Did J S Mill really claim that violations of free trade have nothing to do with liberty?

‘Again, trade is a social act. Whoever undertakes to sell any description of goods to the public, does what affects the interests of other persons, and of society in general; and thus his conduct, in principle, comes within the jurisdiction of society’ … . The ‘so-called doctrine of Free Trade … rests on grounds different from, though equally solid with, the principle of liberty … . Restrictions on trade, or on production for purposes of trade, are indeed restraints; and all restraints qua restraint, is an evil: but the restraints in question affect only that part of conduct which society is competent to restrain, and are wrong solely because they do not really produce the results which it is desired to produce by them.’ J S Mill, ‘On Liberty’, 1859, Ch. 5

This passage has puzzled me since I was a young man. It seems to me that individual liberty is obviously violated when governments intervene in trade. If a government imposes a tax on a good for the purposes of assisting the producers of a close substitute, this must be just as much an infringement of the liberty of consumers as when it imposes a sin tax on a good to discourage consumers from purchasing that good.

However, it is now clearer to me what Mill was trying to say. The first key to the puzzle is that Mill refers to ‘the principle of individual liberty’ rather than just ‘individual liberty’. What Mill means by the principle of individual liberty is explained a couple of paragraphs earlier as the maxim ‘that the individual is not accountable to society for his actions, in so far as these concern the interests of no person but himself’. According to that view, the individual should be accountable to society for ‘actions that are prejudicial to the interests of others’.

Friedrich Hayek and others have noted that the distinction that Mill sought to make between actions that affect the acting person and actions that affect others is not very useful because there is hardly any action that may not conceivably affect others in some way. According to Hayek the relevant issue is whether it is reasonable for the affected persons to expect legal protection from the action concerned (‘Constitution of Liberty’, 1960, p 145).

Now, in the paragraph immediately prior to his discussion of international trade, Mill acknowledges that damage to the interests of others does not necessarily justify the interference of society. In this context he discussed the views of society toward various forms of contest in which people who succeed benefit ‘from the loss of others’. He notes: ‘society admits no right, either legal or moral, in the disappointed competitors to immunity from this kind of suffering’.

The second key to the puzzle is that in the passage quoted above Mill suggests that all restraints are evil. If Mill is referring to coercion, as seems likely, then it seems to me that at this point he is close to recognizing the merits of the definition of liberty that Hayek later adopted. Hayek defined liberty as ‘a state in which coercion of some by others is reduced as much as possible in society’ (‘Constitution of Liberty’, p 11). This definition meets Mill’s desire to acknowledge that restraints are necessary to protect citizens from force and fraud, and may be appropriate under some other circumstances where individual conduct adversely affects the interests of others.

Mill seems to have been attempting to establish that the attitude of society toward individual conduct should depend on where it lies on a spectrum. At one end of the spectrum, where conduct affects only the individual actor, other people have no right to intervene. At the other end, force and fraud should obviously be illegal. At other points on the spectrum the effects of individual conduct on the welfare of society are ‘open to discussion’. (Mill uses these words are used in the introductory paragraphs of Ch. IV.)

In asserting that the ‘doctrine’ of free trade rests on equally solid ground to ‘the principle of liberty’ Mill is clearly implying that in our discussion of trade there should be a strong presumption that free trade enhances the general welfare of society. It follows that he must believe that government intervention in trade is generally an unwarranted form of coercion. That seems to me to be just another way of saying that such intervention is generally an unwarranted interference with individual liberty.

How can we ensure that parliaments are representative and governments are accountable?

An update of my views on the topic has now been published by "On Line Opinion":



‘In a really equal democracy, every or any section would be represented, not disproportionately, but proportionately. A majority of the electors would always have a majority of the representatives; but a minority of the electors would always have a minority of the representatives. Man for man they would be as fully represented as the majority. Unless they are, there is not equal government, but a government of inequality and privilege: one part of the people rule over the rest: there is a part whose fair and equal share of influence in the representation is withheld from them; contrary to all just government, but, above all, contrary to the principle of democracy, which professes equality as its very root and foundation’ (J S Mill, Representative Government, Chapter 7, 1861).

Some famous person has probably written in support of strong executive government which dominates parliament and is held in check only by periodical elections (as well as an independent judiciary etc) but I don’t know where to find an appropriate quote. Those who have commented on such a system have tended to refer to it disparagingly as an elective dictatorship. However, I think it is possible to defend a system that tends to deliver the governing party a substantial majority of seats on the grounds that it results in more accountable government than a proportional system in which no party has a clear majority. A government that dominates parliament cannot claim that it has not implemented its promises to the electorate because of obstruction by other parties. It has to wear the electoral consequences of its own actions.

The point I am trying to make is that while proportional representation might be a desirable characteristic of a parliament, it is undesirable to have a system of government in which parties go to the polls to seek endorsement of their policies and then, after the election, enter into negotiations to decide what policies the temporary coalition of parties forming the government will actually seek to implement. Parties forming such temporary coalitions tend to blame each other for poor outcomes and electors find it hard to tell who is responsible for what.

Various compromises between proportional representation and elective dictatorship are possible. One possibility is the reinforced proportional representation system used in Greece under which the party which wins the largest number of seats in parliament is allocated additional seats so that it more likely to be able to form a majority in its own right. Leaving aside the obvious point that it is difficult to envisage that Greece’s recent economic performance could have been much worse without this reinforcement of proportional representation, an arbitrary adjustment to numbers of seats seems somewhat inelegant (if not undemocratic).

Another possibility is to have a bi-cameral system with the government being formed in the lower house, elected on the basis of a system that usually produces workable majorities for a governing party or stable coalition (e.g. single member electorates) and an upper house, acting as a house of review, elected using proportional representation. As recent events in the UK show, single member electorates cannot always ensure that the party winning the largest number of votes is able to govern by itself (or even to form part of the government for that matter). But single member electorates have a reasonable track record in producing stable and accountable governments. This system has the added advantage of allowing voters to vote for a person to represent their locality rather than for a party (or party list).

Luke Malpass and Oliver Marc Hartwich have recently advocated a bi-cameral system, such as I have just described, to replace the single chamber proportional representation system in New Zealand (CIS Policy Monograph 109). This is also the system that we have in Australia.

So, does the Australian system provide the best possible compromise between a representative parliament and an accountable government? I don’t think so, because it gives too much power to the upper house. The Australian Constitution contains a sensible procedure to resolve a deadlock between the upper and lower houses of parliament – a joint meeting of both houses – but joint sittings can occur only after a double-dissolution election.

I think the requirement for an election to resolve deadlocks between the two houses of parliament tends to work against accountable government because it enables governments to blame obstruction in the Senate for failure to implement policies. Before going down the double-dissolution path governments have to consider the possibility that they will lose such elections or be returned to power with more obstructive upper houses than they had before. Although there are half a dozen occasions in Australian history when governments have brought on double-dissolution elections, they have been defeated on about half those occasions. A joint sitting of both houses of parliament has occurred on only one occasion.

Given the difficulty of amending the Australian Constitution it seems that we will have to continue to live with the adverse consequences for government accountability of the requirement for elections to resolve deadlocks. We can, however, take some solace from the fact that the election requirement has the virtue of providing a test of the extent to which governments have the courage of their convictions. The value of such a test has recently been highlighted by the current government’s decision not to trigger a double-dissolution election on the bill to establish a carbon emissions trading system in Australia.

Postscript 1:
After reading a post by Tim Harford I have been reminded of Kenneth Arrow's impossibility theorem. Rather than wondering where to find a quote from some famous person supporting elective dictatorship I could have quoted Kenneth Arrow to the effect that whatever electoral system you use you will always end up with some form of dictatorship (although some forms of dictatorship are worse than others). The inference that I think should be drawn from Arrow's impossibility theorem is that markets are usually better than politics in producing outcomes that are beneficial for everyone.

Postscript 2:
Joseph Schumpeter qualifies as a famous person who emphasized the value of strong executive government. In Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942) he wrote: 

"It is in fact obvious not only that proportional representation will offer opportunities for all sorts of idiosyncrasies to assert themselves but also that it may prevent democracy from producing efficient governments and thus prove a danger in times of stress. But before concluding that democracy becomes unworkable if its principle is carried out consistently, it is just as well to ask ourselves whether this principle really implies proportional representation. As a matter of fact it does not. If acceptance of leadership is the true function of the electorate's vote, the case for proportional representation collapses because its premises are no longer binding. The principle of democracy then merely means that the reins of government should be handed to those who command more support than do any of the competing individuals or teams".

I wrote more about Schumpeter's views of democracy here.

Would an hedonimeter help us to choose between push-pin and poetry?

There seems to be enduring interest in the post, ‘Is push-pin as good as poetry’, that I wrote a few years ago. That post was about John Stuart Mill’s rejection of Jeremy Bentham’s assertion that if the game of push-pin gives more pleasure than poetry then it is more valuable than poetry. Mill argued that some pleasures are superior to others and that it is possible for people to become addicted to inferior pleasures. I followed up on the question of whether push-pin might be addictive in a subsequent post.


A logical place to begin this post would be to define an hedonimeter. Before I do that, however, I want to make the point that Mill’s thoughts about higher and lower pleasures seem to have been a side-track that did not lead anywhere in the subsequent development of economics. A few years after publication of Mill’s essay on utilitarianism, the famous economist, William Stanley Jevons, came down strongly in favour of Bentham’s view of utility. According to Jevons:

‘Whatever can produce pleasure or prevent pain may possess utility. ... The food which prevents the pangs of hunger, the clothes which fend off the cold of winter, possess incontestable utility; but we must beware of restricting the meaning of the word by any moral considerations. Anything which an individual is found to desire and to labour for must be assumed to possess for him utility. In the science of Economics we treat men not as they ought to be, but as they are’ (‘The Theory of Political Economy’, 1871, III.2).

Francis Edgeworth, who came with the idea of an hedonimeter, was a strong supporter of Jevons’ view that utility has two relevant dimensions: intensity and time. Edgeworth suggested that we:

‘...imagine an ideally perfect instrument, a psychophysical machine, continually registering the height of pleasure experienced by an individual ... From moment to moment the hedonimeter varies; the delicate index now flickering with the flutter of the passions, now steadied by intellectual activity, low sunk whole hours in the neighbourhood of zero, or momentarily springing up towards infinity’ (‘Mathematical Physics’, 1881).

I think that description tells us, in today’s language, that an hedonimeter might be a sexy idea. It will probably be a long time before you can buy an hedonimeter at your local supermarket but research indicates that levels of various chemicals (e.g. cortisol) in the body and activity in various parts of the brain are related to pleasant and unpleasant experiences. It seems likely that if we were able to conduct surveys using hedonimeters – perhaps one day it might be possible to carry one around like a pedometer – they would give similar results to those obtained by Daniel Kahneman and Alan Krueger using evaluated time use (ETU) techniques. In surveys using ETU techniques respondents are asked to account for time spent on various activities on the preceding day and to rate their feelings for each activity in terms of a range of affective categories e.g. happy, worried/ anxious or angry/hostile. The ETU data suggests that people tend to get most pleasure from sex and socializing and least pleasure from working and commuting.

If anyone was really interested in comparing the pleasures people obtain from push-pin and poetry it is possible to imagine conducting an experiment in which participants played push-pin and attended poetry readings and rated their experiences. If you were concerned that such information might not be relevant to you personally, you might be able to get someone to design an appropriate experiment to enable you to rate and record your emotions during the two experiences.

How would you feel about using the results of an ETU exercise (or an hedonimeter) to decide something that may actually be important to you – for example, whether to play sport A or B or have a holiday at location X or Y - on the basis of the balance of emotions that you have experienced in those activities in the past? I don’t know about you, but I would want to see whether the hedonimeter results are consistent with my memories of the different experiences before I decided whether to use them.

A recent presentation by Daniel Kahneman (on TED) suggests that what my reflective self might feel about my memories of the experiences that I want to choose between could differ substantially from the emotions that my experiencing self has actually felt (or what an accurate hedonimeter might record).

Would you ignore the evidence of an hedonimeter if it conflicted with your memories of the experience? Would you ignore suggestions from your spouse or a friend that your memories of a holiday might be biased by the way you felt about something that happened at the end? If you had a reliable hedonimeter to record your memory of past pleasures would you give less weight to consideration of what experiences it is good to have (or issues such as those raised by J S Mill about the superiority and inferiority of different pleasures) in making your choices? Why do humans have selective memories? Do our selective memories serve a useful function from an evolutionary perspective?
Winton Bates

Postscript 1:
In retrospect I would like to add some further questions: Do the reasons why human have selective memories make any difference to the way you and I should live our lives? If I am told that there are good evolutionary reasons why I should remember how an experience ended (e.g. because it was important to the survival of my ancestors to remember which of their hunting expeditions were successful and unsuccessful) is this relevant to the decisions I should make today?
I am beginning to think that while the evolutionary reasons for cognitive bias may be interesting they may not be particularly relevant to our current decision-making.

Postscript 2:
I obviously became sidetracked while attempting to answer this question. My answer is that whether the hedonimeter would help us to make the choice depends on the criterion we think is most appropriate. If the criterion is pleasure, the hedonimeter might help. If the criterion is what is good for us, then pleasure is only factor that we would take into account and an accurate measure of pleasure might not be particularly useful. We might consider that it is better for us to spend Thursday evenings reading poetry rather than playing pushpin even though we might get more pleasure from playing pushpin.

Why should we view individual rights as metanormative principles?

I first came across the concept of a metanormative principle when I read ‘Norms of Liberty’ (2005) by Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl. These authors argue that individual rights are metanormative principles that provide a solution to the problem of finding a political/legal order that will in principle not require that the flourishing of any person or group be given structural preference over others (p 78). They point out that individual rights are a unique ethical concept that differs from other ethical concepts – individual rights are not needed to know the nature of virtue or our obligations to others but are needed to enable people to flourish in different ways, according to their own values, without coming into conflict with each other. They suggest that an ethics that conceives of human flourishing as the ultimate standard should uphold a political legal order that sees protection of individual liberty as its chief aim (p.85). (There is an earlier post discussing these views here.)


It seems to me that Friedrich Hayek advanced a metanormative argument for individual rights similar to that advanced by Rasmussen and Den Uyl. Hayek argued that restriction of the use of the coercive powers of the state to enforcement of the negative rules of just conduct (prohibition of actions harming others) makes it possible for individuals and groups to live in peace without agreeing on common ends. He also presented a slightly different metanormative argument for liberty - that it makes possible a society in which mutually beneficial exchanges enable people to help each other to achieve their individual ends without agreeing on what those ends should be. This means that people ‘while following their own interests, whether wholly egotistical or highly altruistic, will further the aims of many others’ (Law, legislation and liberty, V2, 1982, p 110). I think Robert Sugden refers to that line of argument as ‘opportunity as mutual advantage’ (see below).

Robert Nozick’s view of the ethics of respect also seems to me to be a metanormative argument for recognition of individual rights. Nozick argues that the ethics of respect – mandating respect for the life and autonomy of others - is a foundation upon which higher layers of ethics may grow. For example, respect may grow into responsiveness to needs of others, which mandates acting in a way that is responsive to their value, enhancing and supporting it and enabling it to flourish (‘Invariances’, 2001, p 280).

J S Mill presented a metanormative argument in favour of individual rights when he suggested that the experimentation of different individuals and groups in living as seems best to themselves has value for society as a whole:

“It will not be denied by anybody, that originality is a valuable element in human affairs. There is always need of persons not only to discover new truths, and point out when what were once truths are true no longer, but also to commence new practices, and set the example of more enlightened conduct, and better taste and sense in human life” (“On Liberty”, Ch 3).

Mill also endorsed the argument that individuals are the best judges of their own interests. Viewed as an assertion about matters of fact this is not always correct. But it seems to me that Mill presents it as a metanormative argument for individual rights. He wrote:

‘... neither one person, nor any number of persons, is warranted in saying to another human creature of ripe years, that he shall not do with his life for his own benefit what he chooses to do with it. He is the person most interested in his own well-being, the interest which any other person, except in cases of strong personal attachment, can have in it, is trifling, compared with that which he himself has; the interest which society has in him individually (except as to his conduct to others) is fractional, and altogether indirect: while, with respect to his own feelings and circumstances, the most ordinary man or woman has means of knowledge immeasurably surpassing those that can be possessed by any one else’ (‘On Liberty, Ch 4).

A problem with this line of argument is that it is possible for any of us to claim that other people would benefit from being prevented from engaging in what we think is foolish behaviour because they do not seem to be sufficiently interested or knowledgeable about the effects of that behaviour on their well-being. Robert Sugden makes the point that when people make this argument they are imagining that ‘whoever designs the regulations will share their own sense of what is foolish, rather than belonging to the party of fools’.

Sugden suggests that from each person’s own perspective of what is good for herself she is much more likely to see herself as benefiting from opportunities to do as she likes (while accepting responsibility for her actions). From each person’s perspective on what is good for her she is also likely to see herself as benefiting from the opportunities that that other people have to do as they like - because that includes opportunities for actions that will benefit her. The opportunities available to each individual provides mutual advantages for themselves and others, including strangers with whom they trade on the basis of strict reciprocity. (See: Robert Sugden, ‘Opportunity as mutual advantage’, Economics and Philosophy, 26, 2010).

It seems to me that Sugden’s argument for opportunity to be viewed as mutual advantage is a strong metanormative argument in favour of individual rights and free trade. Since opportunity may also be viewed as potential for flourishing the concept of opportunity as mutual advantage also provides a link between freedom and individual flourishing.

Does the concept of national character make sense?

In my last post I noted that J S Mill argued that Jeremy Bentham did not qualify as a ‘true teacher of social arrangements’ because he was unable to point out how ‘national character’ ... ‘can be improved, and how it has been made what it is’.


It is clear that Mill saw national character as fundamental to human flourishing: ‘That which alone causes any material interests to exist, which alone enables any body of human beings to exist as a society, is national character: that it is, which causes one nation to succeed in what it attempts, another to fail; one nation to understand and aspire to elevated things, another to grovel in mean ones; which makes the greatness of one nation lasting, and dooms another to early and rapid decay’ (Bentham, 1838).

What is national character? A few years earlier, Mill had provided a sketchy outline of factors influencing national character in the context of considering the limitations of Bentham’s approach. He wrote: ‘A theory, therefore, which considers little in an action besides that action’s own consequences, will generally be sufficient to serve the purposes of a philosophy of legislation. Such a philosophy will be most apt to fail in the consideration of the greater social questions—the theory of organic institutions and general forms of polity; for those (unlike the details of legislation) to be duly estimated, must be viewed as the great instruments of forming the national character; of carrying forward the members of the community towards perfection, or preserving them from degeneracy’ (Remarks on Bentham’s philosophy, 1833).

What Mill had in mind in writing about national character seems to involve, among other things, what Douglass North has referred to as informal institutions or informal constraints. North’s institutional economics does not attempt to provide the explanation of national character that Mill criticized Bentham for not providing. By focusing explicitly on institutions, however, North has been able to make substantial advances towards a framework for analysis of social progress.

North writes: ‘In our daily interaction with others, whether within the family, in external social relations, or in business activities, the governing structure is overwhelmingly defined by codes of conduct, norms of behavior, and conventions’ (‘Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance’, 1990: 36). He has explained the influence of such informal institutions on economic performance in the following terms: ‘Effective traditions of hard work, honesty and integrity simply lower the cost of transacting and make possible complex productive exchange. Such traditions are always reinforced by ideologies that undergird those attitudes’ (p 138).

Where do these ideologies come from? North suggests that our subjective perceptions ‘are continually being filtered through existing (culturally determined) mental constructs’. (p.183). At the level of the individual, ideological change can occur in a variety of ways. For example, it can occur as a consequence of changes in economic conditions that cause people to change their mental models of how the world works, changes in communications costs that influence how easily people can share their values and perceptions with others, and through institutional changes that influence the cost of expressing convictions that are at variance with conventional wisdom.

It seems to me that North provides a useful framework in which to consider the concerns that Mill expressed about mass media leading to the ‘growing insignificance of the individual in the mass’ which ‘corrupts the very foundation on the improvement of public opinion itself’ (See: Are J S Mill’s view about progress still relevant today?). Mill was concerned that the growth of the mass media would result in the weakening of ‘the influence of the more cultivated few over the many’. Paradoxically, those whom Mill would have viewed as ‘cultivated’ - people like himself - subsequently had a strong influence on public opinion on issues such as slavery and the emancipation of women. Nevertheless, I doubt whether Mill would consider that there has been much improvement in ‘national character’ since his time.

Mill’s approach seems quaint today because he was asserting that the views of a particular class of educated people should be considered to be cultivated and set above those of others. In my view he was right to recognize that some opinions deserve more respect than others but it is up to individual members of the public to decide for themselves whose views deserve respect.

Even if the public could be confident that opinions of experts are founded on a basic respect for truth there would remain the huge problem in choosing between conflicting expert opinions on complex topical issues. How can differing expert views be evaluated in a context which informs public opinion and discourages intervention by those seeking to confuse issues for economic or political advantage? How can the informal rules of the game of public discussion of topical issues be improved to encourage the development of public attitudes on public policy issues that are consistent with widely-accepted ethical values? Can the informal rules be changed so that overt populism is exposed in the media as disrespect for the intelligence of the public rather than viewed as clever politics? What changes in the rules of the game would encourage Australia's political leaders to make thoughtful contributions rather than presenting inane gibberish under headings designed to convey the impression that they are preparing for challenges of the future?

How much was J S Mill's view of progress influenced by personal experience?

In my last post I suggested that while J S Mill assisted in the triumph of the idea of progress, he was concerned that public opinion was becoming more powerful without becoming much more wise. One of the remedies he suggested in the article ‘Civilisation’, published when he was about 30 years of age (1836) was for universities to become dedicated to inspiring an intense love of truth.


The mental crisis that Mill suffered when 20 years old seems to have played an important role in the subsequent development of his views, including his views about progress. Mill recounts in his autobiography that the crisis involved, among other things, the sudden realization that he would not feel happy if all the ‘changes in institutions and opinions’ that he had been looking forward to were to be effected instantly.

The explanations that have been put forward for this crisis include depression and boredom. I think Richard Reeves is probably on the right track, however, in suggesting that Mill ‘suddenly saw the hollowness of the philosophical religion to which he had subscribed’ (‘John Stuart Mill, Victorian Firebrand: 63). This philosophical religion was Benthamite utilitarianism. It seems likely that Mill would not have been filled with joy about the prospect of instantaneous implementation of the reforms he had been advocating because he perceived that they would have done little to improve ‘national character’. In his essay, ‘Bentham’ (1838) Mill argued that Bentham did not qualify as a ‘true teacher of social arrangements’ because he was unable to point out how ‘national character’ ... ‘can be improved, and how it has been made what it is’. Mill suggested that Bentham’s philosophy ‘can teach the means of regulating the merely business part of the social arrangements’, but Bentham ‘committed the mistake of supposing that the business part of human affairs was the whole of them’.

Elijah Millgram has drawn attention to another aspect of Mill’s mental crisis that seems to have influenced the subsequent development of his views (here). Mill ascribed his recovery to, among other things, thinking his way through what we now call the problem of determinism. Millgram makes a strong case that Mill was suffering from a sense of moral unfreedom.

In ‘A System of Logic’ (1843) Mill wrote: ‘Now, a necessitarian, believing that our actions follow from our characters, and that our characters follow from our organization, our education, and our circumstances, is apt to be, with more or less of consciousness on his part, a fatalist as to his own actions, and to believe that his nature is such, or that his education and circumstances have so moulded his character, that nothing can now prevent him from feeling and acting in a particular way, or at least that no effort of his own can hinder it. ... But this is a grand error. He has, to a certain extent, a power to alter his character. ... His character is formed by his circumstances (including among these his particular organization); but his own desire to mould it in a particular way, is one of those circumstances, and by no means one of the least influential. We cannot, indeed, directly will to be different from what we are. But neither did those who are supposed to have formed our characters, directly will that we should be what we are. Their will had no direct power except over their own actions. If they could place us under the influence of certain circumstances, we, in like manner, can place ourselves under the influence of other circumstances. We are exactly as capable of making our own character, if we will, as others are of making it for us’ (Book VI, Ch. II).

Mill’s recovery may have been helped by realization that his upbringing had not condemned him to be an apostle of Benthamite utilitarianism, irrespective of whether or not that was what he wanted to be.

In my last post I note that Mill castigated the English universities for acting as though the object of education was to inculcate the teacher’s own opinions in order to produce disciples rather than thinkers or inquirers. I wonder whether thoughts about his father’s inculcation of Benthamite utilitarianism in Mill’s own education would have passed through his mind when he wrote that.

One way or another Mill managed to form a strong view about the purpose of education. This passage from ‘Civilization’ is worth quoting more than once: ‘The very corner-stone of an education intended to form great minds, must be the recognition of the principle, that the object is to call forth the greatest possible quantity of intellectual power, and to inspire the intensest love of truth: and this without a particle of regard to the results to which the exercise of that power may lead, even though it should conduct the pupil to opinions diametrically opposite to those of his teachers’.

Are J S Mill's views about progress still relevant today?

John Stuart Mill assisted in the triumph of the idea of progress in the 19th Century but he also had concerns about the future that still seem relevant today. Richard Reeves comments: ‘Mill was not a knee-jerk critic of what Ruskin dismissed as the “steam whistle society”, but nor was he a blind advocate of industrialization for its own sake. As an avid botanist and walker, he was acutely sensitive to what would today be called environmental concerns’ (‘John Stuart Mill, Victorian Firebrand’: 233).


I will focus here on the views on progress and, in particular, concerns about public opinion that Mill put forward in ‘Civilisation’, published in 1836, when he was about 30 years old.

Mill identified three characteristics of civilisation:
• the development of commerce, manufactures and agriculture;
• people acting together for common purposes in large organisations; and
• peace being maintained within society through arrangements for protecting the person and property of members.
He suggests: ‘Wherever there has arisen sufficient knowledge of the arts of life, and sufficient security of property and person, to render the progressive increase of wealth and population possible, the community becomes and continues progressive in all the elements which we have just enumerated’.

Mill goes on to argue that the most remarkable consequence of advancing civilization is ‘that power passes more and more from individuals, and small knots of individuals, to masses: that the importance of the masses becomes constantly greater, that of individuals less’. He gives several reasons: economic growth results in the growth of a middle class and the dispersion of knowledge; the development of habits of cooperation and discipline in large organizations enable development of associations of different kinds, including benefit societies and trades unions; and improved communications through newspapers that enable people to learn that others feel as they feel.

Mill argued that political reform would follow inevitably: ‘The triumph of democracy, or, in other words, of the government of public opinion, does not depend upon the opinion of any individual or set of individuals that it ought to triumph, but upon the natural laws of the progress of wealth, upon the diffusion of reading, and the increase of the facilities of human intercourse’.

Mill’s concern about the growth in power of public opinion was that the individual would become lost in the crowd; although the individual depends more and more on opinion (reputation) he is apt to depend less and less upon the well-grounded opinions of those who know him. Mill suggested that with the growth in power of public opinion ‘arts for attracting public attention formed a necessary part of the qualifications even of the deserving’. His main concern was that ‘growing insignificance of the individual in the mass’ ... ‘corrupts the very foundation on the improvement of public opinion itself; it corrupts public teaching; it weakens the influence of the more cultivated few over the many’.

One for the remedies that Mill proposed was ‘national institutions of education, and forms of polity, calculated to invigorate the individual character. Mill then proceeded to castigate the English universities for acting as though the object of education was to inculcate the teacher’s own opinions in order to produce disciples rather than thinkers or inquirers. Mill wrote: ‘The very corner-stone of an education intended to form great minds, must be the recognition of the principle, that the object is to call forth the greatest possible quantity of intellectual power, and to inspire the intensest love of truth: and this without a particle of regard to the results to which the exercise of that power may lead, even though it should conduct the pupil to opinions diametrically opposite to those of his teachers’.

Massive changes have occurred in university education over the last 174 years, some of which correspond to Mill’s suggestions. Does this mean that Mill’s views on university education are now of only historical relevance? Do our universities now inspire the intensest love of truth? Are these standards of truth-seeking now reflected in the mass media and politics?

Unfortunately, there seem to be many people in universities these days who would regard Mill’s aim of inspiring the intensest love of truth as a philosophically suspect idea that is inconsistent with the modern purpose of universities in training technicians and inculcating them with politically correct views.

Is it possible to make an appropriate emotive appeal by just telling a story?

A post by Peter Boettke on The Austrian Economists blog has got me thinking about emotive appeals in politics. I think the point that Boettke is making is that rhetorical experts are offering poor advice when they suggest that writers try to get their message across by telling stories that appeal to the emotions, in the manner of Dickens and Steinbeck, rather than using stories to illuminate systemic forces, as Ayn Rand did in “Atlas Shrugged”.

I think it might be worth noting that it is sometimes possible to make effective emotive appeals without telling stories and that some stories are capable of speaking for themselves in illuminating systemic forces.

My example of an effective emotional appeal that does not involve a story comes from “John Stuart Mill, Victorian Firebrand”, by Richard Reeves, which I have just finished reading. When Mill was a member of the House of Commons, arguing for women to be given the right to vote, he used an accounting framework to urge rejection of the view that the political interests of women were safe in the hands of their fathers, husbands. and brothers. Mill said:
“I should like to have a return laid before this House of the number of women who are annually beaten to death, kicked to death, or trampled to death by their male protectors: and, in an opposite column, the amount of the sentences passed, in those cases in which the dastardly criminals did not get off altogether. I should also like to have, in a third column, the amount of property, the unlawful taking of which was, at the same sessions or assizes, by the same judge, thought worthy of the same amount of punishment. We should then have an arithmetical estimate of the value set by a male legislature and male tribunals on the murder of a woman, often by torture continued through years, which, if there is any shame in us, would make us hang our heads” (Available at: Online Library of Liberty).

Richard Reeves comments that this passage “vividly captures the combination of sinewy logic and controlled anger employed by Mill’s best pieces of oratory” (p 423).

It can also be possible in some circumstances for a simple story to evoke an appropriate emotive response without any interpretation. For example, last night I read a story in a news magazine about a respected business man who is co-owner and general manager of a travel agency in the country in which he lives. A few months ago this man moved in with his parents while his own house was being renovated. Four days after he left the house his next door neighbours decided to take advantage of his absence by forcing open the front door and changing the locks. They are now occupying the house and refusing to leave. As soon as he found out what had happened the man contacted the police expecting that they would evict the squatters, but the police took them food and supplies. The man has taken the matter to court but the case has still not been resolved.

I have left out some details of this story such as the country where this is alleged to be happening, and the man’s name and ethnicity because I don’t think such details should be relevant to one’s emotive response. (If anyone is interested in following up the story it is in The Weekend Australian Magazine for August 22-23, 2009.)

How do you respond to this story? My initial reaction was anger at the way property rights were apparently being disregarded and dismay that the rule of law seemed to be breaking down in the country concerned.

I hope there is another side to this story that will make my initial reaction inappropriate. For present purposes, however, the only point I want to make is that the story speaks for itself. I don’t think many people would need to be told explicitly that the story illustrates that there may be something wrong with the justice system of a country in which such things can occur.

How could J.S. Mill have reconciled his views on liberty and indoctrination of morals?

In “John Stuart Mill, Victorian Firebrand” Richard Reeves suggests that the question of whether Mill’s essay, “Utilitarianism”, can be reconciled with his more famous essay, “On Liberty”, is one that “will keep scholars engaged for the foreseeable future” (p. 330). That is probably correct, but I don’t think Mill would have had a huge problem in reconciling his views in the two essays if he had felt inclined to do so.

What is it that needs to be reconciled? In “On Liberty”, Mill argues that human flourishing requires the exercise of individual choice: “The human faculties of perception, judgment, discriminative feeling, mental activity, and even moral preference, are exercised only in making a choice. He who does anything because it is the custom, makes no choice. He gains no practice either in discerning or in desiring what is best. The mental and moral, like the muscular powers, are improved only by being used” (Ch. 3).

In “Utilitarianism”, written about the same time, Mill argues that people should be indoctrinated with a version of utilitarian morality: “To do as you would be done by, and to love your neighbour as yourself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality. As the means of making the nearest approach to this ideal, utility would enjoin, first, that laws and social arrangements should place the happiness, or (as speaking practically it may be called) the interest, of every individual, as nearly as possible in harmony with the interest of the whole; and secondly, that education and opinion, which have so vast a power over human character, should so use that power as to establish in the mind of every individual an indissoluble association between his own happiness and the good of the whole; especially between his own happiness and the practice of such modes of conduct, negative and positive, as regard for the universal happiness prescribes; so that not only he may be unable to conceive the possibility of happiness to himself, consistently with conduct opposed to the general good, but also that a direct impulse to promote the general good may be in every individual one of the habitual motives of action, and the sentiments connected therewith may fill a large and prominent place in every human being's sentient existence (Ch 2).

Different people have different views about the tension between Mill’s emphasis on the importance of individual choice and his proposals for indoctrination of an indissoluble association between individual happiness and the good of the whole. For example, Linda Raeder writes: “A deep immersion in Mill’s thought leaves one with the decided impression that his aspirations for human beings were not for the flowering of their unique individuality but for their conformity to his personal ideal of value and service” (“John Stuart Mill and the Religion of Humanity”, 2002). Richard Reeves adopts a more conventional view of Mill’s aspirations: “The animating idea at the heart of Mill’s life and work is individual liberty. His image of a good society was one in which every man (and, he would add, every woman) can shape the course of their own life. ... Mill wanted our lives to be free, but he also wanted them to be good ” (p. 6).

Mill’s view on the importance of diversity in education seem to me to provide an example of the way in which it would have been possible for him to reconcile his desire for us to be free with his desire for us to be good. He wrote: “All that has been said of the importance of individuality of character, and diversity in opinions and modes of conduct, involves, as of the same unspeakable importance, diversity of education. A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another: and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation, in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body. An education established and controlled by the State, should only exist, if it exist at all, as one among many competing experiments, carried on for the purpose of example and stimulus, to keep the others up to a certain standard of excellence” “On Liberty”, Ch 5.

Mill also emphasised the value of experimentation at a more general level:
“It will not be denied by anybody, that originality is a valuable element in human affairs. There is always need of persons not only to discover new truths, and point out when what were once truths are true no longer, but also to commence new practices, and set the example of more enlightened conduct, and better taste and sense in human life” (“On Liberty”, Ch 3).

In his “Autobiography” Mill noted that he viewed “On Liberty” as “a kind of philosophic text-book of a single truth, which the changes progressively taking place in modern society tend to bring out into ever stronger relief: the importance, to man and society of a large variety in types of character, and of giving full freedom to human nature to expand itself in innumerable and conflicting directions” (Ch 7).

It seems to me that it would have been possible for Mill to reconcile his views on liberty and ethics by making the case that recognition of the right of individuals to experiment in living as seems best to themselves is of over-riding importance to society. Not only does this open the possibility of discovering new truths, it also opens the possibility that people can learn from the mistakes of others. As Friedrich Hayek wrote: “It is whenever man reaches beyond his present self, where the new emerges and assessment lies in the future, that liberty ultimately shows its value” (“Constitution of Liberty”, p. 394).

If Mill had argued more explicitly that the right of individuals to live as seems best to themselves is of over-riding importance it would have been clearer that he did not intend that his personal values should be imposed on people who do not desire them.

Postscript:
I should have noted that Hayek explicitly made the point that "the existence of individuals and groups simultaneously observing partially different rules provides the opportunity for the selection of the more effective ones" ("Constitution of Liberty", p.63).

How silly were J.S. Mill's views about income distribution?

J S Mill wrote: “The laws and conditions of the Production of wealth partake of the character of physical truths. There is nothing optional or arbitrary in them. ... It is not so with the Distribution of wealth. That is a matter of human institution solely. The things once there, mankind, individually or collectively, can do with them as they like. They can place them at the disposal of whomsoever they please, and on whatever terms” (Principles of Political Economy, 1848, II,1.1).

In 1983, Friedrich Hayek commented that this view of J S Mill “is really an incredible stupidity, showing a complete unawareness of the crucial guide function of prices ...” Hayek explains: “We must face the truth that it is not the magnitude of a given aggregate product which allows us to decide what to do with it, but rather the other way around: that a process which tells us how to reward the several contributions to this product is also the indispensable source of information for the individuals, telling them where they can make the aggregate product as large as possible” (Conference paper published in Nishiyama and Leube, “The Essence of Hayek”, p 323). This must have been one of the most intemperate remarks that Hayek ever made about anyone.

One of the things I have learned from Richard Reeves book, “John Stuart Mill, Victorian Firebrand” is that Karl Marx was also unimpressed by Mill’s attempt to separate the laws of production and distribution. Marx viewed this as “a shallow syncretism” (Reeves, p 210). He thought Mill was attempting to reconcile irreconcilables.

How silly were Mill’s views about distribution? In order to answer this question I think we need to understand Mill’s views about property and inheritance.

I see a lot of merit in much of what Mill wrote about property. For example: “The institution of property, when limited to its essential elements, consists in the recognition, in each person, of a right to the exclusive disposal of what he or she have produced by their own exertions, or received either by gift or by fair agreement, without force or fraud, from those who produced it” (“Principles of Political Economy”, II, 2.2).

It is when Mill writes about “landed property” that I begin to see problems: “When the "sacredness of property" is talked of, it should always be remembered, that any such sacredness does not belong in the same degree to landed property. No man made the land. It is the original inheritance of the whole species. Its appropriation is wholly a question of general expediency” (“Principles of Political Economy”, II,2.26). Given that land can be exchanged for other goods I don’t see how it is possible to argue that rights to ownership should not be recognized as the same for land as for other goods.

The problem that Mill had with “landed property” seems to be associated with the potential for a relatively small number of families to have a disproportionate amount of wealth and to exercise disproportionate political power. He was against the inheritance of “enormous fortunes which no one needs for any personal purpose but ostentation or improper power”. Richard Reeves points out that Mill was particularly concerned to distinguish between “earned” and “unearned” income. Mill viewed inheritances as “unearned” and argued that it would be socially beneficial to impose a limit on the amount any person could inherit.

Mill’s views about redistributive taxation were also influenced by his aversion to inherited wealth: “To tax the larger incomes at a higher percentage than the smaller is to lay a tax on industry and economy; to impose a penalty on people for having worked harder and saved more than their neighbours. It is not the fortunes which are earned, but those which are unearned, that it is for the public good to place under limitation. ...I conceive that inheritances and legacies, exceeding a certain amount, are highly proper subjects for taxation: and that the revenue from them should be as great as it can be made without giving rise to evasions ... such as it would be impossible adequately to check” (“Principles of Political Economy”, V, 2.14).

It seems to me that Mill’s claim that distribution of wealth should be viewed as entirely separate from production was silly – and contradicted by his own views about the adverse consequences of progressive taxation. Mill’s idea for an upper limit on the amount that anyone could inherit also seems extremely silly. I can see some wisdom in his views about taxation of inheritances, but even here it seems to me that he was fooling himself if he thought that inheritance taxes would impose no disincentives to working and saving. Despite all this silliness, however, Mill still had many sensible things to say about property rights and taxation.

Is our inner nature good?

Abraham Maslow suggested that humans have an inner nature or core which is good. According to Maslow this inner core is “potentiality, but not final actualization”. He argued that in principle our inner core can easily self-actualize, but this rarely happens in practice due to the many human diminution forces including fear of self-actualization and the limiting belief in society that human nature is evil (“Toward a Psychology of Being”, 1968, chapter 14).

The view that humans have inherent potentialities that are good has a long history. For example, Aristotle argued that humans have inherent potentialities that it is in their nature to develop. He suggests, however, that for most people the virtues remain undeveloped unless they are actively cultivated:

“Now some think that we are made good by nature, others by habituation, others by teaching. Nature's part evidently does not depend on us, but as a result of some divine causes is present in those who are truly fortunate; while argument and teaching, we may suspect, are not powerful with all men, but the soul of the student must first have been cultivated by means of habits for noble joy and noble hatred, like earth which is to nourish the seed” (“Nicomachean Ethics”, Book x: 9).

J.S. Mill made it clear that he didn’t think there was more than a mere germ of good in human nature:

“Allowing everything to be an instinct which anybody has ever asserted to be one, it remains true that nearly every respectable attribute of humanity is the result not of instinct, but of a victory over instinct; and that there is hardly anything valuable in the natural man except capacities - a whole world of possibilities, all of them dependent upon eminently artificial discipline for being realised” (“On Nature”, 1874).

Over a century before, David Hume presented a much more positive view of the relationship between morality and the inner nature of humans:

“Take any action allowed to be vicious: Wilful murder, for instance. Examine it in all lights, and see if you can find that matter of fact, or real existence, which you call vice. In which-ever way you take it, you find only certain passions, motives, volitions and thoughts. There is no other matter of fact in the case. The vice entirely escapes you, as long as you consider the object. You never can find it, till you turn your reflection into your own breast, and find a sentiment of disapprobation, which arises in you, towards this action. Here is a matter of fact; but it is the object of feeling, not of reason. It lies in yourself, not in the object. So that when you pronounce any action or character to be vicious, you mean nothing, but that from the constitution of your nature you have a feeling or sentiment of blame from the contemplation of it”. (“A Treatise of Human Nature”, 1739, III, I, i).

Hume’s view of the matter has received a considerable amount of support in recent years from psychological research (e.g. observing affective reactions to stories involving harmless taboo violations even though people had difficulty defending their moral judgments), neuroscientific evidence of emotional involvement in moral judgments, and studies that suggest that non-human primates and human have some similar moral instincts.

This evidence supports the social intuitionist view of Jonathan Haidt and Fredrik Bjorklund that moral beliefs and motivations come from a small set of intuitions that evolution has prepared the human brain to develop and that these intuitions then enable and constrain the social construction of virtues and values. This means that children have a preparedness to acquire certain kinds of moral knowledge and a resistance to acquiring other kinds (here).

Our instinctive morals don’t necessarily provide us with good guidance about how to behave towards strangers in the modern world because they evolved to protect self, kin and clan rather than to enable us to obtain the benefits of specialization and trade. I have previously suggested, following Hayek’s view, that our instinctive morals often cause people to argue for government intervention that gets in the way of the mutually beneficial exchanges among strangers that are necessary for human flourishing (here).

Nevertheless, Mill went much too far in asserting that nearly every respectable attribute of humanity is the result of victory over instinct. It seems to me that Maslow was much closer to the truth in asserting that the inner nature of humans is good.

Can happiness be obtained by seeking it?

Please Note: A revised version of this post is available here.

John Stuart Mill is often quoted as an authority on the question of whether happiness can be obtained by seeking it. He wrote:

“Those only are happy ... who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way” (“Autobiography”, here).

How can this view that happiness cannot be obtained by seeking it be reconciled with Mill’s conviction “that happiness is the test of all rules of conduct, and the end of life”? That was no problem for J.S. Mill: “the happiness which forms the utilitarian standard of what is right in conduct, is not the agent's own happiness, but that of all concerned. As between his own happiness and that of others, utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator” (“Utilitarianism”, here).

Not content to let that proposition rest on its dubious merits, Mill enlisted the support of a widely-esteemed authority: “In the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth, we read the complete spirit of the ethics of utility. To do as you would be done by, and to love your neighbour as yourself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality”. So there!

Coming back to the original question, it is actually not clear to me that J.S. was strongly of the view that happiness could not be obtained by seeking it. He regarded some pleasures as being higher than others (for my discussion of his views on pushpin and poetry see here and here) and he saw the development of “noble character” as intimately linked to the higher pleasures. At one point he seems to suggest that development of a noble character is an avenue to happiness. He writes: “... if it may be doubted whether a noble character is always the happier for its nobleness, there can be no doubt that it makes other people happier ...” (“Utilitarianism”). His personal experience is also relevant here. He reports that he helped himself to regain some measure of happiness after suffering a nervous breakdown when he was a young man by reading the poetry of William Wordsworth. He wrote:

“What made Wordsworth's poems a medicine for my state of mind, was that they expressed, not mere outward beauty, but states of feeling, and of thought coloured by feeling, under the excitement of beauty. They seemed to be the very culture of the feelings, which I was in quest of” (“Autobiography”). For an example of what Mill was writing about, see this poem by Wordsworth (here).

It seems to me that Mill’s take on the question of whether happiness can be obtained by seeking it stems from his conception of happiness as having to do solely with seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. Mill seems to accept that happiness could be obtained by cultivating tranquillity:

“the conscious ability to do without happiness gives the best prospect of realizing, such happiness as is attainable. For nothing except that consciousness can raise a person above the chances of life, by making him feel that, let fate and fortune do their worst, they have not power to subdue him: which, once felt, frees him from excess of anxiety concerning the evils of life, and enables him, like many a Stoic in the worst times of the Roman Empire, to cultivate in tranquility the sources of satisfaction accessible to him, without concerning himself about the uncertainty of their duration, any more than about their inevitable end”.

In his autobiography Mill reports that it was after his nervous breakdown that he came to the view that personal happiness cannot be obtained by seeking it. Kieran Setiya suggests that Mill displays a lack of self-knowledge because he became unhappy even though he had already met his own condition of aiming not at his own happiness, but at the happiness of others (here). However, my reading of Mill’s account suggests that he saw his problem as stemming from the moment when he asked himself whether he would be happy if all his objects in life were realized. Mill implies that his mistake was to question his own happiness:

“Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so. The only chance is to treat, not happiness, but some end external to it, as the purpose of life. Let your self-consciousness, your scrutiny, your self-interrogation, exhaust themselves on that; and if otherwise fortunately circumstanced you will inhale happiness with the air you breathe, without dwelling on it or thinking about it, without either forestalling it in imagination, or putting it to flight by fatal questioning”.

How should we view this? Should we treat it as an assertion that the way to be happy is to live a “meaningful” life? Or, should we treat it as an invitation by Mill to follow his example by avoiding any problems we might have in accepting our emotional states by losing ourselves in furthering causes that seem much more important than our own happiness? Should we view Mill’s fear of self-awareness as a symptom of low self-esteem?

Leaving those questions aside, what is my answer to the question I began with? Can happiness be obtained by seeking it? It seem to me that the answer depends on what you mean by happiness. You do not harm your chances of happiness by seeking to live a good life.

Is liberty opposed to virtue?

Robert Skidelsky argues that we have come to think of morality as having to do only with rights and obligations (here). According to Skidelsky, where there is no right or obligation, morality has become silent:
“A man who, having fulfilled his obligations to others, settles down to watch porn on television all day may be foolish, disgusting, vulgar and so forth, but he is not strictly speaking immoral”.

Skidelsky claims that increased liberty, as advocated by J.S. Mill, is largely responsible for this apparent contraction in the scope of morality and in the decline in virtue ethics. As is well known, Mill argued in “On Liberty” that adults should be legally free to do as they choose as long as they do not interfere with the rights of others. However, he also argued against what he described as the “despotism of custom”:
“The human faculties of perception, judgement, discriminative feeling, mental activity, and even moral preference, are exercised only by making a choice. He who does anything because it is the custom makes no choice. He gains no practice either in discerning or in desiring what is best” (Chapter on Individuality).

Skidelsky claims that contrary to Mill’s argument, increases in personal liberty have not enabled people to become more self-directed and happier. He observes: “Modern Britain, for all its profusion of choice, is hardly a showcase of fully developed personalities”. I imagine that Skidelsky would also consider that this observation applies to other western countries.

Skidelsky uses the TV show, “Big Brother” as an example of what he means: “It panders to the greed and vanity of its participants and to the voyeurism of its viewers. ... Yet from a liberal standpoint, there is nothing to be said against it. The participants are there of their own accord and may leave any time they please. ... On some level we know it is vile, yet we lack the authority and words to say so”.

Well, I think he just said that “Big Brother” is vile. In any case, Skidelsky has not convinced me that liberty is opposed to virtue. The fact that many people do not use their liberty to make good choices does not make their liberty responsible for their choices, or for the apparent absence of the use of moral language in the discussion of the choices that they make. It is only the possibility of choice that enables anyone to consider the morality or rationality or any other characteristic of the choices that anyone makes.

It seems to me that while liberty is not opposed to virtue, it is possible to argue that those who have been unduly influenced by Mill’s attack on “the despotism of custom” may have been left without a moral compass. As Friedrich Hayek pointed out, it is unwise to disregard customary rules just because their significance and importance is not obvious to us. These rules may embody wisdom resulting from the experimentation of many previous generations. Hayek also made the important point that whereas coercive rules unambiguously restrict liberty, customary rules are not despotic. They “can be broken by individuals who feel that they have strong enough reasons to brave the censure of their fellows” (“Constitution of Liberty, 1960: 62-63).
It is also possible to argue that in emphasizing the role of reason, Mill and his followers have not been sufficiently sensitive to the role that emotions play in morality. The role of emotions had previously been asserted by David Hume: “Morals excite passions, and produce or prevent actions. Reason of itself is utterly impotent in this particular. The rules of morality, therefore, are not conclusions of our reason” (“A Treatise of Human Nature”, 1739, III, I, i).

Nevertheless, even if it is possible to pin some blame on Mill for a decline in unthinking adherence to moral conventions, he can hardly be blamed for the apparent absence of moral language in the public discussion of the choices that people make. If anyone thinks that certain behaviour is unhealthy or in some other way inconsistent with living the good life, there is nothing stopping them from giving reasons why they think that. People might even be prepared to listen if those delivering the sermons regard themselves as moral equals.

Is push-pin addictive?

I ended my last post (Is push-pin as good as poetry?) wondering whether John Stuart Mill would have had a different view of the pleasures offered by sensual and aesthetic pursuits if he had viewed the matter in terms of ongoing choices about the allocation of his time, rather than as a single decision to be made for all time. I had in mind that he might have been able to decide, for example, that this evening he will play push-pin, but tomorrow evening he will go and visit Harriet Taylor and read some poetry by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. (I am assuming that Harriet would have preferred poetry to push-pin.)

Having now thought further about this, I don’t think J.S. would have changed his view if he had framed the issue in terms of a time allocation problem. I think he saw the choice between sensual and aesthetic pleasures as path dependent. In other words, J.S. thought that if he went too frequently down the path to the push-pin parlour (or wherever they played that game) rather than up the path that leads to Harriet’s place of poetry, he would eventually forget how to find Harriet’s place.

Mill saw intellectual tastes as being closely linked to high aspirations and noble feelings. In “Utilitarianism” he wrote:
“Capacity for the nobler feelings is in most natures a very tender plant, easily killed, not only by hostile influences, but by mere want of sustenance and in the majority of young persons it speedily dies away if the occupations to which their position in life has devoted them, and the society into which it has thrown them, are not favourable to keeping that higher capacity in exercise” (here).

He went on to argue that people who do not exercise that higher capacity “addict themselves to inferior pleasures”. According to Mill, this means that they do not “deliberately prefer” these “inferior pleasures”.

As I wrote earlier I know very little about push-pin, but I am prepared to accept that it could be slightly addictive. Similarly, poetry could also be slightly addictive. It is difficult for me to accept, however, that anyone could become addicted to either push-pin or poetry to the extent that they would lose their capacity for rational choice. (Interestingly, but beside the point, the poet Coleridge - whom J.S. admired - claimed that his famous poem ‘Kubla Khan’ was inspired by a dream that was induced by use of opium, a highly addictive activity).

Would J.S. still have argued that those “addicted” to inferior pleasures do not deliberately prefer them had he had the opportunity to read what Gary Becker wrote much later about rational addiction? In brief, Becker argues that people choose to consume addictive products because they believe that the pleasure will outweigh the pain. They then choose to continue consuming these products because they believe that the pain of giving up will be greater than the pain of continuing with the habit.

I suspect J.S. would have a problem, as I do, in accepting that this kind of behaviour is rational. He might have been more impressed, however, by Thomas Schelling’s view that addiction is neither purely rational or irrational – it is about self-control. The dopamine system in our brains wants pleasure and wants it now. The cognitive system is better able to make longer term choices, but it can be slow to operate. That means that if we cultivate the habit of thinking strategically we can make better decisions. For example, if we are worried about becoming addicted to push-pin it is possible to make a commitment to read poetry at a particular time when we think we might otherwise make a spur of the moment decision to play push-pin. (Tim Harford writes beautifully about this kind of thing –although not explicitly about push-pin and poetry - in chapter two of his recent book, ‘The Logic of Life’).

Where this leaves me is with the thought that J.S. Mill was slightly off the mark in identifying the capacity to enjoy aesthetic pleasure as a tender plant that can speedily die away through want of sustenance. Rather, it is the capacity to make strategic decisions affecting our own well-being that is the tender plant that requires constant nourishment. It seems to me that humans could not flourish in an environment where aesthetic pleasures were the only pleasures they were permitted to seek. In order to flourish we need the freedom to make strategic decisions affecting our own well-being.

Is push-pin as good as poetry?

In order to answer this question it is necessary to know what push-pin is. From what I have been able to discover it is a game played with pins on the brim of a hat. Armed with that knowledge, however, I still don’t know enough about push-pin to judge whether it might sometimes give me more pleasure than reading poetry. The answer could also depend on the quality of the poetry and my mood at the time.

In The Rationale of Reward, published in 1830, Jeremy Bentham wrote :
“Prejudice apart, the game of push-pin is of equal value with the arts and sciences of music and poetry. If the game of push-pin furnish more pleasure, it is more valuable than either” (here).

Anyone who has studied a small amount of economics would know what Bentham was talking about. Whether pushpin is as good as poetry depends on an individual’s tastes.

John Stuart Mill noted that Bentham could not bear to hear anyone speak in his presence of good and bad taste: “He thought it an insolent piece of dogmatism in one person to praise or condemn another in a matter of taste”. With obvious relish, Mill contradicts this view of his god-father by asserting that people’s likings and dislikings are “full of the most important inferences as to every point of their character”. A person’s tastes “show him to be wise or a fool, cultivated or ignorant, gentle or rough, sensitive or callous ...” and so on (see here).

Picking up a similar theme in “Utilitarianism”, Mill writes:
“It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool or the pig are of a different opinion, it only because they only know their side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides” (here).

When I first read that about 40 years ago, I wrote in the margin: “interpersonal comparisons of utility?” What I meant was: ‘How could Mill know what pleasure a satisfied pig or fool might feel?’

However, I now think Mill had a point. You have to experience pleasures before you can compare them. You have to read enough poetry to gain an understanding of the pleasure that other people obtain from reading poetry before you can judge whether this pleasure exceeds the pleasure you could obtain from alternative activities. The same is true of all cultural pursuits. The implications for education of children should be obvious.

I like to think of J.S. Mill as the great defender of individual liberty who asserted that:
“Such are the differences among human beings in their sources of pleasure ... that unless there is a corresponding diversity in their modes of life, they neither obtain their fair share of happiness, nor grow to the mental, moral and aesthetic stature of which their nature is capable”.

That was what Mill wrote in “On Liberty” (here). In writing Utilitarianism, however, he had other things on his mind. In that context he was not willing to consider the possibility that anyone who had knowledge of both bodily pleasures, which he describes as “the lower pleasures”, and mental pleasures, which he describes as “the higher pleasures”, could ever view the former as superior to the latter. The most he was prepared to concede was that people who appreciated the “intrinsic superiority” of the higher pleasures could occasionally be tempted to “postpone them to the lower”.

I wonder whether Mill would have reached a different conclusion if he had framed the question as being about the allocation of time to different activities. Within that context he might have been able to appreciate that it is not necessary to decide whether the pleasure to be gained from poetry always exceeds the pleasure that can be obtained from a good meal or playing sport. The issue is not about being tempted to pursue lower pleasures. It is about obtaining balance in one’s life.

Postscript:
Since writing this I have read what Henry Hazlitt had to say on the subject ("The Foundations of Morality", 1998). Hazlitt suggests that the discovery of marginal-utility economics supplies the solution: "Bentham's dictum becomes defensible if amended to read: Marginal satisfaction being equal, a unit of pushpin is as good as a unit of poetry". However, I doubt whether that explanation would have satisfied Mill. See my next post: Is push-pin addictive.
Postscript 2: May 2010
I have now written a related post on the potential contribution of happiness research to the question of whether push-pin is as good as poetry.