|
Consequentialism
Deontology
Virtue Ethics
As its name suggests, consequentialism holds that ultimately, right and wrong depend one consequences of what we do. Utilitarianism is a special case of a consequentialist theory, and we will take it up in a moment. Deontology, meanwhile, holds that right and wrong are ultimately determined by moral rules. These rules may be very specific, as in the case of the Ten Commandments, or they may be highly general, as with the Golden Rule. The 18th-Century German philosopher Immanuel Kant is arguably the most important deontologist, and we will discuss his Categorical Imperative later on. Virtue Ethics, meanwhile, holds that the practice of the virtues is the cornerstone of the moral life. Virtues are character traits such as honesty, courage, temperance and the like. The virtuous person has developed the capacity to know when these virtues are called for, and to act accordingly. The virtuous person also knows what the virtues require, understanding, for example, the difference between courage and, on the one hand, rashness and on the other hand cowardice.
We will have more to say about deontology and virtue ethics later on. For now, we turn to Utilitarianism, and in particular to John Stuart Mill's version. Mill was a 19th-century British philosopher and was one of the two or three most important of the utilitarians. In the essay we read, he offers his statement of the principles of utilitarianism and defends the view against certain objections.
Utilitarianism, according to Mill, holds that actions are right insofar as they promote happiness, wrong insofar as they promote unhappiness.
But what is happiness? According to Mill, Happiness is pleasure or the absence of pain; unhappiness is pain or the absence of pleasure. Utilitarianism, he tells us, is a form of hedonism; it holds pleasure to be the ultimate good.
This leads immediately to a criticism that Mill clearly wants to block: if pleasure is all that matters, then why isn't utilitarianism a swine's philosophy? Why doesn't it imply that a life of crude sensual pleasure is as good as any other life?
Mill's first point is that if humans were only capable of the sorts of pleasures that swine are capable of, then a piggish life would be the highest good. But in fact, humans are capable of many pleasures that aren't available to swine at all.
We can admit this. Still, the raw pleasure involved in, say, downing a pint of Ben & Jerry's Chunky Monkey is usually a lot more intense than the pleasures of listening to Beethoven. So even on Mill's criterion, it might seem that the swinish life still comes out on top.
Mill would argue that this is wrong (though admittedly there was no Chunky Monkey in the 19th century.) He would point us to an obvious fact. There are people who like good ice cream but who, if given the choice, would frequently choose painting or Beethoven or Morphine (the band; not the drug) or chess or good conversation or playing tennis to eating ice cream. There are two points here. One is that, for reasons not having to do with the pleasure as such, some pleasures are preferable. They are more lasting, they are safer, cost less, etc. And what Mill takes to be the "higher" pleasures often fit into that category. So in Mill's view, on external grounds alone, a wise person would not choose a life of sex, drugs and rock and roll. But there is more to the story than that. Leaving external considerations of permanence, etc. aside, pleasures are not ranked just by sheer quantity or intensity. They are also ranked by quality. Playing tennis well is hard work. It is often frustrating and even painful. It leads to plenty of dissatisfaction as you realizes your limitations or remember missed opportunities for better play. But people who work hard at tennis find it enormously rewarding. The exercise of a skill -- to take just one example -- is a higher pleasure.
This leads to two questions. First, what does the distinction between quality and quantity of pleasure come to? And second, how is it determined that one pleasure is of higher quality than another? Begin with the first question.
The best way to think about the distinction between quantity and quality of pleasures is by imagining a situation where you are forced to choose between unlimited quantities of pleasure A and unlimited quantities of pleasure B; you can have one or the other but not both for the rest of your life. As we have set the comparison up, quantity doesn't enter into it. So B ranks ahead of A in quality.
Now in fact, this doesn't quite tell all. It does distinguish between quantity and quality. But as I have set it up, certain trade-offs are possible. Suppose that pleasure B is of higher quality than pleasure A. It still might turn out that if we are dealing with limited amounts of these pleasures, I might in some circumstances prefer A to B. For example. I admit that listening to Beethoven is a higher pleasure than eating chocolate. But suppose this were my choice: I can eat chocolate once a week but never listen to Beethoven or I can listen to Beethoven for a total of 4 hours but can never eat chocolate again. I'm pretty sure I'd go for the chocolate.
This isn't really a problem as far as the sheer distinction between quantity and quality is concerned. But it might lead to some admittedly complicated arguments for leading a swine's life. In fact, however, Mill seems to think that some pleasures are so far above others in quality that considerations of quantity could virtually never become relevant. This is the point I take him to be making when he writes:
In other words (or some words, anyway) Mill is saying that some pleasures are of such high quality when compared to others that comparisons of quantity become almost irrelevant.
What sorts of pleasures is Mill talking about? The ones he mentions may seem to be on the hoity-toity side, but his particular list isn't what is at issue. The most plausible candidates, as I hinted above, are activities that call for the exercise of complex physical or intellectual skills. Think about the things you have decided to devote time to not just because you have to but because you want to. It might be lacrosse; it might be playing the piano; it might be painting, programming, designing web pages, baking bread. My guess is that everyone reading this spends a fair amount of time working on some complex skill and takes him- or herself to be good at or talented at it. These are the kinds of things that we probably would be quite unwilling to give up and that we rank higher, ultimately, than many ordinary pleasures.
Not so fast, you may say. It seems pretty obvious that some sensual pleasures -- sex perhaps being the most notable -- have a very powerful hold on us. Yet they are pleasures that animals also experience. What should Mill say about this?
Truth to tell, I'm not sure what he would say. If Mill's claim is that a competent judge would never want to include the sorts of pleasures that animals are capable of in his life, then I think he is just plain wrong. Chunky Monkey and hot showers (not to mention sex) have their place in a balanced life. And Mill gives very little attention to the question of how the various pleasures ought to be balanced. But I think he does make a plausible case that there really are "higher" pleasures and that we would expect them to be part of what happiness includes.
Whatever we should say about the place of the more sensual pleasures in the good life, Mill makes an interesting point about the "higher pleasures: they often involve a fair amount of discontent. I am a tolerable guitar player. I wish I were better. Sometimes that distance between my actual skills and my desires makes for frustration. So Mill urges us not to confuse happiness with contentment.
Here things get a bit tricky. A person who is mostly content would seem to be happy, and Mill need not deny this. But is a happy person necessarily content? I think Mill is right: there is no simple connection. A happy life is likely to involve the exercise of complex skills and that often brings with it a lot of frustration.
But could a happy life lack all contentment? That's a lot harder to imagine. Of course Mill doesn't have to say it could. He can even admit that discontent is in its own way a type of pain. But what he is saying is that a life that contains a lot of discontent can still be on balance happier than a life that contains only a little discontent.
Where does this leave us on this first, large issue? Nowhere entirely clear. It is surely right that pleasure is a component of happiness. It is also very plausible that pleasures differ in quality as well as in quantity. And it is surely right that thoughtful people who are acquainted with both sides of the question will rank some activities that involve a lot of discontent higher than some simple pleasures. Mill is right: better to be a human dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. What we can wonder about, however, is whether pleasure is really the core of happiness. Granted, a life with no pleasure in it is hardly to be counted as happy. But some of the things we rank very high don't exactly seem to produce pleasure at all, or insofar as they do, this seems incidental to our valuing of them. I don't value the paintings of Roualt for the pleasure they give me. I value them in large part for their disturbing quality. Ravel's Pavan for a Dead Princess, which was played a lot after Princess Diana died, also comes to mind. It is a beautiful piece of music. But it is also expresses -- and to an extent creates -- a feeling of resigned melancholy. Is "pleasure" the right word for the sensation it creates in me?
We will leave this question for now. Suffice it to say that the connection between pleasure and goodness is not really very clear. But the question of how we should rank pleasures is fairly straightforwardly answered, according to Mill: the appropriate judge must be acquainted with both pleasures (or at least, both kinds of pleasure.) If all or most people who know pleasure A and pleasure B rank A higher, then A is the higher pleasure. And this is reasonable enough that we will let it pass so as to move on to the next (and related) issue: how is the principle of utility to be proved?
First, remind ourselves just what is to be proved: that happiness is desirable, and that it is the only thing that is ultimately desirable. The first clause leads to another question: how do we prove that something is desirable? Mill is surely right in pointing out that at some point, argument runs out and experience takes over. His detailed answer, however, has proved controversial. He tells us: the only proof that something is visible is that it is seen. And the only proof that something is desirable is that it is desired. But not everyone has been happy with this way of putting it.
There does seem to be a connection between the concept of seeing and the concept of being visible. If no one (or no creature) can see a particular thing -- no matter how well their visual apparatus otherwise functions -- it would be very odd to say that it is visible. And if someone really can see a certain thing, then it really is visible, though possibly not to everyone. We could quibble about details here, but let them pass. The problem is this: "desirable" means, in part, "good" or "valuable." In fact, the word "valuable" will help make the point more clearly. It's another of those "-able/-ible" words that suggest a connection with some sort of ability or capacity, as in "visible" with vision, "audible" with hearing, "breakable" with the capacity to be broken, and so on. But to be valuable is not the same thing as to be capable of being valued. We could put it this way: if people actually do value something, then that thing is capable of being valued. But that doesn't make it valuable. The problem is that there are things of no real value at all that some people value anyway.
The same point applies to "desirable." Mill is trying to show that happiness is genuinely desirable -- that it is a true good. The mere fact that people desire it wouldn't prove this, any more than the fact that some people desire tobacco proves it to be a good thing.
This is a classic objection to Mill. Let us concede the logic of the objection. Still, if there was something that no one was capable of desiring, it is very hard to see how it could be truly desirable. And perhaps more important, if something is desired after due consideration by thoughtful, broadly experienced and properly informed people, this may not strictly prove that it is desirable, but it is hard to imagine how the people could still be wrong. In any case, when it comes to happiness, it is clear that people do desire it, and it is also clear that it is desirable, however those two facts may be connected. So Mill actually has little to fear on this point. Just about everyone -- even philosophers -- will agree that happiness is desirable.
What about the other claim -- the claim that happiness is ultimately the only desirable thing? Here Mill doesn't begin by offering a direct argument. Instead, he considers an objection. The objection is that people desire things other than happiness. And indeed, among the things they desire are the virtues, which are good things if any things are.. So it seems that Mill is wrong: happiness isn't the only good.
Now of course some things are desired only as means to happiness. For most of us, money isn't desirable in and of itself; it is desirable because it allows us to obtain things that contribute to our happiness. So far, then, no problem for Mill. But virtue is not desired just as a means. Virtue is desired as an end in itself. What does Mill say about this?
His first point is that the dragnets things can come to be desired for their own sake. Some people come to desire money for its own sake; a miser is an extreme example of such a person. On the one hand, this scores a point (and one that Mill never notices) against the idea that desire is a proof of desirablity. But let that pass, because on the other hand he turns it into an advantage for defending himself from the objection we are considering now. The miser desires money not as a means to his happiness but as part of his happiness. Something can pass from being an instrument in the pursuit of happiness to a part of the thing itself. This may or may not always be a good thing. But in the case of virtue, it seems both true and a good thing. People who acquire and practice the virtues desire them as part of their happiness rather than as a mere external means to it. Happiness is not some abstract, amorphous whatsit. It is a complex whole, and specific activities are part of it.
The point is psychologically quite plausible, even though it is often overlooked. For me, for example, writing is not a mere means to happiness; it is part of my happiness. If I lost the ability to write, I would not simply have lost a tool for getting other satisfactions; I would have lost something that I have come to value for its own sake -- to value as part of my happiness. For you, it may be drawing or swimming or cooking or playing football or writing computer programs. Things like this are no longer mere means for the person who truly values them.
All this gives Mill a way of saying that virtue is part of the Utilitarian ideal. Nonetheless, he insists that it would be good even if it did not make the virtuous person happy. Why? Because it contributes to the happiness of others. And at this point his rebuttal of an objection turns into an argument. We seem to value things either as means to happiness or as ends in themselves. But in the second case, we value them as part of our happiness. Thus, Mill writes of virtue:
The serious question that remains is whether this way of putting it is morally or psychologically correct. We will take this objection up in the next set of notes when we consider Rachels' response to utilitarianism. © copyright Allen Stairs, 1998
Web surfer's caveat: These are course notes, intended to augment classroom discussion of the issues and readings. They should be read as such and are not intended for general distribution or publication.