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Mill's Metaethical Non-cognitivism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 December 2017

PETER ZUK
PETER ZUK*
Affiliation:
Rice [email protected]
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Abstract

In section I, I lay out key components of my favoured non-cognitivist interpretation of Mill's metaethics. In section II, I respond to several objections to this style of interpretation posed by Christopher Macleod. In section III, I respond to David Brink's treatment of the well-known ‘competent judges’ passage in Mill's Utilitarianism. I argue that important difficulties face both Brink's evidential interpretation and the rival constitutive interpretation that he proposes but rejects. I opt for a third interpretative option that I call the psychological interpretation. This interpretation makes sense of otherwise difficult aspects of chapter IV of Utilitarianism. In section IV, I offer some reasons for rejecting Nicholas Drake's claim that Mill is ultimately best characterized as a Humean constructivist. If we accept Drake's suggestion that Mill's non-cognitivism is compatible with his being a constructivist, I argue, we should view Mill as putting forward a distinctively Millian form of constructivism rather than a Humean one.

Type
Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 30 , Issue 3 , September 2018 , pp. 271 - 293
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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References

1 Ryan, Alan, The Philosophy of John Stuart Mill, 2nd edn. (Atlantic Highlands, NJ, 1990), p. 193Google Scholar. A similar line is taken by West, Henry, Mill's Utilitarianism (London, 2007)Google Scholar.

2 Mill, John Stuart, A System of Logic Ratiocinative and Inductive, Collected Works, vol. 8, ed. Robson, John M. (Toronto, 1965), p. 943Google Scholar. My emphasis.

3 For a different take on this and similar passages in Mill's work, see Fletcher, Guy, ‘Mill's Art of Life’, A Companion to Mill, ed. Macleod, Christopher and Miller, Dale E. (Malden, MA, 2017), pp. 297–312Google Scholar.

4 See, for instance, Hare, R. M., The Language of Morals (London, 1972)Google Scholar and Hare, R. M., Freedom and Reason (London, 1963)Google Scholar.

5 Mill, System, p. 944.

6 Mill, System, p. 944. My thanks to Chris Heathwood for pointing out to me that Mill's talk of assertion here is one of several instances of ostensibly cognitivist vocabulary in certain passages that I examine. As we will see, there is an important respect in which certain cognitivist notions are indispensable to Mill's particular form of non-cognitivism.

7 Mill, System, p. 949.

8 For helpful discussions of Mill's conception of art (and specifically, his conception of ‘the art of life’), see John Stuart Mill and the Art of Life, ed. Ben Eggleston, Dale E. Miller and David Weinstein (New York, 2011). My understanding of Mill's art–science distinction is much indebted to the various essays contained in that volume.

9 Mill, System, p. 949. Mill's emphasis.

10 Mill, John Stuart, ‘On the Definition of Political Economy’, Collected Works, vol. 4, ed. Robson, John M. (Toronto, 1967), pp. 309–40Google Scholar, at 319–20.

11 Mill, System, p. 949.

12 See Ryan, Philosophy, p. 190.

13 Mill, John Stuart, Utilitarianism, Collected Works, vol. 10, ed. Robson, John M. (Toronto, 1969), p. 213Google Scholar.

14 Macleod, Christopher, ‘Was Mill a Noncognitivist?’, The Southern Journal of Philosophy 51.2 (2013), pp. 206–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Macleod, ‘Was Mill a Noncognitivist?’, p. 212.

16 Macleod, ‘Was Mill a Noncognitivist?’, p. 212.

17 Macleod, ‘Was Mill a Noncognitivist?’, p. 212.

18 Macleod, ‘Was Mill a Noncognitivist?’, p. 215.

19 John Stuart Mill, Letter to Edward Lytton Bulwer, 27 March 1843, Collected Works, vol. 13, ed. Francis E. Mineka (Toronto, 1963), p. 579.

20 Macleod, ‘Was Mill a Noncognitivist?’, p. 215.

21 Macleod, ‘Was Mill a Noncognitivist?’, p. 213.

22 Macleod, ‘Was Mill a Noncognitivist?’, p. 214. Macleod is here thinking of the ontologically quietest moral realist position that has recently been defended by such writers as Ronald Dworkin, Thomas Nagel, Derek Parfit, T. M. Scanlon and John Skorupski. See Macleod, ‘Was Mill a Noncognitivist?’, p. 214 n. 36.

23 Macleod, ‘Was Mill a Noncognitivist?’, p. 214.

24 See Drake, Nicholas, ‘A Humean Constructivist Reading of J. S. Mill's Utilitarian Theory’, Utilitas 28.2 (2016), pp. 189–214CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 211–12.

25 Macleod, Christopher, ‘Mill, Intuitions, and Normativity’, Utilitas 25.1 (2013), pp. 46–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 Taylor, Helen, ‘Introductory Notice’, Collected Works, vol. 10, ed. Robson, John M. (Toronto, 1969), pp. 371Google Scholar–2, at 371.

27 Mill, John Stuart, ‘Nature’, Collected Works, vol. 10, ed. Robson, John M. (Toronto, 1969), pp. 373–402Google Scholar, at 374.

28 Mill, ‘Nature’, p. 375.

29 Mill, ‘Nature’, p. 375.

30 Mill, ‘Nature’, p. 377.

31 Macleod, ‘Was Mill a Noncognitivist?’, p. 213. Though Macleod suggests this construal, he does not explicitly endorse it. However, the conception that Mill endorses in ‘Nature’ is strikingly similar to the one suggested by Macleod here.

32 Macleod, ‘Was Mill a Noncognitivist?’, p. 219.

33 Macleod, ‘Was Mill a Noncognitivist?’, p. 221.

34 Mill, System, p. 949.

35 Macleod, ‘Was Mill a Noncognitivist?’, p. 215.

36 Drake, ‘A Humean Constructivist Reading’, p. 206.

37 Mill, System, p. 949. Mill then adds: ‘This, however, does not go to the bottom of the matter; for the speaker's approbation is no sufficient reason why other people should approve; nor ought it to be a conclusive reason even with himself. For the purposes of practice, every one must be required to justify his approbation; and for this there is need of general premises, determining what are the proper objects of approbation, and what the proper order of precedence among those objects’ (Mill, System, p. 949). As we will see shortly, Mill's conception of moral justification involves a corresponding desire for the object of each prescriptive utterance or commitment.

38 Ryan draws a similar conclusion, writing: ‘This is Mill's rather awkward way of saying that, although a man who says “you ought to do this” is not stating that he approves of the action in question, he is nonetheless implying it’, insofar as psychological facts about the speaker can be inferred from an approving utterance. See Ryan, Philosophy, p. 190.

39 Brink, David, Mill's Progressive Principles (Oxford, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ch. 3. In particular, Brink interprets Mill as a realist perfectionist who understands objective moral truths to be grounded in ‘the proper exercise of those capacities essential to our nature’ (Brink, Progresssive Principles, pp. 60–1). I concern myself with Brink's interpretative arguments for a general moral realist reading, on which his further arguments for the more specific perfectionist reading depend.

40 Mill, Utilitarianism, p. 211.

41 Brink, Progressive Principles, p. 56.

42 Mill, Utilitarianism, p. 212, in Brink, Progressive Principles, p. 56.

43 Brink, Progressive Principles, p. 56.

44 Mill, Utilitarianism, p. 212. My emphasis.

45 Brink, Progressive Principles, p. 57.

46 Mill, System, p. 944.

47 Mill, System, p. 951, footnote.

48 Brink, Progressive Principles, pp. 57–8.

49 Mill, Utilitarianism, p. 213. My emphasis.

50 Mill, Utilitarianism, p. 211.

51 Mill, Utilitarianism, p. 211.

52 Mill, Utilitarianism, p. 213.

53 Mill, Utilitarianism, p. 234.

54 For another exposition and defence of this idea, see Wilson, Fred, ‘Mill's Proof That Happiness Is the Criterion of Morality’, Journal of Business Ethics 1.1 (1982), pp. 59–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. at 62–3. See also Hall, Everett W., ‘The “Proof” of Utility in Bentham and Mill’, Ethics 60.1 (1949), pp. 1–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 1–3. While Hall maintains as an interpretative matter that Mill does not identify desirability with capable of being desired, Hall defends such an identification against charges of fallaciousness.

55 Skorupski, John, ‘The Place of Utilitarianism in Mill's Philosophy’, The Blackwell Guide to Mill's Utilitarianism, ed. West, Henry R. (Malden, MA, 2006), pp. 45–59Google Scholar, at 45 and 49, respectively.

56 My thanks to an anonymous reviewer for raising this worry.

57 Theodor Gomperz, Letter Manuscript, 18 March 1868, Johns Hopkins University Library, quoted in J. M. Robson, ‘Textual Introduction’, Collected Works, vol. 10, ed. John M. Robson (Toronto, 1969), pp. cv–cxxxix, at cxxvi.

58 John Stuart Mill, Letter Manuscript, 23 April 1868, Johns Hopkins University Library, quoted in Robson, ‘Textual Introduction’, Collected Works, vol. 10, p. cxxvi.

59 Mill, Letter Manuscript, p. cxxvi.

60 Mill, ‘Political Economy’, pp. 119–20.

61 Ryan draws a similar conclusion in Ryan, Alan, J. S. Mill (London, 1974), pp. 102–4Google Scholar.

62 Mill, Utilitarianism, p. 234.

63 Mill, Utilitarianism, p. 237.

64 Mill, Utilitarianism, p. 237.

65 Mill, Utilitarianism, p. 237. For a careful treatment of how one might reconcile desire-satisfactionist and hedonist theories of welfare, see Heathwood, Chris, ‘Desire Satisfactionism and Hedonism’, Philosophical Studies 128.3 (2006), pp. 539–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

66 My thanks to Dale Miller for suggesting this possibility.

67 Drake, ‘A Humean Constructivist Reading’, p. 211.

68 Mill, Utilitarianism, p. 237.

69 Mill, Utilitarianism, p. 238.

70 My thanks once again to an anonymous reviewer for raising this point. See also Skorupski, ‘The Place of Utilitarianism’, p. 52.

71 See Hare, Freedom and Reason, ch. 6.

72 Mill, System, p. 951.

73 Mill, System, p. 951. For further analysis of this and a similar passage in Utilitarianism, as well as an argument that Mill's view on this subject is itself evidence for an anti-realist reading of Mill's views on practical normativity, see Macleod, Christopher, ‘Mill's Antirealism’, The Philosophical Quarterly 66.263 (2016), pp. 261–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

74 For one statement of the distinction, see Smith, Michael, The Moral Problem (Malden, MA, 1994), pp. 94–8Google Scholar.

75 Mill, Utilitarianism, p. 219.

76 Mill, Utilitarianism, p. 229.

77 Mill, Utilitarianism, pp. 212–13.

78 Mill, Utilitarianism, p. 212.

79 In so far as it requires one to be in or imagine oneself in another's place, this argument bears certain similarities to an important aspect of Hare, R. M., ‘Wrongness and Harm’, Essays on the Moral Concepts (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1972), pp. 92–109CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. at 100–1.

80 This leaves open, and perhaps even supports, the possibility that Mill endorses Humeanism of a certain sort: a democratized Humeanism according to which the desires of every subject are potentially normatively reason-giving for each agent. See Manne, Kate, ‘Democratizing Humeanism’, Weighing Reasons, ed. Lord, Errol and Maguire, Barry (New York, 2016), pp. 123–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar. But this is an altogether different view from that which standardly goes under the name of Humean constructivism.

81 Mill, Utilitarianism, p. 207. See Drake, ‘A Humean Constructivist Reading’, sect. 3.

82 Mill, Utilitarianism, p. 208.

83 Drake, ‘A Humean Constructivist Reading’, p. 197.

84 Street, Sharon, ‘What is Constructivism in Ethics and Metaethics?’, Philosophy Compass 5.5 (2010), pp. 363–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

85 See Zuk, Peter D., ‘A Third Version of Constructivism: Rethinking Spinoza's Metaethics’, Philosophical Studies 172.10 (2015), pp. 2565–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

86 I thank Gwen Bradford, Chris Dohna, Mahmoud El-Youssef, David Erdel, Chris Heathwood, Christopher Macleod, Dale Miller, George Sher, Grant Sterling, Brandon Williams, the members of the Spring 2015 Perfectionism seminar at Rice, audiences at the 2014 meeting of the APA Central Division, the 2014 meeting of the Rocky Mountain Ethics Congress, and the 2016 meeting of the Midsouth Philosophy Conference, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on previous drafts of this article.