Moore's Criticism of Mill's Proof of Utilitarianism

Moore's Criticism of Mill's Proof of Utilitarianism
Ok, in the previous post we looked at Sidgwick's criticisms of Mill's proof of utilitarianism.  As the title might suggest, we will now turn to Moore's criticisms.  For a more detailed explanation of Mill's proof, check out the previous post.  For this post I'll just present Mill's proof in its skeleton form so we are easily able to refer back to specific premises.

(I will write a post within a week about how Mill might reply to Sidgwick and Moore)
Favourite Quote:
"Happiness, as we saw, has been defined by Mill, as 'pleasure and the absence of pain'.  Does Mill mean to say that 'money,' these actual coins, which he admites to be desired in and for themselves, are a part either of pleasure or of the absence of pain?  Will he maintain that those coins themselves are in my mind, and actually a part of my pleasant feelings?  If this is to be said, all words are useless:  nothing can possibly be distinguished from anything else; if those two things are not distinct, what on earth is?  We shall hear next that this table is really and truly the same thing as this room; that a cab-horse is in fact indistinguishable from St Paul's Cathedral..." (Moore, p.71)

Quick Sketch of Mill's Proof
Proof of Part 1: Happiness is a Good

(P1)  The only evidence that something is desirable (i.e. good) is that people desire it.
(P2)  People desire their own happiness.
(P3)  Thus, a particular person's happiness is desirable to them (and therefore an end),
(P4)  Thus, happiness (as conceived by each person) is an end and (therefore) a good to that person.
(C1)  So, the general happiness is a good to the aggregate of all people.

Proof of Part 2:  Happiness is the only good.
All desires are either a means to happiness or a component of a compound notion of happiness.  Since we identify ends by whether they are desirable, (C2) happiness is the only thing desired as an end in itself.

Grand Conclusion
Because happiness is the sole end of human action "and the promotion of it the test by which to judge of all human contact," it must be the standard of morality (Mill, p. 125).  In other words, utilitarianism is true.  

Moore's Criticisms of Mill's Proof
Moore identifies most of the same problems that Sidgwick does, however, his account of why Mill went wrong differs.

Argument 1: Naturalistic Fallacy Via Fallacy of Equivocation
Recall that Sidgwick also accuses Mill of the fallacy of equivocation (failing to hold constant the meaning of a term through out the premises to the conclusion).  Moore makes the same claim against Mill but explains the equivocation as causing Mill to commit the naturalistic fallacy.  

The naturalistic fallacy is committed anytime the property of moral good is equated with a natural property, and Mill commits this fallacy when he tells us that 'good' means 'desirable'.  To make his argument, Moore relies on the same disanalogy Sidgwick recognized in Mill's analogy between 'visible' and 'desirable'.  Mill tells us that to know what is is visible we observe what is able to be seen and so, to know what is desirable we observe what people desire.  The problem is that 'visible' means 'able to be seen' but 'desirable' doesn't mean 'able to be desired': it means something ought to be desired or is worthy of being desired.

However, if we simply follow Mill's analogy and interpret 'desirable' as the descriptive 'able to be desired' then it follows that just about anything can be good.  Because, it seems just about anything can, in a descriptive sense, be desired--including 'bad' things.  Well, that's not going to help Mill's case....

But that's not the main problem.  The main problem that arises from attributing the descriptive interpretation to 'desirable' is that what we ought to do (the normative rule of action) collapses into the descriptive claim about what we do do.  

In other words, he established his normative (i.e. , what we ought to do) conclusion that "the general happiness is good because it is desirable"  through the descriptive claim that people do desire their own happiness.  But if we hold the descriptive meaning constant throughout the premises and apply it to the conclusion, then the conclusion itself becomes descriptive--i.e., the general happiness is good because we are able to desire it.  

But that doesn't tell us that we ought to desire it or that it ought to be desired, which is what Mill wants to say.  Furthermore, as we have seen, being able to desire something doesn't imply it is what we ought to desire, nor does it make it the standard by which to judge all human conduct.  

By equating 'desirable' with 'the good' and holding Mill to the descriptive meaning of desirable (established in the premises), he cannot derive the normativity he wants in his conclusion.   His alternative is to equivocate on the meaning of 'desirable', which invalidates his argument because it commits the fallacy of equivocation.  

Argument 2:  Means-Ends vs Psychological Hedonism
Like Sidgwick, Moore also rejects Mill's psychological hedonism--i.e., that the only thing we desire  (i.e., the sole end of action) is pleasure/happiness because everything is either a means to or a component of happiness.  Moore's two general arguments are that (a) Mill psychological model of the relationship between desires and pleasure is wrong and that (b) Mill conflates what it is to be a means and what it means to be an end.

The first part of Mill's objection is to counter Mill's psychological model.  For Moore pleasure is what motivates action toward some particular object; and that particular object is included in the ultimate end of my desire.  For Mill when I desire some object, it's actually not that object that I desire but only the anticipated pleasure I will get from it.  But for Moore the way it works is that the idea of that object causes in me a thought of pleasure which in turn causes me to desire the object.  So, as well as the pleasure I hope to attain, I also desire the object.  Therefore, pleasure isn't the only thing we desire because we also desire the object. 

The second argument concerns a confusion of means and ends.  Recall that Mill acknowledges that some might counter his psychological hedonism by pointing out that people pursue things like virtue, power, fame, money etc as ends in themselves.  His reply is that in such cases those 'ends', through habit or education, have become components of a compound notion of happiness, thereby supporting his hypothesis that the only thing people desire is happiness.

To illustrate Moore's objections, lets take money as an example.  Recall that for Mill happiness is 'pleasure and the absence of pain'.  Some people view money as an intermediate means to some pleasure.  But as Mill suggests, for some people, money can be an end it itself.  That is, they just want money for money's sake.  Not to buy anything...but just to have it: think Scrooge McDuck or Mr. Burns.  

In the latter case money has become part of that person's compound notion of happiness.  And, if money is part of someone's compound notion of happiness then money is pleasure because happiness is pleasure.  But in what sense can money be pleasure?  This doesn't seem to make sense at all.  Mill is just defining words to suit his purpose.

Mill told us that everything except pleasure is but a means, which seems to imply that everything except pleasure is precluded from being an end.  But now he tells us that some other things that were previously means--that by any reasonable use of language are distinct from pleasure--can also be ends.  

So, either Mill must maintain the ridiculous position that money is pleasure or that there are things besides pleasure that people desire as ends.  If he doesn't want to appear kressy he's going to have to take the latter, but then he has to give up psychological hedonism.

Maybe It's Good that Helping Old Ladies Across The Street Brings About Happiness? But, Is It Good That It's Good?

G. E. Moore's Open Question Argument


Review


In the previous post we took a look at G. E. Moore's naturalistic fallacy which, if you recall, is (short version):  




(1)  Simple ideas/concepts cannot be defined by their properties because then they would be the same as their properties.  Eg.  'Yellow' cannot be defined as 'bright' because 'yellow' and 'bright' are not equivalence. 
(2)  'Good' is a simple concept.
(C)  Therefore, 'good' cannot be defined by its properties.  If one says "'good' is pleasure" or "'good' is virtue" they are committing the naturalistic fallacy.  'Good' is not equivalent to pleasure or virtue.  Some things might share the properties or 'good' and pleasure or 'good and virtue, but it is a mistake to define 'good' as either pleasure or virtue.


We see the naturalistic fallacy every day when people say things are 'good' or 'bad' based on their properties.  Typical examples abound in the alt-med community where you'll often hear that something is 'good' for you because "it's natural".  No.  It's just natural, its goodness has nothing to do with it being natural.  Natural and 'good' are not equivalent.  Try eating some organic, pesticide-free, natural helmlock and tell me how 'good' it is for you.  


You'll also hear from them, "that's artificial, it's baaaaaaaaaaad".  X may be both artificial and bad but its badness is not related to its artificiality.  Lots of manmade things are good for me too, like antibiotics if I have gangreen.  Yay! Science!


You can also hear the naturalistic fallacy from anti-gay groups.  They say, homosexuality is baaaaaaaaaad because it's not natural.  But, after studying the naturalistic fallacy we know that the badness and naturalness of a thing/act are not equivalent.  Even if we discount the factual falsity of this claim, whether something is natural or not has no bearing on whether it's good or bad.  If they want to maintain logical consistency, they shouldn't fly in airplanes or drink coca cola because they're not natural either, therefore baaaaaaaaaaaaad.


The Open Question Argument


Lets take a quick look at Moore's next famous argument, known as the Open Question Argument.  While this argument is related to the first, it is slightly different.  The basic objective of the argument is to shew that any answer to the question "what does 'good' mean" is insufficient.  The answer only leaves us with another question thereby preventing us from closing the original question.  Lets break this shit down.


Check 1.  Check 1.  Test.  Test.  Oh, before I continue I should mention that I am now even cooler than I was a month ago because I bought a bluetooth earpiece for my cell phone.  Now I am very cool and look like an official security guard.  Just thought I'd share...moving on...


Wait!  I need to say one more thing in the preamble about why Moore is even making this argument.  Up until Moore (with the exception of Sidwick) when different philosophers gave differing definitions of 'good', the cause of the disagreement was considered to be just that some philosophers (those with an opposing viewpoint) simply had the wrong definition.  Moore's argument attempts to show that the disagreement doesn't arise out of some definitions being wrong while others are right, but that they are all wrong because no definition is ever possible.  Finally, just because we can't define 'good' doesn't mean the concept has no meaning, he's simple pointing out that we can't define it.


Ok, back to the open question argument.  Here's an example to illustrate the argument.  Lets pick something that most would consider to be 'good'; lets say, (i) helping old ladies across the street is good.    Some annoying person asks, "but what does it mean for something to be good"?  Someone else replies, "(ii) saying something is good means something brings about happiness" (you can substitute anything you like).


So now we have a definition:  something that brings about happiness is good.  Now we can ask another question: "is it good that (i) helping little old ladies across the street brings about happiness?" Perhaps the answer to this particular example is yes, but the answer isn't important to Moore's case.  What's important is that we are asking a separate question which arose out of the prior assertion (ii).


Moore's point here is that any value claim--i.e., x is good because it brings about happiness--doesn't close the issue; it raises further questions: (iii) is it good that doing x brings about happiness? (iv) And is it good to do anything and everything to bring about happiness?  This is a separate issue and might not have the same answer as our first question.  Momentary reflection should give us some examples where bringing about fleeting happiness might not always be the 'good' thing to do.  


Two important observations fall out of this: (1) 'good' and 'happiness' (or whatever we put in its place) aren't really equivalent in meaning.  If they were they'd be interchangeable and the question "is it good that helping little old ladies across the street brings about happiness?" would be as nonsensical as "is it good that helping little old ladies across the street is good?".  Clearly these two sentences are different in meaning.  (2)  We can see that (i), (iii), and (iv) are separate but significant questions.  The general lesson here is that while we may be able to point to specific examples of what 'good' is, anytime I try to define 'good', a new non-trivial value question pops up, leaving us with further value question about what is 'good'.


OK, that argument makes my head spin.  Anyone reading this who has anything to add, correct, or present more clearly...please feel free!  It would be good!