Phl 303
Lecture 10: Mill

I. Introduction

Son of James Mill, colleague of Jeremy Bentham
Bentham:

  1. Universal hedonism: everyone always seeks to maximize own pleasure, minimize own pain.
  2. The right public policy: greatest happiness for greatest number. Each person counts for one, and only one.
  3. Natural rights,natural law = "nonsense on stilts"
Rigorous education. Reading Greek at age 3.
Nervous breakdown at age 20.
Partial break with Benthamites. We should promote "higher pleasures", and the development of the "progressive powers of our human nature".
Platonic relationship with Harriet Taylor for 30 years. Moved toward feminism, socialism.

II. Three conceptions of "nature"

Mill offers two definitions:

  1. Nature is the totality of what does or can happen. Only impossible things are "contrary to nature".
  2. Nature includes everything except what is the result of intentional human action.
Natural vs. artificial. Everything we do is "contrary to nature".

Where does this leave the teleological conception of nature in Aristotle, Aquinas, Butler?
Human nature is defined by our final cause (eudaemonia).
Whatever prevents us from achieving our final cause is "contrary to (human) nature".

Mill considers this third conception when he considers the possibility that Nature = whatever fulfills God's intentions.

Notice the difference between Aquinas and Mill's imagined theologian on this point:

Aquinas proceeds in a bottom-up fashion:

  1. Science tells us that certain things have functions & final causes.
  2. Natural theology tells us that God created these organs and organisms.
  3. Hence, we can infer that it is (in some sense) God's intention that things should fulfill their natural functions and achieve their final ends.
The first step is excluded by the modern, Baconian conception of science (as concerned exclusively with material and efficient causes).

Mill's imagined theologian proceeds in a top-down fashion:

  1. Natural theology tells us that there is a benevelont Creator and governor of the cosmos.
  2. By carefully examining the universe, we are able to infer what God intentions are for specific parts.
  3. We can then call these Divinely intended uses the "natural functions" or "purposes" of things.
Mill throws doubt on step 2. Mill doesn't even seem to be aware of the possibility of the bottom-up approach. He assumes that Bacon's conception of science is the correct one.

Mill argues that God must be either evil or less than omnipotent (all-powerful).

  1. If God were omnipotent, then all of His intentions would be fulfilled.
  2. If God were good, He would intend that every creature enjoy perfect happiness.
  3. But, every creature does not enjoy perfect happiness.
Therefore, God is either not good or not omnipotent.

However, for the purposes of Mill's argument in this essay, we can reconstruct a better argument:

  1. Assume that Nature is defined as what fulfills God's intentions.
  2. If all of God's intentions are fulfilled, then nothing every happens that is contrary to nature.
  3. If not all of God's intentions are fulfilled, then His intentions are always inscrutable.
Therefore, either nothing happens that is contrary to nature, or whether or not something is contrary to nature is always inscrutable.
Either way, the concept "contrary to nature" is useless.

III. Mill vs. Rousseau

Rousseau's elevation of nature (in sense 2) and rejection of convention and artificiality is one of Mill's principal targets.
The "Noble Savage" idea.
Mill argues that uncivilized peoples are typically "pugnacious, dirty, irascible, cowardly and mendacious (untruthful)".

Untutored, uncivilized human nature is itself in need of reform:

  1. It includes many drives and impulses that are wholly bad -- drives toward cruelty and destruction.
  2. It is part of a system of nature that is amoral, in which the vast majority of animals live by tormenting and devouring other animals.
Mill reflects typical British sympathy for the suffering of animals. Also motivated Darwin to find an impersonal explanation for this "natural evil".

IV. The Essence of Moral Goodness

Return to Gnostic or Manichaean conception of world:
Actual, physical universe is the product of a bad god, or of the recalcitrance of matter.
Morality is defined by the character and intentions of a separate good god.

Mill: there is a finite, wholly beneficent God.
Nature (including human nature) does not yet reflect the values and intentions of God. He needs our help to reform the world.

Ethical dualism. Unbridgeable gap between what is and what ought to be (David Hume), or between facts and values.
"You cannot derive values from facts, or oughts from isses."

Raises the problem: why be moral?
What is the basis of the authority of the moral "ought"?

Mill fastens on a particular motive or feeling: compassion, sympathy, good-will.
Morality is based on the perfection and universalization of that feeling: impartial sympathy for all human beings.
Why should this feeling be given priority over others? What makes the moral point of view inescapable and overriding?
Nietzsche: Victorian moralism is merely a vestige of extinct faith.

V. Introduction to Darwin (1809-1882)

Wrote The Origin of Species 1836-1859.
Earlier evolutionary theories: Empedocles, Erasmus Darwin (CD's grandfather), Buffon (18th. c).
Used theory to produce scientific explanations of:

  1. Biogeography.
  2. Fossil sequences.
  3. Homologies.
Key influence: economist Thomas Malthus (1766-1839): fertility produces a "struggle for existence".
Darwin wrote before Mendel's discovery of the principles of genetics had become known. Much later -- addressed the issue of the evolution of humanity. The Descent of Man.

What are the implications of evolution for the concept of human nature?
What are the implications for morality?

Last updated October 27, 1998
Created by: Robert C. Koons
Send comments to: koons@la.utexas.edu

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