Topic 1: Welfare and pleasure

Essay question

Why does Mill distinguish between higher and lower pleasures, and does his account succeed?

Key readings

• Mill, J. S., Utilitarianism, London: Parker, Son & Bourn, 1863, ch. 2.
• Brink, D. O., Mill's Moral and Political Philosophy, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Fall, 2014, sect. 2.2.
• Crisp, R., Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Mill on Utilitarianism, London: Routledge, 1997, ch. 2.
• Parfit, D., Reasons and Persons, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984, pp. 493-502.
• Sumner, L. W., Welfare, Happiness and Ethics, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, ch. 5.

Further reading

• Bentham, J., An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, London: T. Payne & Son, 1780, chs. 1-5.
• Broad, C. D., Five Types of Ethical Theory, London: Kegan Paul, 1930, ch. 6.
• Bykvist, K., Utilitarianism: a Guide for the Perplexed, London: Continuum, 2009, ch. 4.
• Edwards, R., Do Pleasures and Pains Differ Qualitatively?, vol. 9, no. 4 (1975), pp. 270-281.
• Griffin, J. Well-Being: Its Meaning, Measurement and Moral Importance, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986, chs. 1-4.
• Hoag, R., J. S. Mill’s Language of Pleasures, Utilitas, vol. 4, no. 2 (November, 1992), pp. 247-278.
• Martin, R., A Defence of Mill’s Qualitative Hedonism, Philosophy, vol. 47, no. 180 (April, 1972), pp. 140-151.
• Sidgwick, H., The Methods of Ethics, 7th ed., London: Macmillan, 1874, book 1, ch. 4.
• West, H. R., Mill’s Qualitative Hedonism, Philosophy, vol. 51, no. 195 (January, 1976), pp. 97-101.

Exam questions

• “Utilitarianism depends on the assumption that all goods can be weighted against one another on a single scale. That assumption is false. So utilitarianism must be rejected.” Do you agree?
• Does Mill’s distinction between higher and lower pleasures imply that in a choice between reading a good poem and having a massage I should always read the poem?
• Does Mill deny that people desire virtue, or that virtue is not to be desired?
• Is Mill right to argue that pleasures can differ in quality as well as in quantity?
• Could a lower pleasure be more pleasant than a higher?
• According to Bentham, ‘the value of a pleasure of pain considered by itself, will be greater or less, according to the following circumstances: (i) its intensity; (ii) its duration; (iii) its certainty or uncertainty; (iv) its propinquity or remoteness’. Is this the only value of a pleasure or pain?