Someone might challenge Mill by saying that other things are valuable in themselves. This means that it’s the only thing for whose desirability in itself we have evidence. In the third step, Mill argues that happiness is the only thing we desire for itself. Mill reasons that if every person’s happiness is valuable then a world that contains more happiness is better than one that contains less, other things equal. It depends on the natures of the items, their value, and the collection. Often, though, a collection of valuable items will also be valuable.
Sometimes combining good things might produce something bad, like topping a pizza with hot fudge sauce. If I know that one gold bar is heavy, I’m not reasoning badly if I conclude that a pallet of these bars will be heavy, too. But while collections don’t always have the properties that their members share, sometimes they do. An apple is spherical, but a bushel of apples isn’t. Some critics have charged Mill with committing the “fallacy of composition,” which is the fallacy of reasoning that because the members of a collection all have some property, the collection must have it, too. “since A’s happiness is a good, B’s a good, C’s a good, &c., the sum of these goods must be a good.” “No reason can be given why the general happiness is desirable, except that each person … desires his own happiness.” In the same paragraph, Mill turns to the second step: If happiness isn’t desirable then all of humanity has made the same huge mistake, which may seem implausible. īut notice the shift in Mill’s wording from “only proof” to “sole evidence.” Even if the fact that everyone actually desires happiness doesn’t logically entail that they should, it might still be evidence for this. While our actually doing something is proof positive that we can do it, it doesn’t mean that we should. One criticism of this step is that Mill overlooks the fact that while ‘visible’ means “capable of being seen,” to call something desirable means not that we can desire it but that we ought to. … In like manner, … the sole evidence … that anything is desirable, is that people do actually desire it.” “The only proof … that an object is visible, is that people actually see it. Mill takes these three claims together to compose the principle of utility. Nothing except happiness is desirable as an end. The “general happiness” is desirable as an end.ģ. Mill’s argument consists of three steps, each meant to establish a different claim:Ģ.
Today it’s called Mill’s “proof,” although the name is misleading since he admits that the “considerations” he offers aren’t a tidy deduction. Mill’s argument appears in Chapter 4 of his essay Utilitarianism. Instead it concerns what’s “desirable as an end.” It’s the foundation of Mill’s utilitarianism, not the theory itself. Yet Mill’s principle of utility doesn’t directly concern the morality of actions. In its simplest form, utilitarianism says that actions are right if they would maximize the total amount of happiness in the world in the long run otherwise they’re wrong.
Mill offers this claim in the course of discussing the moral theory called utilitarianism. Mill’s name for the claim that only happiness is valuable for its own sake is the “principle of utility.” This is ripe for confusion. This essay considers whether Mill really makes elementary blunders. His argument is notorious because some critics charge that it contains obvious errors. The 19 th-century utilitarian philosopher John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) argues that it is. It may seem obvious that happiness is valuable, but is it the only thing valuable for its own sake, as opposed to being useful as a way to get something else?
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