Mill's Principle of Utility (22-Oct-2003)

Mill is not so ambitious as Aristotle: he says that he will leave as "an open question" the issue of how we decide what constitutes happiness, or pleasure. In the limited space available here, I will just address two points: Ramachandran makes a similar point about art which I think is relevant here:

Let's take kitsch art. instantly, if you're a sophisticated art critic or a person who buys art in auctions, you know this is kitsch. Now one cynical view would be what's kitsch for one person is high art for another. It's completely arbitrary. Well I don't agree because you all know that you can mature from kitsch to genuine art, but you can't slide backwards once you have.

see Reith lecture

Ramachandran's "sophisticated art critic" can not enjoy kitsch art, even though it may previously have given more pleasure than he now enjoys with sophisticated art.

The second point is this. There is an apocryphal exchange "what was the effect of the French revolution?" "It's too early to tell". I don't think Mill answers this: how long do we have to wait until we know whether the effect of an action was good or not? Christians believe that all things work to God's will, and that eventually it will be clear what the reason for all suffering has been. But in the meantime, it seems like there is an awful lot of short-term pain to be endured.