by Henry Piper (all rights reserved)
Mill’s Utilitarianism
For us, who live in a materialistic, technologically-obsessed consumer society, the utilitarian ethical theory of John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) may be the most intuitively obvious theory of ethics since it is based ostensibly on practical, worldly reality. Utilitarianism is known as a “consequentialist” theory, since it looks to the outward, physical consequences of actions to determine what is ethical or right. According to Mill’s utilitarian theory, “actions are right as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.” Who could argue with that?
However, as Mill begins to define terms, we begin to detect ground for controversy. Most evidently, it is incumbent on Mill to define “happiness,” which he does as follows: “By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain or the privation of pleasure.” So the thesis of Mill’s ethical theory is what he refers to as the “Greatest Happiness Principle,” which states that an action is ethical if it furnishes the greatest good, or happiness, that is, pleasure, for the greatest number of people.
This definition of happiness as pleasure immediately raises a problem for Mill, since it seemed to many of his early readers that such a definition of happiness tended to degrade the very idea of morality and of human nature itself: recalling the materialist metaphysics of Hobbes, if the highest human calling is only to obtain pleasure, this would seem to imply that human beings are no better than beasts or children, who are ruled by their instinctual, selfish concerns for instant gratification. Thus, “in many minds,” says Mill, “To suppose that life has no higher end than pleasure―no better and nobler object of desire and pursuit―they designate… as a doctrine worthy only of swine.” This complaint against his utilitarian ethics provides, for Mill, the occasion for the fuller exposition of his theory.
Utilitarianism is Not for “Swine”
To this “accusation” that utilitarianism is thus degrading or “too low,” Mill responds, “the accusation supposes human beings to be capable of no pleasures except those of which swine are capable.” But Mill argues, “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.” That is, Mill attributes 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.” In other words, by the term “pleasure” Mill by no means limits himself to the material pleasures of physical sense; on the contrary, the mental pleasures of human intellect and culture are much the more elevated and valuable.
Previous exponents of utilitarianism, says Mill, have assigned such superiority to “mental over bodily pleasures chiefly in the greater permanence, safety, uncostliness, etc. of the former… rather than in their intrinsic nature.” For Mill, however, the superiority of the mental pleasures is due not primarily to the fact that mental pleasures have such “circumstantial advantages” of being easier to acquire and longer lasting in their effect; rather, the mental pleasures are of a different and superior kind altogether. Thus it is not just a matter of mental pleasures offering the quantitative advantage of lasting longer or costing less, for the mental pleasures are of a fundamentally superior, intrinsic quality. In short, the “pleasure” of humans is more mental than physical, and the mental pleasures are superior to the physical because they are longer-lasting and because they are simply of a better quality. They are longer lasting because physical pleasures like sex and candy may be intense but they pass quickly and leave one simply wanting more, whereas the mental pleasure of a big accomplishment like succeeding in a philosophy course offer lasting gratification. They are of higher quality because physical pleasures simply come and go, whereas the mental pleasures might make our lives fuller and actually improve the world (your college degree makes you a more educated and capable person who can accomplish great things in your career).
To the objection that “pleasure” is an intrinsically subjective matter, determined, that is, by personal taste rather than by objective, theoretical standards worthy of a reputable moral theory, Mill responds that anyone who has become acquainted with the mental pleasures of higher culture cannot help but value them more than the merely physical, and it is only such people, argues Mill, who are competent to judge which pleasure is greater, since everyone is familiar with physical pleasure, whereas only the highly cultivated are familiar with the “higher” pleasures as well. Thus Mill can argue, “Now it is an unquestionable fact that those who are equally acquainted with… both [physical and mental pleasures] do give a most marked preference to the manner of existence which employs their higher [i.e. mental] faculties.” It is true, concedes Mill, that “A being of higher faculties requires more to make him happy, is capable of probably more acute suffering, and certainly accessible to it at more points, than one of an inferior type; but in spite of those liabilities, he can never wish to sink into what he feels to be a lower grade of existence.” This is significant: being a free, human being is much more challenging than being a goldfish: I don’t think the fish knows it’s going to die or worries about philosophy exams or global warming, whereas we human beings, being free, feel the weight of responsibility for our lives and the future of the world (thus anxiety); yet who would want to trade places with a goldfish? It is important to note here, says Mill, that “happiness,” at least for the human being of elevated capacities, is not a matter merely of contentment, that is, of having one’s physical appetite sated, as is the case for “swine”; rather, the very term happiness, as Mill employs it, represents a uniquely human sort of fulfillment.
Better Human than Pig
It is thus that Mill can conclude, “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, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question.” In other words, though fool or pig might argue that their own, “low” pleasures of physical gratification are the best, clearly they are not competent to make this judgment since they are utterly ignorant of the higher, mental pleasures; by contrast, Socrates, and all human beings potentially, have the capacity to be fully acquainted with both the physical and mental pleasures, thus only they are competent to make the comparison. Admittedly, again, the refinement that comes of culture and education, and human consciousness more generally, open us, as human beings, up to discomfort, anxiety, grief and depression—of which animals and fools may be unaware; but notwithstanding the burdens of the human sensibilities that accompany our higher mental faculties, argues Mill, no human being would ever want to trade places with a pig.
Is Utilitarianism Merely a Morality of “Expediency”?: On Veracity (Truth-telling)
Mill notes that the hard-nosed practicality of his utilitarianism seems to leave the theory open to another version of the “too low” variety of criticism, namely the charge that, rather than define and encourage genuinely moral conduct, it counsels mere expediency, which can very easily be turned to selfish ends and have the effect of rationalizing otherwise clearly immoral or hurtful conduct. The very term “expediency,” while it shares with utilitarianism the concern for practical consequences, might also imply the taking of moral short-cuts, so to speak.
In response to this concern, Mill turns to a consideration of the virtue of “veracity,” that is, honesty or truth-telling. On the one hand, notes Mill, it might seem, at times, to be “expedient, for the purpose of getting over some momentary embarrassment, or obtaining some object immediately useful to ourselves or others, to tell a lie.” But Mill argues that “veracity is one of the most useful, and the enfeeblement of that feeling one of the most hurtful, things to which our conduct can be instrumental.” The importance of being truthful is, to Mill, so fundamental a principle of human community that “any, even unintentional, deviation from truth does that much toward weakening the trustworthiness of human assertion, which is not only the principle support of all present social well-being, but the insufficiency of which does more than any one thing that can be named to keep back civilization, virtue, everything on which human happiness on the largest scale depends.” Thus, he concludes, “the violation, for a present advantage, of a rule of such transcendent expediency is not expedient.” In other words, “expediency” is perfectly consistent, suggests Mill, with the highest of moral values, because truthfulness is vital to a stable, moral society and lies are deeply harmful to it.
Thus Mill strongly urges veracity as a pillar of utilitarian ethics, arguing that its status as a basic moral virtue is commensurate with the supreme degree of its usefulness to human society, or, at least, with the grave threat that its absence would pose to such society; its great expediency, in fact, is precisely the basis of its moral value. Having made this point, however, Mill adds that veracity, “sacred as it is, admits of possible exceptions,” which, he asserts “is acknowledged by all moralists” (unaccountably overlooking Kant, who admits of no exceptions and to whom we shall turn shortly). According to Mill, it could be moral to lie “when the withholding of some fact (as of information from a malefactor, or of bad news from a person dangerously ill) would save an individual (especially an individual other than oneself) from some great and unmediated evil, and when the withholding can only be effected by denial.” Most of us, at least without further thought on the matter, would probably accept the practical, that is, utilitarian usefulness of such a rare lie—lying to save a life (though we must reserve judgment since Kant will give us good reason to think on it anew); but, as even Mill takes pains to point out, such an exception to the general rule that to lie is wrong must be very rare, and its occasions carefully circumscribed.
Indeed, though Mill (unlike Kant) would permit the rare lie that serves the Greatest Happiness Principle, we must emphasize not only that the rare occasion permitting a lie would probably never happen to any of us (have you ever had to lie to save someone’s life?), but also that the importance of truth-telling is a “supreme” value upon which much if not all ethical reasoning is founded. We shall see this the more clearly when we consider Kant, but for the moment let it be noted that many basic social “wrongs” are essentially forms of deception—when we steal we hide and so effectively claim not to be stealing, and when we kill we are implicitly asserting that “my life is more valuable that hers,” which, absent a rare justification like self defense, etc., we must acknowledge to be false and a lie. Moreover, it is easy to overlook how easily we might take truthfulness for granted: though the cashier does not overtly promise “I am giving you the correct change,” don’t we take that promise for granted when we receive our change? And would we ever buy a can of soup if we thought their labels might be lying to us? These trivial examples remind us that innumerable implicit promises are being made to us every day and we simply we take it for granted, and we could not function without trusting, that they are true.
Finally, Mill adds another argument in refutation of the notion that utilitarianism is “too low.” It may seem as though Mill’s “greatest happiness principle” would fail to reward the selfless, sacrificial, “saintly” person that our tradition has always looked up to, and would even tend to encourage selfish behavior, since the pursuit of pleasure, in and of itself, might well be expected to lead to the greedy acquisition of scarce resources; however, the greatest happiness principle, as Mill points out, does not, on its very terms, give license to seek personal pleasure, for it is a theory that demands concern for “all mankind,” indeed for “the whole sentient creation,” says Mill. In other words, greatest happiness is not the same as individual happiness; therefore, in order for an action to be moral, on Mill’s terms, it must serve the happiness of all, or of the greatest number, or somehow amount to the greatest sum total of happiness, taking both quantity and quality of happiness into account. Thus, strictly speaking, in each of my actions, it would seem, I must take my own happiness into account, but only as that of one person amongst the whole of all humankind (and of all animals and plants as well, to the extent of their sentience); thus, though it does not honor the self-sacrificing martyr as such, as a practical matter it could hardly be more selfless.
But Does That Make Utilitarianism “Too High”?
However, if I must take the wellbeing of all creation into consideration with every action I take, this would seem to set up a standard for ethics that is too impossibly high rather than too low: so is utilitarianism “too high for humanity,” is it “exacting too much to require that people shall always act from the inducement of promoting the general interests of society” over and above their own?
To this Mill responds, first, that, more often than not, what benefits me will typically at least do no harm to the common good; therefore, Mill’s theory hardly requires me to be a saint, since even the most selfish of actions will usually at least not harm others and will add to the general happiness by increasing my own. We must continually recall that Mill’s utilitarianism, as a consequentialist theory, is concerned only with the practical consequences (i.e. results) of a person’s actions and not with the motives or intentions behind them; in this regard, Mill notes that intentions are relevant to the “moral worth” of a person, but not to the morality of an action, and since Mill's ethics is strictly consequentialist, moral worth is completely irrelevant to his moral theory (in direct contrast to the moral theory of Kant, whom we shall turn to next): in his words, “the motive has nothing to do with the morality of the action, though much with the worth of the agent. He who saves a fellow creature from drowning does what is morally right, whether his motive be duty, or the hope of being paid for his trouble.” In other words, the saint or martyr gets no special recognition in Mill’s ethics since the sacrificing of oneself does not in itself increase happiness; however, if the consequence of self-sacrifice or martyrdom adds to greater happiness overall and on balance, then of course Mill would credit the result of the action as moral. In any event, whether a person is a saint or a sinner, whether of good or bad “moral worth” (or “character”), Mill insists that we measure the morality of their actions based not on the nature of the person, but only on the results of their actions; and even if most people, most of the time, are motivated, selfishly, primarily by their own, personal happiness or pleasure, that will not prevent their actions from frequently benefiting others if only accidentally (and not intentionally)—at the least, even the most selfish of actions will typically at least not unduly hurt others.
Mill adds another reason that utilitarianism is not “too high for humanity, namely that, as a practical matter, most of the actions of most people most of the time will affect only themselves or at most a relatively small number of other people in their immediate vicinity; few of us, that is, hold such positions of social, political or economic authority over a wide number of others as to make our actions even relevant to many people other than those who immediately surround us. Again, Mill’s utilitarianism does not impose on us a duty to serve everyone, all the time, since we do not have that power, and it is enough, for most of us, simply to keep clean “our own side of the street.” In this spirit, at the conclusion of her novel Middlemarch, Mill's contemporary George Eliot (1819-1880) writes, “for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”
In sum, Mill argues that utilitarianism is not “too low,” since it strives to achieve the highest possible quality of human fulfillment, for as many people as possible. And it is not “too high,” since as a practical matter the happiness of individuals should be in substantial accord with the happiness of the whole.
Act Utilitarianism v. Rule Utilitarianism
There is another rather more technical problem that Mill addresses, which falls under the category of his theory being “too high”: does the utilitarianism require me, in order to act ethically, to consider my actions at every moment to assure that what I’m doing assures the greatest good for the greatest number (this is known as “act-utilitarianism”)? This would seem to be highly impractical, thus not utilitarian at all, because then, for example, clearly I could never ethically indulge myself or others in any frivolous luxury or enjoyment because any effort or money I might expend, on an ice cream for example, could surely provide greater benefit by being used to feed the hungry and so making my ice cream unethical. Further, having promised my teenage neighbor to pay her after she mows my lawn, wouldn’t I be forced to decide, when she demands payment, that the money would furnish greater happiness being sent to assuage famine overseas, since many little children might be fed for the money otherwise to be used by my well-fed teenage neighbor for trivialities? This latter case might arguably call for an exception to the principle of veracity, and we could easily imagine so many such cases that the exceptions would seem likely to swallow the rule.
Mill disputes this last criticism of utilitarianism by claiming that it is not necessarily our individual acts, as such, that must conform to the “greatest happiness” principle; rather, Mill seems open to the idea that the utilitarian standard is not so much a matter of analyzing our individual actions according to whether they serve the greatest number, but should rather serve as a guide to the formulation of general rules which are themselves designed along utilitarian lines (this is known as “rule-utilitarianism”). The virtue of this approach is that it might leave room to recognize a class of “goods” that we would be free to indulge in, such as the ice cream, as long as they don’t actively hurt others or deprive others of some good or happiness, and further this approach might effectively broaden and take better account of what “happiness” means, such that an ice cream could be ethically permissible as representing an important, if not absolutely necessary, aspect of human liberty and happiness. Moreover, the rule-based approach would be expected to take account of possible ethical conflicts, such as that between the promise to pay and the better use of the payment, by fashioning a rule that would acknowledge the practical requirement, to a stable and “happy” society, of keeping promises (an example of the expediency of veracity).
The problem with this rule-based approach, however, is that it seems to presuppose that it is possible to formulate a set of rules comprehensive and unambiguous enough to settle all disputes as to “rightness,” and this presupposition is just not plausible. No set of rules can account for all possible contingencies or assure the protection of all conceivable interests; thus there must be innumerable exceptions to any general rules, and, as more rules permitting such exceptions proliferate, our rule-based approach may end up looking more and more like the act-utilitarianism we were trying to leave behind, since we would approach the need to have as many rules as there are actions, and ultimately a new rule for every action. In other words, while the theoretical distinction between “act-utilitarianism” and “rule-utilitarianism” is plain, it is not clear that the latter would not leave us, as a practical matter, at least as to the most difficult and important ethical decisions our lives bring, with the ultimate requirement that one must bear the responsibility for one’s individual actions, particularly when the rules fail by their conflict, or where the rules or laws require one to do something that one’s conscience will not allow. In such cases, in other words, it would be up to me to determine whether the case at hand warranted an exception to the general rule, and this would again leave us with the limitations of act-utilitarianism.
Virtues and Limitations of Utilitarianism
Mill’s defense of utilitarianism against the twin complaints that is it both “too low” and “too high” makes a great deal of sense; and, as suggested at the outset, there seems a solid, practical common sense about Mill’s views generally. We can think of Mill’s Greatest Happiness Principle as effectively a “cost-benefit analysis” according to which, when considering the morality of a proposed action, we weigh the various kinds of pleasure that will flow to the number of people benefitted against the various kinds pain that will be suffered by the number of people who must sacrifice. For example, the political process that levies taxes and spends the money for public projects presumably employs a utilitarian analysis to weigh the pain inflicted by taxes (and especially the greater pain that might be suffered by taxes on poorer people, etc.) against the pleasure offered by the new bridge the tax money would build. Though it is surely difficult to account for all the pains and pleasures involved, we must recall that no action is going to benefit and penalize absolutely everyone equally, but utilitarianism, quite reasonably, seeks to benefit the general or overall good, thus it is not a reasonable complaint that I will never use the bridge, since many more people will (and in fact the food I buy at the market may in fact come over that bridge). In short, how else can we reasonably make such public policy but on the basis of such utilitarian cost-benefit analysis?
As practical in the realm of public affairs as utilitarianism might seem to be, however, on careful consideration serious questions remain, two of which emerge from an analysis of the two aspects of Mill’s Greatest Happiness Principle: first, how, practically, do we define “happiness,” and second, what might the provision of happiness for the “greatest number” imply, i.e. what ab out the “lesser number” or the minority? In addition, we must consider the problem of the knowledge and prediction of future consequences.
First, clearly “happiness” is a seriously vague term which surely must defy a ready general definition. Obviously, even if we accept Mill’s argument in support of the relative value of mental over physical pleasures, this leaves innumerable mental pleasures to compete against one another for our valuation, and surely even the most cerebral of people will not deny the vital importance of some substantial degree of physical comforts, and how do we then balance the happiness of such physical comfort against the mental pleasures of professional accomplishment or the opera or a good book? Moreover, surely even sometimes purely “mental” pleasures can be positively bad, such as workaholism or perfectionism or a morbid obsession with self-advancement that makes us anti-social or delusional. Finally, Mill’s standard of judgment seems remarkably elitist, reserving the judgment of moral value only to the highly “cultivated”; and, after all, who is to be the judge of what counts for “cultivation,” who is to judge the judges?
Second, and perhaps most important of all the weaknesses of Mill’s theory, by advancing the interests of “the greatest number,” we arguably devalue the importance of individual happiness or freedom: thus in some cases a utilitarian theory would clearly assert that sacrificing the happiness, liberty or even the lives of a few people would be okay if such sacrifice served “a greater good.” Thus, for example, it might be okay to test dangerous drugs on a few unsuspecting people (maybe even children) if such testing might lead to a cure for cancer. But those devoted, as a moral and ethical matter, to the freedom and dignity of individual persons as our ultimate ethical ideal (including the law and major medical societies) would clearly reject this treatment of people as “human guinea pigs.” (It is on this score, especially, that Kant’s moral theory will prove indispensable, for the fundamental, bedrock principle of Kant’s theory, and the “greatest good” to which Kant aspires, is precisely individual human freedom, or what he refers to as the human capacity for “self rule,” that is, autonomy.) In other words, Mill’s utilitarianism would seem clearly in fact to require, at times, the sacrifice of certain of our most cherished principles of individual human life, freedom and dignity if it somehow served the general welfare.
The Problem of “Consequences”
The practical, commonsensical character of Mill’s utilitarianism, as we have noted, is attributable to the fact that Mill’s is a consequentialist theory, and surely, it would seem, any reasonable ethical theory would seek to produce the best possible consequences. However, while surely no one would intentionally pursue bad consequences, a theory that is based on consequences, like Mill’s, faces the problem of knowing and predicting what the consequences of actions are going to be.
This is a problem, first, because, strictly speaking, we can of course never predict anything about the future with perfect accuracy (recall the previous discussion of the fallibility of science). Even the most regular and reliable events, like the rising of the sun, are subject to disruption and change, and when it comes to events involving human actions, countless uncertainties and unknowns render reliable prediction of the outcomes of such actions profoundly difficult. In particular, it is impossible to know and take into account all the past and present factors that influence events, even if we could predict with accuracy what future consequences will result from such factors.
But there is another problem involving the consequences of human actions, apart from the understanding of past and present conditions, and that is the problem of unforeseen consequences, especially in the long-term. Consider, for example, that acts of war are presumably justified, ethically, on utilitarian terms: thus, it might be deemed to have been ethical to use nuclear weapons against Japan on the assumption that, by killing thousands of innocent civilians immediately (some 200,000, as it happened), hundreds of thousands of soldiers’ lives, even up to a million or more, would be spared that would ultimately have been lost had the war indefinitely continued. Even on the face of it, of course, this is a highly problematic ethical decision. But even leaving aside the intrinsic problem of weighing the certain deaths of thousands of civilians against the predicted deaths of even more soldiers, there is the further problem that the long-term consequences of the nuclear bombs were impossible to predict. One factor that was not fully appreciated at the time, for example, was the radiation fallout from the bombs, which would cause grievous health problems and mortality for weeks, months and years to come (another 100,000 deaths at least, but who knows?). And what of the geopolitical consequences of the unleashing of such a weapon, which, whatever virtues might be attributed to it, is undeniably horrific in its effects?
In short, we are reminded that we simply cannot know what even the short-term consequences of any action are going to be, much less those in the more distant future. And it is fair to say, moreover, that this problem will be the greater in proportion to the scope and gravity of the decisions; in other words, the greater the number of people that are likely to be affected, and the greater the effects are expected to be, the more varied and unforeseeable the consequences are likely to be, the decisions to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki being a case in point.
It is thus that we should look forward to our consideration of Kant’s non-consequentialist theory of ethics, for the problem of consequences will not exist there since Kant will consider only the present intention that motivates actions rather than their known and unknown future consequences. It has been said that “the road to hell is paved with good intentions,” which would seem to warn us against the Kantian view, but is this fair or reasonable? Kant would surely reply that the well-intentioned action is surely more likely to produce good consequences than that motivated by ill; and it seems unlikely, surely, that the bad things that happen in the course of human affairs are primarily the result of good intentions. But we must await the consideration of Kant for more on these matters.
Conclusion: The Utility of Utilitarianism
In sum, utilitarianism’s apparent good sense does indicate that it is an invaluable theory for practical and measurable matters of public policy: it prescribes what we might today refer to as a “cost-benefit analysis.” Thus it is indispensable, for example, in deciding how to raise public money for a public project. To tax people evidently reduces their happiness, and thus imposes a “cost,” but is ethically justifiable when the money raised is put to a use that results in greater overall pleasure, thus where the overall “benefit” exceeds the overall cost. Moreover, whom to tax, how much, and to whom the benefits of money raised should primarily accrue must, under utilitarian principles, follow the greatest and thus overall good, thus there is a spirit of egalitarianism and democracy built into the theory, which we can in principle embrace.
However, Mill’s utilitarianism suffers serious limitations, as implied by the very terms of “the greatest happiness principle” itself. How do we measure the “greatness” of a particular kind of happiness? Again, this theory may be very well suited to deal with the readily measurable matters such as involve money and its uses, thus the cost and benefits of a bridge project, of police protection and the like seem well suited to utilitarianism, at least in principle; but the most interesting and important ethical matters defy such measurement, don’t they? What constitutes “happiness,” after all? Mill himself complicates his own theory profoundly by defending “mental pleasures” over “physical pleasures,” arguing that the former are greater in their durable quantity and of more refined (and human) quality. But many would argue that bridges should be funded before poems, and who’s to say?
In addition, it is one thing to theorize about good consequences but it is quite another to achieve them in practice. Even assuming that we can agree on what constitutes “happiness” and thus on what consequences we ought to achieve, it may be impossible reasonably to predict whether certain actions will or will not actually achieve them. Moreover, even if we are successful in achieving the immediately desired consequences, there may well be other, unintended consequences or “side-effects” that could radically alter our judgment, in hindsight, of the overall benefit of the actions in question.
Finally, the greatest limitation of Mill’s utilitarianism arguably concerns “the greatest number,” for, as mentioned above, this would seem to justify the exploitation of a vulnerable minority for the perceived benefit of a ruling majority, such as in the case of a human drug trial, and such exploitation would seem to have no clear limits. In other words, for utilitarianism it would seem that “nothing is sacred,” that there is no generally accepted sense of value, not even human life, freedom and dignity.
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