John Stuart Mill and Henry Sidgwick

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John Stuart Mill and Henry Sidgwick

• Marco E.L. Guidi
• Università di Pisa
• Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche

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• John Stuart Mill Utilitarianism (1861), chapter
  5
• The principle of utility is a mere form of words
  without rational signification, unless one
  persons happiness, supposed equal in degree
  ..., is counted for exactly as much as
  anothers. Those conditions being supplied,
  Benthams dictum, everybody to count for one,
  nobody for more than one, might be written under
  the principle of utility as an explanatory
  commentary
• Principle of impartiality or principle of equal
  consideration of interests (Singer 1993 21).

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John Stuart Mill Utilitarianism, ch. 5
Connection between Justice and Utility.
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Mills definition
That principle i.e. the GHP is a mere form of
words without rational signification, unless one
persons happiness, supposed equal in degree
(with the proper allowance made for kind), is
counted for exactly as much as anothers,

• anonymity or agent-neutrality
• equiproportionality
• proper allowance must be made for pleasures of
  different qualities.
• ? Other things being equal, those who enjoy
  higher pleasures must be more considered. But the
  question is just how far other things may be
  equal, as far as higher pleasures are defined as
  infinitely superior to lower pleasures from
  relative, the preference for those who feel
  higher pleasures risks then to become an absolute
  one.

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Mill adds that the principle of impartiality,
restated in utilitarian terms, necessarily implies
an equal claim to all the means of happiness,
except in so far as the inevitable conditions of
human life, and the general interest, in which
that of every individual is included, set limits
to the maxim and those limits ought to be
strictly construed.
Two principles or one? Mill objects to Spencer
that impartiality is implicit in the Greatest
Happiness Principle
It may be more correctly described as supposing
that equal amounts of happiness are equally
desirable, whether felt by the same or by
different persons. This, however, is not a
presupposition not a premise needful to support
the principle of utility, but the very principle
itself.
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• Henry Sidgwicks Methods of Ethics (1874)
• distribution of happiness distinguished from
  the distribution of the means of happiness.

2. Impartiality as an additional principle to GHP
It is evident that there may be many different
ways of distributing the same quantum of
happiness among the same number of persons ? at
least we have to supplement the principle of
seeking the greatest happiness on the whole by
some principle of Just or Right distribution of
this happiness ? Benthams formula.
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• Two principles or one? It may be contended that
  Sidgwicks conclusions strictly depend on the
  peculiar way in which he formulates the question.
  
• Let us assume that
• the total amount of happiness is given and can
  be differently distributed.
• the capacity for pleasure is equal in all
  persons.
• the number of individuals is also fixed.
• there is a certain amount of means of happiness
  to be distributed
• we take the Greatest Happiness Principle as a
  guide to action.
• Under these assumptions, only those amounts of
  total utility which maximise it are significant.
  Let us then consider one of these amounts.
• Ceteris paribus, any equilibrium total happiness
  is generated by redistributing the means of
  happiness until happiness is equally distributed.
  
• If the capacity for pleasure is the same in all
  individuals, it is then impossible to reach a
  maximum total utility that does not correspond to
  equal distribution of happiness.