Mill on Better and Worse Ways of Being
I suggested here that being human is better than being a bird. Better with respect to what?
Well, that’s a good question. Let’s examine it via a reference to Mill.
According to Mill in Utilitarianism, “it’s better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied, and better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. If the fool, or the pig, has a different opinion, it is because it only knows its own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides.” Nice passage!
For the most part, I agree with Mill. But I’m neither a utilitarian nor a hedonist of the axiological, prudential, or normative kinds. (See here for a brief taxonomy of hedonism.) I incline toward value pluralism (VP), which holds that there is more than one intrinsic value. VP contrasts value monism (VM), which holds that there is only one intrinsic value. So far as I can tell, most adherents of VM are axiological hedonists and thus hold that pleasure is the only intrinsic value. But one can affirm VM by holding that the one and only value is something other than pleasure, such as excellence or wholeness, wisdom, rationality, freedom, creative activity, etc.
Now, ‘better’ is a term of axiological comparison for which it is reasonable to ask “better with respect to what?” Mill asserts a better than relation holding between the dissatisfied human and the satisfied pig and between the dissatisfied wise person and the satisfied fool. What is the covering consideration for this relation? For Mill, it seems to be degree of pleasure. Mill claims that the pleasure associated with being a dissatisfied human is higher than the pleasure of being a satisfied pig and that the pleasure of being dissatisfied and wise is higher than that of being satisfied but foolish. For Mill, higher pleasure entails a better state of being.
Let’s set aside the reasonable question of whether or not it makes sense to say that some pleasures are objectively higher/better than others. Since I’m inclined to VP, I can agree with Mill that pleasure is a value, though I don’t believe it’s the only value. I thus can agree with Mill that it’s better (in the sense of being a matter of higher pleasure) to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied and better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And yet I can assert that the better-than relation holds with respect to other values as well. It is better with respect to eudaimonia (i.e., objective moral and intellectual flourishing) to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied and better with respect to eudaimonia to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. In other words, the objective welfare of the human is higher than that of the pig, and the objective welfare of the wise person is higher than that of the fool. The human is capable of a higher form of life than the pig since, according to human nature, the human being can attain objectively valuable states of rationality, self-consciousness, rational and moral agency, freedom of will, autonomy, creativity, etc., but the pig cannot, given porcine nature. Moreover, the wise person can attain states of being inaccessible to the fool qua fool – though the fool can improve from a condition of folly to one of wisdom and therefore access the states of a wise person. But the fool cannot access these states while in the condition of folly.
Now, I said: “for the most part, I agree with Mill.” I have concerns with his passage. For example, he says: “If the fool, or the pig, have a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides.”
To what kind of knowledge is Mill referring? Likely, the reference is to knowledge-by-acquaintance since plausibly the pig lacks the capacity to possess propositional knowledge, and Mill is not talking about know-how. It is true that the pig does not have knowledge-by-acquaintance of what it is like to be human, nor does the fool qua fool possess knowledge-by-acquaintance of what it is like to be wise. However, the human being lacks knowledge-by-acquaintance of what it’s like to be a pig. The human hence doesn’t “know both sides” – at least not in terms of experience.
Question: Does the wise person have knowledge-by-acquaintance of what it’s like to be a fool? Perhaps he does, if he was once foolish, then became wise and retained his memory of what it was like to be foolish.
This is an interesting topic to pursue. Alas, I must stop here. Other duties call, and this is merely a Stack post, i.e., a provisional philosophical entry.