I’m beginning a semester today with John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism. I like to inform the students of these facts before we begin delving into the philosophy:
[Mill] began to learn Greek at three and Latin at eight. By the age of fourteen he had read most of the Greek and Latin classics, had made a wide survey of history, had done extensive work in logic and mathematics, and had mastered the basics of economic theory.
Given this, it really is quite amazing that Mill allowed himself to write the following sentence in the second paragraph of Utilitarianism:
All action is for the sake of some end, and rules of action, it seems natural to suppose, must take their whole character and colour from the end to which they are subservient.
Mill doesn’t deign to stop and explain himself. This just astounds me. But then again, if he had, I wouldn’t have the opportunity to write “Everybody loves somebody” on the blackboard at the beginning of each semester.
Chris | 26-Jan-06 at 1:06 pm | Permalink
I’m not sure I follow. I take it the “Everybody loves somebody” is used to show that even so, it doesn’t follow that there’s somebody loved by everybody? (Or do you have something else in mind?)
But if that’s what you have in mind, the bit quoted only (possibly) gets Mill in trouble if “the end” is meant to refer to a single end. But couldn’t it be meant distributively, i.e., to refer to each end of each action?
Also, the “seems natural to suppose” suggests that Mill doesn’t think that that’s strictly entailed. A number of supporting reasons might make it natural to suppose, including ones that are part of the grand tradition going back to (at least) the opening lines of Aristotle’s NE.
Paul | 26-Jan-06 at 3:27 pm | Permalink
My main point was that the phrase is so ambiguous that it deserves to be disambiguated–especially given that it occurs in the second paragraph, and is offered as a reason for thinking that we should not rest content, as we do in the sciences, to believe that particular truths are always more secure and take justificatory primacy over general theories attempting to uncover foundational principles. Maybe the ambiguity wasn’t so glaring to Mill, who wasn’t subjected to the “Everybody loves somebody” exercise in philosophy class after philosophy class. But given his mental acuity and the justificatory use to which Mill puts the claim,I wonder why it didn’t bother him.
But there are other, more interesting reasons to worry about the ambiguity. Take your first reading, the Single End reading. First, it is not obvious that the Single End view is correct, so it would be strange for Mill to invoke it here as blithely as he does. And yet there are reasons to think that Mill does have something like this in mind. For he does say that “rules of action…must take their whole character and colour from the END [--not endS--] to which they are subservient.”
Moreover, after conceding that there is quite a bit of disagreement in morals, his preferred method of dispelling the disagreement is to point out that “it would be easy to show that whatever steadiness or consistency that [the moral beliefs of mankind] have attained, has been mainly due to the tacit influence of…the principle of utility…” (I admit that I use crafty editing here, but I think it’s true to Mill’s claim). So Mill does seem to be thinking that all action (or at least most) is for the sake of pleasure. And even though he goes on to explain in Chapter IV how it could be that all action is for the sake of a Single End, it is not the sort of thing that one can assume from the get-go–at least not without a LITTLE explaination of what you mean. Even Aristotle did that, didn’t he?
The final problem with the claim that I can see, is that if the Single End interpretation is not intended, there is little reason to think that NORMATIVE rules of action “must” take their character from the end that the actions IN FACT aim at. That would be a pretty weak moral view. Here the Single End view is more compelling. I.e., if some form of pychological eudaimonism were true, it would be easier to believe that the Single End “colours the character” of normative rules of action.
So my problem with the claim is that it’s too ambiguous and, on either interpretation, too controversial to roll out as blithely and early as Mill does.
Paul | 26-Jan-06 at 3:32 pm | Permalink
(a)For he does say that “rules of action…must take their whole character and colour from the END [--not endS--] to which they are subservient.”
(b)And yet there are reasons to think that Mill does have something like [the Single End view] in mind.
To be clear, I do not think that point (a) is the BEST evidence for point (b), since semantic considerations ARE at play here–there are reason to want to use the singular for of “end” even on the distributive reading you suggest. I take point (b) to be primarly supported by the discussion in the next paragraph, beginning from “Moreover,”.
Chris | 26-Jan-06 at 4:08 pm | Permalink
Oh, you’re probably right: he’s certainly not being very precise here, and you’re also probably right about where he wants to, ahem, end up. But perhaps that’s just in the nature of an introduction to roll out the general idea first and then return to clarify and substantiate it later. The phrase, “seems natural to suppose,” might be taken to indicate exactly that, even though, you know, it doesn’t seem natural to suppose.
Paul | 26-Jan-06 at 4:37 pm | Permalink
Good. Even if there is some justice in the accusation I make, it goes some way toward legitimating my use of the ambiguity as a way to easy the students into Mill, and precise philosophical thinking in general.
Paul | 26-Jan-06 at 4:39 pm | Permalink
Damn, I should read my comments before posting!
I meant, “Even if there is only a little justice in the accusation I make…” But whatever….
Paul | 29-Jan-06 at 4:47 pm | Permalink
I don’t see how considerations of penis enlargement are relevant.
Chris | 29-Jan-06 at 5:24 pm | Permalink
Oops. I just deleted the spam, which sort of takes the zing out of your joke.
Paul | 29-Jan-06 at 5:39 pm | Permalink
I think we can both agree that there wasn’t much zing in that joke to begin with.