BEN SAUNDERS
Mill regarded happiness as the proper end of all action and the basis of morality:
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.
(Utilitarianism, X: 210)
Nonetheless, two people might agree with this general statement, while having very different understandings of happiness. The aim of this chapter is to elucidate Mill’s understanding of happiness, including the contribution of his infamous higher pleasures.
One difficulty with uncovering what Mill meant by happiness is that he did not use the term in just one sense. Rather, Mill distinguished between happiness
in the comparatively humble sense, of pleasure and freedom from pain, and in the higher meaning, of rendering life … such as human beings with highly developed faculties can care to have.
(Logic, VIII: 952)
While the former sense of happiness is arguably the more normal meaning in English, the latter is not altogether unknown. John Finnis, for instance, argues that participating in certain basic goods brings us not only pleasure but also:
“happiness” in the deeper, less usual sense of that word in which it signifies, roughly, a fullness of life, a certain development as a person, a meaningfulness of one’s existence. (2011: 96)
Further, it is this objective sense that translators have in mind when “happiness” is used to translate the Greek eudaimonia, which also denotes an objective ideal of a flourishing life.
Happiness, in this higher sense, is equivalent to well‐being, but not biased towards any particular understanding of what that well‐being consists in. Thus, to say that happiness is the end of morality is only to commit oneself to welfarism (the view that all that matters, morally, is people’s well‐being) but not to any particular conception of well‐being, such as hedonism (the view that well‐being or happiness consists in pleasure and absence of pain). One could subscribe to this welfarism while offering an alternative account of happiness, such as identifying it with the satisfaction of our desires, as suggested by A.J. Ayer: “we can identify the ‘happiness’ of a person with the class of ends that he in fact pursues, whatever these may happen to be” (1980: 266). To understand and apply the Greatest Happiness Principle, we therefore need a specification of the happiness that is to function as the end of morality.
Mill’s own gloss on happiness, in chapter two of Utilitarianism, suggests the comparatively humble, hedonistic interpretation: “By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure” (Utilitarianism, X: 210). We should not, however, take this as Mill’s final word on the matter; it is possible that he was merely stating the general position of utilitarians, rather than his own distinctive views, and, in any case, his later remarks offer important qualifications to these statements. Before proceeding further, though, it is worth noting that even this already makes happiness dependent upon two distinct constituents: pleasure and avoidance of pain. We should not assume, as Sidgwick (1967: 124–5) did, that pleasure and pain are opposite ends of a single spectrum, like heat and cold, so that a reduction in pleasure could equivalently be described as an increase in pain. It is possible for one life to contain both more pleasure and more pain than another, in which case it has something to recommend it (the good of pleasure) but also something counting against it (the bad of pain). Mill may be committed to the view that pleasure and pain are ultimately commensurable; that is, that we can in principle always judge whether a given pleasure is worth a given pain, by assessing their contribution to happiness. Nonetheless, such choices require careful balancing of good against bad. It is an open question – one that, for Mill, could only be settled by experience – which of these lives would be better overall (Utilitarianism, X: 213).
As we shall see, Mill certainly thought that a happy life could contain a great deal of discontent (Utilitarianism, X: 212). Indeed, it is even possible that a happy life will contain much pain, provided that there is sufficient pleasure to more than compensate for this. Conversely, a more pleasant life may be less happy, if it also contains more pain. According to Mill, those who speak of happiness ordinarily mean
not a life of rapture; but moments of such, in an existence made up of few and transitory pains, many and various pleasures, with a decided predominance of the active over the passive, and having as the foundation of the whole, not to expect more from life than it is capable of bestowing. A life thus composed, to those who have been fortunate enough to obtain it, has always appeared worthy of the name of happiness.
(Utilitarianism, X: 215)
Thus, promoting happiness can involve promoting pleasure and/or reducing pain.
Though Mill’s identification of happiness with pleasure and the absence of pain suggests that he was, at least in his own estimation, a hedonist, he was acutely aware that his hedonism was not like Bentham’s. Immediately after saying that happiness consists in pleasure and absence of pain, Mill added that “much more requires to be said; in particular, what things it includes in the ideas of pain and pleasure; and to what extent this is left an open question” (Utilitarianism, X: 210), thereby signaling that what he meant by “pleasure” may be different from what others understood by the term. This is followed by Mill’s most (in)famous departure from Benthamite hedonism, namely his distinction between higher and lower pleasures. Before turning to this “qualitative hedonism,” however, let us examine what Mill had to say on happiness in chapter four of Utilitarianism, his notorious “proof.”
Judging by its title, chapter four of Utilitarianism concerns the kind of proof of which utilitarianism is susceptible. Mill stresses that there “cannot be proof in the ordinary and popular meaning of the term” (Utilitarianism, X: 207), but only considerations “capable of determining the intellect either to give or withhold its assent” (Utilitarianism, X: 208). Nonetheless, Mill argues for three distinct claims: first, that happiness is desirable; second, that the general happiness is desirable; and, third, that only happiness is desirable. It seems that he regarded these claims as amounting to some sort of proof of utilitarianism, even though by modern lights this proof is incomplete (it only concerns what is valuable, so does not show that right action is what brings about the most value – an assumption that Mill apparently took to be self‐evident). The various alleged fallacies in Mill’s arguments need not concern us here; our interest is in what Mill says about the happiness that forms the end of morality.
Mill spent little time arguing that happiness is a good, either because he assumed that everyone would acknowledge this or because he thought it fruitless to argue with those who denied it.
If the end which the utilitarian doctrine proposes to itself were not, in theory and in practice, acknowledged to be an end, nothing could ever convince any person that it was so.
(Utilitarianism, X: 234)
If someone refuses to accept that happiness is good, then there seems little we can say that might convince them. Mill apparently held that, if we introspect, we will find that we do desire our own happiness and, further, that this desire for happiness shows that we think of our happiness as something good. It would be perverse to desire something while thinking it worthless; we desire things because we think they are good. Thus, assuming that we are somewhat reliable identifiers of what is actually good, our desiring something is therefore evidence that it is good (Utilitarianism, X: 234). Perhaps Mill was unwise to draw an analogy between desirability and visibility, but we might say that desiring something is evidence that it is desirable in much the same way that seeing something as red is evidence that it is red. Unless we have some reason to doubt the reliability of our faculties, we should take them as revealing reality to us.
The most crucial stretch of chapter four, however, is the argument that only happiness is desirable as an end. Mill recognized that people,
do desire things which, in common language, are decidedly distinguished from happiness. They desire, for example, virtue and the absence of vice, no less really than pleasure and the absence of pain. … 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.
(Utilitarianism, X: 234–5)
When speaking of desire, here, Mill means desiring something as an end, and not merely instrumentally. If people desire virtue as an end, then this seems to contradict the claim that only happiness is desirable as an end.
Several avenues were open to Mill at this point. He could have denied that people do desire virtue for itself, arguing that it is only desired instrumentally. Alternatively, he could have conceded that people do desire virtue for itself, but insisted that they are wrong to do so, which would be to say that their desires here do not track desirability (or, at least, intrinsic desirability). Neither approach, however, would be likely to satisfy the critics of utilitarianism, who regarded it as defective precisely because it seemed to disparage the value of virtue. These critics maintained that virtue was not only desired but desirable in itself and this is why they objected to the claim that only happiness is desirable as an end. Mill therefore employed a third strategy, arguing that virtue is indeed desirable but only because, at least for those who value it, it is a constituent part of happiness and not, in fact, something distinct from it. If this argument can be sustained, then Mill can consistently agree that virtue is desirable in itself, while still holding that only happiness is desired as an end.
The utilitarian doctrine
maintains not only that virtue is to be desired, but that it is to be desired disinterestedly, for itself … Virtue, according to the utilitarian doctrine, is not naturally and originally part of the end, but it is capable of becoming so; and in those who love it disinterestedly it has become so, and is desired and cherished, not as a means to happiness, but as a part of their happiness.
(Utilitarianism, X: 235)
Here, Mill relies upon a distinction between merely instrumental means and constituent parts. Suppose I wish to have a relaxing weekend at home. I might do various things to achieve this, such as working hard to finish a paper by Friday or not scheduling a supervision meeting for Monday morning. These things are only instrumental to my aim: I do not do them for their own sake, but for the sake of something else, namely having a relaxing weekend. On the other hand, there are things I might do because I regard them as part of having a relaxing weekend, such as sleeping in on Saturday or going out for dinner on Sunday. I could have a relaxing weekend without doing these things, since they are not the only ways of relaxing, but they are not merely instrumental to my aim. Doing these things is (one way of) having a relaxing weekend. They may be considered means to my end in a non‐causal sense (Hoag 1987: 423–4), but their value is not simply instrumental. I value my Saturday morning lie‐in differently from the way I value finishing my paper on Friday; it does not simply enable me to have a relaxing weekend, but is part of my having a relaxing weekend, and therefore something that I value in and for itself.
Just as a relaxing weekend can be made up of relaxing activities, Mill held that happiness can be made up of pleasurable activities.
The ingredients of happiness are very various, and each of them is desirable in itself, and not merely when considered as swelling an aggregate. The principle of utility does not mean that any given pleasure, as music, for instance, or any given exemption from pain, as for example health, are to be looked upon as means to a collective something termed happiness, and to be desired on that account. They are desired and desirable in and for themselves; besides being means, they are a part of the end.
(Utilitarianism, X: 235)
Some activities that we pursue might be merely instrumental to our happiness. The process of learning to play a musical instrument, for instance, may not be pleasurable in itself, but playing it – once one has achieved sufficient competence – can be regarded as a pleasure, and not merely a means to pleasure. The learning process is, plausibly, worthwhile only because instrumental to pleasure later on. Playing the instrument, on the other hand, can be regarded as a pleasure in itself, assuming that it is enjoyed.
There is, here, a distinction between two ways of understanding pleasure: one as a mental state, which arises as a result of a given source or activity, and one as encompassing the source itself (Crisp 1997: 26–7). We may say either that “playing the piano gives me pleasure,” which suggests that the pleasure is something distinct from and a consequence of the playing, or that “playing the piano is one of my pleasures,” which suggests that the activity itself is the pleasure. Brink (2013: 52) draws a similar distinction, between subjective and objective pleasures, where the former refers to mental states and the second activities. A note of caution is necessary here. It would not be plausible, however, to identify a pleasure simply with an activity, such as reading poetry, regardless of one’s mental state. One person may enjoy reading, and thereby count it as a pleasure, while another may simply find it boring and there is no merit in describing the latter as partaking in a pleasant activity if she does not enjoy it. Reading poetry is only plausibly described as a pleasure if one enjoys it. Thus, I think the more promising question is whether Mill held pleasure to be simply a mental state or a combination of a mental state and the source that produces it.
Bentham, it seems, understood pleasure in the former of these two ways, as a mental state distinct from its cause (1996: 51). Mill’s position is less clear. Roger Crisp suggests that Mill is most naturally read, like Bentham, as holding that pleasures are mental states, because he frequently contrasts pleasures and pains, and pains (Crisp assumes) are mental states (1997: 27). But it is not clear that pains must be understood as mental states, rather than as sharing a similar ambiguity. I may say that the administrative duties of my job are a pain, rather than that they cause me pain (Saunders 2010: 55; Brink 2013: 74). Thus, Mill’s tendency to contrast pleasures and pains does not seem decisive evidence that he regarded the former as simply mental states, of the sort that might exist without the activity in question. This does not, of course, show that Mill regarded pleasures as including their sources, as well as mental states. He may simply have been unclear on this point, perhaps due to a tension between his Benthamite and Aristotelian influences.
Whatever Mill’s general understanding of pleasure, in his proof he slipped from talking of virtue itself (a disposition of character manifested in actions) to the consciousness of virtue (Utilitarianism, X: 237), which is presumably a mental state. Most likely this would not satisfy critics, who would insist that it is virtue itself, rather than the mere consciousness of virtue, that is of value. Setting this aside, however, it seems that Mill thought he could reconcile the claim that virtue is valuable in itself with the claim that only happiness is desirable as an end by maintaining that, at least for some people, virtue is part of their happiness.
Whatever is desired otherwise than as a means to some end beyond itself, and ultimately to happiness, is desired as itself a part of happiness, and not desired for itself until it has become so. Those who desire virtue for its own sake, desire it either because the consciousness of it is a pleasure, or because the consciousness of being without it is a pain.
(Utilitarianism, X: 237)
Given this argument, it seems that the claim that only happiness is desired as an end becomes a truism, because anything that is desired as an end is labelled part of happiness. Elijah Millgram takes this to be why no proof, in the strict sense, is possible, since it is not an inference but an intuition (2000: 290).
Mill’s proof of utilitarianism shows that only happiness is desirable only by incorporating everything desired for itself into happiness. This could be reconciled with an understanding of happiness as consisting in pleasure and the absence of pain only if these various ingredients of happiness can all plausibly be construed as pleasures or absences of pain. For Mill’s elaboration on what he includes in pleasure, and the absence of pain, we must return to Chapter II of Utilitarianism, where he sets out his distinction between higher and lower pleasures.
As we have seen, Bentham regarded pleasure as a mental state that could arise as a consequence of many sources. Since he regarded only pleasure itself (and avoidance of pain) as valuable, he was indifferent to the source of the pleasure. As he famously pronounced:
The utility of all these arts and sciences, – I speak both of those of amusement and curiosity, – the value which they possess, is exactly in proportion to the pleasure they yield. … Prejudice apart, the game of push‐pin is of equal value with the arts and sciences of music and poetry. If the game of push‐pin furnish more pleasure, it is more valuable than either. Everybody can play at pushpin: poetry and music are relished only by a few.
(Bentham 1830: 206 [Book III, Ch. 1])
(Push‐pin was a simple child’s game played with pins (Gomme 1898: 86); a modern equivalent would be something like tic‐tac‐toe.) Such remarks had led critics to denigrate utilitarianism as “a doctrine worthy only of swine” (Utilitarianism, X: 210), guilty of neglecting nobler ends.
Mill was particularly sensitive to these criticisms. Whereas Bentham was dismissive of poetry (Bentham, X: 113–4), Mill was a keen admirer, even crediting the works of Wordsworth and others as instrumental in his recovery from depression (Autobiography, I: 147–54). Mill’s defense of utilitarianism against this charge was, therefore, not simply strategic – he had to satisfy himself that utilitarianism was compatible with a proper appreciation of noble pursuits, if it was to be worthy of his adherence. The challenge, however, is to show that some pleasures, such as poetry, are more valuable than others, such as push‐pin, without abandoning the hedonistic claim that only pleasure (and absence of pain) is valuable. Mill could not, therefore, simply postulate self‐realization as another end, independent of pleasure. If self‐realization is valuable as an end in itself then it must be as part of happiness.
Mill’s first response to the doctrine of swine objection was to note that certain incidental considerations may favor poetry over push‐pin:
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.
(Utilitarianism, X: 211)
While the features that make higher pleasures more valuable are also ultimately contingent, logically speaking, since they depend on human (or individual) constitution which might have been different, these “circumstantial advantages” depend upon the context, rather than the nature of the activity itself. Push‐pin may be preferable to poetry, if one is too tired to enjoy poetry, but conversely poetry may be preferable if one has no one to play push‐pin with. Mill wanted to say more, to show that “some kinds of pleasure are [intrinsically] more desirable and more valuable than others” (Utilitarianism, X: 211).
Drawing on traditional Epicurean responses to the doctrine of swine objection, Mill argued that “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” (Utilitarianism, X: 210–1). Mill claimed, plausibly I believe, that few, if any, intelligent human beings would agree to be transformed into less intelligent beings, human or animal, even if assured that once transformed they would be fully content with their lot (Utilitarianism, X: 211–2). Note that what judges are asked to compare, here, are not two pleasures but two ways of life (Miller 2010: 65–6; Brink 2013: 51). Faced with the choice, Mill assumes that most of us would prefer to be Socrates dissatisfied than a contented fool. Since there is no apparent “further end” served by being Socrates, it seems that we prefer being Socrates as an end, and not instrumentally, and thus that we regard being Socrates as being better off, or happier, than being a contented fool. Again, we see that Mill’s “happiness” contains an objective evaluation of well‐being, or flourishing, that can come apart from one’s own subjective evaluation of one’s life, which is merely contentment (Utilitarianism, X: 212).
At this point, we might reasonably ask why we should defer to the judgment of Socrates, rather than the fool. Perhaps the contented fool would no more wish to swap places with Socrates than vice versa, so what basis is there to conclude that Socrates’s life really is better, just because Socrates thinks it so? There are at least two points to make in response. First, Mill’s appeal is not simply to what Socrates and the fool may have thought, but to what we think. If all, or most, of us would prefer to be Socrates, then the most obvious explanation is that we think we would be better off as Socrates than the fool. Unless we postulate some mass error or delusion, it seems this is good reason to think Socrates’s life actually is better. Second, we may explain why the fool’s verdict is given less evidential weight:
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 [Socrates] knows both.
(Utilitarianism, X: 212)
One may question this, asking whether Socrates has any more appreciation of what it is like to be a fool than vice versa (Ryan 1974: 111; see also Miller 2010: 65). Perhaps Socrates knows that foolish things do not make him happy, because he is always discontented with activities that do not employ his higher faculties, but might it not be that they really do make the fool happy, and not merely content? Even if Socrates plays push‐pin, couldn’t we say that he can’t really appreciate it in the way the fool does, just as we suppose the fool can’t really appreciate poetry? There is certainly something to this. It is relatively easy for me to judge whether I would rather be me reading poetry or me playing push‐pin, but much harder to judge whether I would be better off as me reading poetry or someone else playing push‐pin, since I do not know what it is like to be them. Nonetheless, I think it plausible to say that those of us who are not fools have a better appreciation of what it is like to be a fool than vice versa. All of us were once children, with as‐yet undeveloped higher faculties. Life as a child may be contented and carefree – in the subjective sense, perhaps “happier” than life as an adult – but would we, on reflection, choose to remain as children all our lives, rather than to grow up? Do we not think those whose mental age never develops beyond that typical of a child as unfortunate, rather than truly happy? Of course, we may have moments where we wish to be a child again, but I think few of us would choose to be children all our lives. If this is right, then Mill’s contention seems at least plausible.
Our decided preference for being Socrates, rather than a contented fool, is taken as evidence that it is better to be Socrates. Similarly, when it comes to particular pleasures, it is by appeal to those with experience of both that we are to determine which is the more valuable or worthwhile. If someone with experience of both poetry and push‐pin prefers the former, this amounts to saying that she thinks it more valuable. If the vast majority of such people prefer poetry, this gives us good reason to believe that it actually is more valuable than push‐pin. Note that “prefer” here does not simply mean “chooses.” Sometimes we may choose to read poetry and other times to play push‐pin, perhaps because we are tired (Utilitarianism, X: 212–3). Indeed, for us to have experience of both activities, it is necessary that we have at some point chosen each of them.
Why would someone, with experience of two pleasures, such as poetry and push‐pin, choose the former over the latter? The obvious answer is that they think it better for them, which is to say that it makes them happier. For Bentham, this must mean that they get more pleasure from it. Mill, however, held that the choice may depend not only on the amount of pleasure involved in each activity, but also on judgments of the quality of that pleasure.
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.
(Utilitarianism, X: 211)
Suppose one is a wine connoisseur, caring only about winetasting. It would not follow that one wants to maximize the amount of wine that one tastes; we would expect such a person to want to taste a variety of wines and to prefer tasting those of higher quality (Schmidt‐Petri 2003: 103; Saunders 2010: 61–3). In preferring a high‐quality wine to a low‐quality wine, they are not valuing some mysterious “quality,” independent of wine, any more than preferring more wine to less (other things equal) amounts to valuing “quantity” instead of wine. Rather, quality and quantity are properties of the wine that they value.
Similarly, Mill supposes that a happy life is one “as rich as possible in enjoyments, both in point of quantity and quality” (Utilitarianism, X: 214). In other words, for Mill, happiness is a function of both quantity and quality of pleasures (Miller 2010: 57). This is less simple than Bentham’s hedonism, which focuses only on the quantity of pleasure, but even that is a function of two distinct elements, intensity and duration. Since the only way to determine that one pleasure is more intense than another is to appeal to the verdict of those with experience of both, Mill argues that we should also accept their judgment that one pleasure is “preferable in kind, apart from the question of intensity” (Utilitarianism, X: 213).
At this point, one may wonder how intensity and quality are distinguished. Suppose we observe someone choose an hour of reading poetry over an hour of playing push‐pin. How can we know whether this is because they regard poetry as a more intense pleasure, thus preferring it on merely quantitative grounds, or because they regard it as a higher quality pleasure, thus preferring it even if smaller in amount? If we cannot distinguish judgments of quality from judgments of intensity, then we might question whether there is any need to introduce a qualitative dimension to pleasures, rather than explaining choices in terms of intensity. Indeed, Jonathan Riley suggests that what it is for one pleasure to be higher than another is simply for it to be so much more intense that one always gets more pleasure from the former than the latter (2003: 416). This, however, reduces quality to quantity, whereas Mill is clear that judgments of quality are distinct from differences in intensity or quantity more generally (Saunders 2011: 191).
I would suggest that Mill’s qualitative hedonism is motivated by the phenomenology of pleasure. It seems false to experience to say that Socrates derives more pleasure from poetry than the fool may gain from childish parlor games. Nonetheless, if we think Socrates’s life is a better one, happier in the objective sense, then we must either appeal to some pleasure‐independent ingredient of happiness, such as knowledge, or say that a smaller quantity of pleasure can be more valuable (more happiness‐producing) than a larger quantity because superior in kind. Taking the former approach would mean abandoning hedonism. By taking the latter approach, Mill was able to maintain that only pleasure (and absence of pain) contributes to happiness, but the contribution that any given pleasure makes depends not only on its quantity but also its quality. The quality of a pleasure, in turn, seems to depend on the extent to which it exercises and develops our higher, intellectual faculties. Thus, Mill values self‐development or self‐realization, but as something that contributes to the value of pleasure, rather than something independent of it.
On this interpretation, then, what makes one pleasure better in kind than another is that it makes a greater contribution to one’s happiness, through the development of one’s higher faculties. Thus, there is some independent fact of the matter as to which of two pleasures will most promote one’s happiness and the role of experienced judges is merely an evidential one: we take their preference for one pleasure over another as an indication that the former is better, but this is not what makes it so (Brink 2013: 56–8). There is, however, another way of interpreting Mill’s remarks.
Elijah Millgram takes it that the preferences of competent judges play a constitutive role (2009: 237); they are what makes one pleasure better than another. According to this rival view, things are good because we desire them, rather than being desired because they are antecedently good. On this understanding, it is the putative fact that we (competent judges) desire poetry‐pleasure more than we desire push‐pin‐pleasure that makes the former better. This interpretation is not without textural basis. In introducing the notion of higher pleasures, Mill says:
If I am asked, what I mean by difference of quality in pleasures, or what makes one pleasure more valuable than another, merely as a pleasure, except its being greater in amount, there is but one possible answer. 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.
(Utilitarianism, X: 211)
Since Mill speaks of what makes one pleasure more valuable than another, it is natural to read this passage as concerned with what explains or constitutes this value, rather than merely how we come to recognize it. However, Mill’s talk of a “verdict” or “judgment” suggests that judges play an evidential role; there is, as suggested above, a fact of the matter that they seek to ascertain. Admittedly, Millgram makes the point that “a judicial verdict constitutes the legal fact” (2000: 297), but, though the judge may be understood as establishing a legal fact, there is also a natural sense in which whether the defendant is innocent or guilty is an independent fact, which the judge may get right or wrong.
Moreover, whatever we think the more natural interpretation of the words that Mill uses, the position that Millgram attributes to Mill seems less plausible, as Millgram himself recognizes (2000: 284). On this view, the verdict of these judges appears arbitrary, whereas Mill suggests that competent judges have reasons to prefer some pleasures to others (Utilitarianism, X: 211). Furthermore, it is not clear why we should side with the majority of the judges, if not because we think that they are getting something right (Brink 2013: 57). Thus, it seems that the most charitable way to read Mill is as holding that the verdict of judges tells us which of two pleasures is better, but is not what makes it so. Rather, this preference is explained by a prior fact about that pleasure’s conduciveness to mental development and, as a result, happiness.
We now have some understanding of Mill’s qualitative hedonism. He held, I have argued, that certain pleasures are intrinsically more valuable than others – which is to say that, other things (such as quantity) equal, they contribute more to our happiness – because they contribute to our development. There are still a number of common confusions about this doctrine that stand in need of correction.
First, it is often supposed that Mill draws a distinction between two kinds of pleasure, “higher pleasures” (generally identified with the intellectual) and “lower pleasures” (usually bodily). On this view, we should be able to say of any given pleasure whether it is higher or lower, depending presumably on whether it involves our higher faculties or not. However, whether a pleasure involves our higher faculties is a matter of degree. Even a childish game may involve some intellectual input, compared to the purely sensual pleasure of a massage, while reading poetry may be less intellectually stimulating than reading philosophy (Miller 2010: 63). We should, therefore, expect pleasures to fall along a continuum, from highest to lowest, according to the extent to which they cultivate our higher faculties. There is no need to postulate a clear separation, at any point, between “higher” and “lower” pleasures. Mill does not say that any pleasure can be categorized, in isolation, as either higher or lower. It makes no sense to say “poetry is a higher pleasure,” without saying what other pleasure it is higher than. Mill’s examples concern comparisons between pleasures (Millgram 2009: 327n2). For any two pleasures, we can ask whether one is higher in quality than the other, but the resulting judgment is an essentially comparative one. Thus, we can say that poetry is a higher pleasure than push‐pin, but a lower pleasure than philosophy. It makes no sense to ask whether poetry, or anything else, is a higher pleasure, absent some comparator.
Second, many commentators take Mill to be committed to the view that we should always prefer a higher pleasure to a lower pleasure, regardless of the quantities involved (e.g., Riley 2003: 415–6; Millgram 2009: 327). This assumption is based on Mill’s remark that:
If one of the two [pleasures] is, by those who are competently acquainted with both, placed so far above the other that they prefer it, even though knowing it to be attended with a greater amount of distinct, and would not resign it for any quantity of the other pleasure which their nature is capable of, we are justified in ascribing to the preferred enjoyment a superiority in quality, so far outweighing quantity as to render it, in comparison, of small account.
(Utilitarianism, X: 211)
However, it seems a mistake to infer from this that quality always trumps considerations of quantity (Schmidt‐Petri 2003; Miller 2010: 58–9; Brink 2013: 50). What Mill says is that, if judges prefer poetry to push‐pin, regardless of quantity, it must be because of a big difference in quality. He does not say that there is a qualitative difference only in such cases or that all differences in quality are so significant as to render quantity irrelevant. Just as it would be absurd to consider only quantity and not quality (Utilitarianism, X: 211), it would likewise be absurd to consider only quality and not quantity. We often have to make trade‐offs between quality and quantity when it comes to other goods, such as wine (to use the earlier example). Indeed, Mill spoke of the decided preference of experienced judges being both “the test of quality, and the rule for measuring it against quantity” (Utilitarianism, X: 214), suggesting that one might rationally prefer a larger amount of an inferior pleasure to a smaller amount of a superior one.
If happiness is, as suggested here, a function of both quality and quantity of pleasure, then it makes little sense to suppose that one’s choices should depend only on quality, and not also on quantity. Of course, if one pleasure is superior to another in both quality and quantity, then it will clearly contribute more to happiness. However, faced with a choice between a greater quantity of an inferior pleasure and a smaller amount of a superior quality pleasure, there is no way to know a priori which is better; we can only rely on the verdict of experienced judges to tell us whether a given increase in quality is worth a given decrease in quantity or not. Mill allowed that the difference in quality between two pleasures may be so great that the quantities involved would become practically irrelevant – that judges would prefer a tiny amount of the better, to any amount of the worse – but he did not say that this was always, or even ordinarily, the case. More often, a balancing of quality and quantity is required.
A common complaint about Mill’s qualitative hedonism is not that it is implausible in itself, but that it is no longer really hedonistic. We have already seen a superficial answer to this objection: valuing pleasures on the basis of their quality, rather than only their quantity, does not amount to valuing anything other than pleasures, any more than distinguishing between wines of different qualities mean valuing something other than wine. Thus, Mill can consistently maintain that only pleasures (and absences of pain) are of value.
However, we may distinguish two kinds, or aspects, of hedonism (Hoag 1987: 427–8; Crisp 1997: 26). Substantive hedonism is a thesis about what things are of value; it says that only pleasure is valuable, but leaves open why this is so. Explanatory hedonism is a view about why things are valuable; on this view, things are valuable only because and in so far as they are pleasant. Given these definitions, explanatory hedonism entails substantive hedonism, but not vice versa. In these terms, it seems that Mill was a substantive hedonist, but not an explanatory hedonist, since the value of higher pleasures is explained, at least in part, by something other than their pleasantness. There must be something that explains our quality judgments, that is, something that makes higher pleasures better than lower pleasures. If this is so, critics suggest, then that property is an independent good‐making feature of the activities and ought to contribute to happiness even where pleasure is absent.
One possibility is that what makes pleasures good is that they satisfy our desires. As we have seen, Millgram suggests something like this, holding that being desired makes something good (2000: 297). If one assumes that we desire only pleasure, then this view would be a form of substantive, but not evaluative, hedonism. This may have been Mill’s view, since he does indeed suggest that we desire only pleasure:
desiring a thing and finding it pleasant, aversion to it and thinking of it as painful, are phenomena entirely inseparable, … to think of an object as desirable (unless for the sake of its consequences), and to think of it as pleasant, are one and the same thing; and that to desire anything, except in proportion as the idea of it is pleasant, is a physical and metaphysical impossibility.
(Utilitarianism, X: 237–8)
But I have already argued that Millgram’s interpretation does not make best sense of the role played by experienced judges in Mill’s theory (see also Brink 2013: 65). Moreover, if what makes something good for us, or part of our happiness, is its satisfying our desires, this would have counterintuitive implications. It would suggest, for instance, that one ought either to cultivate many strong but easily‐satisfied desires, so as to increase one’s total desire satisfaction (Parfit 1984: 497), and/or to divest oneself of hard to satisfy desires, in order to increase the proportion of one’s desires that are satisfied (Brink 2013: 70–1). However, Mill realized that even the total satisfaction of his desires would not bring happiness (Autobiography I: 139). This suggests that happiness consists in something else; perhaps not the actual fulfillment of desires but the striving to fulfill them.
I have suggested that what makes higher pleasures more valuable than lower ones is their conduciveness to individual development. Mill said that he came to recognize the importance of “the internal culture of the individual” (Autobiography, I: 147) as a consequence of his mental crisis of 1826–7. He thereafter emphasized the importance of active self‐development throughout his works, for instance:
The human faculties of perception, judgment, discriminative feeling, mental activity, and even moral preference, … like the muscular powers, are improved only by being used. … It really is of importance, not only what men do, but also what manner of men they are that do it. Among the works of man, which human life is rightly employed in perfecting and beautifying, the first in importance surely is man himself. … Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develope itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.
(Liberty, XVIII: 262–3)
Similar concerns are displayed in The Subjection of Women, in which Mill argues that Victorian women were kept in a stunted condition, unable to realize their full potential (Subjection, XXI: 326–31) and in Considerations on Representative Government, where Mill argues that a benevolent despotism would be bad, since subjects will be passive and enfeebled (Considerations, XIX: 399–412). It seems that happiness, or flourishing, consists in the realization of our natural potential; what might be called self‐development or self‐assertion (Liberty, XVIII: 265–6).
When Mill said that happiness consists in pleasure and absence of pain, this can be seen as no more than an exercise in semantics, paying lip‐service to a hedonism he could never bring himself to break from publically (Brink 2013: 66). On this interpretation, Mill sought to reconcile the Greek ideal of self‐development with hedonism simply by calling those things that contribute to our development “pleasures.” On this view, it would be fair to say that Mill was not really a hedonist, but merely employing the language of hedonism to conceal a very different substantive view about human happiness. Brink (2013: 54–5, 60–3) takes such a view, because he interprets Mill as holding that certain activities are valuable, independently of one’s mental states. However, it is possible to read Mill more charitably than this. Perhaps he held that only activities that are enjoyed in the right way contribute to our proper development. In this, Mill would be following Aristotle, who held that pleasure completes virtuous activity (Aristotle 1999: 159 [1174b33]). Reading poetry, without enjoying it, would suggest a lack of proper appreciation. One might well read the entire works of a Shakespeare or a Wordsworth but, if one is not moved by them, and does not feel pleasure as a result, then one’s higher faculties are not exercised; one may as well be reading a shopping list. Mill might have held that we are so constituted as to find the realization of our potential pleasant. If so, then it seems he would have good, though contingent, reasons to think that anything that contributes to our happiness will be a pleasure. Even so, this would have the puzzling implication that reading Shakespeare with no enjoyment would contribute nothing to one’s happiness, yet reading it with only a very small amount of pleasure may contribute very significantly to one’s happiness, given the quality of that pleasure.