W3: Higher Pleasures

Higher Pleasures

Does Mill’s distinction between higher and lower pleasures achieve what he wants it to achieve?

(January 2025): I think some of the symmetry discussion, like a lot of discussion of skepticism in general, is too dialectically-minded. People can know what the higher pleasures are, even if they can’t convince their opponents. However, there might still be a problem of making the higher pleasures depend on peoples’ judgments (‘what makes one pleasure more valuable than another’), rather than taking these judgments as merely indicating what the objectively higher pleasures are. Also, note that the transfinite ordinal scale isn’t really needed (as with slightly less naive utility functions we can represent welfare levels with just the reals).

One worry for utilitarian theories of value is that they are degrading. Under simple hedonism:

(1) If two things yield the same quantity of pleasure, they are equally valuable.

But it seems plausible that:

(2) Push-pin yields the same quantity of pleasure as poetry.

So, simple hedonists commit themselves to Bentham’s position:

(3) ‘The game of push-pin is of equal value with the arts and sciences of music and poetry.’

This degrading conclusion seems absurd enough to disqualify hedonism as a theory of value. In response, simple hedonists may deny (2). Poetry has ‘greater permanency, safety, uncostliness, etc.’ and thus yields far more pleasure than push-pin in the long term. But perhaps this defense is too contingent: that is, it might fail to defuse other objections in this family of worries.

With his distinction between higher and lower pleasures, Mill aims to provide a more principled defense of utilitarian theories of value. In particular, he aims to construct a more sophisticated¹ theory of value which doesn’t entail (1). On a faithful finitary reading of Mill’s distinction, it fails to stand up to a more sophisticated degradingness objection (namely, Crisp’s (Oyster) case). Thus, it fails to achieve a more principled defense. Crisp’s infinitary reading is less faithful to Mill’s writing, but it succeeds on (Oyster). The simple infinitary reading also stands up against Crisp’s (Austerity) objection. However, Mill’s distinction falls to a (Symmetry) objection adapted from Smart, whose own response is inadequate. So, Mill’s distinction does not achieve what he wants it to achieve.

(In)finitary readings

Here is a long quotation where Mill motivates, as outlined above, his distinction:

Utilitarian writers in general have placed the superiority of mental over bodily pleasures chiefly in…their circumstantial advantages rather than in their intrinsic nature. And on all these points utilitarians have fully proved their case; but they might have taken the other, and, as it may be called, higher ground, with entire consistency. It is quite compatible with the principle of utility to recognise the fact, that some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others. It would be absurd that while, in estimating all other things, quality is considered as well as quantity, the estimation of pleasures should be supposed to depend on quantity alone.

Now, Mill’s distinction may be interpreted finitarily: for any two pleasures and a quantity $q$, there is some finite multiplier $k$ such that $q$ of the higher is worth $k\times q$ of the lower. Alternatively, Mill may be interpreted infinitarily: for some pairs of pleasures there is no finite $k$ (i.e., a minimal amount of the higher pleasure is worth more than any finite amount of the lower pleasure).² Mill’s writing is more consistent with the finitary view (italics mine):

If one of the two [pleasures] 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 out-weighing quantity as to render it, in comparison, of small account.

This seems to imply that although $k$ may be very large, it must be finite. In the first case, it might be limited by natural capacity (e.g., lifespan). In the second case, quantity is of small account rather than of no account, which would be implied by the infinitary view. However, Mill might have simply lacked the tools to articulate the infinitary view, and so this reading might just be anachronistic rather than totally inconsistent.

Oysters

The finitary reading does not fully achieve Mill’s aim. After making his distinction, we have:

(1’) If two things yield the same quality-adjusted amount of pleasure, they are equally valuable.

The finitary reading falls to an amended version (Oyster) of the degradingness objection:

(2’) A magical oyster living $k$ years yields the same quality-adjusted amount of pleasure as Hadyn’s life.

(3’) So, the oyster’s life is of equal value with Hadyn’s life.

The finitary view’s implication that a sufficiently long-lived oyster has a life as valuable as Hadyn’s is seen as disqualifying. Since it falls to (Oyster), the finitary view fails Mill’s goal of providing a more principled defense of utilitarian theories of value: it is no less circumstantial than the defenses taking the ‘lower ground’.

The infinitary view does better. In particular, it blocks (2’). Hadyn’s life involved at least some pleasure which was worth, on this view, $k\ge \omega$ times³ as much as a unit of oyster-life (which Crisp compares to ‘floating very drunk in a warm bath’). Thus, no matter how long the (Oyster) lives, it will never have a life as valuable as Hadyn’s. So, at first pass, the infinitary view seems to achieve what Mill wants it to achieve.

Austerity

Under Mill’s view (emphasis mine), ‘what makes one pleasure more valuable than another’ is the judgement of ‘a majority among’ those who have enjoyed both. Crisp raises an objection (Austerity):

If I consistently apply the views of the panel in my decision-making, my life will be an austere one indeed. For their view is that reading philosophy is incommensurably more valuable than any lower pleasure. So it appears that my welfare will be promoted maximally if I stick at the philosophy for as long as possible.

However, his ‘whole-life’ refinement (later, on the basis of this) is both unnecessary and implausible. Crisp finds unintuitive the apparent implication that reading all of Austen’s novels is better than reading all but one while having many varied lower pleasures. But if most competent judges share Crisp’s intuition, there might be a higher pleasure which consists of something like the satisfaction of knowing that one is well-rounded. Sacrificing some higher pleasures for lower ones may be instrumental to this reflective pleasure. So a more careful glance shows that the simple infinitary view does not have this (Austerity) implication, rendering Crisp’s refinement unnecessary.

Moreover, Crisp’s revision is either silent on the value of particular acts, or else involves hybrid view on which quality matters only when considering a life overall. Both have clear downsides. The former doesn’t seem fine-grained enough support a moral theory. The latter seems to imply that, say, the magical oyster which spends a day as Haydn before resuming oysterhood leads a more valuable life than the vast majority of people, or that a life which includes one paragraph of Austen is far better than one which includes no Austen (and is actually just as good as one which includes all of Austen). One might appeal at this point to reflective pleasures as outlined above, but this dissolves the original worry as well and leaves the view twisted into knots for no reason at all.⁴ So the infinitary view withstands (Austerity), and refinement is unnecessary.

Symmetry

However we interpret Mill’s distinction, it faces another problem (Symmetry): Mill cannot in principle distinguish between higher pleasures and addictive lower pleasures. He writes:

Men lose their high aspirations as they lose their intellectual tastes, because they have not time or opportunity for indulging them; and they addict themselves to inferior pleasures, not because they deliberately prefer them, but because they are either the only ones to which they have access, or the only ones which they are any longer capable of enjoying.

Consider the case of apparently competent judges who have experienced Smart’s ‘electrode operation’ (which directly stimulates the brain’s reward mechanisms — suppose, even, that this exploits mechanisms unique to humans). If Mill can undermine the competence of these judges by arguing that they have become incapable of enjoying the higher pleasures, these judges can do the same in reverse: someone who reads too much philosophy about ‘human dignity’ becomes unable to enjoy the higher pleasure of electrode operation. Similarly, they might adapt Mill’s slogan: ‘better to be [a wirehead] dissatisfied than a [philosopher] satisfied. And if the [philosopher], 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.’ Note that these would not be eccentrics, either: presumably, the vast majority of competent judges would fall victim to the neurochemical addiction of electrode operation. So, at first pass, it seems difficult to raise an asymmetry consistent with Mill’s views.

Smart attempts to address this worry by modifying Mill’s view. What matters is not the judgements of competent judges, but those of people in general:

That is, for A to call B ‘happy’, A must be contented at the prospect of B being in his present state of mind and at the prospect of A himself, should the opportunity arise, enjoying that sort of state of mind.

Firstly, we may note that this is a departure from Mill’s view. Mill’s distinction relies upon the judgements of competent judges, and Smart’s departure seems so significant that even if it did successfully underwrite some distinction between higher and lower pleasures, it would not be Mill’s distinction. Either way, though, Smart’s modification doesn’t work. Consider R, a billionaire who indulges in a life of luxury and lower pleasures, and S, a philosopher who lives off stale bread and has no intimate relationships. It seems plausible that the vast majority of the human population (not to mention the sentient non-human population) might be more inclined to call R happy than to call S happy. Even if general opinion went the other way, it seems too contingent to ground poetry and philosophy as ‘higher’ pleasures in principle, as Mill would like. So, Smart’s test is inadequate.

A further departure from Mill might be more plausible. Rather than a consensus of competent judges determining what would be best for everyone, what’s best for each person might be determined by, say, ‘what [they] would prefer, now and in the various alternatives, if [they] knew all of the relevant facts about these alternatives’⁵. Thus, pleasures are higher or lower for particular people, rather than higher or lower simpliciter. However, this view is now substantially different from Mill’s own. So, Mill’s method of drawing a distinction between higher and lower pleasures is not able to provide a defense of a utilitarian theory of value any more principled than other defenses which Mill critiqued as circumstantial.

To recap: Mill wants his distinction between higher and lower pleasures to provide a more principled defense of utilitarian theories of value against the degradingness objection. One feature of a more principled defense would be withstanding amended versions of the objection. However, the most textually-supported reading of Mill fails to do this for Crisp’s (Oyster) case. If we amend our reading, as Crisp does, we are led to an infinitary reading which seems more principled at first pass. However, it falls to a more general objection: not the easily-met (Austerity) objection that Crisp raises, but rather a (Symmetry) objection which Smart raises but does not successfully address. While this objection may be answerable, doing so requires departing completely from Mill’s distinction. So, Mill’s own distinction is unable to achieve what he wants it to achieve.

An aside

Here is an aside on hedonism; I don’t think it’s relevant to the essay title, but it seems relevant to the topic in general. That is, I assume it might come up in the tutorial, and so I wanted to note my thoughts (badly articulated, even compared to the above essay) here. The most relevant reference is Appendix I of Reasons and Persons, though Sumner (2009) has some related discussion about early theorists. Hedonism (in particular, preference hedonism) differs from desire-satisfaction (in particular, success theory) in that the former takes preferences only about ‘introspectively discernible mental states’ to matter, while the latter takes preferences about ourselves more generally. Both of these differ from objective list theory, on which values precede preferences: approximately, something can be good simpliciter, rather than just good for some particular person. Mill writes:

It may be questioned whether any one who has remained equally susceptible to both classes of pleasures, ever knowingly and calmly preferred the lower… the judgment of those who are qualified by knowledge of both, or, if they differ, that of the majority among them, must be admitted as final.

The first part shows the priority of pleasure over individual preference (and recall that pleasure is what matters to Mill). The second part shows that competent judges (even just a majority) determine what is valuable (i.e., pleasurable) in general. These are characteristic of an objective list theory. Mill runs preference hedonism and success theory together, but in the passage where he talks about being an ‘ignoramus’ etc., he seems to speak of attributes which are not introspectively discernible. And unless we find (I grant there might be some, e.g., in Part IV, that I’ve overlooked) indication of a restriction toward sensations mattering, it seems as though Mill’s test for higher-order pleasures also turns out in favor of desire-satisfaction over hedonism. In particular, competent judges likely prefer to have all their desires actually satisfied, not just ones about introspectively available sensations (e.g., ‘intelligent person’ vs. ‘fool’ over ‘feeling intelligent’ vs. ‘feeling foolish’). If this is right, Mill is actually furthest from hedonism!

References

• Bentham, Jeremy. The Rationale of Reward. England: Published by John and H. L. Hunt, 1825, 1825.
• Crisp, Roger. Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Mill on Utilitarianism. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2009.
• Mill, John Stuart. Utilitarianism. Luton: AUK Classics, 2014.
• Parfit, Derek. Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986.
• Smart, J. J. C. (John Jamieson Carswell), and Bernard Williams. Utilitarianism: For and Against. Repr. with corrections. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.

Footnotes

1. I don’t take it that Mill aimed to defend hedonism as such, only a rough approximation. So although it’s beyond the scope of my paper, I’d like to argue/explore the very odd view that Mill’s defense here is closest to a version of objective list theory, somewhat close to desire-satisfaction theory, and least close to hedonism! ↩

2. Rather technically, for this to be plausible (e.g., unless any finite amount of the higher pleasure is just as good as any other finite amount), experiences must be compared by ordinal value rather than cardinal value. But cf. Crisp’s ‘whole-life’ view, for which cardinals in this sense may be sufficient and even necessary. He uses the term ‘cardinal’ differently (closer to economics than set theory), but that’s far beyond my focus here. ↩

3. Here ‘ω’ means, as usual, the first non-zero limit ordinal: the smallest number greater than all the natural numbers. ↩

4. This is similar to Global versions of e.g. Success Theory (see Parfit), but (a) is motivated quite differently and (b) includes (is about) the baggage of Mill’s distinction. ↩

5. This is Parfit’s description of ‘Global Success Theory’. ↩