Millian Qualitative Superiorities and Utilitarianism, Part II

I continue my argument that Millian qualitative superiorities are infinite superiorities: one pleasant feeling, or type of pleasant feeling, is qualitatively superior to another in Mill's sense if and only if even a bit of the superior is more pleasant (and thus more valuable) than any finite quantity of the inferior, however large. This gives rise to a hierarchy of higher and lower pleasures such that a reasonable hedonist always refuses to sacrifice a higher for a lower irrespective of the finite amounts of each. Some indication of why this absolute refusal may be reasonable is provided in the course of outlining the content of the Millian hierarchy. It emerges that Mill's hedonistic utilitarianism has an extraordinary structure because it gives absolute priority over competing considerations to a code of justice that distributes equal rights and correlative duties for all. His utilitarianism also recognizes that certain aesthetic and spiritual pleasures may be qualitatively superior even to the pleasant feeling of security associated with the moral sentiment of justice. Thus, for instance, a noble individual may reasonably choose to waive his own rights so as to perform beautiful supererogatory actions that provide great benefits for others at the sacrifice of the right-holder's own vital interests.

Millian Qualitative Superiorities and Utilitarianism, Part I

Arrhenius and Rabinowicz (henceforth, AR) have argued that Millian qualitative superiorities are possible without assuming that any pleasure, or type of pleasure, is infinitely superior to another. But AR's analysis is fatally flawed in the context of ethical hedonism, where the assumption in question is necessary and sufficient for Millian qualitative superiorities. Marginalist analysis of the sort pressed by AR continues to have a valid role to play within any plausible version of hedonism, provided the fundamental incoherence that infects AR's use of such analysis is removed. But what AR call ‘Millian superiorities’ are never genuine qualitative superiorities in Mill's sense. Mill scholars need to appreciate this point and recognize that the interpretation of qualitative superiorities as infinite superiorities is the only interpretation which is compatible with the text of Mill's Utilitarianism. The continuing failure to appreciate the possibility of infinite superiorities has precluded any adequate understanding of the extraordinary structure of Mill's pluralistic hedonistic utilitarianism.

Why We Ought to Accept the Repugnant Conclusion

Derek Parfit has famously pointed out that ‘total’ utilitarian views, such as classical hedonistic utilitarianism, lead to the conclusion that, to each population of quite happy persons there corresponds a more extensive population with people living lives just worth living, which is (on the whole) better. In particular, for any possible population of at least ten billion people, all with a very high quality of life, there must be some much larger imaginable population whose existence, if other things are equal, would be better, even though its members have lives that are barely worth living. This world is better if the sum total of well-being is great enough, and it is great enough if only enough sentient beings inhabit it. This conclusion has been considered by Parfit and others to be ‘repugnant’.

Compassionate Utilitarianism: The Unknown Bentham Revealed

Unlike the compassionate conservatism of George Bush, Compassionate Utilitarianism is not a confusing concept. Nor is it a newly minted version of Utilitarianism given that it is embedded in the writings of Jeremy Bentham, writings that have come to light only with the Oxford University Press publication of his Deontology in 1983 as edited by me. Bentham's An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (IPML) expresses the standard interpretation of Hedonistic Utilitarianism. What he said in Deontology serves as the basis of Compassionate Utilitarianism.

Suffering and Moral Responsibility. By Jamie Mayerfeld. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. 237p. $45.00.

Jamie Mayerfeld has written a wise and morally sensitive book that he hopes will compel readers to take seriously their “prima facie duty to relieve suffering” (p. 9). Insofar as “attention to suffering has been a casualty of a long series of attacks on hedonistic utilitarianism” (p. 3), Mayerfeld offers a thorough account of the nature of suffering and argues for the view that its badness imposes a universal prima facie duty for people to try to avoid suffering. Since the purpose of moral inquiry is “to identify wrong kinds of behavior so that we can avoid them” (p. 7), Mayerfeld, not himself a utilitarian, follows a catholic approach and skillfully draws upon arguments from utilitarians, deontologists, Aristotelians, hedonists, psychologists, and philosophers to support his moral intuitions.