'Human nature is so constituted as to desire nothing which is not either part of happiness or a means to it' - Is this true? Why is the answer to this question so important to Mill?

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Jessica Mead

‘Human nature is so constituted as to desire nothing which is not either part of happiness or a means to it’ – Is this true? Why is the answer to this question so important to Mill?

In Chapter Four of Utilitarianism, Mill attempts to prove his moral theory: ‘actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness’. According to Crisp, his proof comprises three stages: happiness is desirable; the general happiness is desirable and nothing other than happiness is desirable. Mill sides with the inductive, empirical school, believing the intuitionists too unscientific, complementing his naturalism i.e. the natural sciences, including psychology, can explain everything.  This essay shall examine each of the three stages and assess the link between human nature and desire.  Finally, the importance to Mill that nothing apart from happiness is desired shall be considered.

The first stage is that happiness is desirable, providing a basis for the remainder of the proof.  Mill needs to prove that happiness is actually desirable in order to argue that humans desire nothing else other than happiness.  He believes that the only evidence that something is desirable is that it is actually desired.  He compares this to proving an object is visible.  ‘The only proof capable of being given that an object is visible, is that people actually see it’.  He illustrates that each individual’s happiness is a good to that individual.  The principle of utilitarianism rests on the only good or ultimate end being happiness.  Mill suggests that it is possible to appeal to the desiring faculty in the case of good and ultimate ends.  The most significant objection to the first stage of the proof comes from G.E. Moore in his Principia Ethica.  He considers Mill’s link between ‘visible’ and ‘desirable’ as naturalistic fallacy.  He objects that Mill defines the word ‘good’ as ‘desired’ because it clearly rests on an open question argument.  However, Roger Crisp argues that Mill was not intending to define but to suggest that ‘happiness is good, desirable, an end’.  Another criticism is that what is desired is not necessarily good and that ‘there may be desirable objects which are not desired’ Nevertheless, Mill is fairly successful in showing that happiness is desirable and it is certainly reasonable that happiness could be considered a good and an ultimate end.

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In the second stage, Mill extends the individual’s happiness to the collective happiness.  Mill suggests in 4.3 of his Utilitarianism that the only reason why the general happiness is desirable because each individual desires his own happiness.  Therefore, as each person’s happiness is a good to himself and to the general happiness, thus happiness is a good to the aggregate of individuals. Mill makes three assumptions: the moral assumption, the impartiality assumption and the teleological assumption. The first is that individuals are already moral, not egoists concerned only in their own happiness.  Therefore, since happiness is a good, people should ...

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