THE INTERPRETATION OF THE MORAL PHILOSOPHY OF JOHN STUART MILL J. O. Urmson Introduction, H. Gene Blocker IN THE MID-1950S, in reaction to Kontran, deontology real ethics, a number of philosophers developed a new interest in the interpretation of the moral theory of Utilitarianism. For over fifty years, a largely negative interpretation of John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism s main spokesperson and defender, had prevailed. However, several theorists began to argue that the standard interpretation was an unfair and inaccurate reading of Mill. In the selection that follows, J. O. Urmson challenges what he sees as two major misinterpretations of Mill. According to Urmson, the first faulty reading is that Mill was guilty of the famous is-ought fallacy of Naturalism. The second misinterpretation is that Mill endorsed what later became known as act Utilitarianism. Let s take a closer look at both of these accusations. The Naturalistic Fallacy was made famous by the English philosopher George Edward Moore at the turn of the twentieth century. However, the Scottish philosopher David Hume had already laid out the details of this fallacy back in the mid-eighteenth century. Hume had claimed that one can never derive ought from is ; that is, the fact that something is true doesn t make it right. More important, we can t define what ought to be in terms of what is for example, that the word good should mean pleasurable. Another example of Naturalism is the claim that if men tend to be more aggressive and domineering than women, then it is right that they should behave so. According to Hume, Moore, and indeed most contemporary philosophers, this kind of Naturalistic reasoning is faulty. Even though it may be true that human beings tend to be selfish and egoistical, for example, it doesn t follow that this is the way we ought to behave. It makes just as much sense, and perhaps more, to argue the reverse that it is actually wrong to give in to our natural tendency to look out for number one. In the case of Utilitarianism, the supposed Naturalistic Fallacy was Mill s argument that because human beings desire pleasure, then pleasure must be good, and we should therefore do all we can to pursue it. Urmson argues that,
on the contrary, Mill saw pleasure or happiness not as the only inherent good but as a test, or a criterion, of what is right (that is, what we ought to do). According to Urmson, Mill believed that in order to decide whether something is right and good, we must know whether it increases or decreases the general well-being (pleasure or happiness) of all the people involved. Urmson then identifies a second serious misreading of Mill: the interpretation of his thinking, and of Utilitarianism generally, as act Utilitarianism. According to act Utilitarianism, we should judge the moral worth of an action by whether it increases or decreases the overall happiness of the society involved. Consider the example that Urmson himself examines. Suppose you have promised to help a friend with some homework. Should you keep your promise? Why or why not? An act Utilitarian might argue that, to answer this question, we should look at the likely future consequences of each option and assess which option yields the most overall happiness. For example, suppose that keeping the promise will cause you to miss out on an overnight beach party which would probably create an enormous amount of unhappiness on your part. Let s also suppose that your friend won t appreciate your efforts to help him study, and will become angry with you for driving him to do better in class. After thinking in this way for a while, you might decide that, if you really want to generate as much happiness as possible and not risk the chance of causing any unhappiness, you should actually break your promise to your friend. If that sounds crazy, it s because we generally believe that a moral philosophy ought to fit with our moral intuitions, which in this case tell us pretty clearly that breaking a promise is wrong. Most people would feel uncomfortable about breaking a promise not because they ve coldly calculated the consequences of keeping it or breaking it, but because of a more general sense of morality. Urmson argues that the traditional interpretation of Mill paints him and Utilitarianism in general as lacking a commonsense, intuitive moral sensitivity. After Mill s time, philosophers tried to solve this and other problems in Utilitarianism by distinguishing rule Utilitarianism from act Utilitarianism. Rule Utilitarianism holds that the morally right action is the one that most closely follows the correct moral rule, and the correct moral rules are those which tend to promote the greatest happiness for the greatest number. In our example about promise-keeping above, a rule Utilitarian might argue that even though you could imagine cases in which breaking a promise might increase the overall happiness of everyone involved, breaking
promises as a general rule would lead to widespread social misery. Therefore, you ought to keep your promise. Because the act/rule distinction didn t appear until long after Mill s writing, it is unclear whether Mill would have been an act or a rule Utilitarian. Perhaps he should be interpreted as neither, or as a bit of both. Urmson, for his part, argues that Mill should be read as a rule Utilitarian, and that therefore he is immune from the accusations of those critical of Utilitarianism. As you read the selection, ask yourself whether Urmson has provided a different interpretation of Utilitarianism or, in effect, has offered a new theory of his own. How can we tell whether Mill was an act or rule Utilitarian, when this distinction was formulated long after Mill s death? Still, assuming that we can apply this distinction to Mill, do you think that Urmson offers a reasonable interpretation of Mill s Utilitarianism? Why or why not? It is a matter which should be of great interest to those who study the psychology of philosophers that the theories of some great philosophers or the past are studied with the most patient and accurate scholarship, while those of others are so burlesqued and travestied by critics and commentators that it is hard to believe that their works are ever seriously read with a sympathetic interest, or even that they are read at all. Amongst those who suffer most in this way John Stuart Mill is an outstanding example. With the exception of a short book by Reginald Jackson, there is no remotely accurate account of his views on deductive logic, so that, for example, the absurd view that the syllogism involves petitio principii is almost invariably fathered on him; and, as Von Wright says, A good systematic and critical monograph on Mill s Logic of Induction still remains to be written. But even more perplexing is the almost universal misconstruction placed upon Mill s ethical doctrines; for his Utilitarianism is a work which every undergraduate is set to read and which one would therefore expect Mill s critics to have read at least once. But this, apparently, is not so; and instead of Mill s own doctrines a travesty is discussed, so that the most common criticisms of him are simply irrelevant. It will not be the thesis of this paper that Mill s views are immune to criticism, or that they are of impeccable clarity and verbal consistency; it will be maintained that, if interpreted with, say, half the The Interpretation of the Moral Philosophy of John Stuart Mill, by J. O. Ormson, reprinted from The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. III, 1953, pp. 33 39.
sympathy automatically accorded to Plato, Leibniz, and Kant, in essentially consistent thesis can be discovered which is very superior to that usually attributed to Mill and immune to the common run of criticisms.... Some of Mill s expositors and critics have thought that Mill was attempting to analyse or define the notion of right in terms of the summum bonum. Thus Mill is commonly adduced as an example of an ethical naturalist by those who interpret his account of happiness naturalistically, as being one who defined rightness in terms of the natural consequences of actions. Moore, for example, while criticising Mill s account of the ultimate end says: In thus insisting that what is right must mean what produces the best possible results Utilitarianism is fully justified. Others have been less favourable in their estimation of this alleged view of Mill s. But right or wrong, it seems clear to me that Mill did not hold it. Mill s only reference to this analytic problem is where he refers to a person who sees in moral obligation a transcendent fact, an objective reality belonging to the province of Things in themselves, and goes on to speak of this view as an irrelevant opinion on this point of Ontology, as though the analysis of ethical terms was not part of ethical philosophy at all as he conceived it, but part of ontology. It seems clear that when Mill speaks of his quest for the criterion of right and wrong, concerning the foundation of morality for a test of right and wrong, he is looking for or a means of ascertaining what is right or wrong, not for a definition of these terms. We shall not, therefore, deal further with this interpretation of Mill; if a further refutation of it is required it should be sought in the agreement of the text with the alternative exposition shortly to be given. The other mistaken view avoids the error of this first view, and indeed is incompatible with it. It is, probably, the received view. On this interpretation is looking for a test of right or wrong as the ultimate test by which one can justify the ascription of rightness or wrongness to courses of action, rightness and wrongness being taken to be words which we understand. This test is taken to be whether the course of action does or does not tend to promote the ultimate end (which Mill no doubt says is the general happiness). So far there is no cause to quarrel with the received view, for it is correct. But in detail the view is wrong. For it is further suggested that for Mill this ultimate test is also the immediate test; the rightness or wrongness of any particular action is to be decided by considering whether it promotes the ultimate end. We may, it might be admitted, on Mill s view sometimes act, by rule of
thumb or in a hurry, without actually raising this question; but the actual justification, if there is one, must be directly in terms of consequences, including the consequences of the example that we have set. On this view, then, Mill holds that an action, a particular action, is right if it promotes the ultimate end better than any alternative, and otherwise it is wrong. However we in fact make up our minds in moral situations, so far as justification goes no other factor enters into the matter. It is clear that on this interpretation Mill is immediately open to two shattering objections; first, it is obviously and correctly urged, if one has, for example, promised to do something it is one s duty to do it at least partly because one has promised to do it and not merely because of consequences, even if these consequences are taken to include one s example in promise-breaking. Secondly, it is correctly pointed out that on this view a man who, ceteris paribus, chooses the inferior of two musical comedies for an evening s entertainment has done a moral wrong, and this is preposterous. If this were in fact the view of Mill, he would indeed be fit for little more than the halting eristic of philosophical infants. I shall now set out in a set of propositions what I take to be in fact Mill s view and substantiate them afterwards from the text. This will obscure the subtleties but will make clearer the main lines of interpretation. A. A particular action is justified as being right by showing that it is in accord with some moral rule. It is shown to be wrong by showing that it trangresses some moral rule. B. A moral rule is shown to be correct by showing that the recognition of that rule promotes the ultimate end. C. Moral rules can be justified only in regard to matters in which the general welfare is more than negligibly affected. D. Where no moral rule is applicable the question of the rightness or wrongness of particular acts does not arise, though the worth of the actions can be estimated in other ways.... There is, no doubt, need of further explanation of these propositions; but that, and some caveats, can best be given in the process of establishing that these are in fact Mill s views. First, then, to establish from the text that in Mill s view particular actions are shown to be right or wrong by showing that they are or are not in accord with some moral rule. (i) He says with evident approbation: The intuitive, no less than what may be termed the inductive, school of ethics, insists on the necessity of general laws. They both
agree that the morality of an individual action is not a question of direct perception, but of the application of a law to an individual case. They recognise also, to a great extent, the same moral laws. Mill reproaches these schools only with being unable to give a unifying rationale of these laws (as he will do in proposition B). (ii) He says, But to consider the rules of morality as improvable is one thing; to pass over the intermediate generalisations entirely, an endeavour to test each individual action directly by the first principle, is another. It is a strange notion that the acknowledgement of a first principle is inconsistent with the admission of secondary ones. He adds, with feeling: 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. (iii) Having admitted that rules of conduct cannot be so framed as to require no exceptions, he adds, We must remember that only in these cases of conflict between secondary principles is it requisite that first principles should be appealed to. There is no case of moral obligation in which some secondary principle is not involved; and if only one, there can seldom be any real doubt which one it is, in the mind of any person by whom the principle itself is recognised. This quotation supports both propositions A and D. It shows that for Mill moral rules are not merely rules of thumb which aid the unreflective man in making up his mind, but an essential part of moral reasoning. The relevance of a moral rule is the criterion of whether we are dealing with a case of right or wrong or some other moral or prudential situation. (iv) The last passage which we shall select to establish this interpretation of Mill (it would be easy to find more) is also a joint confirmation of propositions A and D, showing that our last was not an obiter dictum on which we have placed too much weight. In the chapter entitled On the connection between justice and utility, Mill has maintained that it is a distinguishing mark of a just act that it is one required by a specific rule or law, positive or moral, carrying also liability to penal sanctions. He then writes this important paragraph, which in view of its importance and the neglect that it has suffered must be quoted at length: The above is, I think, a true account, as far as it goes, of the origin and progressive growth of the idea of justice. But we must observe, that it contains, as yet, nothing to distinguish that obligation from moral obligation in general. For the truth is, that the idea of penal sanction, which is the essence of law, enters not only into the conception of injustice, but into that of any kind of wrong. We do not call anything wrong, unless we mean to imply that a person ought to be punished in some way or other for doing it; if not by law, by the opinion of
his fellow-creatures; if not by opinion, by the reproaches of his own conscience. This seems to be the real turning point of the distinction between morality and simple expediency. It is a part of the notion of Duty in every one of its forms, that a person may rightfully be compelled to fulfil it. Duty is a thing which may be exacted from a person, as one exacts a debt. Unless we think that it may be exacted from him, we do not call it his duty.... There are other things, on the contrary, which we wish that people should do, which we like or admire them for doing, perhaps dislike or despise them for not doing, but yet admit that they are not bound to do; it is not a case of moral obligation; we do not blame them, that is, we do not think that they are proper objects of punishment.... I think there is no doubt that this distinction lies at the bottom of the notions of right and wrong; that we call any conduct wrong, or employ, instead, some other term of dislike or disparagement, according as we think that the person ought, or ought not, to be punished for it; and we say, it would be right to do so and so, or merely that it would be desirable or laudable, according as we would wish to see the person whom it concerns, compelled, or only persuaded and exhorted, to act in that manner. How supporters of the received view have squared it with this passage I do not know; they do not mention it. If they have noticed it at all it is, presumably, regarded as an example of Mill s inconsistent eclectism. Mill here makes it quite clear that in his view right and wrong are derived from moral rules; in other cases where the ultimate end is no doubt affected appraisal of conduct must be made in other ways. For example, if one s own participation in the ultimate end is impaired without breach of moral law, it is imprudence or lack of self-respect, it is not wrong-doing. So much for the establishment of this interpretation of Mill, in a positive way, as regards Points A and D. We must now ask whether there is anything in Mill which is inconsistent with it and in favour of the received view. It is impossible to show positively that there is nothing in Mill which favours the received view against the interpretation here given, for it would require a complete review of everything that Mill says. We shall have to be content with examining two points which might be thought to tell in favour of the received view. (a) Mill says: The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to promote the reverse of Happiness. This seems to be the well-known sentence which is at the bottom of the received interpretation. Of course, it could be taken as
a loose and inaccurate statement of the received view, if the general argument required it. But note that strictly one can say that a certain action tends to produce a certain result only if one is speaking of type rather than tokenactions. Drinking alcohol may tend to promote exhilaration, but my drinking this particular glass either does or does not produce it. It seems, then, that Mill can well be interpreted here as regarding moral rules as forbidding or enjoining types of action, in fact as making the point that the right moral rules are the ones which promote the ultimate end (my proposition B), not as saying something contrary to proposition A. And this, or something like it, is the interpretation which consistency requires.... (b) Mill sometimes refers to moral rules as intermediate generalisations from the supreme principle, or as corollaries of it. These are probably the sort of phrases which lead people to think that they play a purely heuristic role in ethical thinking for Mill. As for the expression intermediate generalisation, Mill undoubtedly thinks that we should, and to some extent do, arrive at and improve our moral rules by such methods as observing that a certain type of action has had bad results of a social kind in such an overwhelming majority cases that it ought to be banned.... But this account of the genesis of moral rules does not require us to interpret them as being anything but rules when once made.... We have already been led in our examination of possible objections to proposition A to say something in defence of the view that Mill thought that a moral rule is shown to be correct by showing that the recognition of that rule promotes the ultimate end (proposition B). A little more may be added on this point, though it seems fairly obvious that if we are right in saying that the supreme principle is not to be evoked, in Mill s view, in the direct justification of particular right acts, it must thus come in in an indirect way in view of the importance that Mill attached to it. And it is hard to think what the indirect way is if not this.... The applicability of moral rules is, says Mill, the characteristic difference which marks off, not justice, but morality in general, from the remaining provinces of Expediency and Worthiness.