Handbook of Ethical Theory by George Stuart Fullerton (e reader TXT) 📕

Morals and Legislation, chapter i, Sec 5.] That which serves that interest he sets down as “conformable to the principle of utility.” What is thus conformable he declares ought to be done, what is not conformable ought not to be done. Right and wrong he distinguishes in the same manner. “When thus interpreted,” he insists, “the words ought, and right and wrong, and others of that stamp, have a meaning; when otherwise, they have none” [Footnote: Ibid., i, 10.]

Of differences in quality between pleasures Bentham takes no account. In his curious and interesting chapter entitled “Value of a Lot of Pleasure or Pain, how to be Measured,” he enumerates the circumstances which should determine the value of a pleasure or a pain. They are as follows: [Footnote: Ibid., chapter iv.]

1. Its intensity. 2. Its duration. 3. Its certainty or uncertainty. 4. Its propinquity or remoteness. 5. Its fecundity. 6. Its purity. 7. Its extent.

The first four of these characteristics call for no comment. By the fecundity of a pleasure Bentham understands its likelihood of being followed by other pleasures; by its purity, the likelihood that it will not be followed by pains. The characteristic “extent” marks off utilitarianism from egoism, for it has reference to the number of persons affected by the pleasure or the pain. The greater the number, the higher the value in question. The greatest number of pleasures of the highest value, as free as possible from admixture with pains, is the goal of the endeavors of the utilitarian. Naturally, when the interests of many persons are taken into account, the question of the principle according to which “lots” of pleasure are to be distributed becomes a pressing one. Bentham decides it as follows: “Everybody to count for one, and nobody for more than one.” [Footnote: See the discussion of Bentham’s dictum in its bearings on justice, J. S. Mill, Utilitarianism, chapter v.] In other words, the distribution should be an impartial one.

At first sight, this account of the relative desirability of pleasures and undesirability of pains seems sensible enough. Men do desire pleasure, and they undoubtedly approve the preference given to pleasures more intense, enduring, certain, immediate, fruitful in further pleasures, free from painful consequences, and shared by many, over those which have not these characteristics:

“Intense, long, certain, speedy, fruitful, pure— Such marks in pleasures and in pains endure. Such pleasures seek, if private be thy end: If it be public, wide let them extend. Such pains avoid, whichever be thy view; If pains must come, let them extend to few.”

[Footnote: Principles of Morals and Legislation, chapter iv, i, Note.]

These mnemonic lines may well strike many readers as embodying a very good working rule of common-sense morality; as paying a proper regard to prudence and to benevolence as well. But there are passages in Bentham calculated to shake such acquiescence. He writes:

“Now pleasure is in itself a good; nay, even setting aside immunity from pain, the only good: pain is in itself an evil, and, indeed without exception, the only evil; or else the words good and evil have no meaning. And this is alike true of every sort of pain, and of every sort of pleasure.” [Footnote: Ibid., chapter x, 10.]

“Let a man’s motive be ill-will; call it even malice, envy, cruelty; it is still a kind of pleasure that is his motive: the pleasure he takes at the thought of the pain which he sees, or expects to see, his adversary undergo. Now even this wretched pleasure, taken by itself, is good: it may be faint; it may be short; it must at any rate be impure: yet, while it lasts, and before any bad consequences arrive, it is as good as any other that is not more intense.” [Footnote: Ibid, note.]

Reflection upon such passages may well lead a man to ask himself:

(1) Is it, after all, the consensus of human opinion that pleasure is the only good and pain the only evil?

(2) Are some pleasures actually regarded as more desirable than others, solely through the application of the standard given above?

(3) Can the pleasure of a malignant act properly be called morally good at all?

107. THE DOCTRINE OF JOHN STUART MILL.—Bentham’s purely quantitative estimate of the value of pleasures has aroused in many minds the feeling that he puts morality upon a low level. [Footnote: In justice to Bentham it must be borne in mind that his prime interest was not in ethical theory, but in legislative reform. His doctrine, such as it was, and applied as he applied it, was a tool of no mean efficacy. Bentham must count among the real benefactors of mankind.] Mill attempts an improvement upon his doctrine. “It is quite compatible with the principle of utility,” he writes, “to recognize the fact that 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 depend on quantity alone.” [Footnote: Utilitarianism, chapter i.]

Thus, Mill distinguishes between higher pleasures and lower, and he gives a criterion for distinguishing the former from the latter: “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.” He refers the whole matter to the judgment of the “competent;” and, in accordance with that judgment, decides that: “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. The other party to the comparison knows both sides.” [Footnote: Ibid.]

That some pleasures may properly be called higher than others moralists of many schools will be ready to admit, but to Mill’s criterion of what proves them to be higher they may demur. Of the delight that a fool takes in his folly a wise man may be as incapable as a fool is of the enjoyment of wisdom. With mature years men cease to be competent judges of the pleasures of boyhood. To each nature, its appropriate choice of pleasures. That human beings at a given level of intellectual and emotional development actually desire certain things rather than certain others does not prove that those things are desirable in any general sense. It does not prove that men ought to desire them. For that proof we must look in some other direction; and a critical scrutiny of the pleasures which moralists ancient and modern have generally accepted as “higher” reveals a common characteristic which explains their being thus classed together much better than the appeal to Mill’s criterion. [Footnote: See chapter xxx, Sec 142.]

As has often been pointed out, Mill, while defending Utilitarianism, really passes beyond it, and his doctrine tends to merge in one widely different from that of Bentham. For the “Greatest Happiness Principle” he virtually substitutes the “Highest Happiness Principle.” But he scarcely realizes the significance of his substitution, and he gives an inadequate account of the significance of higher and lower.

108. THE ARGUMENT FOR UTILITARIANISM.—We have seen above that Bentham maintains that such words as “ought,” “right” and “wrong” have no meaning unless interpreted after the fashion of the utilitarian. He admits that his “principle of utility” is not susceptible of direct proof, but claims that such a proof is needless. [Footnote: Principles of Morals and Legislation, chapter i, 11.]

Accepting it as a fact revealed by observation that the actual end of action on the part of every individual is his own happiness as he conceives it, he appears to have passed on without question to the further positions, that the proper end of action of the individual is his own greatest happiness, and, yet, his proper end of action, as a member of a community, is the greatest happiness of the community. [Footnote: See the paper entitled “Logical Arrangements, Employed as Instruments in Legislation” etc., Memoirs, Bowring’s Edition, Volume X, page 560.]

The second of these positions cannot be deduced from the first, nor can the third be inferred from the other two. Bentham appears to have taken the “principle of utility” for granted; but one coming after him and scrutinizing his work can scarcely avoid raising the question of the justice of his assumption. That happiness is the only thing desirable, and that the happiness of all should be the object aimed at by each, are propositions which seem to stand in need of proof.

Such proof Mill attempted to furnish. [Footnote: He does not regard his doctrine as provable in the usual sense; but he adduces what he regards as “equivalent to proof.” Utilitarianism, chapter i. ] He argues as follows:

“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. If the end which the utilitarian doctrine proposes to itself were not, in theory and practice, acknowledged to be an end, nothing could ever convince any person that it 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, being a fact, we have not only all the proof 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. Happiness has made out its title as one of the ends of conduct, and, consequently one of the ends of morality.” [Footnote: Utilitarianism, chapter iv.]

That happiness is the only ultimate end, Mill regards as established by the argument that other things, for example, virtue, though they come to be valued for themselves, do so only through the fact that, originally valued as means to the attainment of happiness, they become, through association, valued even out of this relation, and thus treated as a part of happiness. [Footnote: Ibid.]

The defects in Mill’s argument have made themselves apparent, not merely to the opponents of utilitarianism, but even to its advocates. [Footnote: SIDGWICK, The Methods of Ethics, Book III, chapter xiii, Sec 5] We cannot say that things are desirable in any moral sense, simply because they are desired. In a loose sense of the word, everything that is or has been desired by anyone is desirable—it evidently can be desired. When we say no more than this, we say nothing. But when we call a course of action desirable we mean more than this; and we are compelled to admit that a multitude of desirable things are not generally desired. This is the burden of the lament of every reformer.

Furthermore, it does not appear to follow that, because his own happiness is a good to each member of a community, the happiness of all must likewise be a good to each severally. A community in which every man studies his own interest may conceivably be a community in which no man regards it as desirable to consult the public weal. That the general happiness is desirable, in a loose sense of the word, is palpable fact; it is obvious