Reconciling the Contradictions of Mill’s Preference-based Utilitarianism Ryan Sadler Bauman College

In Utilitarianism, John Stuart Mill advances the “greatest happiness principle,” which “holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to produce happiness…[and] by happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain.” [1] Mill supplements the “greatest happiness principle” with the argument in Chapter II that some types of higher pleasures are intrinsically of a greater value than others, as competent judges prefer them even though they are attended by a lesser degree of pleasure. However, it is difficult to defend the anti-hedonist principle of higher pleasures as a central doctrine of Mill’s hedonist utilitarianism. Given that hedonism considers one pleasure of a finite amount as equal to another pleasure of the same finite amount, it seems that qualitative distinctions between pleasures cannot be reconciled without importing value-based principles foreign to traditional hedonism. This conflict is further complicated by the implications of Mill’s conclusions on virtue. Mill claims in Chapter IV that virtue has no superior intrinsic value, despite its preferred status – it is merely instrumental to happiness. It quickly becomes evident that the higher pleasures of Chapter II are unlike the virtue of Chapter IV:...