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J.S. Mill's Test for Higher Pleasure
Mill, J.S.
Mill, J.S.
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Mill, J.S.
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business ethics
morality
morality
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Methods of ethics
Philosophical ethics
Philosophical ethics
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BooherMillTest.pdf
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Abstract
In Utilitarianism[1] (II, 5)), John Stuart Mill maintains that "some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others," thereby making differences in the qualities of pleasures as well as in the quantities of pleasure relevant to moral deliberations. The standard reading of Mill's test for pleasures of higher quality is as follows: One pleasure is of higher quality than another if and only if most people who have experienced both pleasures always prefer the first to the second regardless of their respective quantities.[2] The standard reading suffers from two problems. First, the standard reading results in a lexical ordering of pleasures, as no amount of a lower pleasure could ever trump even a tiny amount of a higher pleasure. For example, in no case can the mild physical enjoyment of eating a hamburger trump the enjoyment of reciting Homer. This categorical result (which conjures images of Kant) cuts against Mill's modest goal of providing rules of thumb, or as Daniel Jacobson recently put it, a "general approach to ethics."[3] The problems are magnified if one takes Mill at his word when he states that "[t]o do as one would be done by, and to love one's neighbour as oneself, constitutes the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality."[4] (Utilitarianism (II, 18) While it may be merely counterintuitive that in no case can a large quantity of lower pleasure morally trump a tiny quantity of higher pleasure, it becomes entirely unworkable to require one to forego all lower pleasures whenever doing otherwise would cause someone else to enjoy a reduced quantity of higher pleasure. A basic cannon of interpretation requires placing a high evidentiary burden on any reading with such results.
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2007
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With permission of the license/copyright holder