James and John Stuart Mill on The Felicific Calculus: Two Close Views?
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The general experience of mankind as a way to improve our ability to anticipate the consequences of our action
We have previously seen that the knowledge of the ideas of the causes pleasures and pains adds depth to the felicific calculation. James Mill, besides, traced the origin of morality, and therefore of the felicific calculus, in the experience of mankind. It is because we have the usual experience with painful acts, or the cause of what was painful, from the pleasant acts, or the cause of what was pleasant, that we have distinguished moral acts from immoral ones (James Mill 1835, pp. 248-249). The experience of mankind is then, in the way of Nicolas de Condorcet, the key of the indefinite progress of the human mind. John Stuart Mill will reiterate and develop the argument in close relation to our ability to calculate, by replying to the numerous critics on the failures of the felicific calculus to guide human actions. His point of view was explicit enough in the field, and deserves to be underlined. “(D)efenders of utility often find themselves called upon to reply to such objections as this—that there is not time, previous to action, for calculating and weighing the effects of any line of conduct on the general happiness. This is exactly as if any one were to say that it is impossible to guide our conduct by Christianity, because there is not time, on every occasion on which anything has to be done, to read through the Old and New Testaments. The answer to the objection is, that there has been ample time, namely, the whole past duration of the human species. During all that time mankind have been learning by experience the tendencies of actions; on which experience all the prudence, as well as all the morality of life, is dependent. People talk as if the commencement of this course of experience had hitherto been put off, and as if, at the moment when some man feels tempted to meddle with the property or life of another, he had to begin considering for the first time whether murder and theft are injurious to human happiness (…) mankind must by this time have acquired positive beliefs as to the effects of some actions on their happiness; and the beliefs which have thus come down are the rules of morality for the multitude, and for the philosopher until he has succeeded in finding better (…) The corollaries from the principle of utility, like the precepts of every practical art, admit of indefinite improvement, and, in a progressive state of the human mind, their improvement is perpetually going on. (John Stuart Mill 1861, pp. 42-43). As the human mind, the felicific calculus is therefore indefinitely perfectible, but in two different ways, thoug not independent. Experience adds to calculation, either directly or indirectly. The more we feel sensations that we live directly in our life, the more we form complex associations of ideas, and the more we develop the felicific calculus. This is the usual associationist argument. But we can also learn mentally from the experience of mankind, even if we do not have experienced it directly in terms of sensations. The history of human mankind, experienced indirectly, is then at stake to improve the felicific calculus: this is an unusual associationist argument.
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Calculating without being aware of calculating: toward an associationist conception of aesthetism
Though perpetually perfectible and therefore progressive, calculation cannot do everything. According to John Stuart Mill, if there is one area wherein calculation plays no role, it is the domain of aesthetism, which is supposed to reflect the intrinsic quality of our actions, regardless extrinsic considerations (John Stuart Mill 1865b, pp. 337-338; see also John Stuart Mill 1869b, pp. 650-651). In other words, according to the principle of aesthetics, there would be disinterested actions. The question is then how such actions emerge and are explained. Again, the answer paradoxically seems to appear in the wings of psychological associationism, and is closely related to the previous analysis concerning the remote causes of pleasures. James Mill already observed that “when a grand cause of pleasures has been associated with a great many pleasures, and a great many times, the association acquires a peculiar character and strength” (James Mill 1829, vol. 2, p. 266), especially during our childhood. Like many authors having faith in education – in theory and in practice, as shown by the education he gave to his elder son –, James Mill believed that “the original features” of our temperament are being formed during our childhood (James Mill 1819, p. 31). Insofar as the greatest efficacy in the transition from sensations to ideas occurs when we undergo our first sensations – during childhood –, these original features give birth to the strongest habits in our life. Many examples may illustrate such remarkable phenomena during this period of life, such as the facility to learn a language or the remembrance of a melody. In time, thanks to the strength and the repetition of the associations, what was desired as a means to an end becomes an end in itself. Our remote causes of pleasures, being “inclosed in a web of associated ideas of pleasures or of pains at a very early period of life” could then be desired for their own sake: they become disinterested (John Stuart Mill 1843b, pp. 842-843; John Stuart Mill 1861, p. 238; John Stuart Mill 1869, p. 232; see also Loizides 2014, p. 313). The “aesthetic”, though calculator, individual can then decide to follow two possible but very different directions. The first is self regarding, and the Mills remarked with regret that wealth or money constitute “one of the strongest moving forces of human life”. In time, money “is desired not for the sake of an end, but as part of the end” (John Stuart Mill 1861, p. 236). The second path we can follow is more other regarding, and thefore concerns morality. At the beginning, this supposes an effort, like when we try to improve our artistic passions. But, in time, again, we will desire virtue for itself, and then, “(a) man feels himself exempted from the obligation of calculating in such cases”. This is not because he does not calculate, or does not want to do it. In fact, “the calculation has already been made” (James Mill 1835, p. 163). This I think is the perfect form of the felicific calculus: this is an aesthetic one. We then understand why James Mill considered that it was “an abuse of language to call” aesthetic actions “beautiful or ugly” (James Mill 1835, p. 163): as strange as it sounds, they cannot be independent of a notion of calculation from a Associationist and Utilitarian point of view. Perhaps, James Mill’s esprit de système has pushed him to acknowledge this, whereas it is the so-called “romantic” revolution of his elder son that has pushed him to maintain, on principle, the existence of disinterested actions, but at the expense of the logical consistency of his associationist background.
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We can then now conclude on the Utilitarian understanding of happiness. One can said that John Stuart Mill deviates from the standard conception by claiming that happiness consists in dignity, or in the general cultivation of nobleness of character, or more generally, that happiness is an art of life combining morality, expediency and aesthetism. Surely John Stuart Mill thought that disinterested actions matter in the art of life. But he still viewed the importance of a regulator in such art. Commenting George Grote's three volume survey of Plato's works, and observing that the measuring art – “metritiki technj” – is a usual topic in the dialogues related to the Republic, John Stuart remarked that "(o)ur life is to be regulated, but we are not told what it is to be regulated by", and was surprised that Plato did not seriously consider the sovereign masters as the regulator in stake (John Stuart Mill 1867, p. 351; see also Quincy 1980, p. 460). Anyway, independently of the different conceptions of happiness one may have, he made explicitly clear that we are rational human beings trying to pursue it, via the help of our ability to calculate. “Nobody argues that the art of navigation is not founded on astronomy”, he claimed, “because sailors cannot wait to calculate the Nautical Almanack. Being rational creatures, they go to sea with it ready calculated; and all rational creatures go out upon the sea of life with their minds made up on the common questions of right and wrong, as well as on many of the far more difficult questions of wise and foolish. And this, as long as foresight is a human quality, it is to be presumed they will continue to do” (John Stuart Mill 1861, p. 225). Later and more explicitly, he said "that the truths of arithmetic are applicable to the valuation of happiness, as of all other measurable quantities" (John Stuart Mill 1861, p. 258). This shows that regardless what we include in happiness, the latter cannot be incompatible with calculation. Better: “happiness is intended pleasure”
(John Stuart Mil 1861, p. 210), that which presupposes a calculation – through intention – compatible with the art of life, and especially rooted in the cultivation of mental pleasure, and not mere bodily pleasures. We cannot reproach to John Stuart Mill his desire to fuse romanticism with rationalism, or to make a synthesis between deontology and teleology. He grew up during a period in which significant changes were occurring in the applied sciences and humanities. It was a time of innovation, exploration, and significant optimism. He had faith in the love of our fellow- creatures and the desire to be in unity with them. Like his father, he tought that they constitute “the origin of affections of the greatest influence in human life” (James Mill 1829, vol. II, p. 215). 16 Nevertheless and anyway, the so-called “desinterested sentiments” or aesthetic actions have no priority in John Stuart Mill’s conception of the art of life. When they are in conflict with moral reason, indeed, the latter should have priority (John Stuart Mil 1861, pp. 220-221). An interesting case, though sensitive and delicate, is that of the death penalty. We should not forget that John Stuart Mill defended, in his parliamentary speech of 1868, the retention of capital punishment for the worst murderers on the grounds of a “mere” felicific calculus based on the arguments of frugality and exemplarity. 17 Though he was convinced in the power of sympathy to care about our follow-creatures, let us not forget that his position
16 Besides, here appears the observation from which the golden rule can emerge: (t)o do as one would be done by, and to love one’s nighbour as oneself” (John Stuart Mill 1861, p. 218). 17 On the way in which John Stuart Mill’s position about death penalty differs from that of Bentham, see Benoît Basse (2013). 16
about death penalty shows that natural sentiments alone are impotent to regulate our art of life: the regulator remains the felicific calculus. “Men calculate”, Bentham wrote, “some with less exactness […] some with more: but all men calculate” (Bentham 1781, p. 188). After all, the basic objective of a Utilitarian education will be to make sure that such a calculation, which is in the quotidian of human beings and constitutes therefore a “psychological truth” (John Stuart Mill 1865a, p. 177), becomes a genuine felicific calculus. Though John Stuart Mill’s domestic education leads him to a well- known mental crisis, and though he put greater emphasis on the quality of pleasures and disinterested actions than his predecessors in his philosophical system, he still remained in the intellectual shadow of them, especially that of his father.
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