Dignity for Utility's Sake

The more we read and discuss Mill and his interestingly nuanced version of utilitarianism, the more I cannot help but wonder if he secretly (or subconsciously) harbored deontological views regarding the dignity and inherent value of all human beings.  Not only did he use words like dignity fairly often, but he also seemed to work very hard to bend and tweak the principle of utility so as to incorporate such ideas.  Both his attempt to distinguish higher pleasures from lower pleasures and his incorporation of rule utilitarianism seem to suggest that he wanted a utilitarian basis for ideas like dignity.  Even if it is (and it probably is) wrong to suggest that Mill was a closet Kantian, though, I find it interesting that we could almost take his brand of utilitarianism to an extreme, where we would find ourselves knee-deep in deontology.  For instance, if we were to use rule utilitarianism to suggest that, in the long run, utility would be maximized if all people respected the dignity of others, and treated all other people as ends in themselves, couldn’t we essentially justify deontology for utilitarian reasons?  The convenient byproduct of this would be that, since Kantian-type dignity has not actually been established, it gives us a way out of extreme scenarios such as runaway trolleys and Nazis at the door; scenarios in which a strict adherence to Kantian principles seems unreasonable.  This is no doubt full of holes, but I find it intriguing nonetheless.

In Defense of Higher and Lower Pleasures

            Although I acknowledge that Mill has serious issues in terms of clarity, and how exactly to distinguish between higher and lower pleasures, I do believe that he is making a very good and important point.  In attempting to save utilitarianism from those that criticize it as crude and degrading, Mill argues that it is actually those critics who “represent human nature in a degrading light” by supposing that human beings are “capable of no pleasures except those of which swine are capable” (Utilitarianism, p. 913).  He goes on to point out that “human beings have faculties more elevated than the animal appetites, and when once made conscious of them, do not regard anything as happiness which does not include their gratification” (p. 914).

            Despite its lack of exactness, I think we should bear with Mill on this one.  He is trying to establish that his idea of maximizing “pleasure” is much deeper and more profound than Bentham’s.  To illustrate this, perhaps it would better, rather than trying to compare Madonna to Beethoven or the WWE to Shakespeare, to instead focus on some of the greatest possible human pleasures.  For instance, couldn’t it be argued that having a sense of dignity and self-respect is one of the highest pleasures a person can feel?  Or, similarly, we all like to acknowledge (when refuting Kant) that doing the right thing or being kind makes us feel good about ourselves.  Further, most people would agree that these types of “pleasures” are qualitatively different than the pleasure we get from, say, eating chocolate.  And as a result, we would not trade the former for the latter, even if it meant less pleasure (of the lower kind) in the short run.  Of course, people do make these trade offs, but usually feel bad about it.  Take as another example, the difference between how a healthy lifestyle can genuinely make us feel good, and how eating really bad food can be temporarily pleasurable.  Essentially, Mill is saying that humans can “feel good” in ways that make physical gratification seem irrelevant, and a proper utilitarian calculus should take that into account.

            

The Necessity of Presupposing Freedom

On Tuesday there was a very interesting discussion regarding determinism and free will. Kant recognizes that if we are going to take the idea of cause and effect (or the laws of Newtonian physics) seriously, then we have to accept that everything in the observable universe, including ourselves, operates strictly according to these laws.  However, he does not let this stop him from suggesting that we must presuppose the Idea of freedom, which is to say that our will is capable of acting autonomously.  Professor Silliman suggested that this necessity is based on the fact that, if we were to accept determinism and the absence of free will, we would have to give up on the whole idea of morality.  However, in addition to that, I think that Kant is actually saying something even more basic.  I believe he is saying that, from a practical point of view, we have to regard ourselves as free.  As rational beings, we would not even be able to make sense of our daily experience without the Idea that we are actually making choices.  It is one thing to defend determinism on an intellectual level, but the actual experience of living life seems to require that we at least imagine ourselves as free.  This is why Kant feels that he does not even need to prove that freedom exists.  For him, “every being which cannot act otherwise than under the Idea of freedom is thereby really free in a practical respect” (Foundation for the Metaphysics of Morals, p. 883). 

The Softer Side of Kant?

In class on Tuesday, Professor Silliman proposed the possibility of reading Kant in a fairly (perhaps overly) generous manner, and I tend to like that interpretation.  In this way, we could understand his claims and examples as intentionally extreme in order to give greater clarity to his essential meaning.  For instance, when Kant suggests that the actions of a person who finds it easy and pleasurable to be kind do not have any real moral worth, as opposed to the actions of a miserable misanthrope who treats people kindly purely out of duty, it is easy to overreact and dismiss this as ridiculous.  Most people naturally find those that genuinely enjoy doing good to be more admirable and praiseworthy.  However, I believe that Kant is making a strong point, if you can see this simply as a technique to achieve clarity.  He is attempting to boil down a moral act to its essence.  And he is saying that the moral worth of the action is found in the rational choice (or will) to act in accordance with the moral law.  Feeling good about doing good is not a bad thing, but it is really just gravy, and should never be the reason for acting morally.  For Kant, morality is fundamentally rational, and the fact that moral action generally tends to make people feel good is simply a pleasant coincidence.