2 - Mill's Proof of the Principle of Utility

Summary

In a famous, or infamous, paragraph or so early on in Chapter 4 of Utilitarianism, Mill provides his argument for the Principle of Utility. I will first quote the passage at some length, and rehearse two very familiar objections to it. Then I will go on to say what I intend to do with the material I will have introduced.

The utilitarian doctrine is, that happiness is desirable, and the only thing desirable, as an end; all other things being only desirable as means to that end. What ought to be required of this doctrine – what conditions is it requisite that the doctrine should fulfil – to make good its claim to be believed?

The only proof capable of being given that an object is visible, is that people actually see it. The only proof that a sound is audible, is that people hear it: and so of the other sources of our experience. In like manner, I apprehend, the sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything is desirable, is that people do actually desire it. If the end which the utilitarian doctrine proposes to itself were not, in theory and in practice, acknowledged to be an end, nothing could ever convince any person that it was so. No reason can be given why the general happiness is desirable except that each person, so far as he believes it to be attainable, desires his own happiness.