Hmmm, you should probably take SEP with a grain of salt. As I always point out they will have us believe that Mach and Carnap were Neutral Monists!
And when stating how Materialists define matter they use Berkeley as a source.
Certainly any text which is not the original is subject to the interpretation of the person writing it. But that is not all I read. The understanding I have at present is based on what these sources seem to agree on. I do not think that is illegitmate.
Well let me stop you there and quote from J.S. Mill's Utilitarianism:
So it is not my suggestion, it is J.S Mill's suggestion. So it is supported.
I am sorry. I thought it was clear from what I said that is not supported by Bentham. I referred to him and his cohort because I understood that Mill followed and built on Bentham and James Mill amongst others. It is true that in one of the succeeding paragraphs I referred to them both but I did think that it would be obvious I was trying to outline my understanding of Bentham, because later I said "Turning to Mill". Mill did disagree with Bentham, did he not?
Your source cites Bentham's Principles Of Morals and Legislation and what Bentham is doing here is simply setting out some definitions about the different type of utility, in this case the "sympathetic sensibility", the degree to which a person gains pleasure from another's pleasure and pain from another's pain and he balances this with the "antipathetic sensibility", the degree to which a person gains pain from another's pleasure and pleasure from another's pain. I don't think that it is controversial that we all have each of these to some extent - your source is drawing a somewhat long bow in this case.
Why do you think this is a long bow? The writer of this quote takes the view that Bentham's reason for suggesting that another's pleasure or pain should matter to us consists entirely in the fact that it gives rise to pleasure or pain in ourselves. Bentham said "Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure." He seems to locate this within the individual (indeed it is hard to see where else it could be). So any person who does not find that another's pleasure makes him happy or another's pain makes him sad will have no reason to take account of any but his own. Such people do exist in the form of psychopaths and sociopaths; and nearer the mean there are many who do not seem to have much of the capacity.
I think this is what Mill meant when he said that Bentham was too narrow.
Bentham calls the community a "fictitious body":
Yes, he does. He said that the interest of the community could not be anything beyond "the sum of the interests of the several members who compose it".
But he also said: "An action then may be said to be conformable to the principle of utility, or, for shortness sake, to utility, (meaning with respect to the community at large) when the tendency it has to augment the happiness of the community is greater than any it has to diminish it."
And "A man may be said to be a partizan of the principle of utility, when the approbation or disapprobation he annexes to any action, or to any measure, is determined by and proportioned to the tendency which he conceives it to have to augment or to diminish the happiness of the community: or in other words, to its conformity or unconformity to the laws or dictates of utility."
And "A measure of government (which is but a particular kind of action, performed by a particular person or persons) may be said to be conformable to or dictated by the principle of utility, when in like manner the tendency which it has to augment the happiness of the community is greater than any which it has to diminish it."
So far as I can tell Bentham does not seem to see this as a problem because he seems to assume that the interests of the individual will coincide with the interests of society, so that proper pursuit of each individual's pleasure will necessarily increase the happiness of all. I do not think I can accept this. If a measure of government is an action performed by a person or persons then it must be performed to increase his own happiness. It is not in the least bit obvious to me that those actions will necessarily have the effect of increasing the happiness of the governed. As I see it, it supposes that there are no real differences between people or their interests. I think there are such differences.
That would only be difficult if the thing that made me happy also made the community unhappy. If the community is indifferent about or happy about the things that make me happy then what is the problem?
If the things that make me happy make the community unhappy then there is a conflict, but not a particularly difficult conflict.
In the end there is communication, compromise and if that fails the law. It is this last part that Bentham mostly addresses.
That only works if the community has an independent existence. If those with power or wealth conceive their interest in such a way as to make a lot of people unhappy that is neither here nor there if the community is "fictitious", and any action which increases that individual's happiness is moral by definition. There is absolutely no reason why he should not do just what he likes (indeed he "ought" to): and if he needs to lie about it to keep you quiet then he "ought" to do that as well. As Bentham says "Of an action that is conformable to the principle of utility one may always say either that it is one that ought to be done, or at least that it is not one that ought not to be done. One may say also, that it is right it should be done; at least that it is not wrong it should be done: that it is a right action; at least that it is not a wrong action. When thus interpreted, the words ought, and right and wrong and others of that stamp, have a meaning: when otherwise, they have none".
I don't think that either Bentham or Mill say that a person is only able to pursue their own happiness.
I think that is precisely what Bentham says. Can you show me where he denies it? There is some scope for ambiguity because in the phrase "fictitious body" the emphasis is on body, and it may be argued that he means something like the phrase "corporate person" But that does not help us since it is not possible for any such virtual entity to act, whether it has interests or no. Only people can act. And they follow their own interest by definition and, indeed, any other possible kind of action is denied by a sort of circular reasoning such as we see in Freud in another context. I agree it is not what Mill says.
I don't think that is true of human nature,
I agree.
and in the cases where it is, well it is not really a practical consideration in any case - unless we go and live as hermits then out happiness is dependent upon the happiness of others.
I agree
Please quote where Bentham specifically denies that another's happiness is equally important.
He denies it in his description of the "sympathetic sensibility". If he has another passage where he admits the possibility I will be glad to see it.
Economists have no trouble incorporating utility into objective models while acknowledging that it cannot have a normative measure, so why shouldn't Ethicists?
Don't understand that. I usually contrast objective/subjective and normative/descriptive, so I think my thought was improperly conveyed. Bentham says that happiness is subjective. He propose his calculus as a means of making it objective, I think. It is in practice impossible to apply that calculus (perhaps you disagree, but I think it is). So we have to move to a rule based system based on what generally works, for most decisions we actually face. That is normative is it not?
As I pointed out above, the idea that Bentham endorsed psychological egoism is simply claim by the SEP writer and not supported, as far as I can see, by anything Bentham wrote himself.
I disagree, as outlined above. There is clearly scope for different interpretations since you differ from SEP and the internet encyclopaedia of philosophy. But if the pursuit of happiness is subjective and is the only moral thing then how do you distinguish it from psychological egoism?
No, Mill is only pointing out that the human race is rather better than the detractors of Utilitarianism would have us believe, he does not state (anywhere that I can see) any intrinsic superiority for the higher pleasures, only that humans do take pleasure in certain things that animals do not. And he does not insist on it as a precondition for Utiltarianism.
I assume you base on this? "better Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied."
But he goes on " If I am asked, what I mean by difference of quality in pleasures, or what makes one pleasure more valuable than another, merely as a pleasure, except its being greater in amount, there is but one possible answer. Of two pleasures, if there be one to which all or almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference, irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, that is the more desirable pleasure. If one of the two 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 outweighing quantity as to render it, in comparison, of small account."
And "its most appropriate appellation is a sense of dignity, which all human beings possess in one form or other, and in some, though by no means in exact, proportion to their higher faculties, and which is so essential a part of the happiness of those in whom it is strong, that nothing which conflicts with it could be, otherwise than momentarily, an object of desire to them."
But you are right he does not insist on it as a precondition for utilitarianism: he does say it is necessary for a "perfectly just conception of utility or happiness"
You have lost me completely here. How can happiness not be subjective. How can it not be a sensation of a mental state. Where does Mill ever suggest that happiness is not a sensation or mental state?
In the same passage.
"standard is not the agent's own greatest happiness, but the greatest amount of happiness altogether; and if it may possibly be doubted whether a noble character is always the happier for its nobleness, there can be no doubt that it makes other people happier, and that the world in general is immensely a gainer by it. Utilitarianism, therefore, could only attain its end by the general cultivation of nobleness of character, even if each individual were only benefited by the nobleness of others, and his own, so far as happiness is concerned, were a sheer deduction from the benefit. But the bare enunciation of such an absurdity as this last, renders refutation superfluous."
Clearly in the last sentence he does not think that is a likely outcome. But later he says this: " Though it is only in a very imperfect state of the world's arrangements that any one can best serve the happiness of others by the absolute sacrifice of his own, yet so long as the world is in that imperfect state, I fully acknowledge that the readiness to make such a sacrifice is the highest virtue which can be found in man." One can argue, as he does (indeed he almost must), that the sacrifice of personal happiness in such circumstances gives the agent the best chance of maximising his utility: but whatever he means by this he cannot mean the subjective state of happiness as it is usually understood.This is because he has already said the agent has made an "absolute sacrifice" of it. Again he may do so in hopes of increasing the total of happiness in the world if his sacrifice makes others happier: but this does seem to be stretching things a bit.
Both Bentham and Mill do found on the idea that the pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain are intrinsic to man's nature and that those principles are irreducible, it seems to me. That is not really subjective so much as an objective statement about how we are made. The content of happiness may be subjective but he basis of that pursuit is not.
What would you have him do, produce a manual for behaviour? I think J.S. Mill is crediting us with a little intelligence of our own. After all Kant does not provide a decision making procedure. In fact I can't think of any Ethicist who has attempted this beside Bentham, and he was addressing judicial procedures rather than procedures for individuals.
But Mill does say we should act in accord with secondary principles, does he not? It seems to follow that there will be rules for conduct and although those can be overridden in particular instances where the utility is violated by following them, in general this seems to imply that there are expectations of moral behaviour which we should all follow on the basis of those rules. I cannot see this is anything other than a conception of "moral truth" as much as any other.
I had taken from other sources that he was founding not so much on utilitarianism, as presented by Bentham, but some form of the golden rule. It is gratifying to find I have indeed understood Mill: as he says:
"In the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth, we read the complete spirit of the ethics of utility. To do as you would be done by, and to love your neighbour as yourself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality. As the means of making the nearest approach to this ideal, utility would enjoin, first, that laws and social arrangements should place the happiness, or (as speaking practically it may be called) the interest, of every individual, as nearly as possible in harmony with the interest of the whole; and secondly, that education and opinion, which have so vast a power over human character, should so use that power as to establish in the mind of every individual an indissoluble association between his own happiness and the good of the whole; especially between his own happiness and the practice of such modes of conduct, negative and positive, as regard for the universal happiness prescribes; so that not only he may be unable to conceive the possibility of happiness to himself, consistently with conduct opposed to the general good, but also that a direct impulse to promote the general good may be in every individual one of the habitual motives of action, and the sentiments connected therewith may fill a large and prominent place in every human being's sentient existence. If the, impugners of the utilitarian morality represented it to their own minds in this its, true character, I know not what recommendation possessed by any other morality they could possibly affirm to be wanting to it; what more beautiful or more exalted developments of human nature any other ethical system can be supposed to foster, or what springs of action, not accessible to the utilitarian, such systems rely on for giving effect to their mandates."
I see nothing in this passage more than I see in any reasonable ethical system based on "do as you would be done by" The things which are unique to utilitarianism are not enough to make a system which will work. Thus we need some version of the golden rule to obviate Omelas. I know you say we do not because Mill says we must value each person's happiness as we do our own: but at the same time each person counts for one and only one and so you need the golden rule to avoid the problem of addition leading to the outcome in Omelas. I think this is why Mill brings it in but perhaps you read it differently?
You will have to cite this part because I have no idea what you are talking about.
It is how I read this passage
" It is a strange notion that the acknowledgment of a first principle is inconsistent with the admission of secondary ones. To inform a traveller respecting the place of his. ultimate destination, is not to forbid the use of landmarks and direction-posts on the way. The proposition that happiness is the end and aim of morality, does not mean that no road ought to be laid down to that goal, or that persons going thither should not be advised to take one direction rather than another. Men really ought to leave off talking a kind of nonsense on this subject, which they would neither talk nor listen to on other matters of practical concernment. Nobody argues that the art of navigation is not founded on astronomy, because sailors cannot wait to calculate the Nautical Almanack. Being rational creatures, they go to sea with it ready calculated; and all rational creatures go out upon the sea of life with their minds made up on the common questions of right and wrong, as well as on many of the far more difficult questions of wise and foolish. And this, as long as foresight is a human quality, it is to be presumed they will continue to do. Whatever we adopt as the fundamental principle of morality, we require subordinate principles to apply it by; the impossibility of doing without them, being common to all systems, can afford no argument against any one in particular; but gravely to argue as if no such secondary principles could be had, and as if mankind had remained till now, and always must remain, without drawing any general conclusions from the experience of human life, is as high a pitch, I think, as absurdity has ever reached in philosophical controversy."
Please cite the part where he seems to say this, otherwise I am in not position to comment.
I will have to come back to this as I do not have the energy to find and cite this again right now, sorry
What would really help is if you could state rather more concisely what your difficulty is with this rather straightforward position, because I don't really understand what you don't understand.
Sorry I am not great at concise. I do not know what you mean by a "straightforward position" in this context
