities not strengthened, but overlaid by it. They are crammed with mere facts, and with the opinions or phrases of other people, and these are accepted as a substitute for the power to form opinions of their own: and thus the sons of eminent fathers, who have spared no pains in their education, so often grow up mere parroters of what they have learned, incapable of using their minds except in the furrows traced for them. Mine, however, was not an education of cram. My father never permitted anything that I learnt to degenerate into mere exercise of memory. He strove to make the understanding not only go along with every step of teaching, but, if possible, precede it. Anything which could be found out by thinking I never was told, until I had exhausted my efforts to find it out for myself.
While John Stuart Mill underwent such a rigorous everyday curriculum, he was struck by a severe nervous breakdown at about twenty years of age.
From the winter of 1821, when I first read Bentham, and especially from the commencement of the Westminster Review, I had what might truly be called an object in life: to be a reformer of the world. My conception of my own happiness was entirely identified with this object. The personal sympathies I wished for were those of fellow laborers in this enterprise. I endeavored to pick up as many flowers as I could by the way; but as a serious and permanent personal satisfaction to rest upon, my whole reliance was placed upon this; and I was accustomed to felicitate myself on the certainty of a happy life which I enjoyed, through placing my happiness in something durable and distant, on which some progress might be always making, while it could never be exhausted by complete attainment.
But the time came when I awakened from this as from a dream. It was in the autumn of 1828. I was in a dull state of nerves, such as everybody is occasionally liable to, one of those moods when what is pleasure at other times becomes insipid or indifferent; the state, I should think, in which converts to Methodism usually are, when smitten by their first "conviction of sin," I seemed to have nothing left to live for. At first I hoped that the cloud would pass away of itself; but it did not. A night's sleep, the sovereign remedy for the smaller vexations of life, had no effect upon it. In vain I sought relief from my favorite books, those memorials of past nobleness and greatness from which I had always hitherto drawn strength and animation. I read them now without feeling, or with the accustomed feeling minus all its charm; and I became persuaded that my love of mankind, and of excellence for its own sake, had worn itself out....
John Stuart Mill was able to find some literature, poetry, Wordsworth in particular, which had a great healing effect on his mental malaise. It was also said to be the period in which John Stuart Mill became acquainted with Harriet Taylor.... John Mill was 24 years old, to be exact, when he met Harriet at a dinner party and the mutual attraction became immediately obvious, gradually growing stronger. John was quite handsome, extremely intelligent, incredibly widely read and already well established. Harriet Taylor, on the other hand, the wife of a respected gentlemen and mother of two children, was young, attractive, and quite intellectually curious. Her husband was a quite devoted to his wife, but much older and more conservative. Therefore, as it states, "the great romance contained... all the traditional elements of the eternal triangle--the dull but devoted husband, the beautiful but bored wife, the gallant but gullible lover..." Soon John Taylor, Harriet's husband, found out the relationship between Harriet and this young attractive gentleman was more serious. Several years later, he proposed a trial separation in the hope that it would help Harriet to return to his family, in vain. Then Harriet took refuge in France with John Stuart Mill following her. Later despite all expectations, Harriet went back to her husband. Their affectionate liaison continued 15 more years without coming to any fruition. In 1849, John Taylor died of cancer. They waited two more years until they got married, on August 21, 1851.
The philosophical implication of this relationship between Harriet Taylor and John Stuart Mill was enormous. Mill acknowledged indeed that his opera owed more than half its merit to Harriet. She was also greatly instrumental to John's involvement in the Women's Suffrage Movement and other social reforms.
John Stuart Mill's contributions to ethics is well presented in his book Utilitarianism (1863). John was also a very close associate and heir apparent of Bentham. He never abandoned the name "utilitarianism." And yet, upon careful observation, it becomes obvious that John Stuart Mill did not follow the basic principles of hedonism, which was the basis for Bentham's theory. As stated before (at the end of the Bentham section), John Stuart Mill could not and did not believe that human nature is exclusively egoistic. On the contrary, the human-being is almost equally altruistic, particularly in moral consideration. Once he left the turf of egoism, enlightened self-interest as collective egoism does not appear to him to be able to provide the foundation for moral obligation. To John Stuart Mill, altruism is the meaningful basis for the moral command and responsibility. Furthermore, Mill could not help but acknowledge the obvious qualitative differences among pleasures. Abandoning the basic tenet that there are no qualitative differences, but only quantitative ones, Mill can no longer defend Bentham's hedonistic calculus as the meaningful means for determining as the criterion for right action whether or not a certain action ought to be done.
However, by his loyalty and devotion to the cause of utilitarianism and Bentham, Mill did everything possible to make these differences minimum between Bentham's position and his own.
The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, utility or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasures and the absence of pain, by unhappiness, pain and the privation of pleasure. All desirable things (which are as numerous in the utilitarian as in any other scheme) are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as a means to the promotion of pleasure and the pretention of pain.
John Stuart Mill clearly admitted the qualitative differences among pleasures and other values and what kind of pleasure or joy one seeks depends on one's own training and culture (=education). It is also interesting to note that Mill already had insight into the human value cognition such that, while uneducated and inexperienced, one knows only the pleasure of lower rank, the educated one with high endowments can see both the lower pleasure as well as the intellectual, higher joy. Mill maintained that quality must be taken into consideration even in the case of pleasure.
When thus attacked, the Epicureans have always answered that it is not they but their accusers who represent human nature in a degrading light, since the accusation supposes human beings to be capable of no pleasures except those of which swine are capable. Human beings have faculties more elevated than the animal appetites, and when once made conscious of them, do not regard anything as happiness which does not include their gratification. There is no known Epicurean theory of life which does not assign to the pleasures of the intellect, of the feelings and imagination, and of the moral sentiments, a much higher value as pleasure than to those of mere sensation.
Like Jean-Jacques Rousseau (who distinguished the "general will" from the "will of all"), John Stuart Mill sees in morality and the superior human nature the devotion of the general, common good beyond collective egoism. Therefore, Mill was able to say:
I must again repeat, what the assailants of utilitarianism seldom have the justice to acknowledge, that the happiness which forms the utilitarian standard of what is right conduct, is not the agent's own happiness but that of all concerned. As between his own happiness and that of others, utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator. In the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth we read the complete spirit of the ethics of utility. To do as you would be done by, and to love your neighbor as yourself, constitutes the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality.
Thus, clearly against the traditional egoistic hedonism, Mill took the moral position to be not pursuing one's own pleasure, but to be concerned about the good and well-being of others. Therefore, since we already know the egoism of hedonistic principles, it sounds quite strange to hear Mill say:
The utilitarian morality does recognize in human beings the power of sacrificing their own greatest good for the good of others. It only refuses to admit that the sacrifice is itself a good. A sacrifice which does not increase, or tend to increase, the sum total of happiness it considers wasted. The only self-renunciation which it applauds, is devotion to the happiness, or to some to the means of happiness, of others.
Thus, John Stuart Mill was looking more carefully at the nature of morality and its ought through his own, well refined eye and by so doing, Mill went beyond the limits of hedonism and egoism completely.
There is always the fundamental principle(s) on which any scientific inquiry is based and the truth of a certain conclusion is justifiable by that principle. In the case of ethics, it is what Mill calls summum bonum, the greatest good. However, in the matter of morality, there has no consensus among philosophers.
All action is for the sake of some end, and rules of action... Must take their whole character and color from the end to which they are subservient. When we engage in a pursuit, a clear and precise conception of what we are pursuing would seem to be the fist thing we need.... A test of right and wrong must be the means, one would think, of ascertaining what is right or wrong, and not a consequence of having already ascertained it.
Mill points out to taking a recourse back to the theory of natural faculty, 1) moral sense or 2) instinct, which in itself a matter of debate. 3) The general principles of moral judgment are part of the faculty of reason and through either intuition o induction, according to some philosophers, a certain general laws of morality are given. Although they agree that the moralist of an individual action is not a acquisition of direct perception, but of the application of a law to an individual case. And yet, they disagree as to the ground for and the source of this law. 4) According to the one opinion, the principles of morals are evident a priori, requiring nothing to command assent, except that the meaning of the term be understood. 5) Others maintain that the right or the wrong is a matter of observation. They also do not make an effort to reduce a variety of principles to the most fundamental principle. Therefore, they assume the ordinary precepts of morals as of a priori authority, or they lay down as the common groundwork of those maxims, some generality much less obviously authoritative than the maxims themselves, and which has never thought either to be some one fundamental principle or law, at root of all morality or several, in this case the consistency must be self evident. In short , the absence of cognition of the ultimate standard of morals makes the foundation of the ethics uncertain. According to Mill, Bentham's principle of utility, the greatest pleasure for the greatest number of people, appears to be the basis, even to those a priori moralists.
Therefore, Mill is going to attempt to make sure to clarify Bentham's principle of utility and its standpoint. AS far as the instrumental value of "good" for example is easy to stipulate and provide it with the reason. However, the intrinsic value of "good" to which the instrumental value is a means is not self evident. Mill contends that the acceptance or the rejection of such an intrinsic value can not be achieved by blind impulse, or arbitrary choice. Mill considers that such a choice of an intrinsic value is rooted in the rational faculty.
Mill would like to present the rational ground for either the acceptance or the rejection of the utilitarian principle.
Mill directs our attention to the fact that according to our common sense, utility as the principle or criterion for the morally right action is opposed to pleasure, which is a grave misconception of the opponents of utilitarianism. However, the tradition of hedonism from Epicurus to Bentham, it is taken as obvious that utility is a pleasure. In ethical doctrines, the rejection or neglect of pleasure seems to be very prevalent right now.
At the same time, Mill warns against the general tendency to identify pleasure in the sense of utility to be identical with an instantaneous pleasure of senses.
It is generally asserted in the utilitarianism as the foundation of morals that utility, or the general happiness principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.
By happiness is meant the presence of pleasure and the absence of pain. By unhappiness, pain and the privation of pleasure.
However, Mill contends that it is necessary to elucidate what kinds of state of affairs by pleasure or pain, and to what extent this is left an open question. The fundamental principle of utilitarianism is unchanged: The problem of the following statement, "pleasure, and freedom of pain, are the only things desirable..," two things. As stated later, "desirable" is ambiguous, namely this statement to be acceptable, Mill intentionally commits the fallacy of equivocation. On the one hand, "desirable" signifies that which can be desirable. On the other hand, "desirable" in this context signifies that which ought to be desired. The latter implies that what is desirable is a value and given to us as an ideal to be actualized.
Pleasure, and freedom of pain, are the only things desirable as ends. And all desirable things (which are as numerous in the utilitarian as in any other scheme) are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain.
To suppose that life has (as they express it) no higher end than pleasure--no better and nobler object of desire and pursuit--they designate as utterly mean and grovelling: as a doctrine worthy only of swine, to whom the followers of Epicurus were, at a very early period, contemptuously likened, and modern holders o the doctrine are occasionally make the subject of equally polite comparisons by it German, French, and English assailants.
According to the opponents of utilitarianism, as far as the pleasure is concerned, we the humans and swine are the same. Against this contention, Mill contends that the pleasure of the human-being is totally different from that of the beast, that is happiness. For the human-beings possess more elevated faculty than the animal appetite, and when once made conscious of them, do not regard anything as happiness which doe not include their gratification.
But there is no known Epicurean theory of life which does not assign to the pleasures of the intellect, of the feelings, and imagination, and of the moral sentiments, a much higher value as pleasures than to those of mere sensation. ...Utilitarian writers in general have placed the superiority of mental over bodily pleasures chiefly in the greater permanency, safety, uncostliness, etc. Of the former --that is, in their circumstantial advantages rather than in their intrinsic nature.
Further Mill insists the compatibility of the following with the principle of utility originally proposed by Jeremy Bentham: Namely, there is qualitative difference among pleasure, that is, some are more desirable, while the other, less desirable.
...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 depended on quantity alone.
As to the principle of preference or the question of the hierarchy of values, Mill contends that the more intellectually developed, more enlightened (by different values), more experienced one gets, always the better one becomes the judge to see the hierarchy of value.
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 most desirable pleasure. .... It is an unquestionable fact that those who are equally acquainted with, and equally capable of appreciating and enjoying, both, do give a most marked preference to the manner of existence which employs their higher faculties.
Few human creatures would consent to be changed into any of the lower animals, for a promise of the fullest allowance of a beast's pleasures; no intelligent human being would consent to be a fool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base, even thought they should be persuaded that the fool, the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they are with theirs.
The pleasures of the higher faculties uniquely human are more satisfactory and of greater happiness than those of the lower faculties, according to Mill, and at the same time, those who possess the higher faculties are equally capable of the greater pains and sufferings.
A being of higher faculties' pleasures more to make him happy, is capable probably of more acute suffering, and is certainly accessible to it at more points, than one of an inferior type; but in spite of these liabilities, he can never really wish to sink into what he feels to be a lower grade of existence.
Mills says that any one could say this is due to pride, the love of liberty and personal independence, , the love of power, or the love of excitement...., its most appropriate appellation is a sense of dignity....in proposition to their higher faculties.. which constitutes the essential part of the human happiness.
Mill contends that it is always possible and even factual to see that a being with the higher faculties may sacrifice a certain happiness (which is likely lower) for the sake of achieving the higher pleasure.
Whoever supposes that this preference takes place at a sacrifice of happiness---that the superior being, in anything like equal circumstances, is not happier than the inferior---confounds the two very different ideas, of happiness, and content.
Pointing out the fact that we are more satisfied with the higher pleasures, we have clear preference of the above than to be satisfied with the lower pleasure (although the latter often are stronger than the former).
It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool or the pig, is of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides.
Against the objection that sometimes those who are capable of higher pleasure often overwhelmed by the temptation by the lower pleasure. Because, according to Mill, "men often, from infirmity of character, make their election for the nearer good, though they know it to be less valuable; and this no less when the choice is between the bodily pleasures, than when it is between bodily and mental."
They pursue sensual indulgences to the injury of health despite the awareness of the value of health. And it may be further objected, according to Mill, that they began with great enthusiasm in youth, and yet they in years sink into indolence and selfishness... Ion opposition to these, Mill contends, this kind of change is not a voluntary choice, or before they can devote themselves to the one, they become already incapable.
The preference between two values, Mill argues, can be not decided by the objective hierarchy of values, but rather two equally experienced experts with almost equal intelligence, or the majority, may be differentiate the preference of the one to the other. Apart from the question of intensity, the pleasures of the higher faculties are [referable and superior to the lower in kind.
Mill further emphasizes the significance of the j u s t character in the Utilitarian principle, when happiness is considered.
I have dwelt on this point, a being a necessary part of a perfectly j u s t conception of Utility of Happiness, considered as the directive rule of human conduct. But it is by no means an indispensable condition to the acceptance of the utilitarian standard; for that standard is not the agent's own greatest happiness, but the greatest amount of happiness altogether; and if it may possibly be doubted whether a noble character is always the happier for its nobleness, there can be no doubt that it makes other people happier, even if each individual were only benefited by the nobleness of others, and his own, so far as happiness is concerned, were a sheer deduction from the benefit. But the bare enunciation of such a absurdity as this last, renders refutation superfluous.
The greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people must be both in quantity and quality:
According to the Great Happiness Principe... the ultimate end, with reference to and a for the sake of which all other things, are desirable (whether we are considering our own good or that of other people) is an existence exempt as far as possible from pain, and as rich as possible in enjoyments, both in point of quantity and quality; the test of quality, and the rule for measuring it against quantity, being the preference felt by those who, in their opportunities of experience (have greater variety of values)... the end of human action, is necessarily also the standard of morality; which may accordingly be denied, the rule and precepts for human conduct, by the observance of which an existence such as has been described might be, to the g r e a e s t e x t e n t possible, secured to all humankind; and not to them only, but, so far as the nature of things admits, to the whole sentient creation.
Mill's defense against the criticism of eudaimonism: There are two objections against Utilitarian Eudaimonism:
In the cases of 2)-- voluntarily---men can do without happiness, which the n o b l e human beings have felt and have become so by renunciation, which is to be the beginning and necessary condition of all virtues.
The happiness which forms the utilitarian standard of what is right in conduct, is not the agent;s own happiness, but that of all concerned. Mill contends that when no consequence is generally considered as the criterion for the morally right action, but the motive, this should be able to be justified by the utilitarian principle by emphasizing the greatest number of people, namely the extent of the utility.
in the Golden Rule of Jesus of nazareth, we read the complete spirit of the ethics of utility. to do as one would be done by, and to love one's own neighbor s oneself constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality. As the means of making the nearest approach to this ideal, utility wold enjoin, first, that laws and social arrangements should place the happiness or the interest, of every individual, as nearly as possible in harmony with the interest of the whole; and secondly, that education and opinion, which have so vast a power over human character, should so use that power as to establish in the mind of every individual an indissoluble association between his own happiness and the good of the whole, so that not only he/she may be unable to conceive the possibility of happiness to himself, consistently with conduct opposed to the general good, but also that a direct impulse to promote the general good may be in every individual one of the habitual motives of action, and the sentiments connected therewith my fill a large and prominent place in every human being's sentient existence...
Some objectors (even more realistic than utilitarians) against utilitarianism, according to Mill, find fault in the just idea of disinterested character with its standard as being too high for humanity. They holds it is too exacting for people to always act from inducement of promoting the general interests of society. Mill tries to correct it by pointing out that these critics confound the criterion of the morally right conduct exclusively to the motive rather than the consequence:
(Such an attempt) is to mistake the very meaning of a standard of morals, and to confound the rule of action with the motive of it. It is the business of ethics to tell us what are our duties, or by what test we may know them; but no system of ethics requires that the sole motive of all we do shall be a feeling of duty; on the contrary, ninety-nine hundredths of all our actions are done from other motives, and rightly so done, if the rule of duty does not condemn them....utilitarian moralists affirms that the motive has nothing to do with the morality of the action, though much with the worth of agent.
Mill tries to show this by stipulating an example of saving a drowning person.
He who saves a fellow creature from drowning does what is worldly right, whether his motive be duty, or the hope of being paid for his trouble; he would betrays the friend that trusts him, is guilty of a crime, even if his object be to serve another friend to whom he is under greater obligations.
to speak only of actions done from the motive o duty, and in direct obedience to principle; it is a miaspprehnsion of the utilitarian mode of thought, to conceive it as implying that people should fix their minds upon so wide a generality as the world, or society at large.
Mills even further asserts that not only most of the good actions are, not for the benefit of the world, but for the benefit of individuals, of which the good of the world is made up, but also the most virtuous men only need to consider the particular persons, not the world as a whole. By say as follows, Mill optimistically and illogically commits the informal fallacy of composition.
The great majority of good actions are intended, not for the benefit of the world, but that of individuals, of which the good of the world is made up; and the thoughts of the most virtuous man need not on these occasions travel beyond the particular persons concerned....The multiplication of happiness is, according to the utilitarian ethics, the object of virtue; the occasions on which any person (except one in a thousand) has it in his power to do this on an extended scale, in other worlds, to be a public benefactor, are but exceptional, and on these occasions alone is he called to consider public utility...
Objections may be raised against utilitarianism such that the criterion of the morally right or wrong be cold, unsympathizing, dry and hard calculations of certain consequences and disregard the moral quality of the person who makes an action. Because, Mill argues, no criterion of the morally right or wrong has something to do with the moral value of the person who chooses and acts. In other words, ethics and its standards as well as the nature of good have little to do with the moral value of a person and his/her character (unless you are a Stoic). There would not be any progress of a person to be moral. Isn't it true that the more good or right actions one chose and acted, the morally better a person becomes? It may be possible, however, that our habit or what you call the moral virtue will be developed more, the more we accumulate the morally good deeds.
Utilitarians are quite aware that there are other desirable possessiones and qualities besides virtue, and are perfectly willing to allow to all of them their full worth. They are also aware that a right action does not necessarily indicate a virtuous character, and that actions which are blameable often proceed from qualities (virtues) entitled to praise.
Although in Utilitarianism the criterion for the morally right action applies mainly to actions, Mill admits, "...in the long run, the best proof of a good character is good actions; and resolutely refuse to consider any mental disposition as good, of which the predominant tendency is to produce bad conduct."
Mill admits that there are different standards of morality (like certain moral laws), but utilitarian principle is designed to decide which is the best in the given situation.
The clarification of the meaning of utility: "Utility" is often accused as immoral, as it is used synonymously with "expedient." For expedient in the sense in opposing to the right generally means that which is expedient for the particular, specific interest of the agent himself/herself. This meaning is rather inconsistent with the utilitarian meaning of expedient, which presupposes the wide consistent extent of the good. Thus, Mill says, "If the principle of utility is good for anything, it must be good for weighing these conflicting utilities against one another, and marking out the region within with one or the other preponderates...".
Mill humbly admits that humankind have still much to learn to the effects of actions on the general happiness, and recognizes the indefinite, perpetual improvement. However, Mill distinguish this from testing each individual action by the first principle:
To consider the rules of morality as improvable, is one thing; to pass over the intermediate generalization entirely, and endeavor to test each individual action directly by the first principle is another.
The proposition that happiness is the end and aim of morality, does not mean that no road ought be laid down to that goal, or that persons going thither should not be advised to take one direction rather than another......whatever we adopt as the fundamental principle of morality, we require subordinate principles to apply it by: the impossibility of doing without them, being common to all systems, can afford no argument against any one in particular; but gravely to argue as if no such secondary principles could bed had...
According to Mill, there are always conflicting considerations and there are always exceptions to the rule.
There exists no moral system under which there do not arise unequivocal cases of conflicting obligation.
Therefore, Mill argues, if utility is the ultimate source of moral obligations, utility maybe invoked to decide between them when their demands are incompatible.
Mill correctly points out that the first, ultimate principle of any system or doctrine cannot be demonstrated, as it provides the justification to everything else.
Then, Mill provides the example of inductive demonstration, in which from the premisses that the visible is possible to be actually seen, and the audible is audible, because it is actually heard, etc. Mill attempts to show that the desirable is desirable because it is actually desired.
The only proof capable of being given that an object is visible, is that people actually see it. The only proof that a sound is audible, is that people hear it , and so of the other sources of our experience. In like manner, I apprehend, the sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything is desirable is that people do actually desire it.
from here, Mill concludes: "If the end which the utilitarian doctrine proposes to itself were not a theory and in practice, acknowledged to be an end, noting could ever convince any person that is was so. No reason can be given why the general happiness is desirable, except that each person, so far as he believes it to be attainable, desires his own happiness."
This, however, implies two fallacies, which Mill completely overlooked:
as Moore correctly pointed out, the visible means that which can be seen and the audible is that which is heard. However, the desirable is not that which can actually desired. In fact, as the next fallacy shows, the "desirable" is "that which deserves to be desired" as best, if not "that which ought to be desired."
As pointed out above, Mill confuses that which is actually desired with that which ought to be desired. His first fallacy is possible only through this informal fallacy of equivocation of the desirable. In fact, Mill took advantage of this ambiguity (having more than one meaning). No way that which is desired implied that which ought to be desired, although the reverse, namely that which ought to be desired implies that which is actually desired.
Mill continues to further commit another fallacy called the "fallacy of composition" here. The fallacious argument goes like this: Since each person's happiness is good to that person, the general (aggregate of these people's) happiness is good to those people as a whole. This is absolutely invalid!
This... being a fact, we have not only all the proof which the case admits of, but all which it is possible to require, that happiness is a good; that each person's happiness is a good to that person, and the general happiness, therefore, a good to the aggregate of all persons.
Mill concedes that in order to prove that it is the sole criterion for the morality that the general happiness is good for the whole people concerned (happiness is the ultimate end of those people), he must also show as well that the people never desire anything else than happiness. It is doubtless that people desire other than happiness such as virtue, absence of vice... Mill contends that the desires of virtue and the practice of virtue itself indeed lead us to happiness, too. For virtues are an ingredient of the individual's conception of happiness. The same may be said of the majority of the great objects of human life---power, wealth, fame, etc.
Mill admits that there is no original desire for virtue or motive to it except virtue's conduciveness to the promotion of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. These virtues of the human beings such as fame, power, wealth, etc., when pursued, are necessarily conducive to the whole, general happiness of the society. And this is a sufficient justification for why the utilitarian principle of the greatest amount of pleasure for the greatest number of the people is the most fundamental principle for the morality.
Conclusion: John Stuart Mill wrote the book, Utilitarianism, and he named the moral doctrine and that of policy decision making held and advanced by Bentham "Utilitarianism." (Bentham did not have this name). Mill was also greatly indebted to Bentham in terms of his philosophical development and the teachings of the ideals for the reform of the society. Mill was indeed the best disciple of Bentham.
In this book, two fundamental principles are to be established: On the one hand, Mill would like to demonstrate and justify that the utilitarian principles is the first and most ultimate principle of morality. On the hand, in order to defend the utilitarianism as the ethical doctrine, he also show that the meaning of utilities as well as the notion of happiness should not be construed so narrowly in the sense of Cyreniacs, i.e., the instantaneous sensual pleasure.
The first task of justify that the greatest pleasure for the greatest number of people is to be the most fundamental, ultimate principle of morality is a) substantiated by pointing the fact that no first principle or the most fundamental principle of all knowledge or any system, cannot be justified by anything else, as the former provides the ground for the rest. Although Mill had to commit several fallacies in the following attempt, Mill tried to show that indeed pleasure and the absence of pain, that is, happiness, is desirable not only to each individual, but also to the general populace, on the basis that in fact each of us indeed desires happiness (pleasure and the freedom from pain) naturally. This attempt provided G. E. Moore "the chance" to develop his naturalistic fallacy.
The second objective seems to explain by and reduce to moral ought, the duty or the moral obligation may be ultimately based on the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.
Thirdly Mill had to accomplish through comprehending the concept of happiness in the widest possible sense. Namely, this happiness as the goal of human life does not only include the pleasure and the absence of pain, but also all the so-called traditional virtues, such as moral virtue itself, fame, wealth, power, etc. Sometimes, Mill had to show the compatibility or consistency of the happiness with self-love,
Fourthly, Mill would like to point out that there are many inconsistencies among different moral doctrines, which can be tested and should be founded on the utilitarian principle.
Finally, Mill makes a heroic attempt to show a) that utilitarianism is a very practical, realistic ethical doctrine useful to the majority of people, and b) that the case, in which happiness, particularly the one's own happiness, is scarified and is not pursued as the ultimate goal, is not universal moral standard, but is accomplished by a few, selected heros and martyrs and does not provide the principle which should be adopted, but can be adopted specially. Those who chooses to sacrifice one's own well-being is called noble in their acts. Although the appearance is against utilitarianism, Mill tried his best to demonstrate that those who achieve self sacrifice are not for anything else but ultimately for the sake of the benefit and happiness of the rest of people.
Indeed in this opus, there are many problems including those informal fallacies committed and yet it is extremely comprehensible in Mill's pursuit for the groundwork for the utilitarianism as the ultimate principle of morality. Like the Indian philosophical commentary, Mill's Utilitarianism may be seen as presenting almost all the basic problems for groundwork for the ethics. By carefully reading this text, we are able to learn a great deal of the nature of ethics.