II. HUMEAN CONSTRUCTIVISM

III. MILL’S VIEW OF PROOF IN MORAL THEORY

Humean constructivism holds that practical reasons are only those reasons entailed by the contingently given practical point of view. There can then, according to this view, be no proof for any moral theory: there are no facts of the matter about whether a person should or should not hold the ultimate values she holds within her practical point of view. Mill's position on proof for moral theories is subjectivist and thus anti-realist, and is compatible with the Humean constructivist view.

Mill discusses the possibility of a proof of his theory early in Utilitarianism:

Humean constructivism observes a distinction between means and ends: means are subject to proof, as which means will accomplish particular ends is a factual matter; but ultimate ends are not subject to proof, as they are contingently given aspects of the particular practical point of view. (Non-ultimate ends can be shown to be entailed or not by ultimate ends, and so are subject to proof in that regard.) This is Mill's position, described in the System of Logic. Mill makes the distinction between ends and means by referring to the province of the former as ‘art’ and the province of the latter as ‘science’:

Mill includes morality in this categorization as an art, not a science.Footnote ³⁰ All arts have first principles, the ends they are to achieve, which are assumed rather than rationally demonstrated:

Mill uses the analogy of health again in Utilitarianism to indicate that ultimate ends are assumed and not subject to proof or falsification: ‘The medical art is proved to be good by its conducing to health; but how is it possible to prove that health is good?’Footnote ³² The principle of utility, then, is a principle that a person may or may not hold as an end, depending on her contingently given practical point of view. Science can show how the end can be achieved, but cannot determine whether it should be an end or not.

Despite the impossibility of proving ends, and thus of proving the principle of utility, Mill writes that: ‘Considerations may be presented, capable of determining the intellect either to give or withhold its assent to the doctrine.’Footnote ³³ This Mill calls ‘a larger meaning of the word “proof”’.Footnote ³⁴ The ‘assent’ cannot be epistemological, in the sense of believing the principle of utility to be a fact, as Mill holds morality to be not a factual matter. It must be the practical meaning of ‘assent’ that is in play: acquiescence, consent or compliance. As Alan Ryan writes,

Mill's view of proof is thus in keeping with a Humean constructivist view, in which ultimate ends are aspects of the contingently given practical point of view, and as such are not subject to proof or disproof. The nature of Mill's reasons for assent to the principle of utility will be the subject of the next section.

IV. MILL’S VIEW OF PRACTICAL REASON

As discussed above (sect. II.2), under Humean constructivism there are practical reasons, but not external or robust obligations. Classical utilitarianism is sometimes thought to be greatly demanding, but I will argue that Mill's theory fits a Humean constructivist reading and excludes external or robust obligations.

It has been noted by several philosophers that Mill's theory does not involve the existence of a certain kind of obligation (or perhaps obligations at all). This has often been regarded as an unintentional failure on Mill's part. Ryan notes that Mill's justification of utilitarianism ‘is open to the Kantian objection that it may be an argument that will get us to want to do what, it may be, is right, but it cannot get us to see that we ought to do what is right’.Footnote ³⁶ Korsgaard notes of the theory that ‘The bare fact that you accept the proof doesn't seem to obligate you to utilitarian conduct’, and concludes that Mill fails to answer the question of why certain actions are necessary.Footnote ³⁷ David Brink notes that Mill attributes the existence of utilitarian practical reasons to the individual conscience, but does not address the question of whether or not people should have such consciences.Footnote ³⁸ I contend that rather than trying to show that people have external or robust obligations and failing, Mill does not believe in such obligations at all, and this is the reason he makes no attempt to demonstrate their existence. As noted in the previous section, what he does try to do, given his view that there is no proof for the principle of utility, is give us motives which will persuade us to follow it. This is in keeping with a Humean constructivist view, in which there are no external or robust obligations and in which practical reasons are entailed from the contingently given practical point of view. Under this reading, Mill attempts to persuade the reader that her practical point of view entails reasons for utilitarian action.

Mill obscures his position on obligation by failing to clarify his terms. It is not immediately obvious whether by ‘obligation’ Mill means the motivation for utilitarian action, or the authority and source of the principle of utility, which might provide reasons for utilitarian action other than those of motivation.Footnote ³⁹ However, the chapter in which Mill's discussion of the issues takes place is titled ‘Of the Ultimate Sanction of the Principle of Utility’ (my emphasis), and Mill speaks only of factors that motivate utilitarianism, rather than any reasons for the existence of external or robust obligations. He thus equates ‘obligations’ with ‘sanctions’, which are enforcements of rules with reward or punishment, pleasure or pain.Footnote ⁴⁰ It seems reasonable then to take Mill on his own terms: rather than trying to establish robust or external obligations for utilitarianism and failing, Mill is trying to establish motivations for utilitarianism. Whether he succeeds or fails cannot be addressed here; I suggest only that his argument be evaluated on its own terms.

Mill identifies two kinds of motivation for utilitarianism, internal and external (not to be confused with Williams's internal and external reasons, or Nagel's motivation internalism and externalism). External motivations include ‘the hope of favor and the fear of displeasure from our fellow creatures or from the Ruler of the universe, along with whatever we may have of sympathy or affection for them, or of love and awe of Him’.Footnote ⁴¹ Given Mill's probable agnosticism (‘[T]he whole domain of the supernatural is . . . that of simple Hope’) and his tendency to pander to religious sentiments for fear of losing his audience, we can reasonably ignore the theistic component.Footnote ⁴² What is left for non-theists in the way of external motivation is the individual's concern for the approbation and disapprobation of others, and sympathy and affection for them; or ‘The whole force . . . of external reward and punishment’ and ‘all that the capacities of human nature admit of disinterested devotion’ to others.Footnote ⁴³ These reasons do not appeal to external obligations, but only to aspects of the contingently given practical point of view.

Mill identifies internal motivation – the ‘ultimate sanction’ – as ‘a subjective feeling in our own minds’ that consists of ‘a pain, more or less intense attendant on violation of duty, which in properly cultivated moral nature rises, in the more serious cases, into shrinking from it as an impossibility’.Footnote ⁴⁴ This could be an indication of external obligations for a moral sense theorist, who might view conscience as knowledge about moral facts; as Mill was not a moral sense theorist, there is no reason to think that the subjective feeling of ‘pain’ that accompanies certain acts is such an indication.Footnote ⁴⁵ It is instead best understood as a product of the contingently given practical point of view. It could be produced by the awareness that we have acted against our own practical reason, or the product of empathy, the awareness that we have done something harmful or failed to do something helpful, perhaps in contradiction to our stated values.

Mill holds that the conscience is based most strongly on benevolence, ‘the feeling of unity with our fellow creatures’.Footnote ⁴⁶ Benevolence is thus the primary aspect of the practical point of view to which Mill appeals in promoting utilitarian practical reasons. Mill holds benevolence to be a natural product of the need to live in societyFootnote ⁴⁷ and, with the external motivators, to be strengthened and honed by education:

Benevolence and the desire for reward and fear of punishment are contingently given aspects of the practical point of view. Mill's view of the motivations for utilitarianism thus fits a Humean constructivist reading: the source of utilitarian practical reasons is entailment by the practical point of view, practical reasons are proportionate to the strength with which people hold the values that entail them, and whether or not people hold utilitarianism as a practical point of view is not subject only to chance but is capable of reinforcement, enforcement and cultivation. There is no appeal to, or justification of, external or robust obligations.

Mill accepts that his theory involves no external obligations, and thus that a person whose practical point of view does not include values that entail utilitarian reasons has no reasons for utilitarianism other than punishment and reward: ‘Undoubtedly this sanction [conscience] has no binding efficacy on those who do not possess the feelings it appeals to.’Footnote ⁴⁹ Mill denies, however, that belief in such obligations has more motivational force than the subjective conscience:

The problem then that the absence of external obligations may seem to propose for Mill's utilitarianism applies to other theories as well; although persons without conscience have no reasons for utilitarianism, ‘neither will these persons be more obedient to any other moral principle than to the utilitarian one’.Footnote ⁵¹ Thus there is no answer to the person who asks ‘why am I bound to promote the general happiness? If my own happiness lies in something else, why may I not give that the preference?’Footnote ⁵² This difficulty will always present itself unless we have been shaped by education to have ‘the feeling of unity with our fellow creatures . . . deeply rooted in our character’.Footnote ⁵³ To see in this a failed argument for external or robust obligations is a mistake. Mill speaks only of contingent, subjective motives to action – dismissing the idea of moral obligation as ‘a transcendental fact, an objective reality’ – and accepts the contingency of utilitarian reasons that results.

This contingency might seem to make arguing for utilitarianism hopeless. Mill notes that ‘moral associations which are of artificial creation, when the intellectual culture goes on, yield by degrees to the dissolving force of analysis’, and that utilitarianism would suffer the same fate ‘if there were no leading department of our nature, no powerful class of sentiments’ to support it.Footnote ⁵⁴ Mill goes on to say though that:

The social instincts are contingently given, but that does not mean they are rare or arbitrary; they are what Dale Dorsey calls a ‘robust species-wide regularity’, being not universal but held to varying degrees by the great majority of people.Footnote ⁵⁶

There is a motivation for utilitarianism even for those who are devoid of benevolence: ‘[H]owever imperfect may be their own practice, they desire and commend all conduct in others toward themselves by which they think their happiness is promoted’; ‘even if he has none of it [the feeling that the good of others must be attended to] himself, he is as greatly interested as anyone that others should have it’.Footnote ⁵⁷ In this view the egoistic person's happiness is best served by a society which acts to promote happiness in general, as that is the means by which her happiness is most likely to be promoted. Support for utilitarian practical reasons is thus, if Mill is right, entailed even from an egoistic practical point of view.

Finally, there is in Mill's argument for utilitarianism a political perspective. Alan Ryan calls this ‘a Hobbesian argument about the nature of the rules which self-interested [persons] could agree to as rules to regulate their conduct with each other’.Footnote ⁵⁸ After noting that ‘the social feelings of mankind – the desire to be in unity with our fellow creatures’ are ‘already a powerful principle in human nature, and happily one of those which tend to become stronger . . . from the influences of advancing civilization’, Mill writes:

Thus Ryan suggests that Mill's answer to the question he gives in Utilitarianism – ‘If my own happiness lies in something else, why may I not give that the preference?’ – is ‘largely to suggest that everyone else will simply combine to make sure that he does give the general happiness the preference’.Footnote ⁶⁰ There is more to this aspect of Mill's argument than a Hobbesian view, however; the ‘desire to be in unity with our fellow creatures’ also implies that our pleasure in being in harmony with others is a motive to consider their interests.

Thus Mill's reasons for the adoption of utilitarianism are benevolence, the fear of punishment and disapprobation and desire for reward and approbation, the desire to live in a society in which one's happiness is promoted, the desire to live in harmony with others, and the need for rules which persons can agree to as a means to regulate their conduct in society. The strongest of these motives is a benevolent conscience, and the strength of a benevolent conscience can be improved by education and cultivation. There is no appeal to external or robust obligations. Mill's view of practical reasons fits a Humean constructivist view, in which practical reasons are only those reasons entailed by the contingently given practical point of view in combination with the non-normative facts.

Korsgaard wonders, given Mill's acceptance of the contingency of practical reason, what the point of his argument could be:

It is true that Mill does not make this clear, but I believe a Humean constructivist reading provides some probable answers.

First, Mill believes that people do not always realize that their practical points of view entail utilitarian practical reasons. After noting that moral beliefs had, before utilitarianism, lacked a clearly identified first principle, Mill writes:

Thus non-utilitarians are mistaken about the basis of their own judgements. This constitutes practical irrationality: we are unlikely to achieve our ends if we are mistaken as to what they are.

Second, Mill nowhere suggests that people's practical points of view are exclusively utilitarian; on the contrary, he acknowledges that the utilitarian conscience is ‘not innate but acquired’, and that the utilitarian conscience can be strengthened by education and cultivation.Footnote ⁶³ Mill can thus be read in part as urging people to cultivate their own utilitarian consciences and to further utilitarianism through the education of others.

Finally, it must be remembered what Mill's purpose in promoting utilitarianism was. As Julia Driver writes, ‘If anything could be identified as the fundamental motivation behind the development of classical utilitarianism it would be the desire to see useless, corrupt laws and social practices changed.’Footnote ⁶⁴ The justifications for such laws and practices were, in Mill's view, non-utilitarian; if Mill could persuade his readers that their deepest social values were in fact utilitarian ones, he could persuade them to reject such justifications and support reform. Before utilitarianism, Mill tells us, ethics was ‘not so much a guide as a consecration of men's actual sentiments’, and Mill is clear that our actual sentiments are not all benevolent; the ‘consecration’ of such sentiments as moral obligations can only be detrimental in Mill's view, and the acceptance that happiness is the end of ethics only beneficial.Footnote ⁶⁵

If Mill was, as I have argued, not attempting to persuade his readers of the existence of any robust or external obligations these several reasons seem sufficient to explain the purpose of his argument for the sanctions for utilitarianism, and are in keeping with a Humean constructivist view in which a person's practical rationality depends in part on her proper understanding of what her practical point of view involves. Mill seeks to persuade the reader that her practical point of view is, where social values are concerned, a utilitarian one.

V. MILL’S NON-COGNITIVISM

This section concerns my negative thesis that Mill is not a moral realist. Non-cognitivism is a form of moral anti-realism, so if Mill is a non-cognitivist he cannot also be a moral realist.Footnote ⁶⁶ Humean constructivism is anti-realist but neutral between anti-realist views of moral language and moral judgement; non-cognitivism therefore does not imply Humean constructivism, but is compatible with it.

Mill can be usefully interpreted as a prescriptivist non-cognitivist, a view according to which moral judgements and statements are species of prescriptive judgements and statements, even where they appear to be indicative. It is important that commitments associated with other non-cognitivist views are not necessarily entailed or required by the view I ascribe to Mill. Neither should Mill's prescriptivism be read as necessarily holding much in common with Carnap's or Hare's prescriptivist views.Footnote ⁶⁷ All that is possible here is to give grounds for a prescriptivist reading of Mill; a full exploration of what his prescriptivism involves and entails must take place elsewhere.Footnote ⁶⁸

The argument that Mill is a non-cognitivist has been made by several scholars, notably Alan Ryan:Footnote ⁶⁹

Ryan's position is supported by Henry West:

Ryan's and West's prescriptivist reading of Mill's metaethics is based on a straightforward reading of his statements: ‘morality itself is not a science, but an art; not truths, but rules’; the results of inquiry into morality ‘do not express themselves in the indicative, but in the imperative mood’.Footnote ⁷²

Mill's non-cognitivism is based on his distinction between art and science, noted in section III. He holds that whereas science deals in truths and facts, art deals in precepts and rules.Footnote ⁷³ Mill holds morality to be an art, and that the language of morality is thus properly prescriptive rather than descriptive:

Against the non-cognitivist reading of Ryan and West, Christopher Macleod argues not for a cognitivist interpretation but an agnostic one: ‘I do not believe there is a safe reading of Mill's metaethics on the basis of textual evidence.’Footnote ⁷⁵ Macleod gives several reasons why the non-cognitivist interpretation should not be accepted.

One such reason is that ascribing non-cognitivism to Mill is anachronistic.Footnote ⁷⁶ This objection might be justified if the ascription in question uses the term non-cognitivism with all the implications of its modern usage; Mill did not think in modern metaethical terms. It seems reasonable, however, to use current terminology for convenience. It is possible to do so in order to identify and illuminate features of philosophers’ thought – even, or perhaps especially, those they may not have been fully aware of – without ascribing to them beliefs they did not have. Just as absolute music has explanatory power in reference to Mozart's music even though the term was coined over fifty years after his death, concepts like non-cognitivism may have explanatory power with regard to Mill's work even though he was not familiar with them.

A second objection to the proposed non-cognitivism of Mill is that Mill referred to there being ‘propositions’, ‘premises’ and ‘assertions’ of art.Footnote ⁷⁷ Macleod suggests this indicates that Mill may have believed moral judgements to be truth-apt. However, although in Mill's view there are no rational justifications for ends, there are rational justifications for means (see sect. III); as means is the area of practical reason to which Mill holds that rational justification applies, we can presume that means is the area of practical reason in which Mill holds that facts exist.

Macleod gives the following quote as an example of Mill's reference to facts of art: ‘it is true, that in the largest sense of the words, even these propositions [of art] assert something as a matter of fact.’Footnote ⁷⁸ That statement does not imply cognitivism when seen in context, however. Mill precedes the statement by saying:

It is here that Mill states what Macleod believes to imply cognitivism, that ‘it is true, that in the largest sense of the words, even these propositions [of art] assert something as a matter of fact.’ But Mill follows the statement by saying that: ‘The fact affirmed in [these propositions of art] is, that the conduct recommended excites in the speaker's mind the feeling of approbation.’ Thus to summarize the passage, Mill states that ends are not the proper subject of science, but of art; that propositions of art are not descriptive, but prescriptive; but that propositions about ends do have descriptive content in a very broad sense, in that they affirm the fact that the speaker has certain approbative sentiments. This is entirely in accordance with non-cognitivism and does not support a cognitivist reading of Mill.

Macleod also argues against Mill's non-cognitivism from the lack of motivation. He claims that non-cognitivism is a solution to problems that Mill didn't face: ‘So, when Mill gives details of the motivations for drawing a distinction between art and science, they are not motivations for a noncognitivist position. Issues of queerness, motivational deficiency, and epistemic contact with the moral never arise.’Footnote ⁸⁰ It is true that Mill does not discuss these issues as motivations for his distinctions between art and science, but they are nevertheless issues of great importance to Mill, and it is thus possible that they underlie his non-cognitivism. Mill discusses motivational problems at length as I have shown above (see section IV; chapter 3 of Utilitarianism is devoted to this topic), he discusses moral sense theory,Footnote ⁸¹ and he discusses moral queerness. Mill states for example that there is a

Roger Crisp writes that:

And as mentioned, Mill also argues against the position of a ‘person who sees in moral obligation a transcendental fact, an objective reality belonging to the province of “things in themselves”’.Footnote ⁸⁴ Mill thus does address ‘issues of queerness, motivational deficiency, and epistemic contact’, and this seems sufficient to motivate a non-cognitivist position on his part.

There is, then, good reason to think that Mill is a non-cognitivist, and thus not a moral realist. His non-cognitivism is compatible with a Humean constructivist view.

VI. MILL’S ARGUMENT FROM DESIRE

Mill's argument from desire for happiness as the only good has been subject to what one philosopher describes as ‘justified universal execration’.Footnote ⁸⁵ This view is based on the understanding that Mill is a realist about happiness as a value, but fails to justify that realism.Footnote ⁸⁶

I suggest that Mill does not fail to justify realism about the value of happiness, because he does not try; rather, Mill is a constructivist about value. Mill's argument is strong under a Humean constructivist reading, and this reading makes more sense of his position than the common view that he argues for realism and fails.

I do not argue that it is decisive that Mill is committed to a constructivist view of value; as with most aspects of Mill's metaethics there is a significant degree of ambiguity and even obscurity. I will argue though that there are good reasons for a constructivist reading of Mill, and that such a reading makes sense of otherwise problematic aspects of his argument.

That Mill has a constructivist view of value makes his theory compatible with Humean constructivism, but does not commit him to it, though his view that desire is the basis of value is in keeping with a Humean approach. For brevity I will not repeat the qualifications expressed here, but would ask that the reader keep them in mind.

Mill's argument for utilitarianism involves three primary claims:

1. 1. The hedonic psychological claim: People solely value happiness for its own sake.

2. 2. The hedonic metaphysical claim: Happiness is the sole good. Corollary: A right act is one which promotes happiness.

3. 3. The utilitarian normative claim: Moral agents should act to promote happiness and reduce suffering.Footnote ⁸⁷

Mill bases the utilitarian normative claim on the hedonic metaphysical claim, a move which is unproblematic. However, he bases the hedonic metaphysical claim on the hedonic psychological claim, a move which appears very problematic. An examination of Mill's argument indicates that he had something very much like Humean constructivism in mind, and, if so, the problem is resolved.Footnote ⁸⁸

Mill sums up utilitarianism succinctly: ‘The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals “utility” or the “greatest happiness principle” holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.’Footnote ⁸⁹ This is a metaphysical claim, as it states that rightness exists and is equivalent to happiness-promotion. It is reasonable to assume that some positive practical reasons are implied by the existence of actions that are right and some negative practical reasons by the existence of actions that are wrong. If so, the statement can be reformulated as ‘Moral agents should act to promote happiness and to reduce unhappiness’, which is the utilitarian normative claim.

While Mill's definition of the principle of utility is both metaphysical and normative, Mill founds it on a strictly metaphysical basis:

This is a statement of the hedonic metaphysical claim. Mill bases the hedonic metaphysical claim on the hedonic psychological claim:

Mill thus bases the utilitarian normative claim on the hedonic metaphysical claim, which in turn is based on the hedonic psychological claim. The latter, highly problematic step is the one with which I am concerned. Mill's argument that happiness is desirable because people desire it is, on the face of it, very poor (as famously criticized by Moore).Footnote ⁹² The word ‘desirable’ does have a sense in which it means simply ‘capable of arousing desire’, and in this sense if a person desires something it is desirable by definition. This does not seem to be the sense that Mill has in mind, though, as it does not follow from this sense of ‘desirable’ that what is desired is good. It is usually assumed that Mill has in mind the other sense of ‘desirable’, meaning, as Moore put it, ‘what ought to be desired’.Footnote ⁹³ But surely we cannot conclude what people ought to desire from what they do desire. Mill's hedonic psychological claim therefore appears incapable of supporting his hedonic metaphysical claim.

Mill's argument for the hedonic metaphysical claim is, however, strong if interpreted under a Humean constructivist view. Under Humean constructivism there are no values independent of the practical point of view, so any statement that something is valuable can only mean that it is valued within a practical point of view. Thus under Humean constructivism to say that X is valuable means only that X is valuable to some person or persons. There is no such thing as something that ought to be valued. Likewise under Humean constructivism to say that X is desirable means only that X is desirable to some person or persons. There is no such thing as something that ought to be desired. As Street puts it, ‘Things are valuable ultimately because we value them.’Footnote ⁹⁴ Likewise, things are desirable only because we desire them.

This is in fact what Mill's argument states. Here is the argument again with implications of the negative thesis – that there are no objective goods – in bold.

I have added italics to highlight the important point that Mill claims not to have shown that happiness is an absolute or objective good, but only that each person's happiness is a good to that person.Footnote ⁹⁵ I have included in this version of the quote the sentence ‘If the end which the utilitarian doctrine proposes to itself were not, in theory and practice acknowledged to be an end, nothing could ever convince any person that it was so’, commonly ignored in discussions of Mill's argument, which refers to Mill's view that ends are not subject to proof and again strongly implies a constructivist, not a realist, view of value.

A Humean constructivist interpretation of Mill's metaphysical premise renders an otherwise very weak argument coherent, as under a Humean constructivist view the hedonic psychological claim entails the hedonic metaphysical claim, which describes a practical point of view. That practical point of view entails utilitarian practical reasons, the utilitarian normative claim.

Although under Humean constructivism the practical point of view is contingently given, Mill's hedonic psychological claim, if true, represents a characteristic of people in general – a robust species-wide regularity – which entails utilitarian practical reasons for practically all people, particularly under Mill's social-instinct and Hobbesian arguments discussed in section IV, in which all people have an interest in promoting a society which treats interests equally. Mill's hedonic psychological claim is an empirical claim that may be true or false; it is not possible to discuss that here. But if the premise is true, under a Humean constructivist reading his argument for utilitarianism is strong. A Humean constructivist reading of Mill is thus an attractive alternative to the common view that he holds a realist view of value which he badly fails to justify.

A realist interpretation of Mill's argument might hold that he does not see the desirable as being entailed by desiring, but rather, sees desiring as the only kind of evidence for the desirable, which has its status independently of what people desire or value. There is an indication that this is Mill's view at the beginning of the chapter:

We might think then that Mill believes that there is some sense by which we can apprehend whether something is an ultimate end, and this sense is our desire.

However, Mill does not go on to say anything about a desirability that exists independently of people's desires. Although it is possible that Mill had an argument that desire is a guide to what is desirable but that desirability is not constituted by desiring, he makes no such argument. I believe charity requires that we assume that had Mill believed in such a realm of the desirable, one independent from people's desires, he would have mentioned it. If we take what Mill does say, rather than what he doesn’t, we seem to have a constructivist view of value.Footnote ⁹⁷

Another possible argument against a constructivist reading of Mill's theory of value is that in chapter 2 of Utilitarianism he accepts that people's desires can go astray.Footnote ⁹⁸ If desires can go astray, it would seem that the desirable cannot only be that which is desired. However, the manner in which they go astray, Mill believes, is in valuing pleasures of lower quality over pleasures of higher quality. The reason for his judgement that the higher pleasures are of higher quality is that they are desired more by those familiar with them; Mill believes that no one who has experienced both kinds of pleasures prefers the lower.Footnote ⁹⁹ That there is something amiss in a person's preferring a lower desire to a higher one lies then, for Mill, only within the person's desire for pleasure: in preferring the lower desire she is pursuing pleasure of lower quality than can be attained elsewhere.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ The person thus holds a false relevant belief, that a lower desire gives more pleasure than a higher one. (Practical irrationality through false belief is a possibility pointed out by Hume himself.Footnote ¹⁰¹) There is here no indication of any value lying beyond what people desire, and thus the practical irrationality Mill describes is in keeping with a constructivist interpretation.Footnote ¹⁰²

VII. AN OBJECTION CONSIDERED

John Skorupski argues against interpreting Mill as a Humean about practical reason. Skorupski's reason for this is as follows:

This is highly questionable, if the Kantian approach to practical reasoning holds that actions can be motivated by pure reason regardless of agents’ background desires, and the Humean approach holds in contrast ‘that such rational principles never have a primary role to play in the explanation of motivation of the fixing of our ends . . . never explaining the original formation of motivation’.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ Mill's discussion of will and desire fits the Humean approach thus described, not the Kantian one.

Mill does say that ‘Will, the active phenomenon, is a different thing from desire, the state of passive sensibility.’Footnote ¹⁰⁵ However, Mill's conception of will is not Kantian, as he immediately makes clear: ‘This, however, is but an instance of that familiar fact, the power of habit.’ He goes on to explain that desire is the original motive of all actions, but that once habits are ingrained behaviours continue after their originating desires have faded. Thus the distinction between will and desire

Thus ‘Will is the child of desire, and passes out of the dominion of its parent only to come under that of habit.’Footnote ¹⁰⁷ The view that actions can be caused by either desire or habit does not entail a Kantian view of ‘the existence of purely conscientious action, flowing not from any unmotivated desire but from acceptance of duty’; and the observation that some actions, originally motivated by desire, come to be performed by sheer force of habit doesn't sufficiently contradict the Humean view to be regarded as non-Humean. Humean views of practical reason hold that ‘there are two main kinds of psychological state’, belief and desire, but not that those are the only kinds of psychological state; there is no obvious reason why Mill's conception of habitual action as an aspect of will cannot be incorporated into a Humean view.Footnote ¹⁰⁸

Finally, Mill makes clear that he accepts the Humean view in his example of a person who has not developed virtue as a habit or in whom the habit is weak: ‘How can the will to be virtuous, where it does not exist in sufficient force, be implanted or awakened? Only by making the person desire virtue – by making him think of it in a pleasurable light, or of its absence in a painful one.’Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Thus Mill's distinction between will and desire is compatible with a Humean approach to practical reason.