Do you agree that this is a good way of distinguishing between higher and lower pleasures

Mill attempts to reply to misconceptions about utilitarianism, and thereby delineate the theory. Mill observes that many people misunderstand utilitarianism by interpreting utility as in opposition to pleasure. In reality, utility is defined as pleasure itself, and the absence of pain. Thus another name for utility is the Greatest Happiness Principle. This principle holds that "actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure." Pleasure and the absence of pain are, by this account, the only things desirable as ends in themselves, the only things inherently "good." Thus, any other circumstance, event, or experience is desirable only insofar as it is a source for such pleasure; actions are good when they lead to a higher level of general happiness, and bad when they decrease that level.

The next criticism Mill takes on is the claim that it is base and demeaning to reduce the meaning of life to pleasure. To this Mill replies that human pleasures are much superior animalistic ones: once people are made aware of their higher faculties, they will never be happy to leave them uncultivated; thus happiness is a sign that we are exercising our higher faculties. It is true that some pleasures may be "base"; however, this does not mean that all of them are: rather, some are intrinsically more valuable than others. When making a moral judgment on an action, utilitarianism thus takes into account not just the quantity, but also the quality of the pleasures resulting from it.

Mill delineates how to differentiate between higher- and lower-quality pleasures: A pleasure is of higher quality if people would choose it over a different pleasure even if it is accompanied by discomfort, and if they would not trade it for a greater amount of the other pleasure. Moreover, Mill contends, it is an "unquestionable fact" that, given equal access to all kinds of pleasures, people will prefer those that appeal to their "higher" faculties. A person will not choose to become an animal, an educated person will not choose to become ignorant, and so on. Even though a person who uses higher faculties often suffers more in life (hence the common dictum "ignorance is bliss"), he would never choose a lower existence, preferring instead to maintain his dignity.

Another misconception about utilitarianism stems from a confusion of happiness with contentment. People who employ higher faculties are often less content, because they have a deeper sense of the limitations of the world. However, their pleasure is of a higher character than that of an animal or a base human. Mill writes, "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 opinions, it is because they only know their side of the question." Thus the people best qualified to judge a pleasure's quality are people who have experienced both the higher and the lower.

Furthermore, Mill observes that even if the possession of a "noble character" brought less happiness to the individual, society would still benefit. Thus, because the greatest happiness principle considers the total amount of happiness, a noble character, even if it is less desirable for the individual, is still desirable by a utilitarian standard.

Commentary

This chapter provides the definition of utilitarianism. There are a few important aspects of this definition. First, it presents utility, or the existence of pleasure and the absence of pain, as both the basis of everything that people desire, and as the foundation of morality. However, utilitarianism does not say that it is moral for people simply to pursue what makes them personally happy. Rather, morality is dictated by the greatest happiness principle; moral action is that which increases the total amount of utility in the world. Pursuing one's own happiness at the expense of social happiness would not be moral under this framework.

Are Higher Pleasures Unique to Human Beings?

John Stuart Mill argues in Utilitarianism that higher pleasures are unique to human beings. Higher pleasures are those pleasures that require some minimum of cognitive capacities to enjoy. More specifically, higher pleasures are intellectual pleasures while lower pleasures are sensual pleasures. Mill argues that animals are not capable of experiencing higher pleasures because animals are not aware of their higher facilities; animals lack the conscious ability to be curious, to achieve a sense of self-worth from volunteering, or to hold a deep and intellectual conversation. Mill successfully argues in Utilitarianism that higher pleasures are not only distinct and unique to human beings,

by Ben Davies

One of John Stuart Mill’s most well-known claims concerns the distinction between higher and lower pleasures. Higher pleasures—which are, roughly, ‘mental’ pleasures—are, says Mill, always preferable to lower pleasures—the pleasures of the body.

In Mill’s rendering, competent judges—those who have experience of both higher and lower pleasures—will choose a higher pleasure over a lower pleasure “even though knowing it to be attended with a greater amount of discontent” and “would not resign it for any quantity of the other [lower] pleasure which their nature is capable of”.

There are two ways we might interpret this claim:

[1] For any amount of a higher pleasure, no matter how small, we would not trade it for any amount of a lower pleasure, no matter how great even if we were left with considerable higher pleasures.

[2] We would not trade our capacity for higher pleasure for any amount of lower pleasure.

Let me spell out the difference more clearly. Consider a particular instance of a pleasure that Mill would categorise as ‘higher’. Although the examples used are often explicitly intellectual, I think we can actually make Mill’s argument a little more plausible by focusing on a pleasure that is mental but not explicitly intellectual, such as an enjoyable but not particularly highbrow evening out with friends (as Gibbs (1986) notes, Mill seems to include not only intellectual pleasures, but also our feelings, imaginations, and moral sentiments, as higher pleasures). You are deciding whether to take up the offer of such an evening out, or to stay in and order a takeaway, mindlessly flicking through whatever is on television.

Interpretation [1] is a common one; on this view, no competent judge would ever choose the mindless evening in. But, I suggest, that makes a great many of us incompetent; we do not always choose the option that speaks to our higher faculties, and we often turn down mental stimulation. And it is not plausible as a claim about the respective values of our mental and bodily pleasures.

More plausible, then, is interpretation [2]. On this view, we are considering not a single instance of ‘higher’ pleasure, but rather our very capacity for mental pleasure. And Mill’s claim can thus be read as saying that there is no amount of bodily pleasure that could substitute for the loss of our capacity for higher pleasure.

This interpretation fits better with Mill’s famous examples. Consider, “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied.” Now it is worth noting that, once we move away from the assumption that higher pleasures must be intellectual, there is something a little odd about these examples: pigs, for instance, cannot plausibly be said to have lives without emotions or fellow feeling. Still, it seems clear that the difference between Mill’s stereotypical human and pig is one of capacity.

If we reject [1] and embrace [2], we get the following conclusion: although it can be rational to sometimes prefer some amount of bodily pleasure to some amount of mental pleasure, there is no amount of bodily pleasure that could justify forfeiting our capacity for higher, mental pleasures. To put things another way, on the view I am outlining the two types of pleasure are commensurable and comparable (since we can trade them off against one another). What they are not is “fully fungible”: there is a limit on the extent to which some increase in bodily pleasure can compensate for the total and irreversible loss of mental pleasure. I want to reiterate here that what is at stake is not the life of the detached philosopher. On its typical construal (and not helped by Mill’s second famous example, comparing Socrates and the ‘fool’) as intellectual pleasure, Mill’s higher pleasures exclude those with significant cognitive disabilities; if we interpret mental pleasures more broadly, though, this seems unnecessary.

In fact, I think we should move even further from the canonical interpretation of Mill. Just as we can compare Mill’s stereotypical human with the stereotypical pig, supposedly devoid of any capacity for mental pleasure, perhaps we can also compare ourselves with the stereotypical robot: capable of a rich mental life, but without the capacity for, or understanding of, bodily pleasures. Such a life also seems unattractive; for my own part, at least, there is no amount of mental pleasure that could induce me to abandon my capacity for bodily pleasure entirely. The incomplete fungibility applies both ways.

Of course, this idea of incomplete fungibility might simply be a product of our inability to fully comprehend large numbers. The committed aggregating consequentialist will insist that we have simply failed to understand how big “any amount” could get. Still, even if this is right, it might be that the kinds of trade offs that would make abandonment of our capacities for either mental or bodily pleasures are only available in theory. In the real world, it might be that no actually available trade-off could be worth it.