I freely admit I have never read Mill. Not yet, anyway. But, if he really did believe in utilitarianism and liberalism, we might ask if he was just another philosopher, talking two games simultaneously. Perhaps he saw no contradiction? Or, on the other hand, maybe this was his way of separating philosophers from 'the vulgar' (a common term, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which philosophers employed to differentiate between themselves and everyone else). Philosophy remains pretty 'full of itself', seems to me. There have been efforts to make it accessible to a wider audience, though these have not necessarily been convincing. We can't ask him now. Even if we could talk to Mr. Mill, I am not sure we would get a straight answer. It is fun to speculate, though.

I have just received a copy of Mill's Three Essays from my friendly library. Looking forward to reading this work. One essay is about the 'utility of religion'. Recently, I have been outlining talking points for an essay on magic and religion. The premise being fleshed out has to do with the origins of magic and religion. Several of these, I will contend, include: ignorance; fear; uncertainty; and the human knowledge of the fatality of existence (in other words: mortality). No other organism has to think about this---primary consciousness neither provides for nor requires such agonizing. My essay, I hope, will illustrate the mysterious nature and allure of magic, and the restorative, promissory nature of religion. At the root of both magic and religion we find superstition. This might be viewed as one of the origins mentioned above, but I see it as an effect. (I alluded to this project in another recent comment on a different post.) Don't yet know how Mill treated the 'utility' notion. I suspect he will have said some things about this, vis-a-vis, his support of utilitarianism. I will have to wait and see...stay tuned!

Can liberty and utilitarian strands of Mill's thought be reconciled?

It is hard to imagine ourselves as a collective organism when we think or philosophize; it seems a personal act. When politicians refer to America, they most often refer to their America. When we refer to our thought, we think of them as our own. However, much of my thought is derived from John Stuart Mill, and I didn't realize this affinity until I read it and found him speaking to my core beliefs.

But lately, my core beliefs have been questioned, and I wonder what Mill would think of our times and events. Pornography, money in politics, and information as a commodity would repulse Mill from his thesis On Liberty. I doubt he could have come to his ideas in our current reality.

David, Ken, and John give a fair accounting of the conflict in Mill's work.

Sexual freedom for one will always imply sexual repression for another. The legalization of drugs will cripple the lives of those prone to addiction. Refusing vaccinations will kill the unvaccinated and vaccinated alike.

Expanding our concept of identity to others, both inside and outside our body in a rule-based utilitarian manner allows our embodied actions to serve our interests without restricting others. Our blood, personal information, and emotional lives are intertwined with others. Ridding ourselves of identifying with our bodies, acts and emotions is one step in a path to reconciling Mills' conundrum. It's not an easy path to travel nor a truthful one in sentiment, but it is a good path and a good life, in the end.

I had a brain fart this morning, concerning the enigma of J.S. Mill. Is it reasonable to assume and/or believe well-to-do people read? I think so, although I have only one relative ( by marriage) who meets the criteria of well-to-do. He is the spouse of my wife's aunt. They raised children; travelled some and he retired from a successful career. I imagine he reads but do not know what. As with other self-made men and women, he is a private person. Here is where this is going: it occurs to me that wealthier people might enjoy reading Mill. They have access to 'the good life'. That there is contradiction in the foundations of his philosophy might not occur to them---whether they are utilitarian, liberal or indeterminate. Perhaps this is a clue to resolving the enigma. If Mill saw no contradiction, only attending circumstances, he would have had no qualms about the matter.

It has often been noticed that the well-off or wealthy don't talk about money. This sometimes annoys those who lack the luxury. But, as a practical matter, they should not trouble themselves. Another's economic status is not their business.

Can utilitarianism work in converse form? Instead of converting happiness-quality into the quantity of its bearers, could one convert the quality of its bearers into happiness-quantity?

Assuming one understands Mill in the context of the liberal tradition of the European Enlightenment, that the greatest good for human beings is also the most rational one, and that this rational goal is happiness, both individually and collectively in aggregate, then no argument needs to be made against a claim that happiness is not the most rational goal, and that makes the primary aim of social analysis to discover the most rational means to achieve what is already accepted by his readers as uncontroversial.

Utility is the name given to whatever contributes to happiness (according to Mill). As a teleological principle, the value of its use is determined by its consequence. The direct consequence is pleasure or pain, and because Mill following Bentham describes happiness as a sum of pleasures broadly understood, its indirect consequence is happiness where instantiation of the principle of utility generates sufficiently more pleasurable consequences than unpleasant. This gets the theory into trouble when, as noted above, the same pleasure-quality might occur under differing relevant conditions which are overlooked in pleasure-volume calculations. One way out is suggested in the book "Utilitarianism", where pleasures whose net sum generates happiness must be conditioned by choice, so that any which are not preceded by a period of deliberation are excluded. This distinguishes between happiness and mere satisfaction, where the latter can be seen as evidence of one's immediate needs or momentary desires being met, and the former as only the higher pleasures which produce the phenomenon. Conditioning happiness-producing pleasure by prior deliberation has the additional benefit of confirming that the range of alternatives have been viewed first, prior to its pursuit. To calculate its quantity in a given context could not then be by the evidence of its occurrence, but by the reasons for its being chosen. In the above example, only the English Gentleman would have a good reason for his choice of pleasure, whereas the Factory worker's would be a mere bi-product of satisfying a basic need, and thus not factor into the calculation, even if in evidentiary terms they might be of equal quality. Judged on a normative criterion for pleasure-choice, then, the event of a pleasure's occurrence can not be confirmed by any evidence for its being produced. Prior knowledge of its alternates in the choice of which pleasure will occur might leave a clear footprint, but since the range of alternatives is different in each case, no standard for what it would look like can be supplied. Rather, one has to presuppose what kind of pleasures could not occur without prior deliberation, in order to determine their quantitative measure. The largest quantity of happiness for the most people has to therefore rely on an indemonstrable, axiomatically assumed concept of what humans are or human nature is. By a qualitative assumption, then, the utility of an action can in aggregate be quantitatively determined within a reliable measure of probability. The diversity of conditions across individuals under which the range of alternatives is presented in pleasure-choice deliberation, however, might be so distinct as to be incomparable, yet in terms of utility be of equal value as to the calculation of the greatest number of those to whom it occurs. For an accurate count, it seems that prior conditions for roughly the same range of alternate pleasures itself would have to be shared (even if the chosen ones can be different in each case), in addition to the criterion of what determines it as a precondition for the utilitarian value of any given pleasure. In Victorian society that would have been a difficult trick, but Mill's central goal would seem to suggest its inexorable eventuality if the calculation and therefore scientific promotion of the quantity of happiness a society possesses can be undertaken.

One error I suppose would be Aristotle's heliocentrism, which seems to be decisively disproven. But what about the claim Aristotle makes in the Metaphysics at 980a22? Could a counter-example to it be found in your own body of work?