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ZUK, PETER
2018.
Mill's Metaethical Non-cognitivism.
Utilitas,
Vol. 30,
Issue. 3,
p.
271.
Article contents
A Humean Constructivist Reading of J. S. Mill's Utilitarian Theory
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 August 2015
Abstract
There is a common view that the utilitarian theory of John Stuart Mill is morally realist and involves a strong kind of practical obligation. This article argues for two negative theses and a positive thesis. The negative theses are that Mill is not a moral realist and that he does not believe in certain kinds of obligations, those involving external reasons and those I call robust obligations, obligations with a particular, strong kind of practical authority. The positive thesis is that Mill's metaethical position can be interpreted as a Humean constructivist view, a metaethical view that is constructivist about value and entails the existence of practical reasons, but not external reasons or robust obligations. I argue that a Humean constructivist reading of Mill's theory is reasonable, and strengthens Mill's argument from desire for the value of happiness, an important but notoriously weak aspect of his theory.
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References
1 Korsgaard, Christine, The Sources of Normativity (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 51, 78CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Skorupski, John, John Stuart Mill (London, 1989), p. 289Google Scholar; West, H. R., Mill's Utilitarianism (London, 2007), p. 32Google Scholar; Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, ‘Consequentialism’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2014/entries/consequentialism/> (2014), sect. 6; David Brink, ‘Mill's Moral and Political Philosophy’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mill-moral-political/> (2008), sect. 2.12.
2 Whether subjectivism entails anti-realism is contentious; I discuss this in sect. II.1.
3 Street, Sharon, ‘What is Constructivism in Ethics and Metaethics?’, Philosophy Compass 5.5 (2010), pp. 363–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘Coming to Terms with Contingency: Humean Constructivism about Practical Reason’, Constructivism in Practical Philosophy, ed. J. Lenman and Y. Shemmer (Oxford, 2012), pp. 40–59. A very different theory also called Humean constructivism is put forward by Lenman, James in his ‘Humean Constructivism in Moral Theory’, Oxford Studies in Metaethics, vol. 5, ed. Shafer-Landau, R. (Oxford, 2010), pp. 175–94Google Scholar. There are less specific references to versions of the theory in Carla Bagnoli, ‘Moral Constructivism: A Phenomenological Argument’, Topoi 21.1–2 (2002), pp. 125–38, and in Dale Dorsey, Relativism and Constructivism: A Humean Response (forthcoming). In this article I am speaking only of Street's version of the theory, but will henceforward omit that specification for brevity.
4 Street, ‘What is Constructivism’, p. 367.
5 Street, ‘What is Constructivism’, p. 366.
6 Street, ‘What is Constructivism’, p. 367.
7 Street, ‘What is Constructivism’, p. 368.
8 Street, ‘What is Constructivism’, p. 369.
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21 Street, ‘Coming to Terms’, pp. 43–4. Street talks in terms of values (again, interchangeably with normative judgement and taking oneself to have a reason) rather than desires, as she believes the talk of desires tends to make the evaluative content of Humean views seem superficial and arbitrary. There is in traditional Humean talk no clear distinction between desires that are fleeting, of little importance in relation to our other desires, and associated with a narrow range of emotions, and those that are lifelong, of great importance in relation to our other desires, and associated with a wide range of affective attitudes. For Street, values thus exist on the same spectrum as desires, but are characterized by greater discipline, range and depth of associated emotional experience, and structural complexity. (For Street's account, see her What is Constructivism, pp. 42–4.)
22 Michael Ridge argues that Street's view is ‘a sophisticated species of metaethical subjectivism, rather than an entirely novel metaethical theory’. I tend to agree with Ridge, but believe that the sophistication of Humean constructivism is significant and useful. Michael Ridge, ‘Kantian Constructivism: Something Old, Something New’, Constructivism in Practical Philosophy, pp. 138–57, at 157.
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33 Mill, Utilitarianism, 1.5.
34 Mill, Utilitarianism, 1.5. The clarity of Utilitarianism is not helped by Mill's continued use of the word ‘proof’ in this sense.
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51 Mill, Utilitarianism, 3.5.
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77 Macleod, Was Mill a Noncognitivist, p. 215.
78 Macleod, Was Mill a Noncognitivist, p. 215; Mill, System, 6.12.5.
79 Mill, System, 6.12.5.
80 Macleod, Was Mill a Noncognitivist, p. 216.
81 Mill, Utilitarianism, 1.3.
82 Mill, Utilitarianism, 3.4.
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87 These three claims do not represent the whole of Mill's argument, omitting most importantly the aggregation premise – that as each person's happiness is a good to that person the general happiness is a good to the aggregate of persons (Mill, Utilitarianism, 4.3), which is not relevant to my purposes here. For formulations of the complete argument see Brink, Mill, sect. 2.11, and Quinton, Utilitarian Ethics, pp. 59–60.
88 I am leaving aside the question of whether the hedonic psychological claim is true.
89 Mill, Utilitarianism, 2.2.
90 Mill, Utilitarianism, 2.2.
91 Mill, Utilitarianism, 4.3.
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95 The problematic aggregation premise does not follow easily from this reading, but does not follow easily from any other reading I know of either. It is not possible to discuss possible solutions here, but a Humean constructivist reading doesn't hang on the aggregation premise; a Humean constructivist reading, like some other views, can hold that Mill is simply wrong that happiness is aggregative.
96 Mill, Utilitarianism, 4.1.
97 This view means that Mill's comment that desire is the sole evidence for desirability in the way that seeing something is the only evidence for visibility and hearing something the only evidence for audibility is a mistake if taken as an exact parallel (Mill, Utilitarianism, 4.3). But the analogy is commonly taken not to be intended as an exact parallel (Crisp, Mill on Utilitarianism, p. 75; West, Mill's Utilitarianism, p. 78).
98 Mill, Utilitarianism, 2.7.
99 Mill, Utilitarianism, 2.6.
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105 Mill, Utilitarianism, 4.11.
106 Mill, Utilitarianism, 4.11; my emphasis.
107 Mill, Utilitarianism, 4.11.
108 Smith, Moral Problem, p. 7; my emphasis.
109 Mill, Utilitarianism, 4.11; Mill's emphasis.
110 I am grateful to Simon Keller, James Lenman, Justin Sytsma, an anonymous referee and especially Richard Joyce for their comments on earlier drafts of this article.
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