-John Stuart Mill, "Utilitarianism", ch. 2

"De gustibus et coloribus non est disputandum."

In John Stuart Mill's treatise, Utilitarianism, the basic philosophical premise of his whole system of ethics is that, in a nut-shell, that which is good is determined by what brings the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest amount of people, or, as Mill put it, the Greatest Happiness Principle, as the basis for determining utility. Among the immediate problems this raises to any analysis is, of course, the difficulty in pinning down a rational, objective framework for determining happiness, which Mill equates early on with pleasure as "the only thing desirable as ends". Mill spots this,

e difficulties in delineating the parameters of higher and lower pleasures in the first place remain not fully stated, in my mind, in Mill's essay. Apologists have ascribed this and other apparent logical fallacies in his essay not as carelessness, but as a result of his attempts to tailor his essay to a popular reading audience rather than a genuinely rigorous philosophical inquiry.

On what exactly higher faculties constitute, Mill takes the standard, rather intellectually aristocratic view: higher faculties are those that involve and are derived from the exercise of the intellect, moral sympathy, and generally distinct from the lower, "animal appetites" such as the basic needs for food, sex, freedom from pain, etc. Mill does not go into much detail, generally, into any distinction, assuming, it seems, that the difference would be evident to all who read his essay. The distinction is not as clear-cut as Mill would have us believe, I think, for there are many pleasures of a decidedly non-aristocratic bent such as the appreciation of a footy match which, (although Mill might have discarded the prospect as a plebeian, lower pleasure), may involve the higher faculties to some degree: the contemplation of the intricacies in team's overall strategy on the field, or the evaluation of odds when placing bets.

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Is it also really true that the panel of competent judges would always rationally select the higher pleasures? Various intellects have advocated lifestyles of relative physical hedonism, and yet no one could call them unacquainted with the pleasures of the higher faculty: voluptuaries like Oscar Wilde, Coleridge, and Byron come to mind, men noted for the quality of their written word who yet voluntarily chose to embrace a lifestyle of physical hedonism, which, some say, enhanced the productive exercise of their higher faculties, such as Coleridge's reportedly opium-induced ode, Xanadu. Does it really stand to reason, as Mill seems to assume, rather blithely, that it is immediately apparent that anyone rational would always, in all circumstances, pick the rather austere lifestyle of intellectual contemplation and constant exercise of higher faculties, disdaining totally the lower pleasures? And is that really a better choice, and if so, on what grounds? Mill tries to tie this i!

remains far from certain that we can derive a consensual empirical framework of what these higher and lower pleasures are, and whether higher pleasures as Mill appears to define them would be the choice for every conceivable circumstance. Mill's utilitarianism, therefore, comes under some considerable consternation if the basis on which we are to determine utility; ie, happiness attained through the acquisition of pleasure and the avoidance of pain, remains subject to such ambiguity.

ice. What is it about the higher pleasure that makes it intrinsically more worthy than the lower one?

compared to the more animal gratifications such as sexual needs or food, and the quality of these higher pleasures is evident as they would be chosen by people with empirical experience of both varieties of pleasure, and the capacity to select between them over the more base ones. In my essay, I will, with particular reference to Mill's essay, "Utilitarianism",

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Approximate Word count = 2238
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page double spaced)