Lance asked:

Mill states that it is “better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied”. What reasons does he give for thinking this?

Answer by Craig Skinner

The reason he gives is that a wise man can experience the “higher” pleasures, whereas the fool experiences only the “lower” ones. And, since a small amount of a higher pleasure is worth any amount of a lower one, even if Socrates is not fully satisfied enjoying the higher pleasures, he is better off than the fool who is completely satisfied with the lower ones.

Why does Mill introduce the idea of higher and lower pleasures, and how does he distinguish between them ?

Mill frames utility in terms of pleasure (the best action to take is the one maximizing overall pleasure). In this he followed the example of his father’s friend Bentham. The latter thought all pleasures could be rated on a single scale and that “pushpin is as good as poetry” (pushpin was a simple pub game). But if pleasures can all be measured on a single scale (intensity multiplied by duration),  we get unwelcome consequences. One standard example is Haydn and the oyster: if an oyster were to  enjoy a tiny bit of pleasure for millions of years, this would outweigh the pleasure in Haydn’s 77-year life, and we would have to say that the oyster’s life was more worthwhile than that of the great composer. Indeed, in Utilitarianism (Ch.2) Mill refers to critics who say it is a “doctrine worthy only of swine”.

To avoid these consequences, Mill said there were higher and lower pleasures. Importantly, a small amount of a higher one was worth more than any amount of a lower one, thereby avoiding the eternal oyster and myriad contented pigs problems.

So, what are the higher pleasures, and how do know that they are ?

Well, the higher ones are distinctly human, whereas we share the lower ones with some other animals. He’s not very specific about the higher pleasures, and one gets the feeling these are just the pursuits he and his friends liked. And they are unnecessarily intellectual. I wonder what he’d make of today’s popular pleasures, like shopping, cooking, playing darts or poker, bungee jumping, jogging, watching people bake, dance or play football on TV.

As to how he knows the status of a pleasure, he says that those who have experienced both higher and lower pleasures prefer the higher, even in small amount, to the lower, even in large amount. But no detail is given as to this social survey, and again, I suspect he just echoes the view  of his friends and himself.

In addition to the higher/ lower distinction, Mill extended the notion of pleasure beyond sensation or feeling of wellbeing to something more like Aristotle’s eudaimonia (flourishing, living and doing well).

He would have been better off, avoiding these problems, if he had abandoned the Benthamite narrow, hedonistic view of happiness, given up talk of higher and lower pleasures altogether, and instead framed utility (maximizing the good) in terms of welfare, benefit, satisfaction or preferences, as later Consequentialists have done.

 

Polly asked:

I was wondering if there is any other way of thinking besides deduction and induction, and I want an example. 

I understand by “thinking” the action of being able to comprehend smthg, and explain it. I know that by “comprehend” you could think about many things (the same for explaining) but what I want to grasp is if there is any other method besides the ones named above but parallel to them. 

Could be an example from mathematics or chemistry or.. well…

Answer by Craig Skinner

There is indeed, namely abduction.

Put simply, the essential features of each are as follows.

Deduction: a conclusion necessarily follows from (is entailed by; is a logical consequence of) the premises. So, if premises are true, conclusion must be true. But deduction tells us nothing new, because the conclusion is implicit in, is already contained in, the premises.

eg  Premise 1.    All Scots are drunks

Premise 2.    Craig is a Scot

Conclusion: Craig is a drunk

Induction:  from “expect more of the same” or “the future will resemble the past” we infer a likely, but not guaranteed conclusion. Unlike deduction this is not logically watertight, it is only probabilistic, but on the other hand it tells us something about the world.

eg   Premise: the sun has risen every morning for as long as we can remember.

Conclusion: the sun will rise tomorrow morning.

Because the world has exhibited regularities for eons, evolution has hardwired induction into sentient species. My dog for instance, is right now looking expectantly for her walk because she has had one around this time of day for years.

Induction notes regularities but doesnt explain them eg why the sun rises.

Abduction: here we infer the best explanation for the facts, so that abduction is also called “inference to the best explanation (IBE)”. It may not always be the right explanation, so that the conclusion, as with induction, and unlike deduction, is not guaranteed. However, unlike deduction and induction, it explains things, and is widely used in everyday life, in science, in medical diagnosis. Most of Sherlock Holmes’s “deductions” are actually abduction eg

Premise 1: the dog didnt bark in the night

Premise 2: dogs dont bark at friends

Best explanation: the intruder was known to the dog

We can update our estimate of the likelihood of our explanation in light of new evidence, and this iterated process can be systematized using Bayesian analysis. Abduction and Bayesian analysis are widely used in the field of Artificial Intelligence.

 

Sheila asked:

Who is greater, Aristotle or Kant? and why?

Answer by Craig Skinner

My vote goes to Aristotle.

Here’s why.

Both are giants of philosophy, in their different ways, and I couldnt choose between them in this regard. But Aristotle was a great scientist, logician and literary critic as well.

To mention just a couple of their enduring contributions to philosophy.

Aristotle.

• virtue ethics is flourishing with lively ongoing philosophical debate, as well as appeal to notions of good character and habits by parents everywhere when bringing up children
• ideas of proper function, ends and purposes, remain very influential in biology and in a naturalistic approach to human nature.

Kant.

• deontological ethics is also flourishing, both philosophically, and in appeals by parents to duty and right action.
• ideas of forms of perception and categories of understanding are very influential in cognitive science.

But Aristotle pulls away with his other achievements.

• his physics is often derided these days. Unfairly so. Given the accepted cosmology of his day (Earth-centred system of concentric circles), his physics is a coherent system of fluid mechanics which held sway for 1500 years till Newton came up with something better.
• his field work in marine biology is suberb, it’s like reading Darwin. He is one of the great biologists.
• his logic was only improved on in the 19th  Century.
• I am not big on the arts, but leading classicists regard his analysis of tragedy as “the single most important piece of literary criticism in Western culture into the twentieth century” (Beard &Henderson 2010. Classics: A Very Short Introduction. OUP).

In conclusion, whilst Aristotle and Kant are two of the three top all-time great philosophers (alongside Plato), Aristotle pulls ahead of Kant in virtue of his being a great physicist, biologist, logician and literary critic.