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A Humean Constructivist Reading of J. S. Mill's Utilitarian Theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2015

NICHOLAS DRAKE Open the ORCID record for NICHOLAS DRAKE [Opens in a new window]
NICHOLAS DRAKE*
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Abstract

There is a common view that the utilitarian theory of John Stuart Mill is morally realist and involves a strong kind of practical obligation. This article argues for two negative theses and a positive thesis. The negative theses are that Mill is not a moral realist and that he does not believe in certain kinds of obligations, those involving external reasons and those I call robust obligations, obligations with a particular, strong kind of practical authority. The positive thesis is that Mill's metaethical position can be interpreted as a Humean constructivist view, a metaethical view that is constructivist about value and entails the existence of practical reasons, but not external reasons or robust obligations. I argue that a Humean constructivist reading of Mill's theory is reasonable, and strengthens Mill's argument from desire for the value of happiness, an important but notoriously weak aspect of his theory.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , June 2016 , pp. 189 - 214
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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References

1 Korsgaard, Christine, The Sources of Normativity (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 51, 78CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Skorupski, John, John Stuart Mill (London, 1989), p. 289Google Scholar; West, H. R., Mill's Utilitarianism (London, 2007), p. 32Google Scholar; Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, ‘Consequentialism’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2014/entries/consequentialism/> (2014), sect. 6; David Brink, ‘Mill's Moral and Political Philosophy’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mill-moral-political/> (2008), sect. 2.12.

2 Whether subjectivism entails anti-realism is contentious; I discuss this in sect. II.1.

3 Street, Sharon, ‘What is Constructivism in Ethics and Metaethics?’, Philosophy Compass 5.5 (2010), pp. 363–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘Coming to Terms with Contingency: Humean Constructivism about Practical Reason’, Constructivism in Practical Philosophy, ed. J. Lenman and Y. Shemmer (Oxford, 2012), pp. 40–59. A very different theory also called Humean constructivism is put forward by Lenman, James in his ‘Humean Constructivism in Moral Theory’, Oxford Studies in Metaethics, vol. 5, ed. Shafer-Landau, R. (Oxford, 2010), pp. 175–94Google Scholar. There are less specific references to versions of the theory in Carla Bagnoli, ‘Moral Constructivism: A Phenomenological Argument’, Topoi 21.1–2 (2002), pp. 125–38, and in Dale Dorsey, Relativism and Constructivism: A Humean Response (forthcoming). In this article I am speaking only of Street's version of the theory, but will henceforward omit that specification for brevity.

4 Street, ‘What is Constructivism’, p. 367.

5 Street, ‘What is Constructivism’, p. 366.

6 Street, ‘What is Constructivism’, p. 367.

7 Street, ‘What is Constructivism’, p. 368.

8 Street, ‘What is Constructivism’, p. 369.

9 Street, ‘What is Constructivism’, p. 369.

10 Street, ‘What is Constructivism’, p. 369.

11 Street, ‘What is Constructivism’, p. 370.

12 Street, ‘Coming to Terms’, p. 41.

13 See Richard Joyce, ‘Moral Anti-Realism’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, <http://plato.stanford.eu/archives/sum2009/entries/moral-anti-realism/> (2009), sect. 1.

14 Williams, Bernard, ‘Internal and External Reasons’, Moral Luck (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 101–13, at 101CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘Internal Reasons and the Obscurity of Blame’, Making Sense of Humanity (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 35–45, at 35. See sect. II.3 for the differences between reasons internalism and Humean constructivism

15 Korsgaard, Sources, pp. 16, 34. Similarly, Mackie speaks of a kind of practical authority involving ‘not-to-be-doneness’: Mackie, J., Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (London, 1977), p. 40Google Scholar.

16 Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice, rev. edn. (Cambridge, MA, 1999), pp. 379–80Google Scholar; Street, ‘What is Constructivism’, p. 367.

17 Street uses an example from Gibbard, that of an ideally coherent Caligula: ‘Humean constructivists . . . think that things are pretty much as they appear with regard to such a case – in other words, that just as it seems on superficial inspection, one can indeed value torturing others above all else and be entirely coherent in doing so.’ Street, ‘What is Constructivism’, p. 371; Gibbard, Allan, ‘Morality as Consistency in Living: Korsgaard's Kantian Lectures’, Ethics 5.5 (1999), pp. 140–64, at 140CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Street considers that they are both anti-realist Humean views, but says nothing else, as far as I know, about the relationship between them. Sharon Street, Objectivity and Truth: You’d Better Rethink It (unpublished), p. 4.

19 Williams, Making Sense, p. 35.

20 Street, Objectivity, p. 36.

21 Street, ‘Coming to Terms’, pp. 43–4. Street talks in terms of values (again, interchangeably with normative judgement and taking oneself to have a reason) rather than desires, as she believes the talk of desires tends to make the evaluative content of Humean views seem superficial and arbitrary. There is in traditional Humean talk no clear distinction between desires that are fleeting, of little importance in relation to our other desires, and associated with a narrow range of emotions, and those that are lifelong, of great importance in relation to our other desires, and associated with a wide range of affective attitudes. For Street, values thus exist on the same spectrum as desires, but are characterized by greater discipline, range and depth of associated emotional experience, and structural complexity. (For Street's account, see her What is Constructivism, pp. 42–4.)

22 Michael Ridge argues that Street's view is ‘a sophisticated species of metaethical subjectivism, rather than an entirely novel metaethical theory’. I tend to agree with Ridge, but believe that the sophistication of Humean constructivism is significant and useful. Michael Ridge, ‘Kantian Constructivism: Something Old, Something New’, Constructivism in Practical Philosophy, pp. 138–57, at 157.

23 Reasons internalism is also compatible with some non-Humean views. For example, Korsgaard's view holds that practical reasons must be internal: Christine Korsgaard, ‘The Normativity of Instrumental Reason’, Ethics and Practical Reason, ed. G. Cullity and B. Gaut (Oxford, 1997), pp. 215–54, at 215 n. 1.

24 Korsgaard, Christine, ‘Skepticism about Practical Reason’, Journal of Philosophy 83.1 (1986), pp. 5–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Korsgaard, ‘Skepticism’, p. 22.

26 Nagel, Thomas, The Possibility of Altruism (Princeton, 1970), p. 8Google Scholar.

27 For the difference between the views see Connie Rosati, ‘Moral Motivation’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-motivation/> (2006), sect. 3.2, and Darwall, Stephen, Impartial Reason (Ithaca, 1983), p. 54Google Scholar.

28 Mill, J. S., Utilitarianism, ed. Shaw, George (Indianapolis, 1863/2001), 1.5Google Scholar. (References to Utilitarianism are to chapter and paragraph numbers.) This agrees with Hume's view that ‘the ultimate ends of human actions can never, in any case, be accounted for by reason, but recommend themselves entirely to the sentiments and affections of mankind, without any dependence on the intellectual faculties’. Hume, David, Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. Schneewind, J. B. (Indianapolis, 1751/1983), app. 1.5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Mill, J. S., A System of Logic Ratiocinative and Inductive, Collected Works, vol. 8, ed. Robson, J. (Toronto, 1974), 6.12.12Google Scholar. References to the System of Logic are by book, chapter and section number.

30 Mill, System, 6.12.1.

31 Mill, System, 6.12.2

32 Mill, Utilitarianism, 1.5. Presumably Mill could answer this question himself, by saying that health is good because it produces happiness, but that there is no way to show that happiness is good because it is valued as an end in itself.

33 Mill, Utilitarianism, 1.5.

34 Mill, Utilitarianism, 1.5. The clarity of Utilitarianism is not helped by Mill's continued use of the word ‘proof’ in this sense.

35 Alan Ryan, The Philosophy of John Stuart Mill (London, 1970), p. 208.

36 Ryan, Philosophy, p. 209.

37 Korsgaard, Sources, pp. 80, 85–6; see also Roger Crisp, Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Mill on Utilitarianism (London, 1997), p. 82.

38 Brink, Mill, sect. 2.12.

39 Brink, Mill, sect. 2.12

40 Mill, Utilitarianism, 3.1; West, Mill's Utilitarianism, p. 69. Roger Crisp notes that ‘“Sanction” was a technical term in eighteenth and nineteenth-century ethics, defined by Bentham as a source of the pleasures and pains that motivate people to act’; Crisp, Mill on Utilitarianism, p. 91.

41 Mill, Utilitarianism, 3.3.

42 Mill, J. S., Autobiography, Collected Works, vol. 1, ed. Robson, J. (Toronto, 1981), p. 483Google Scholar; Fred Wilson, ‘John Stuart Mill’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, < http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mill/> (2012).

43 Mill, Utilitarianism, 3.3.

44 Mill, Utilitarianism, 3.5, 3.3.

45 Mill, Utilitarianism, 1.3.

46 Mill, Utilitarianism, 3.2, 3.10.

47 Mill, Utilitarianism, 3.10.

48 Mill, Utilitarianism, 3.3.

49 Mill, Utilitarianism, 3.5.

50 Mill, Utilitarianism, 3.6.

51 Mill, Utilitarianism, 3.5.

52 Mill, Utilitarianism, 3.1.

53 Mill, Utilitarianism, 3.2.

54 Mill, Utilitarianism, 3.9.

55 Mill, Utilitarianism, 3.10.

56 Dorsey, Relativism and Constructivism, p. 18.

57 Mill, Utilitarianism, 3.3, 3.10.

58 Ryan, Philosophy, p. 196.

59 Mill, Utilitarianism, 3.10.

60 Ryan, Philosophy, p. 201.

61 Korsgaard, Sources, p. 85.

62 Mill, Utilitarianism, 1.4.

63 Mill, Utilitarianism, 3.8, 3.3.

64 Driver, Julia, Consequentialism (Abingdon, 2012), p. 12Google Scholar.

65 Mill, Utilitarianism, 1.4.

66 Joyce, Moral Anti-Realism, sect. 1; Geoff Sayre-McCord, ‘Moral Realism’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2011/entries/consequentialism/> (2011).

67 Carnap, Rudolf, Philosophy and Logical Syntax (London, 1937)Google Scholar; Hare, R. M., The Language of Morals (Oxford, 1952)Google Scholar.

68 The following discussion is indebted to Macleod, Christopher's argument against a non-cognitivist reading of Mill, in his ‘Was Mill a Noncognitivist?’, The Southern Journal of Philosophy 51.2 (2013), pp. 206–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

69 Ryan, and West after him, do not use the term ‘non-cognitivism’ or refer to Mill as a ‘non-cognitivist’, but that Mill is a non-cognitivist seems the only reasonable interpretation of their position on his view of moral language. See also Ryan, Alan, J. S. Mill (London, 1974), pp. 101–4Google Scholar.

70 Ryan, Philosophy, p. 190.

71 West, Mill's Utilitarianism, p. 31.

72 Mill, J. S., Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy, ed. Robson, J. (Toronto, 1961–91), pp. 229–339, at 319–20Google Scholar; Mill, System, 6.12.1.

73 Mill, Essays, p. 312.

74 Mill, Essays, p. 312.

75 Macleod, Was Mill a Noncognitivist, p. 214.

76 Macleod, Was Mill a Noncognitivist, pp. 217–18.

77 Macleod, Was Mill a Noncognitivist, p. 215.

78 Macleod, Was Mill a Noncognitivist, p. 215; Mill, System, 6.12.5.

79 Mill, System, 6.12.5.

80 Macleod, Was Mill a Noncognitivist, p. 216.

81 Mill, Utilitarianism, 1.3.

82 Mill, Utilitarianism, 3.4.

83 Crisp, Mill on Utilitarianism, p. 69.

84 Mill, Utilitarianism, 3.6.

85 Quinton, Anthony, Utilitarian Ethics, 2nd edn. (London, 1989), p. 64Google Scholar.

86 Korsgaard, Sources, pp. 51, 78; Skorupski, John Stuart Mill, p. 289; West, Mill's Utilitarianism, p. 32.

87 These three claims do not represent the whole of Mill's argument, omitting most importantly the aggregation premise – that as each person's happiness is a good to that person the general happiness is a good to the aggregate of persons (Mill, Utilitarianism, 4.3), which is not relevant to my purposes here. For formulations of the complete argument see Brink, Mill, sect. 2.11, and Quinton, Utilitarian Ethics, pp. 59–60.

88 I am leaving aside the question of whether the hedonic psychological claim is true.

89 Mill, Utilitarianism, 2.2.

90 Mill, Utilitarianism, 2.2.

91 Mill, Utilitarianism, 4.3.

92 Moore, G. E., Principia Ethica (Cambridge, 1903/1948), pp. 66–7Google Scholar.

93 Moore, Principia, p. 67.

94 Street, ‘What is Constructivism’, p. 40; see also Street, Sharon, ‘Constructivism about Reasons’, Oxford Studies in Metaethics, vol. 3, ed. Shafer-Landau, R. (Oxford, 2008), pp. 207–45Google Scholar.

95 The problematic aggregation premise does not follow easily from this reading, but does not follow easily from any other reading I know of either. It is not possible to discuss possible solutions here, but a Humean constructivist reading doesn't hang on the aggregation premise; a Humean constructivist reading, like some other views, can hold that Mill is simply wrong that happiness is aggregative.

96 Mill, Utilitarianism, 4.1.

97 This view means that Mill's comment that desire is the sole evidence for desirability in the way that seeing something is the only evidence for visibility and hearing something the only evidence for audibility is a mistake if taken as an exact parallel (Mill, Utilitarianism, 4.3). But the analogy is commonly taken not to be intended as an exact parallel (Crisp, Mill on Utilitarianism, p. 75; West, Mill's Utilitarianism, p. 78).

98 Mill, Utilitarianism, 2.7.

99 Mill, Utilitarianism, 2.6.

100 Mill, Utilitarianism, 2.6, 2.8.

101 Hume, David, A Treatise of Human Nature (Oxford, 1740/1978), p. 463Google Scholar. There is a useful discussion of Hume's view in Joyce, Richard, ‘Irrealism and the Genealogy of Morals’, Ratio 26.4 (2013), pp. 351–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

102 This view in which a person's practical rationality lies in valuing what she would value (or want herself to value) if she was better informed is reminiscent of the views of Peter Railton (‘Moral Realism’, The Philosophical Review’ 95.2 (1986), pp. 163–207) and Smith, Michael (The Moral Problem (Malden, 1994))Google Scholar.

103 Skorupski, John Stuart Mill, p.14; see also p. 295.

104 Wallace, R. Jay, Normativity and the Will (Oxford, 2006), p. 16Google Scholar.

105 Mill, Utilitarianism, 4.11.

106 Mill, Utilitarianism, 4.11; my emphasis.

107 Mill, Utilitarianism, 4.11.

108 Smith, Moral Problem, p. 7; my emphasis.

109 Mill, Utilitarianism, 4.11; Mill's emphasis.

110 I am grateful to Simon Keller, James Lenman, Justin Sytsma, an anonymous referee and especially Richard Joyce for their comments on earlier drafts of this article.