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Article Excerpt
In this paper, I examine how philosophers before and after G.E. Moore understood intrinsic value. The main idea I wish to bring out and defend is that Moore was insufficiently attentive to how distinctive his conception of intrinsic value was, as compared with those of the writers he discussed, and that such inattentiveness skewed his understanding of the positions of others that he discussed and dismissed. My way into this issue is by examining the charge of inconsistency that Moore levels at the qualitative hedonism outlined by J.S. Mill in Utilitarianism. Along the way I suggest that there are a number of ways in which Moore was unfair in rejecting qualitative hedonism as inconsistent. I close by relating the issues that arise in discussion of Moore to contemporary debates on value and reasons.
1. Mill's Qualitative Hedonism
One of the most notorious passages of Mill's Utilitarianism comes when he outlines his qualitative hedonism as follows:
It is quite compatible with the principle of utility to recognise the fact that some kinds' of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others. It would be absurd that, while in estimating all other things quality is considered as well as quantity, the estimation of pleasures should be supposed to depend on quantity alone. (1)
Mill's qualitative hedonism is often held to be inconsistent. (2) By this it is, commonly, meant that although (like all hedonistic theories) it purports to be monistic, it is in fact pluralistic (or, in short, that the qualitative part is inconsistent with the hedonism part). And in Principia Ethica, G.E. Moore objects to Mill along precisely these lines:
I have pointed out that, if you say, as Mill does, that quality of pleasure is to be taken into account, then you are no longer holding that pleasure alone is good as an end, since you imply that something else, something which is not present in all pleasures, is also good as an end. (3)
I think that Moore (like some before and after him) is unfair in his treatment of Mill in a number of ways. I think that even if it is unmotivated and false, qualitative hedonism is consistent. This is not a new claim. I hope, however, to provide an interesting and illuminating explanation of the unfairness, by showing that Moore's objection to Mill's hedonism unduly presupposed (among other things) Moore's substantive view of intrinsic value. (4)
2. Moore's View of Intrinsic Value
Moore's view of intrinsic value (implicit in Principia, and articulated and defended later in "The Conception of Intrinsic Value") consists of one claim supplemented by two further claims. (5) Moore outlines the first claim as follows:
To say that a kind of value is "intrinsic" means merely that the question whether a thing possesses" it, and in what degree it possesses it, depends solely on the intrinsic nature of the thing in question. (6)
Moore then expands further on what he means by saying that intrinsic value depends "solely on the intrinsic nature of the thing in question," and provides a pair of claims as follows:
[I]t is impossible for what is strictly one and the same thing to possess that kind of value [i.e., intrinsic value] at one time, or in one set of circumstances, and not to possess it at another; and equally impossible for it to possess it in one degree at one time, or in one set of circumstances, and to possess it in a different degree at another, or in a different set. (7)
[I]f a given thing possesses any kind of intrinsic value in a certain degree, then not only must that same thing possess it, under all circumstances, in the same degree, but also anything exactly like it, must, under all circumstances, possess it in exactly the same degree. (8)
So, on Moore's view, if Y possesses intrinsic value today, then all of the following must be true:
(a) Y's intrinsic value depends solely upon its intrinsic properties.
(b) Y must also possess intrinsic value (and to the same degree) at any other time or place at which it exists.
(c) Anything with the same intrinsic properties as Y must possess intrinsic value (and to the same degree) as Y. (9)
3. How Mill Could Have Been Consistent (Even on Moore's Terms)
I think that Moore is multiply uncharitable in his reading of Mill and that Mill's qualitative hedonism can be rendered consistent, even on Moore's own terms, in a number of different ways. I shall not cover them all here but will pause briefly to examine three that I consider to be important.
One way of making qualitative hedonism work within Moore's theory would simply be to regard the quality of a pleasure as an intrinsic property of it. And Mill does perhaps think of quality as an intrinsic property, as suggested by his writing:
And there needs be the less hesitation to accept this judgement respecting the quality of pleasures, since there is no other tribunal to be referred to even on the question of quantity. What means are there of determining which is the acutest of two pains, or the intensest of two pleasurable sensations, except the general suffrage of those who are familiar with both? Neither pains nor pleasures are homogeneous, and pain is always heterogeneous with pleasure. (10)
If quality were an intrinsic property of a pleasure, then it seems that qualitative hedonism need not (a) violate Moore's intrinsicality or necessity theses, nor (b) slide into pluralism. One might try to object to such a theory by saying that only the intrinsic properties relating to quantity (that is, intensity and duration) can be relevant to determining the value of a pleasure. But it is not clear what (particularly in Moore's account of intrinsic value) would justify such a restriction.
Moore does pause to consider this version of Mill's theory:
For take even the most favourable supposition of his meaning; let us suppose that by a pleasure he does not mean, as his words imply, that which produces pleasure and the pleasure produced. Let us suppose him to mean that there are various kinds of pleasure, in the sense in which there are various kinds of colour--blue, red, green, etc. (11)
Moore, however, quickly dismisses the position as inconsistent on the grounds that it commits "the fallacy of confusing ends and means." He elaborates upon the charge by writing that "if colour is our only possible end, as Mill says pleasure is, then there can be no possible reason for preferring one colour to another, red, for instance, to blue, except that the one is more of a colour than the other." (12)
It is hard to tell how good an argument this is against this version of Mill's theory (one in which pleasures differ in their intrinsic nature). Apparently Moore just does not take sufficiently seriously the idea of pleasures differing in quality--as suggested by his thinking that the particular kinds of pleasure would be means to some homogeneous "pleasure." It is tempting to see Moore as retaining Bentham's conception of...
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