Why does mill believe lying is wrong

So if Utilitarianism is not sufficient to generate an appropriate response, what, then, is it good for at all? The intellectual or emotional pleasure Jane would receive from feeling loved would be much greater than the pleasure Bob receives from intercourse.

You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Google account. You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account. Notify me of new comments via email. Notify me of new posts via email. Home About. Lying and Utilitarianism October 16, This is a very brief attempt to show some problems with utilitarianism.

Share this: Twitter Facebook. Like this: Like Loading Leave a Reply Cancel reply Enter your comment here Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:. Email required Address never made public.

Name required. Blogroll WordPress. But the local best option must not represent the objective global best. This may be the reason why Mill does not refer to maximization in the formula of utility. According to the formula of utility, actions are more or less correct insofar as they facilitate happiness CW 10, It is doubtlessly not the same to say that an action is right if it actually facilitates happiness, or to say that it is right if it tends to facilitate happiness.

The model seems to be roughly this: At the neutral point of the preference scale, actions have the tendency — in regard to the status quo — to neither increase nor decrease the mass of utility in the world. All actions that tend to facilitate happiness are right, all actions that tend to be harmful are wrong, but all are not in the same measure.

An action has a high positive value on the scale of preference, if its tendency to facilitate happiness is high. An action has highly negative value on the preference scale, if its tendency to evoke unhappiness is high.

That an action tends to produce a particular consequence means that this consequence has a high probability. Mill could have wanted to say that an action is right in proportion to the probability with which it promotes happiness.

This makes sense when we compare options that produce the same amount of happiness. But what about cases in which two actions produce different amounts of pleasure? One plausible answer is that both dimensions must be regarded: the amount of happiness and the probability of its occurrence. Action A is better than action B , if the expected happinessfor A is greater than the expected happiness for B.

The best action is one that maximizes the amount of expected happiness. In the final chapter of Utilitarianism , Mill turns to the sentiment of justice. Actions that are perceived as unjust provoke outrage.

The spontaneity of this feeling and its intensity makes it impossible for it to be ignored by the theory of morals. Mill considers two possible interpretations of the source of the sentiment of justice: first of all, that we are equipped with a sense of justice which is an independent source of moral judgment; second, that there is a general and independent principle of justice.

He names the integration of justice the only real difficulty for utilitarian theory CW 10, Mill splits this problem of integration into three tasks: The first consists in explaining the intensity and spontaneity of the sentiment of justice. The second task is to make plausible that the various types of judgments about justice can be traced back to a systematic core; and the third task consists in showing that the principle of utility constructs this core.

In a nutshell, Mill explains the sentiment of justice as the sublimation of the impulse to take revenge for perceived mortifications of all kinds. If it is known that one will not accept interventions in spheres of influence and interest, the probability of such interventions dwindles. The preparedness to take revenge tends to deter aggression in the first place. Thus, a reputation for vindictiveness — at first glance an irrational trait — arguably has survival value.

This helps to explain why the sentiment is so widespread and vehement. Our sentiment of justice, for Mill, is based on a refinement and sublimation of this animal desire. This natural extension of the impulse of revenge with the help of the social feelings represents a step in the direction of cultivating and refining human motivation.

People begin to feel outrage when the interests of the members of their tribe are being violated or when shared social rules are being disregarded. Gradually, sympathy becomes more inclusive.

Humans discover that co-operation with people outside the tribe is advantageous. As soon as humans begin to think about which parts of the moral code of a society are justified and which parts are not, they inevitably begin to consider consequences. This often occurs in non-systematic, prejudiced or distorted ways.

Across historical periods of times, the correct ideas of intrinsic good and moral rightness will gradually gain more influence.

Judgments about justice approximate progressively the requirements of utilitarianism: The rules upon which the judgments about justice rest will be assessed in light of their tendency to promote happiness. According to Mill, when we see a social practice or a type of action as unjust, we see that the moral rights of persons were harmed.

The thought of moral rights is the systematic core of our judgments of justice. Rights breed perfect obligations, says Mill. Moral rights are concerned with the basic conditions of a good life.

To have a moral right means to have something that society is morally required to guard either through the compulsion of law, education or the pressure of public opinion CW 10, Insofar as moral rights secure the basis of our existence, they serve our natural interest in self-preservation — this is the reason why their harm calls forth such intense emotional reactions. The interplay of social feelings and moral education explains, in turn, why we are not only upset by injustices when we personally suffer, but also when the elemental rights of others are harmed.

This motivates us to sanction the suffering of others as unjust. But they do not exhaust the moral realm. There are imperfect obligations which have no correlative right CW 10, The thesis that moral rights form the systematic core of our judgments of justice is by no means unique to utilitarianism.

Many people take it to be evident that individuals have absolute, inalienable rights; but they doubt that these rights can be grounded in the principle of utility. Intuitionists may claim that we recognize moral rights spontaneously, that we have intuitive knowledge of them.

In order to reject such a view, Mill points out that our judgments of justice do not form a systematic order. If we had a sense of justice that would allow us to recognize what is just, similar to how touch reveals forms or sight reveals color, then we would expect that our corresponding judgments would exhibit a high degree of reliability, definitude and unanimity. But experience teaches us that our judgments regarding just punishments, just tax laws or just remuneration for waged labor are anything but unanimous.

The intuitionists must therefore mobilize a first principle that is independent of experience and that secures the unity and consistency of our theory of justice.

So far they have not succeeded. Mill sees no suggestion that is plausible or which has been met with general acceptance. Geoffrey Sayre-McCord once remarked that Mill seems to answer by example the question of how many serious mistakes a brilliant philosopher can make within a brief paragraph Sayre-McCord , For the assessment of the proof two introductory comments are helpful. These reasons are empirical and touch upon the careful observation of oneself and others.

More cannot be done and should not be expected in a proof re ultimate ends. A further introductory comment concerns the basis of observation through which Mill seeks to support utilitarianism. In moral philosophy the appeal to intuitions plays a prominent role. They are used to justify moral claims and to check the plausibility of moral theories. The task of thought-experiments in testing ethical theories is analogous to the observation of facts in testing empirical theories.

This suggests that intuitions are the right observational basis for the justification of first moral principles. Mill, however, was a fervent critic of intuitionism throughout his philosophical work. Mill considered the idea that truths can be known a priori , independently of observation and experience, to be a stronghold of conservatism.

His argument against intuitionistic approaches to moral philosophy has two parts. The first part points out that intuitionists have not been able to bring our intuitive moral judgments into a system. There is neither a complete list of intuitive moral precepts nor a basic principle of morality which would found such a list CW 10, The second part of the Millian argument consists in an explanation of this result: What some call moral intuition is actually the result of our education and present social discourse.

Society inculcates us with our moral views, and we come to believe strongly in their unquestionable truth. There is no system, no basic principle in the moral views of the Victorian era though. In The Subjection of Women, Mill caustically criticizes the moral intuitions of his contemporaries regarding the role of women. He finds them incompatible with the basic principles of the modern world, such as equality and liberty.

What we need, Mill contends, is a basis of observation that verifies a first principle, a principle that is capable of bringing our practice of moral judgments into order. His argument for the utilitarian principle — if not a deductive argument, an argument all the same — involves three steps. Let us turn to the first step of the argument. Upon an initial reading it seems in fact to have little success.

Can a more evident logical fallacy be given than the claim that something is worthy of striving for because it is factually sought? But Mill in no way believes that the relation between desirable and desired is a matter of definition. He is not saying that desirable objects are by definition objects which people desire; he writes instead that what people desire is the only evidence for what is desirable. If we want to know what is ultimately desirable for humans, we have to acquire observational knowledge about what humans ultimately strive for.

Does Mill claim here that each person tries to promote the happiness of all? This seems to be patently wrong. In a famous letter to a Henry Jones, he clarifies that he did not mean that every person, in fact, strives for the general good. It is unclear what it means that general happiness is the good of the aggregate of all persons. Neither each person, nor the aggregate of all persons seem to strive for the happiness of all. If happiness as such is valuable, it is not unreasonable to promote the well-being of all sentient beings.

With this, the second step of the argument is complete. The result may seem meager at first. That it is not unreasonable to promote the happiness of all appears to be no particularly controversial claim. What Mill fails to show is that each person has most reason to promote the general good.

One should note, however, that the aim of the proof is not to answer the question why one should be moral. Mill does not want to demonstrate that we have reason to prefer general happiness to personal happiness. Hedonism states not only that happiness is intrinsically good, but also that it is the only good and thus the only measure for our action. To show this, is the goal of the third step of the proof. According to Mill, humans cannot desire anything except that which is either aninstrument to or a component of happiness.

He concedes that people seem to strive for every possible thing as ultimate ends. Philosophers may pursue knowledge as their ultimate goal; others value virtue, fame or wealth. That knowledge, virtue, wealth or fame is seen as intrinsically valuable is due to the operation of the principle of association.

In the course of our socialization, goods, like knowledge, virtue, wealth or fame acquire value by their association with pleasure. A philosopher came to experience knowledge as pleasurable, and this is why he desires it. Humans strive for virtue and other goods only if they are associated with the natural and original tendency to seek pleasure and avoid pain.

Virtue, knowledge or wealth can thus become parts of happiness. At this point, Mill declares that the proof is completed.

The life of Socrates is better because no person who is familiar with higher pleasures will trade the joy of philosophizing against an even infinite amount of lower pleasures, Mill suggests. One must not forget that Mill is a hedonist after all. What kind of life is joyful and therefore good for a particular person depends upon many factors, such as tastes, talents and character. There are a great variety of lifestyles that are equally good. But Mill insists that a human life that is completely deprived of higher pleasures is not as good as it could be.

Society must make sure that the social-economic preconditions of a non-impoverished life prevail. In one text passage, Mill even includes the happiness of animals. The Second Formula maintains that a set of social rules A is better than the set B , if in A less humans suffer from an impoverished, unhappy life and more enjoy a fulfilled, rich life than in B.

More difficult is the question how to evaluate scenarios that involve unequal population sizes. With Mill there is no explicit unpacking of this problem; but his advocacy of the regulation of birth gives us at least an indication of the direction in which his considerations would go. Let us consider the following example: Which world would be better: world X in which humans have a fulfilled life and a bad one, or world Y in which humans have a fulfilled life and an impoverished one?

The answer to this question depends on whether we focus on the minimizing the number of bad lives or on maximizing the number of good lives, and whether we measure this absolutely or relatively to the total population. This can mean the absolute number of humans with joyless or impoverished lives. If one answers this way, then world X would be better than world Y because in this world the absolute number of humans with bad lives would be less. But it is also possible to think of the Second Formula as a statement about the relative number of humans with bad lives; in this case world Y would be preferable.

If one follows this interpretation, then world Y is better than world X because in this world absolute and relative measurements suggest that more humans have fulfilled lives. Under the influence of Malthus, Mill insisted throughout his work that the problem of poverty is to be resolved only through a reduction of the population number — as noted, he encouraged the regulation of birth. This proposal is reconcilable with all three interpretations, but does not bear any relation to the question concerning which of the interpretations he could have preferred.

One can speculate how Mill would answer, but there is not clear textual basis. A further theme that Mill does not address concerns the problem of measurement and the interpersonal comparison of quantities of happiness. From an utilitarian point of view, other things being equal, it makes no moral difference whether A or B experiences an equal quantity of happiness CW 10, A quantity of happiness for A bears precisely as much value as a quantity of happiness for B.

But this answers neither the question of measurement nor the question of the comparison of interpersonal utility. Can quantities of happiness be measured like temperatures? The philosopher and economist Francis Edgeworth spoke in his Mathematical Psychics of a fictitious instrument of measurement, a hedonimeter, with whose help the quantities of pleasure and pain could be determined with scientific accuracy.

Or do amounts of happiness have to be assessed approximately, such that Harriet Taylor for example can say that she is happier today than she was yesterday. Interpersonal comparisons of utility are confronted with the related question whether and under which conditions one can say that, for instance, Harriet Taylor and John Stuart Mill experience an equal amount of happiness.

Mill gave both themes little attention. He would always be thinking about his lies. How does Mill reply to the objection that Epicureanism is a doctrine worthy only of swine? According to the utilitarian conception, there was no original desire of it, or motive to it, save its conduciveness to pleasure, and especially to protection from pain. But through the association thus formed, it may be felt a good in itself, and desired as such with a great intensity as any other good; and with this difference between it and the love of money, of power, or of fame, that all of these may, and often do, render the individual noxious to the other members of the society to which he belongs, whereas there is nothing which makes him so much a blessing to them as the cultivation of the disinterested love of virtue.

I disagree because happiness is different from pleasure. Happiness can stand alone even without pleasure. You can smile even without pleasure. Does Mill convince you that the so-called higher pleasures are better than the lower ones? Yes because in higher pleasures, you should be ready for anything or you should be superior in anything. I agree because you should do something for the majority and not for yourself alone. Make a move that ensures that the majority will be happy as you are. Do you agree?

If so, then what mistake or mistakes does he make? Is there any way to reformulate the proof so that it is not defective? You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Google account. You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account. Notify me of new comments via email. Notify me of new posts via email.