J.S. Mill and the Good Life

Ken Taylor
Coming up on Philosophy Talk:

Josh Landy
John Stuart Mill and the Good Life

Trainspotting
Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family.

Ken Taylor
Mill thinks the good life is the life that I choose.

Josh Landy
So which is it? Is it better to choose a life of suffering or live happily in somebody else’s vision?

Garden State
This is my life, Dad. This is it. I spent 26 years waiting for something else to start, so no I don’t think it’s too much to take on because it’s everything there is. I see now it’s all there is.

Trainspotting
Choose your future. Choose life.

Iggy Pop
I got a lust for life

Ken Taylor
Would you rather be a pig satisfied or Socrates dissatisfied?

Josh Landy
Our guest is David Brink, author of “Mill’s Progressive Principles.”

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
I am not going to sit on my ass as the events that affect me unfold to determine the course of my life—I’m going to take a stand.

Ken Taylor
Mill and the Good Life

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
I’m going to defend it.

Ken Taylor
…coming up on Philosophy Talk.

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
Right or wrong, I’m going to defend it.

Ken Taylor
What is the good life?

John Perry
Are we each free to decide which life is best for us?

Ken Taylor
Is a life good because I choose it, or do I choose it because it’s good?

John Perry
Welcome to philosophy, talk to a program that questions everything…

Ken Taylor
…except your intelligence. I’m Ken Taylor. We’re coming to you from the studios of KALW San Francisco.

John Perry
Continuing conversations that begin at Philosophers Xorner on the Stanford campus. That’s where Ken teaches philosophy and I did for 40 or 45 years.

Ken Taylor
Yeah, John, and it’s nice to have our host emeritus back in the studio for a day. Thanks so much.

John Perry
Nice to be back, Ken.

Ken Taylor
So today we’re thinking about John Stuart Mill, and the good life.

John Perry
Well Mill, I guess, I mean, he’s really “On Liberty.” He’s really big on individual choice. He says that a person’s—this is a quote—”own mode of laying out his existence is best, not because it is best in itself, but because it is in his own mode.”

Ken Taylor
I love Mill’s emphasis on freedom and self actualization, not letting yourself be called into conformity by here’s another quote that despotism of custom or browbeaten into accepting orthodoxy by what he calls the tyranny of the prevailing opinion. That’s really good stuff, John.

John Perry
Well, I like it too, Ken. But you know, I guess I’ve never been able to understand how Mill can believe all that and at the same time be a utilitarian.

Ken Taylor
Well, well, wait a minute, what’s the problem?

John Perry
Well, utilitarians think that you should always do that, which produces the greatest happiness for the greatest number, right?

Ken Taylor
Well, yeah, that’s one way they put it.

John Perry
Well, there’s a tension there. Look, example: I know how much you love doing philosophy.

Ken Taylor
I sure do.

John Perry
But suppose that you can, in fact, make more people happy by being a lawyer. You can take up the law, you become a crusader for human rights. Instead of making, you know, a significant number of philosophy students significantly better off you make 1000s of people really better off. But you’re miserable doing it. Would you consider doing it?

Ken Taylor
No, cause you said the thing I would—I think I might be a good lawyer. But I wouldn’t be happy as a lawyer. I’d be miserable as a lawyer.

John Perry
But you’re just one person, Ken. I mean, I have to break it to you. But that’s it. And in the calculus of the greatest good for the greatest number, your individual happiness doesn’t matter any more than anyone else’s.

Ken Taylor
Look, I don’t want to sound too terribly selfish. But frankly, I’m just not willing. I’m just not just not to sacrifice my own happiness at the altar of the happiness of others. I’m just not willing to do that.

John Perry
But aren’t utilitarians? Isn’t that the idea? I mean, some of them would want me to sacrifice my happiness not just for the greater good of all mankind but the greater good of all animalkind.

Ken Taylor
Yeah yeah, that’s Peter Singer. He does he does say that kind of thing. But a mill doesn’t say that sort of thing. I mean, how could he he’s the man who says, here’s a quote another quote from Mill, he who lets the world or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him has no need of any other faculty than the ape like one of imitation.

John Perry
Well, yes, thank you. You’ve explained why I am puzzled. What kind of utilitarianism is that?

Ken Taylor
Well, it’s like, it’s the kind for one thing I know I it’s a kind of doesn’t count all pleasures, or all happiness is equal. I mean, think of what he says about, you know, philosophers and pigs, for example.

John Perry
Well, I think what he’s supposed to have said is, it’s better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied. I think that’s what distinguishes Mill from Bentham and from Mil’ls own father. This, you know, comparative happiness. But how does that help us here?

Ken Taylor
Well, well, just think about it, it shows that happiness is not like it’s not like a fungible commodity necessarily. And so because happiness is not fungible sacrificing the happiness of one Socrates, even for the sake of a million happy pigs, well, that’s not a good part and according to Mill.

John Perry
Okay but let’s just stick to humans. Would it be a good utilitarian bargain to trade that the happiness of one former philosopher turned crusading lawyer, no longer happy as a crusading lawyer, fFor the happiness of a million ordinary Janes and Joes whose life he improves with his lawyerliness?

Ken Taylor
Look, I don’t even think no would make that a bargain. I don’t really know. But I don’t think he would. Because I mean, he says I’m not allowed to harm other people. That’s his famous arm principle, but I don’t think he thinks I’m morally required to sacrifice my happiness for the greater good. I don’t think he thinks that at all.

John Perry
Well, I just don’t see what kind of utilitarianism allows you to thumb, your nose at the greater good and the name of your individual liberty and happiness.

Ken Taylor
Well, I think a subtle and sophisticated kind. That’s what’s got—

John Perry
In other words, a kind that is above my head, and I can understand. Thanks a lot.

Ken Taylor
Yeah, I bet you think it’s more incoherent. But II think that you’re thinking about utility, too narrowly. I mean, do you remember what Mill says in “On Liberty” when he’s talking about utility? He says he means “utility in the largest sense, grounded in the permanent interest of man as a progressive being.” See?

John Perry
Yeah, that’s the old philosophical device. “Oh, you think p is kind of obscure? How about p plus yada, yada, yada, yada?” Oh, that’s perfect.

Ken Taylor
Come on, John. Ask yourself. Come on. Let’s be fair to ask yourself this question. Would allowing the individual to be sacrificed for the good of the collective like as a general rule, would that actually serve humanity’s collective interest in its own progress? I think the answer is obvious. No, it wouldn’t. That would be a recipe for tyranny and oppression to me not freedom and autonomy.

John Perry
Well, can I will concede you this much. Mill is a complicated and sophisticated thinker. And there’s a lot to sort out here.

Ken Taylor
And to help us sort it out, we sent our Roving Philosophical Reporter, Holly J. McDede, to dig into an area where individual freedom and the collective interest quite often seem to conflict. She files this report.

Holly McDede
Bailey Kirkeby is a rising senior at Bear Creek High School in Stockton, California. This past year, she wrote a controversial profile for her school newspaper.

Bailey Kirkeby
Students are often told to follow their dreams and pursue what they love. An 18 year old senior at Bear Creek who recently started a career in adult entertainment is doing just that.

Holly McDede
The piece profiles a fellow high school student who makes her own erotic videos.

Bailey Kirkeby
“When I first started selling, it was just for money,” Fink said, “but then I liked the attention I got such as being called beautiful.”

Holly McDede
Bailey remembers a lot of people criticizing the student’s life choices.

Bailey Kirkeby
This is what she’s wanted to do. And this is the path that she wanted to take and she’s happy with it.

Holly McDede
Caitlyn Flanagan, a writer for The Atlantic magazine, thought people who read that piece should have been more concerned.

Caitlin Flanagan
An 18 year old girl from a troubled home should not be making pornography to pay rent while she tries to graduate from high school. We know that’s not right.

Holly McDede
John Stuart Mill encourages people to pursue higher pleasures like listening to Beethoven or enjoying a nice day at the theater. Flanagan says making sexual videos was not quite what mill had in mind.

Caitlin Flanagan
The idea that a Victorian could possibly imagine an 18 year old girl performing multiple sexual acts with men she doesn’t know—that would just melt John Stuart Mill’s mind down to to nothingness.

Holly McDede
It’s easy for anyone in the digital age to sell porn and to consume it. That does raise questions about harm and liberty. Shira Tarrant is a Professor of Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies at CSU Long Beach. She’s also a fan of John Stuart Mill. People don’t ask her about the guy enough.

Shira Tarrant
I have never had anybody asked me about the link between John Stuart Mill and pornography.

Holly McDede
Tarrant says Mills ideas are handy when it comes to moving past the one dimensional is porn good, Is porn bad, yes or no debate.

Shira Tarrant
When these arguments around pornography are driven by passion and emotion, and morality or even religion, that can interfere with really clear headed thinking.

Holly McDede
She says that if mill were asked to give a lecture on pornography today, it would likely be informed by his wife, Harriet Taylor Mill.

Shira Tarrant
He had a concern about women and women’s political rights largely due to his partner having concerns about women’s rights.

Holly McDede
Harriet Taylor Mill says pleasure would be “infinitely heightened by the perfect equality of the sexes.” With that in mind, Tarrant says Mr. Mill would likely start this imaginary lecture with the harm principle.

Shira Tarrant
The government can only interfere in individual’s liberty if doing so prevents harm from coming to others. Other than that, John Stuart Mill says people have the right to be free to seek rational pleasure to express themselves.

Holly McDede
The question of whether porn causes harm is where this gets complicated. And so at this point in the fantasy lecture, health experts might break down the data on both sides. Mill doesn’t want us to sit back and be indifferent.

Shira Tarrant
If I don’t like porn or I think that pornography is harmful, I can try to convince you not to watch porn. I can engage in free speech and open debate on this topic. I could even, according to Mill, beg you to not watch porn, but according to Mill I cannot force you to stop watching porn. And more importantly neither can the government.

Holly McDede
There are lots of pleasures out there in the world: higher pleasures, lower pleasures, pleasures that are medium low, or on the lower end of high. Some people enjoy porn. Others enjoy learning to play Duke Ellington on the saxophone. And there are good reasons to criticize porn. But there was also a time when people said jazz cause dementia and sexual deviance. At the end of the day, there is no harm in sticking to the science.

The 40 Year Old Virgin
Hey, man, got a big box of porn for you.

Holly McDede
For Philosophy Talk, I’m Holly J. McDede.

Ken Taylor
Thanks, Holly, for that fascinating piece on the dubious pleasures of porn and other illicit things. I’m Ken Taylor, with me is my Stanford colleague John Perry, and today, we’re thinking about Mill and the good life.

John Perry
We’re joined now by David Brink. David is professor of philosophy at the University of California,San Diego. He’s the author of the book “Mill’s Progressive Principles.” David, welcome to Philosophy Talk.

David Brink
Thanks. Hi, John. Hi, Kent.

Ken Taylor
Thanks for joining us, David. Dave, you know, I love teaching—I don’t write about Mill, but I love teaching Mill to undergraduates. I’m not sure I would dare write about Mill. So I’m wondering what first got you so fascinated with this complicated figure that you decided, you actually spend a good portion of your adult life writing books and articles about the dude, what what made you want to do that?

David Brink
Well, I don’t know. I suppose it was wrestling with the sorts of parent tensions anyway, and mills views that you outlined at the beginning of the program. I mean, Mills, the founding contributor to the utilitarian tradition, and to the liberal tradition, and it’s not clear that belief in promoting happiness and respecting individual rights are fully compatible. And it was teaching these materials as every young assistant professor does to undergraduates in moral and political philosophy classes that led me to be puzzled by these issues and to see if I could work out answers and see if mill could be defended as having a coherent and consistent view.

John Perry
Well, it sounds like you’re the perfect person to figure out what what was dividing Ken and I. I’m just not sure all of Mill’s good ideas can be reconciled; Ken’s a little more sanguine. So what do you think? Is Mill’s philosophy more like chunky peanut butter or smooth peanut butter?

David Brink
Well, it’s probably got to be pretty chunky. I’m just hoping that it doesn’t end up with the peanut butter and the oil completely separating? Yeah, I mean, it’s a good puzzle that John raises about the compatibility of the utilitarianism and the rights to liberty. And I think mill has some resources to reconcile those two commitments. I think it’s up for grabs just how far he succeeds. But I think it’s quite an interesting process.

Ken Taylor
So can you give me the skew? If I were to put just a button we had our discussion, we’re going to dig into this more if you were to give me the secret, though, because John’s got a real puzzle. If you could just if you said the cocktail version of how to think about Mills, utilitarianism, together with what some people call these perfectionism, right? How just tell me the secret sauce that would help tie that together, if you can, briefly?

David Brink
Yeah, well, so I suppose I think the best prospects for reconciling his commitments to individual rights to liberty with a belief in promoting the general happiness is, as you suggest, the nature of his assumptions about happiness, in particular, his perfectionism, which I interpret as claiming that the ingredients of happiness are not pleasure or the satisfaction of desire primarily, but are instead the exercise of those powers that make us responsible agents roughly our rational capacities and capacities for practical reasoning. And if that’s true, or something like that’s true, then I think autonomy becomes a really important contributor of individual happiness. And that begins to explain some of the central claims, distinctive claims, defending liberalism, on liberty.

Ken Taylor
Okay I think I got it. It’s key and and what he really means by happiness is, is how I might put a button on it. And that’s a complicated thing, but we’ll dig into that complicated thing after a break. You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. Today we’re thinking about John Stuart Mill and the good life with David Brink from UC San Diego.

John Perry
Does freedom of speech, action and thought always serve the greatest good for the greatest number? I doubt it isn’t some speech worth censoring? Some ideas worth suppressing and some ways of life worth prohibiting?

Ken Taylor
Freedom, harm and happiness—when Philosophy Talk continues.

Tom Petty
I’l stand my ground, and I won’t back down.

Ken Taylor
Is it better to take the experts advice on what’s best for you, or do you stand your ground because it’s your life fter all. I’m Ken Taylor. This is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

John Perry
…except your intelligence—and Tom Petty’s, for that matter. I’m John Perry and we’re thinking about John Stuart Mill and the good life. Our guest is David Brink from UC San Diego author of “Mill’s Progressive Principles.”

Ken Taylor
So David, you know, you said that Mel’s like the one of the founding fathers of the liberal tradition, one of the founding fathers of utilitarianism, and all that’s really cool. And here’s the thing that puzzles me. He thinks he can get all good things. It seems like maybe he thinks he can get all the good things out of freedom, like freedom of speech and thought and action, anti paternalism, the importance of individuality, even genius, the importance of genius, prohibitions against the subjugation of women, he thinks he can get all those good things, apparently, out of utilitarianism. I’m not even sure you can get any of those good things out of utilitarianism that tell you the truth. But I want you let’s give me his best case. Give me like your best utility mill inspire utilitarian argument for something like freedom of speech. Tell me how it works.

David Brink
Okay, yeah, it’s it’s probably good to start with freedom of speech. Because after the introductory chapter in Liberty, where mill sets out the harm principle, which he believes in and censorship, which he opposes and paternalism which he opposes, and offense regulation, which he opposes, he turns in the very next chapter to freedom of expression. And the reason he gives us for why he wants to treat freedom of expression first, is that he thinks that there’s general agreement, maybe not universal agreement, but general agreement about the importance of expressive liberties, but that we don’t fully understand why we value expressive liberties, and that once we understand why we value expressive liberties, we not only learned something important about freedom of expression, but we can extend it to other kinds of liberties. So in the argument about freedom of expression, he gives several reasons for posing censorship and they fall into two groups. One is a kind of truth tracking rationale that says, as Justice Holmes would later say, in shank versus United States that open trade in the free market of ideas is the best test for truth, he suggests that a policy of free from expression anti censorship is most likely to lead to truth, at least in the long run. But he also says that, we want to be able to explain why freedom expression would be important, even if the sensor were to censor all and only false beliefs. The truth tracking rationale can explain that. So he appeals to our interests in exercising these capacities for decision making and adopting ideals and implementing them in our lives and experiments and living and we were cognitively cognitively limited beings, and we need to discuss with other people, not only the options before us, but their merits in order to exercise these sort of normal powers.

Ken Taylor
That’s a that’s a lot there. Let’s unpack because you said there are two kinds of arguments. There’s like, Okay, open discussion is going to get us closer to the truth. But you know, what, a Fox News. I’m just gonna pick on Fox News, Fox News, letting them into the discussion, how’s that gonna get us to the truth? They know, they’re not committed to the truth. They’re committed to blather and propaganda.

John Perry
Hey can Tucker Carlson convince Trump not to do something right?

Ken Taylor
People whose idea who are not committed to the truth whose ideas won’t are engaging them won’t advance the truth. So why should I let all ideas flourish? Are they some ideas that I could just say those are not discussable? Those are still well.

David Brink
I think that’s one kind of limitation of the truth tracking argument. One is that, first of all, it’s just not clear that a complete opposition to censorship is the most likely policy to advance true ideas. I mean, if we’re just comparing two Stark alternatives between censorship, whenever the sensor sees fit, and no restrictions whatsoever on speech, then maybe free speech is more likely to promote true beliefs in the long run. But there are lots of intermediate possibilities involving more conservative forms of censorship or subjecting speech to sort of critical disciplines of fact checking and things like that. And so it’s not obvious that you get at least a libertarian conception of free speech from the truth tracking rationale, but the other worry—

John Perry
Now David, what do you take the libertarian conception or some more watered down conception? It seems like when talking about freedom of speech, you’re talking about a policy. And so it seems like what what we’ve got here must be rule utilitarianism. So can you explain the difference in tell me was Miller rule utilitarian or an act utilitarian, one of you should So getting that distinction, I’ll let David because he knows what he’s talking about.

David Brink
Yeah, so act utilitarianism is the view that we apply the test of utility directly to x so that if you’re choosing between 2x, A and B, you should choose the action of those two that has the better consequences for human happiness. Rule utilitarianism is the view that we don’t apply the test of utility directly to actions. Instead, we apply them to things like rules and principles. And what you’re supposed to do is you’re supposed to act according to the rule or principle that when internalized, has the best consequences for human happiness. And some people have thought that rule utilitarianism would deliver less counterintuitive results about which actions are obligatory in which actions are permissible.

Ken Taylor
This goes back to the thing I was trying to say at the end to John, if you consider the long term happiness of man as a progressive species, right? You might say, Well, look, if you had a rule that says you could always subvert the individual to the collective, that would be bad if you had a rule that let the individual sometimes thumbed his or her nose at the collective, but sometimes not upon their choice, that would be good. But it’s not the particular act that you look at. It’s like, what kind of rules should we have? I mean, it seems to me if you’re going to be a utilitarian, you ought to be a rule utilitarian. Do you disagree?

John Perry
Well, I say I usually talk to mill was a rule utilitarianism. That’s what I read. That’s why his father got mad at him. But now reading David’s book, I’m not so sure. And yeah, so clear this all up.

David Brink
Okay, well, so I think the most important takeaway lesson is just that mill is committed to the importance of rules and principles. And I think it’s especially natural in the sort of governmental or political sphere where you’re thinking about what kinds of policies is the government going to adopt? What sorts of laws are they going to enact? And they’re presumably not going to enact laws about particular individuals on particular occasions, they’re going to enact rules. And even in the individual case, deciding an individual deciding what to do. An individual has to have rules and principles that she internalizes an axon. And I think it’s really clear that mill thinks that we should test different rules or principles by their effects on the general happiness. That doesn’t itself settle the question about whether he’s an act or rule utilitarian because act, utilitarians can think that when you’re choosing rules, you should choose the rules with the best consequences. So I don’t think whether mill is in insists on the importance of optimal rules settles whether he’s a rule or act utilitarian.

Ken Taylor
But again, helped me think okay, so you gave two arguments, that mill has two arguments, there was this truth tracking one, which you agree, is kind of problematic, and the male seems to recognize it, because he gives another argument and that’s this capacities kind of argument. Right? He says, he says something Unlimited, that I always get students to try to see it, you know, even if you believe the truth, that’s not really good for human flourishing, if you believe the truth as a dead dogma rather than something living and and combating falsity and always having to can can show that you know, how to combat the false opinion. And you don’t just take this opinion, this belief on reflex. That’s a good thing. Right. What do you think of that argument? Is that a better argument?

David Brink
Yeah, I think it’s a better stronger, more robust argument, in part because it’s designed to show that we’d have reason to oppose censorship, even if the censor only censored false beliefs. So even if, under a rule of censorship, we all held true beliefs, as you just said, mill thinks that but if we hold them on thinking Li and without understanding their rationale and their justification, then that wouldn’t be valuable, that would be meaningless. And one point mill makes this point by distinguishing as philosophers do between true belief and knowledge, and he thinks, and here’s, I think, partly where the appeal to the perfectionist conception of rational capacities might be relevant. He thinks that we’re really interested in knowledge and not just true belief. And knowledge requires that we hold true beliefs in the right sort of way in a way that’s justified. And that requires understanding the grounds for the beliefs that are true. And in order to fully understand them, we need to confront alternative conceptions of what’s true, and we need to test our beliefs against rivals. And in order to do that we need open discussion among interlocutors with different beliefs and mindsets.

John Perry
Okay, now, we’ve got an email David in Nevada City, he says, mill sounds like the founder of the conservative right, with mill who decides what behavior is harmful to others? Can I pollute and shoot endangered animals? Because I want to? I say it’s not harmful to anyone. What is what you have to say I have to do with it. What do you think, David?

David Brink
Well, so this alludes to the harm principle, which is an important principle for mill that we haven’t really talked directly about. And he sets it out at the beginning of on liberty. And he, at one point, he suggests that the whole version of his liberalism could be reduced to the simple claims of the harm principle that is that the only legitimate reason for restricting anyone’s liberty is to prevent harm to others. I think that that eventually gets qualified in significant ways. But anyway, it’s an important part of Mills principle. But I mean, we have to make determinations about what is harmful and what’s not. And the only way to do that is to have some conception about what’s in someone’s interest, because harm is something like a setback of an important interest. And so seems like we’re to figure out what’s harmful, we have to figure out what people have an interest in and what their happiness consists of.

Ken Taylor
Let’s pursue that further. Because one of the things I teach on liberty every year to freshmen, and one of the things they don’t get, they think mill thinks that speech per se, cannot be a harm, but they think no, if somebody this is me in speech, if somebody hurts my feelings, if they insult me, if they demean me, they harm me, right? And I say, Well, look, the question you got to distinguish offense from harm his offense, necessarily harm or not, and we get going back and forth about offense versus harm. It does mill have a way of drawing a principled distinction between, as it were mere offense and genuine harm.

David Brink
You’re right that he it’s important to understanding the harm principle that he distinguishes between mere offence and harm. And I think we’re all familiar with examples of the distinction. So if I tell a tasteless joke, that may offend you, but it doesn’t harm you. If I undermine your professional credibility and job applications, I’ve probably harmed you. So we have this notion of a harm being a much more significant less ephemeral, the setback of an important interest. Now, the mill doesn’t mill gives examples of what are mere offenses and what count is harms. He doesn’t give a general theory except for the claim that something counts as a harm in case it violates the interests of an assignable individually the rights of an assignable individual. But that’s not a algorithm for distinguishing between offense and harm, and there probably going to be cases that are in the gray area. But we want to resist the inflationary tendency to treat everything you don’t like as a harm.

Ken Taylor
Right, mill thinks you are not entitled to anybody’s good opinion or to anybody’s company. Right. But but you are entitled to a kind of respect. But see, I think we don’t really mail things. I don’t know if mill thinks he’s like articulating common sense in a kind of Socratic midwife form, right? These are implicit in our practices, or if he’s telling us from on high, these are the principles you ought to adopt. Because I think it’s really hard for people to separate out what’s disrespect from, you know, what’s your entitlement to shun me? You know what I mean? And can male somehow help us think about that?

David Brink
Well, I think you’re right, that there’s a there going to be these gray areas. And I think it would be maybe some people who understand utilitarianism as this formula for determining what’s right and wrong, think that there’s going to be an algorithm coming out of the Millian corpus for telling us what’s mere offense and what’s harm. I think that’s a mistake to suppose that he’s going to be giving us an easy test for solving all our practical questions, I think he directs our attention to the idea that in order for something to qualify as a harm, it has to set back an important interest that it’s reasonable for people to claim as a right, and one of the things he thinks makes something right is that the government has a duty to enforce it. And that’s going to depend on which interests are really essential to people’s well being and happiness. And it’s not going to just depend on what they care about at the moment or what they find annoying or inconvenient.

John Perry
So David, I mean, I mean, contemporary technology really makes this important because we got so many ways to harm people using something that would could be called speech. Now Jean Marie from San Francisco asks a question that is on my mind. Are there any contemporary philosophers working on an updated version of this harm principle?

Ken Taylor
So answer that briefly. We may take it up more at the break, but answer it now.

David Brink
Well, Joel Feinberg, wrote Aafour volume treatise about the moral limits of the criminal law in which he saw himself as defending basically million views about the limits of the criminal law. And he basically endorsed Mills categories, including the idea that the harm principle is the main basis for restricting people’s liberty.

John Perry
Yeah, but that’s pre internet.

Ken Taylor
Four volumes, though—four volumes. You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. We’re thinking about Mill and the good life with David Brink from UC San Diego.

John Perry
In a world defined by divisive rhetoric, groupthink, partisan divides, is there still room for Mills tolerance and open debate? Are Mill’s principles outmoded relics of another time?

Ken Taylor
The relevance of Mill in our troubled and divided times—when Philosophy Talk continues.

Talk Talk
It’s my life, don’t you forget. It’s my life, it never ends.

John Perry
It’s my life. So what should anyone else get to say about it? I’m John Perry. And this is Philosophy Talk, the programming questions everything…

Ken Taylor
…except your intelligence. I’m Ken Taylor. Our guest is David Brink from UC San Diego and we’re thinking about Mill and the good life. And David, I want to shift our focus a little bit to the good life, because that’s the part of mill on I have to tell you, I’m no fan of utilitarianism as a moral theory. But I am a fan of mill, right. The thing that makes me a fan of mill is the stuff he says about individuality, self cultivation, the importance of genius, this thing he says about he who loves his life, the his portion of the world, or any portion of it chooses life for him has no need of no capacity except the ape like one of imitation. He thinks that living a characteristically human life involves using all these capacities, right? I mean, and that seems like a self regarding consideration about what I owe to myself, I owe to myself, like a full self development not just to society for its good, but to, to me for my good. So tell me about that part of Mill.

David Brink
Yeah, well, the the defense of the perfectionism view comes out in utilitarianism, but a lot of it’s just a claim directly about what’s the good of an individual. And it’s sort of a further question, what the ethical significance of that is whether we should care about the good of one of us and his higher capacities for his own sake, or whether we should care about it for the sake of what he could contribute to society as a whole. So you can I mean, they’re, they’re bits of mail that are modular, right. One of the things that John’s worry about the compatibility of liberty with utilitarianism brings up is that you might be really attracted to the claims about liberalism and individual rights and on liberty. And you might not be as sanguine as mill is about reconciling that with utilitarianism. And then maybe you should run with the, the, the liberalism rather than the utilitarianism. Also within utilitarianism you might be, you might be inspired by or you might hate as elitist. Mills claims about the higher pleasures doctrine. But you might then wonder whether that’s just a recommendation about how individuals should shape their own lives, or whether it also implies something about the duty they owe to other people to help them live more elevated lives.

Ken Taylor
Tell me how to think about the following example that I give to my students. I’m always looking for a certain answer from them when I give them this example, but a CFI. I’m looking for the right answer if I’m thinking of it the wrong way. So take Susie, Susie is a really brilliant student. She’s a stamp brilliant Stanford student she gets she’s been working really hard to get straight A’s, she wins early fellowship to medical school, her her teachers think she’s going to cure cancer or Alzheimer’s or something. And they think, Gosh, Susie, you’re amazing. And all this social capital has been invested in Susie, but Susie, by the time she’s done four years at Stanford is burned out and decide what she’s going to do. And she’s going to go to Hawaii live on the beach and smoke Kona gold for the rest of her life and say, To heck with all that. Tell me how Mel would think about Suzy.

David Brink
Well, so Suzy is an adult so we don’t have to worry about milk restriction that the arguments of on liberty apply only to adults in the charity of their faculty, right. I think what we do is we respect her right to make that decision and the importance of autonomy to her own good because we think if we forced her to do something else, we wouldn’t be effectively promoting her good because her good depends on its originating from autonomous choice.

Ken Taylor
But she’s really wasting her talent. She’s not quite so herself.

David Brink
So we have all these other options and that’s arguing with her rubber concentrating with her, begging her to keep her options open. So maybe she does need to take a gap year and recharge her batteries. But she shouldn’t do so in a way that forecloses all future opportunity to pursue her medical professional interest.

Ken Taylor
Do we owe it to Susie to remonstrate with her to try and persuade her? Or do we say, Oh, well, Susie, do we owe it to ourselves to try and to try and argue her out of this or not? I mean, what do we owe her? And what do we owe ourselves?

David Brink
Well, I think that we owe it to her directly, that we, because one thing she’s doing is she’s considering using her autonomous powers to make a choice to relinquish or, you know, refuse to pursue her rational capacities in the future. In some ways. This is a little like an example, mill discusses, though he says at the beginning of liberty that paternalism is never permissible, he ends up by the end of on liberty, saying there’s at least one exception. It’s an extreme case. And that’s, it’s permissible to prohibit people from selling themselves into slavery. And what he says about that example, is that the person is contemplating using her autonomy, to abdicate her autonomy going forward. And so he says that the usual reasons we oppose paternalism here conspire to justify paternalistic interference. Now, I think Susie’s case is a little different, because she’s not considering an irrevocable decision. But at least it has some elements of that case that she’s considering using her autonomy, to relinquish her autonomy. And mill would be troubled by that, at least the first resort would be to remonstrate with her and argue with her. And we’d owe that both to her as a rational being, but we’d also in virtue of our relationship with her, we owe it to her right?

Ken Taylor
What about what about the long run interest if humankind considered as a progressive, or the permanent interest of humankind considered as a progressive species or something like that? How we Susie, by going off is and smoking Kona goat instead of going to medical school and serving the greater good because she’s a brilliant person in whom lots of social capital has been invested. How is she serving that?

David Brink
Well, she’s not, that’s the, the, I mean, she’s serving it in one way and not in another. She’s serving it insofar as she’s apparently, at least I’m assuming, made a reflective choice about how she wants to spend her immediate future and for all we know, for indefinite future, but the content of her choice is such as to relinquish her the exercise of irrational capacity. So you have as it were a conflict, a tension between her use of her capacities and the content of her choice. And if we measure both, according to this perfectionist conception of the good, we find that, yes, there’s something to be said for allowing her to make the choice. But she’s also making the choice in such a way as to not honor these perfectionist values. And so at least in the first instance, our response should be to engage her rational capacities and try to reason with her about it.

John Perry
So, David, I want to ask you about another particular case that bothers me. I’m, I’m, uh, you know, not lifelong, but 4045 years member of the ACLU, you know, I love freedom of speech. I don’t know if I’m an absolutist. But nowadays, you can do things like are done on the internet, like, you know, pasting Hillary Clinton’s face on, you know, in a porn video, or in a video of somebody doing something illegal. And you can do it so well, and there’s no way of telling for at least for an ordinary person, if it’s real or not. I don’t think that’s fair. And I, you know, it’s speech, but I don’t think it should be allowed. I mean, how would I? How would I, how could I use mills to help me in this case?

David Brink
Yeah, well, so as Ken suggested earlier, some people when they first read on liberty, especially if they’re just reading the chapter two on defending freedom of expression, come away with the impression that mill is an absolutist. We find out in the beginning of the next chapter that at least he applies the harm principle. There’s this famous corn dealer case where he says that you’re not allowed to smear the reputation of a corn dealers and Sarver’s a poor in front of an angry crowd. And that’s a sort of worry about inciting to violence, something like Holmes is clear and present danger test. But still, that might seem like a fairly libertarian view about freedom of expression. And at least one possibility that I’ve explored. And I have some, I think is interesting policy. ability is to ask whether the way mill justifies freedom of expression gives him grounds for recognizing more forms of regulation, at least, if not censorship. And what I have in mind is that, in the explanation of why freedom of expression is so important that we touched on earlier. It seems as if we appeal to these rational capacities of people and the importance of freedom expression to helping them make informed choices. And one way to summarize that would be to say that Mills partly defending freedom of expression by its contribution to deliberative values. But if that’s true, then it turns out that some exercises of freedom expression might not contribute to but might actually retard deliberative values. And so one possibility that mill talks about is he might be in favor of can’t what we would now call campaign finance restrictions, because he’s worried about the influence of money on elections and public debate surrounding elections. But another thing more directly relevant to your example might be Mel’s defense of various fairness in broadcasting doctrines and fact checking procedures that would actually enhance the way in which speech would contribute to deliberative.

Ken Taylor
So I’m gonna ask you what I want to ask you one final question along this last line. Look, we live in this age of divisive rhetoric and and groupthink and all, all this stuff. Do you? Is there any hope? And I think that’s a cultural phenomenon, right? And mill would hate all that stuff. Is there any hope that our culture will someday embody the kind of openness and tolerance and listening to all points of view that mill believed in? Or do you think that’s just a pipe dream that’s asking you about human beings? Can they actually live in a million way? What do you think?

David Brink
Well, I guess, I’d like to think it’s not a pipe dream. But it’s it’s probably a sort of fragile achievement. And I think one of the things that tends to undermine the achievement is significant kinds of inequality. And this is something that concern mill in a number of contexts, where he thought that significant inequalities constraint, very opportunity for people to succeed in life. And I think when there’s significant equalities, not only as fair equality of opportunity compromise, but I think there tends to be sort of finger pointing and scapegoating. And I think that that leads to sort of partisan interactions, both in the public sphere and elsewhere. And so I think that mill might have thought that one remedy or one hope for the greater sort of tolerant and robust deliberative interaction that he aspired to, would require reductions of significant kinds of social and economic inequalities.

Ken Taylor
Well on that hopeful thought, I mean, because we can do that, perhaps. So there is some hope. So on that hopeful note, I want to thank you for joining us. It’s been a fascinating conversation.

David Brink
Thank you very much.

Ken Taylor
Our guest has been David Brink. He’s a professor of philosophy at UC San Diego. He’s author of “Mill’s Progressive Principles.” So John, are you having a progressively better thoughts now?

John Perry
Oh, oh, yes. As always, you know, last few years, I’ve mostly been studying mill, what I what I do is principles of logic, because his philosophy of language is also very important. But you know, working on this show, he is really an extremely important philosopher, and then the combination of him and his wife, Harriet, with the subjugation of women and roughly the same era Walston craft those those are ideas that have taken a century and a half to really Yeah, set in but but he was at the forefront, whether it was there on his own or was kicked up in front by his wife. I don’t know. Anyway, good for Mill.

Ken Taylor
Mill’s a great philosopher, and I recommend if you haven’t read mill, you should read No. But you know what this conversation continues that philosophers corner at our online community of thinkers were a model with no apologies whatsoever to Descartes is Cogito ergo Blago, I think, therefore, I blog, and you can become a partner in our community just by visiting our website, philosophytalk.org.

John Perry
And if you have a question that wasn’t addressed in today’s show, we’d love to hear from you. Send it to us at comments@philosophytalk.organd we might feature it on our blog. Now, the greatest speed for the greatest number of listeners—let’s hear from Ian Shoales the Sixty-Second Philosopher.

Ian Shoales
Ian Shoales… By the 19th Century, the Enlightenment had morphed into a kind of liberal imperialism. The sun never set on the British Empire, and the sun was better for it. If you looked up civilization in the encyclopedia it would show England. And, of course, John Stuart Mill was the guy who wrote the encyclopedia. Or least the essay ON THE TREATMENT OF BARBAROUS NATIONS: “…nations which are still barbarous have not got beyond the period during which it is likely to be for their benefit that they should be conquered and held in subjection by foreigners. …A violation of great principles of morality it may easily be, but barbarians have no rights as a nation, except a right to such treatment as may… fit them for becoming one.” The burden to be nice is on England, but they do not have to lift it. It’s implicit, so need not be shown. Niceness from barbarians, however, is just a trick, a moment. It is not essential. It proves nothing. Today, of course, we have grown bored with civilization. Democracy demands too much free speech on the one hand, we are tired of being persuaded, and we have to embrace inclusivity on the other. The melting pot churns. We are exhausted by what once gave us pleasure. Angry at those who are enthusiastic about what we take for granted. The word barbarian came from a Greek word which was onomatopoeia for what not Greek-language sounded like to Greeks: “bar bar bar bar bar.” Now we have opened the gates to barbarians, my friends. English is already overrun with words grabbed from other tongues, like rendezvous and totem and avatar, bungalow, loot, and thug. Mill wrote, “Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness….” His utilitarianism was determined by pleasure, tempered by not hampering the pleasure of others. His brand called for a self interest enlightened by responsibility, concern for others, progressive values. He was an early advocate for woman’s suffrage. He used free speech dutifully, lest it be lost. I am sure that the very act of thinking about the best way for human beings and civilizations to thrive brought him pleasure. Which would be a self serving way to be a selfless person. Pleasure was defined as either high or low. High would be opera, for example. Low would be, to use Jeremy Bentham’s example, hopscotch. One requires the machinery of the state, or at least the culture of the state, orchestras, singers, theaters, fabulous outfits, fine dining, and bubbly wine afterwards, the other requires only a sidewalk and a piece of chalk. Pleasures have gotten more diverse and more refined over the years. Opera requires more and more money to keep going, and competes with ballet, theater, the symphony, for funding. Football and basketball eat up the money for arenas and stadiums. Whither hopscotch? Drawing on the sidewalk could get you arrested for defacing public property. Cheating and doping have robbed us of pleasure in many sports. Willful ignorance, zealotry, and bullheadedness have robbed our political discourse of zest. Music is bad, pornography is free, movies are expensive, the Internet is horrible, and we have the attention span of hyperactive two year olds. Not only that, we thought for a moment we had come to the end of history, entering a new phase of enlightened elites feeding the hungry and funding museums til the meat free mutated cows come home. Instead, we have an elite that seems to be only interested in leveraging debt and taking selfies at the disco. And we’re back with the same old edifice of claptrap we thought had been torn down. Just more expensive, and with more niches. Football basketball communist fascist east coast west coast, man woman cisgen transgen puppy kitten morning night. Niches make enemies. We only take pleasure in the displeasure of others. We are all barbarians on this bus. We don’t listen. Bar bar bar bar bar. I gotta go.

Ken Taylor
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Josh Landy
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Ken Taylor
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Josh Landy
Thanks also to Merle Kessler, Angela Johnston, and Lauren Schecter.

Ken Taylor
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Josh Landy
The views expressed (or mis-expressed) on this program do not necessarily represent the opinions of Stanford University or of our other funders.

Ken Taylor
Nobody even when they’re true, unreasonable.

Josh Landy
The conversation continues on our website, philosophytalk.org, where you too can become a partner in our community of thinkers. I’m Josh Landy.

Ken Taylor
And I’m Ken Taylor. Thank you for listening.

Josh Landy
And thank you for thinking.

Alice in Wonderland
This is my life. I’ll decide what to do with it.