Mill’s Higher and Lower Pleasures

Owen WilliamsIntercalated Philosophy9931585

Jeremy Bentham was one of the founding fathers of modern concepts of Utilitarianism. He followed the empiricist John Locke in thinking that all knowledge is ultimately based on sense experience. He also believed that human actions and institutions should be directed at promoting the greatest overall ‘utility’, by which he meant happiness or pleasure (this he called the greatest happiness principle). John Stuart Mill was converted to the utilitarian doctrine early through the influence of both his father (John Mill) and his father’s close acquaintance Bentham. John Stuart Mill (from now on simply referred to as Mill) attempted to further the work of his predecessors on utilitarian thought, as he was himself dedicated to utilitarianism. He sought to improve on the doctrine that was, at the time, concerned with how people do live their lives and suggest a modified utilitarian way of life that indicated how people ought to live their lives.

Bentham offers an experience account of welfare, according to which your welfare consists only in experiences that you have. Your own welfare consists only in those aspects of your life that are good for you. Bentham believed that pleasure was the sole constituent of the various experiences individuals have that make up welfare. So Bentham can be called a hedonist as he holds that personal pleasure is the sole or chief good. Though he is a hedonist, his position is far from that of a sensualist, who advocates the life of luxurious excess. For Bentham, any experience which makes one better off or increases one’s welfare counts as pleasure, whether it be drinking a good espresso or reading philosophy. Of course, pleasurable experiences are not the only ones that matter. The experiences of physical pain, fear, anxiety, and depression are examples of experiences that make one’s life worse and Bentham referred to them as pains.

Bentham’s utilitarian phrase was ‘the greatest good for the greatest number’ and he thought that when faced with a decision, the decision that made the most people happy overall was the right choice. For this reason, he requires that our pleasures and pains can be measured. He thought that any particular pleasure or pain could be given a value in order to be compared with other pleasures and pains. A scale of measurement would have been used to do so. This is Bentham’s felicific calculus and is supposed to provide an objective framework with which the comparative value of different courses of action can be measured. Consider the pleasure of eating a filet steak. According to Bentham, the value of any pleasure is to be determined by its duration and intensity[1]. Incidentally, he also mentioned certainty, propinquity (meaning similarity in nature) and purity as other characteristics related to measurement of pleasures. They might be relevant in practical thinking, but they are not in themselves relevant to the actual welfare value of any pleasure.[2] So the pleasure of eating the filet steak can be measured in intensity and duration. If the duration of eating this steak is one minute at its usual intensity value then it will be twice as pleasurable if eaten for two minutes and three times as pleasurable if eaten for three minutes. However, if a separate steak is analysed, say a rump steak, the intensity may be half that of eating the filet steak. So, eating the former for one minute will be half as pleasurable as eating the latter. Given a choice of both steaks, if the time available for eating both is the same then one’s welfare will be increased by choosing the filet over the rump. This is of course assuming that everyone has preference for the filet steak and that they value the intensity of the steaks in the same way as I have above. This shows Bentham’s belief in the commensurability of pleasures. However, the example used does not compare what Mill would call Higher and Lower Pleasures, though it is a consequence of Bentham’s thoughts that he holds commensurability with all pleasures which I will show now.

Roger Crisp in his book on Mill’s utilitarianism uses the thought experiment of Haydn and the Oyster to show a consequence of Bentham’s belief that is undesirable:

“You are a soul in heaven waiting to be allocated a life on earth. It is late Friday afternoon, and you watch anxiously as the supply of available lives dwindles. When your turn comes, the angel in charge offers you the choice between two lives, that of the composer Joseph Haydn and that of an oyster. Besides composing some wonderful music and influencing the evolution of the symphony, Haydn will meet with success and honour in his own lifetime, be cheerful and popular, travel and gain much enjoyment from field sports. The oyster’s life is far less exciting. Though this is rather a sophisticated oyster, its life will consist only of mild sensual pleasure, rather like that experience by humans when floating very drunk in a warm bath. When you request the life of Haydn, the angel sighs, ‘I’ll never get rid of this oyster life. It’s been hanging around for ages. Look, I’ll make you a special deal. Haydn will die at the age of seventy-seven. But I’ll make the oyster life as long as you like.’”[3]

The question of which life maximises welfare is the key to choosing. The pleasures of Haydn’s are obviously attractive in that they are much more intense than mild sensual pleasure that the oyster experiences. However, Bentham’s commensurability of pleasures allows that eventually, seeing as the oyster lives forever, its welfare will outweigh that of Haydn. So, thus, Benthamite hedonism would dictate that the life of the oyster is the best life.

Mill tried, in his own account of welfare, to make room for the view that the kinds of experience Haydn had puts his life into a completely different category from that of the oyster. Mill thought that it was quite compatible with the principle of utility to recognise that some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and valuable than others. He thought it absurd that while in every other calculation, quality is considered as well as quantity but that in the estimation of pleasures, quantity alone should be depended on. He goes on:

“If I am asked, what I mean by difference of quality in pleasures, or what makes one pleasure more valuable than another, merely as a pleasure, except it being greater in amount, there is but one possible answer. 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. If one of the two is, by those who are competently acquainted with both, placed so far above the other that they prefer it, even though knowing it to be attended with a greater amount of discontent, and would not resign it for any quantity of the other pleasure which their nature is capable of, we are justified in ascribing to the preferred enjoyment a superiority in quality, so far outweighing quantity as to render it, in comparison, of small account.”[4]

Mill claims that some pleasures are so valuable that they will be preferred, by those who have experienced both, to any amount of certain other pleasures. Mill sets up the contrast between types of pleasure in the passage preceding the one quoted. The two types are those pleasures of sensation or animal pleasures (lower) and those of the intellect, the feelings and the imagination, and the moral sentiments (higher); the bodily pleasures and the mental ones. But then it is not clear how the distinction between two kinds of pleasure on the basis of the preference of those who have experienced both will work. When, for example, a fine wine is drunk, there is a sensory pleasure (lower) and reflection upon it (higher). Does it make sense that one could prefer the pleasure of reflection of drinking the wine to any amount of the pure pleasure of the taste? Not really I would say.

Mill’s introduction of the distinction between quality and quantity, and his doctrine of higher and lower pleasures are more or less devices by which Mill hoped to dissociate his utilitarianism from Bentham’s. The Benthamite choice in the case of Haydn and the Oyster is mirrored in Bentham’s famous quote “quantity of pleasures being equal, push-pin is as good as poetry”[5]. This opinion was not popular with other philosophers at the time and Mill specifically introduced quality in order to give his welfare description in Utilitarianism added strength and take it away from the unpopular Benthamite view. Mill’s moral theory, however, was taken from other sources, including the Stoic, Epicurean and Christian traditions, and above all the moral psychology of Plato and Aristotle[6]. It has been suggested by Rem B. Edwards[7] that Francis Hutcheson, who makes a similar distinction between higher and lower pleasures, influenced Mill. He has a good point because they seem remarkably similar.

In Francis Hutcheson’s account of higher and lower pleasures, he distinguishes four different types of pleasures. Hutcheson claims that any of the pleasures of a higher type are both qualitatively and quantitatively better than any of the pleasures in the lower types. Hutcheson, like Mill, does not establish the ordering of the pleasures by simply looking at what the individual finds most pleasing, nor does he do it by simply looking at what the individual’s conscience indicates should be the most enjoyable experience. Rather, Hutcheson bases his decision on what a ‘knowledgeable judge’ would say; a person who has both experienced all of the pleasures that are under consideration and who understands and appreciates the primary importance of the principle of utility. However, his view is rather socially elitist and holds that the ideal assessors are those experienced people (whatever their social position) who have “their tastes and appetites in a natural vigorous state” and can “immediately discern what are the noblest [pleasures]”[8]. But this strongly suggests that Hutcheson has already decided which pleasures should count as noble.

Hutcheson distinguishes among the following pleasures:

  1. “Pleasures of the external senses [which] are of two classes; those of the palate, and those between the sexes.”[9]
  2. “Pleasures of the imagination in the grandeur and elegance of living, and the perceptions of beauty and harmony, to which we may add those of the ingenious arts, and knowledge.”[10]
  3. “Pleasures of the sympathetic kind,”[11] that is, pleasures which arise from our seeing others who are happy.
  4. Moral pleasures which arise “from the consciousness of good affections and actions.”[12]

In comparing pleasures, Hutcheson talks of comparisons of both the dignity and the duration of pleasures. “…dignity denoting the excellence of the kind, when [pleasures] of different kinds are compared, and the intenseness of the sensations when we compare those of the same kind.” Hutcheson’s ‘dignity’ of pleasures can be likened to Mill’s ‘quality’, as they are both the rationale in making decisions on whether pleasures are higher or lower. Of Hutcheson’s distinguished pleasures, I take the first to be a representation of lower pleasure and the last three to all be different forms of higher pleasure. In instances of comparing pleasures of different types, Hutcheson claims that there are qualitative differences. He wants “to prevent any imagination that the inferior sensation of the lower kinds with sufficient duration may complete our happiness.”[13] Even if the lower pleasures are very intense and last for a long time, they will not satisfy us alone.

However, Benjamin Gibbs[14] believes that Hutcheson might have anticipated Mill without in any way influencing him. Mill would have had no use for the central notion that Hutcheson has of ‘moral sense’. Also, Hutcheson is only mentioned rarely and in passing in Mill’s work.

Epicurus, on the other hand, in the third century BC, held a utilitarian view similar to that of Bentham that the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain were the most fitting objectives in the life of the wise man. The essence of the Epicurean philosophy is summed up in the slogan of the poet Horace, ‘Carpe diem’. However, Epicurus had often been accused of advocating a brutish, self-destructive life of pleasure seeking, quite incompatible with the proper dignity of human beings. As I have said, this was exactly the kind of attitude that Mill attempted to take his re-vamped utilitarian doctrine away from. However, there are similarities between the two in that the ideal Epicurean has a greater appetite for the pleasures of the mind than he does for pursuing his bodily desires. Epicurus observes that

“It is not the continuous drinkings and revellings, nor the satisfaction of lusts, nor the enjoyment of fish and other luxuries of the wealthy table, which produces a pleasant life, but sober reasoning, searching out the motives for all choice and avoidance, and banishing mere opinions”[15].

Epicurus lived in times of absolute decadence when people constantly indulged themselves in ‘lower’ pleasures. He wanted to show people that this was quite undignified and that the ‘higher’ pleasures are a more worthy pursuit. Like Plato and Aristotle, Epicurus held that the life of the philosopher is the most satisfying life of all. However, the Epicurean ‘higher and lower pleasures’ is made less worthy of study because Epicurus has the puzzling feature of his account that he sometimes appears to equate the condition of painlessness with a state of pleasure. When someone with a chronic ailment finds himself for an hour without pain, he plainly experiences a very pleasant sense of relief; but, strictly speaking, it is the cessation of the pain, not its simple absence, which gives him pleasure.

So, having considered that other people have suggested the existence of higher and lower pleasures as well as Mill, I would like to expound upon his description of it. Mill thinks the quality of pleasures, in the sense of their value or degree of desirability, is proportional to their kind or intrinsic nature rather than to their quantity. A greater quantity of pleasure is preferable to a lesser, other things being equal, but often the other things are not equal; in particular, pleasures differ in kind as well as amount, and a small quantity of pleasure of one kind may be preferable to a greater quantity of another kind. The pleasures associated with the higher faculties are superior both in kind and absolutely to the pleasures associated with animal appetites. This is shown by the unanimous verdict of people who are suitably acquainted with both. Mill seems to admit that lower pleasures may be more intense; but he says that pleasures of the mind have a superiority in quality, so far outweighing quantity as to render it in comparison of small account. So, in the problem of Haydn and the oyster, Mill can suggest that just one of Haydn’s pleasures, say, of conducting an orchestra, is more valuable than any amount of oyster pleasure. For him, the choice of Haydn’s life would be rational however long the angel agreed to make the life of the oyster.[16]

So, Mill drops the kind of scale that Bentham used because there is no single scale for measuring welfare. He can allow it in cases of comparisons such as the steaks I discussed above but when one pleasure is higher and another lower, rather than one simply being higher or lower than another, he can no longer allow the Benthamite scale. The higher pleasure is more valuable than the lower, but it does not make sense to ask by how much more, because in comparisons like these there are no units.

Mill’s distinction between higher and lower pleasures attracted a large amount of criticism around the time his work’s publication. The most common objection was that Mill faces a dilemma: either quality collapses into quantity and Mill has made no advance on Bentham, or Mill can no longer count himself a full hedonist. As Crisp[17] suggests, when Mill speaks of ‘quantity’, he almost certainly has in mind Bentham’s conception of welfare, according to which the value of a pleasure depends solely upon its duration and intensity. However, it is most probably intensity in particular that he takes to be the more important factor in quantity. When Mill speaks of ‘quality’, he means ‘intrinsic nature’ of the pleasure in question. Mill’s claim, then, is that the intrinsic nature of a higher pleasure is such that it is more valuable for the person who enjoys it than would be the enjoyment of any amount of lower pleasure, however intense it might be.

It is here that Crisp introduces the notion of full hedonism and asks the question whether Mill is a full hedonist. Mill equates happiness with pleasure, and the absence of pain. He says that happiness and the absence of pain are the only things desirable as ends; and that all desirable things are desirable either for pleasure inherent in themselves, or as means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain. As seen with Bentham, a hedonist believes that welfare consists in pleasurable experiences. But this leaves open the question what it is that makes pleasurable experiences good. It is here that Crisp differentiates between hedonism and full hedonism where full hedonism answers this question left open by hedonism. Full hedonism states that what makes these experiences good for someone is not that they fulfil certain desires of that person, but solely that they are pleasurable. So he gives two components to full hedonism: