I have a number of very intelligent and eager students who meet with me after school for various intellectual clubs. (There is Philosophy on Mondays, Logos, a math and logic club, on Wednesdays, and Debate on Thursdays. I also facilitate the Socrates Café in Houston on a Sunday once a month and Benjamin Cohen-Kurzrock, one of the other authors on this blog, runs another group called the Dynamist Roundtable once a week dedicated to the Austrian school of economics.)
In the Philosophy group at the moment, we are reading a long excerpt from John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism. In it, Mill states the basic assumption of Utilitarianism is “that pleasure and freedom from pain are the only things desirable as ends; and that 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”.
In response to the charge that Mill is advocating mere bodily pleasure as the highest goal for man, he protests that “it is quite compatible with the principle of utility to recognize the fact that some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others”. In fact, he states, “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.”
Mill is also famous for saying 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, 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.”
Is Mill arguing that there are things that are desirable by nature to all human beings as human beings?
If you enjoyed this article, please consider sharing it!
I don’t understand the question. Pleasure and pain are the only intrinsic values for Mill. It could be irrelevant whether or not you are a human being other than the fact that intellectual pleasures are our specialty. An alien could be even more intellectual than we are though.
Thank you for commenting on our blog. You are welcome.
You said What do you mean when you say that intellectual pleasures are our specialty? What is the consequence of this specialty for what we desire and for what is good for us?
My question comes from my shock that I think Mill believes there are things that are desirable to all human beings because they are human beings. The quotes from Mill I wrote in the post imply that Mill believes that some pleasures are “better” than others for all human beings.
Moreover, he makes it clear that when he says better, he does not mean a greater magnitude of the same kind but better in quality. I have not gone on to read his elaboration of the theory of pleasure and pain (that will have to wait until my students and I get to read again), but at this point I am wondering if Mill’s argument is implying that the better or worse qualities of pleasure arise from the “intrinsic nature” of different kinds of activities.
This sounds much more like Aristotle and natural law than the reports of Mill’s philosophy I have heard before.
Plato argued in the Republic that intellectual pleasure is the best kind of pleasure. Bodily pleasures tend to actually be the relief of pain. Hunger is pain and food relieves us of this pain.
The fact that we are human might have nothing to do with the fact that intellectual pleasure has a higher quality. Like I said, aliens could have this as well. I think what mill wants to say is simply that nonhuman animals we know about don’t seem to have intellectual pleasure. This can be used to justify the fact that a human life is worth more than an animals.
I agree that to be a miserable Socrates is better than a happy pig, but that is only because I don’t think happiness is the most important thing. To have a higher state of consciousness in and of itself is (a) something to be happy about and (b) something that seems to have intrinsic worth.
> I agree that to be a miserable Socrates is better than a happy pig . . .
You can’t actually agree with this because it’s not what Mills said. There is a confusion here between happiness and satisfaction, and between misery and dissatisfaction. Part of Mills’ point is that while it may superficially seem better to be satisfied than not, it depends on what kinds of appetites are involved and he who is fortunate enough to be human is better off not satisfied than he who is a pig but satisfied. Socrates is not miserable in his dissatisfaction, rather he is “happy” precisely because he understands the nature of dissatisfaction and tries his best to be satisfied. On the other hand, pigs don’t really even rise to the level of being able to be happy or not, even when they are satisfied.
Exactly. When I said “but that is only because I don’t think happiness is the most important thing,” I was precisely saying that I don’t agree with Mill. Happiness in the sense of “satisfaction” or “pleasure” is not something I find to be as important as other things.
James,
I think I understand what you’re saying about human beings and aliens. You’re saying it’s not the fact that we are human beings per se that makes intellectual pleasures pleasant to us. Rather, it’s some characteristic (or set of characteristics) we have as humans that makes intellectual endeavors important to us and that nonhumans could also have these characteristics. Perhaps these characteristics are our intellect and rational faculties.
This makes sense to me. Perhaps Mill should have said, it’s better to be a being with an intellect unsatisfied than to be a being without an intellect satisfied; better to be a being with a well-developed, well-disciplined and self-aware intellect than to be a being with a dull intellect.
Still, it seems that Mill believes we have a nature that defines which pleasures are more proper than others, even though the essential characteristics of this nature might be shared with other nonhuman beings.