Millian superiorities in historical
perspective: the early reception
of Mill's quality-quantity
distinction
Marco E. L. Guidi
University of Pisa
Department of Economics
ISUS X. Berkeley, CA, 11-14 September 2008
Objectives and questions
• Current debate on Mill’s quality-quantity distinction:
compatible with hedonistic analysis?
• Early reception of Mill’s analysis of pleasures among
British early marginalist economists (Jevons, Edgeworth,
Marshall, Wicksteed):
– Bentham’s “felicific calculus” becomes the foundation of
economic theory
– The individual weighs goods according to the comparative
pleasure they generate, in order to maximise utility or happiness.
– Individual equilibrium at equal weighed marginal utility
• Was there a room for Mill's distinction in such a
reformulation of utilitarian arithmetic?
• Was the distinction accepted of rejected?
• What arguments were deployed?
• What can we learn from this early reception?
Mill's superiorities
• Chapter 2 of Utilitarianism (1861)
– Bentham and Mill based superiority on
quantitative “circumstances”, such as
intensity, duration, and purity, “that is, in their
circumstantial advantages rather than in their
intrinsic nature”
– “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.”
Mill's superiorities
• “If I am asked, what I mean by difference of quality in
pleasures, or what makes one pleasure more valuable
than another, merely as a pleasure, except its being
greater in amount, there is but one possible answer. Of
two pleasures, if there be one to which all or almost all
who have experience of both give a decided preference,
irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it,
that is the more desirable pleasure. If one of the two is,
by those who are competently acquainted with both,
placed so far above the other that they prefer it, even
though knowing it to be attended with a greater amount
of discontent, and would not resign it for any quantity of
the other pleasure which their nature is capable of, we
are justified in ascribing to the preferred enjoyment a
superiority in quality, so far outweighing quantity as to
render it, in comparison, of small account”
Current debate
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F.H. Bradley 1873 and George E. Moore 1903: we must drop hedonism to
make room for qualitative distinctions
Roderick T. Long 1992: qualitative distinctions compatible with
psychological hedonism, but only indirectly so. It is the pleasantness of
adopting a nobler character, not the higher pleasure itself, that provides
quantitative superiority.
Jonathan Riley 1993 (1999, 2008): Mill’s superiorities incompatible with
quantitative hedonism: quantitative differences within each class are finite,
whereas quantitative differences between different classes are infinite.
Geoffrey Scarre 1997: if a psychological difference  scarcely proved; if
an axiological difference, we move from hedonism to pluralism  back to
Moore and Bradley
Jesper Ryberg 2002: traditional arguments in favour of discontinuity
provide “equally good reasons for claiming that pleasures are measurable
on a single additive scale”
Rabinowicz 2003 and Arrhenius and Rabinowicz 2005: at least for weak
superiority, if in a decreasing sequence e1, ... , en the first element is
superior to the last, it is possible that no element be superior to its
immediate predecessor.
Superiority and weak superiority
• an e-object is superior to e' if and only if e is
better than whatever number of e'
• an e-object is weakly superior to e' if and only if
for a number m, m e-objects are better than
whatever number of e‘
• Satiation  an e-object is superior to e' if the
value of one unit of e is non-lower than the finite
limit-value Ve of e'.
The marginalist revolution and Mill
• W. Stanley Jevons
– 1879. John Stuart Mill's Philosophy Tested.
IV.-Utilitarianism. Contemporary Review, 36,
Sept.-Dec., 521-38.
• Mill's distinction purely qualitative -- based on
“intrinsic” incommensurability.
• praises Bentham for introducing, with
measurability, scientific criteria into moral and
social sciences
Jevons
• Jevons 1879.
– Criticism on Mill's focuses on two distinct arguments:
1. Mill's quality-quantity distinction is inconsistent: the pursuit
of happiness is a constrained maximisation process and for
the majority of persons it is incompatible with the costly and
quite improbable rewards that can be obtained from superior
pleasures. People do indulge in inferior pleasures and Mill's
explanation of this phenomenon uses unconvincing ad hoc
arguments;
2. Mill's theory of intrinsically superior pleasures is a let-down
vis-à-vis Paley's and Bentham's quantitative and scientific
analysis of pleasures and pains. Their analysis contains all
the elements that allow us to explain higher pleasures:
• Externalities = dimensions of fruitfulness, purity (+ extension)
can account for their higher individual and social value.
Jevons
• Jevons's economic writings.
– “Brief Account of a General Mathematical Theory of
Political Economy” (1862);
– Theory of Political Economy (1871);
– Political Economy (Science Primers) (1878).
– “The theory which follows is entirely based on a
calculus of pleasure and pain; and the object of
Economy is to maximise happiness by purchasing
pleasure, as it were, at the lowest cost of pain”
[Jevons 1871, 27].
– Chapters 2 and 3 based on Bentham + “final degree
of utility”
Jevons
• Jevons's economic writings.
– (anti-imperialist approach) Higher pleasures do exist
but they are out of the scope of economics:
economics essentially deals with the “lowest ranks of
feelings”  it is not a “a dismal, cold-blooded” science
for this;
– The satisfaction of vital needs is a necessary
precondition for superior pleasures
• primum vivere, deinde filosofari
• superior pleasures originate from the satiation of lower wants
 Senior's “law of variation”  Jevons’s “law of succession
of wants” (Hobbesian view of needs)
Jevons
• Jevons's economic writings.
– (nevertheless) A definition of superior pleasures:
• “As it seems to me, the feelings of which a man is capable
are of various grades. He is always subject to mere physical
pleasure or pain, necessarily arising from his bodily wants
and susceptibilities. He is capable also of mental and moral
feelings of several degrees of elevation. A higher motive
may rightly overbalance all considerations belonging
even to the next lower range of feelings; but so long as
the higher motive does not intervene, it is surely both
desirable and right that the lower motives should be balanced
against each other” (TPE, 29-30).
–  An unity of a superior pleasure may in some cases
overbalance any quantity of the next lower pleasure:
discontinuity in the series of wants
Jevons
• “Brief account”: the analytical basis of this argument lies
in the notion of decreasing “final degree of utility”
(marginal utility), and in the consequent concept of
satiation:
– “This function of utility is peculiar to each kind of object, and
more or less to each individual. Thus, the appetite for dry bread
is much more rapidly satisfied than that for wine, for clothes, for
handsome furniture, for works of art, or, finally, for money. And
every one has his own peculiar tastes in which he is nearly
insatiable” [Jevons 1866, § 9].
•  It may happen that when the satisfaction of the lower
wants is attained, the value in terms of pleasure thus
obtained is still lower than that of a unit of a higher
pleasure.
• Superiorities are perfectly compatible with hedonistic
analysis and felicific calculus.
Philip Henry Wicksteed
• The Common Sense of Political Economy (1910):
popularisation of the principles of marginalist analysis
• Towards praxeology…
– “It will easily be shown that the principle laid down by Jevons is
not exclusively applicable to industrial or commercial affairs, but
runs as a universal and vital force through the administration of
all our resources. It follows that the general principles which
regulate our conduct in business are identical with those which
regulate our deliberations, our selections between alternatives,
and our decisions, in all other branches of life” [Wicksteed 1910,
3].
• Mill's abstraction of the homo oeconomicus motivated by
self interest is rejected.
Wicksteed
• model housekeeper:
– Given budget, given price, variable goals
– goal = providing food for her family  compares
prices of poultry and potatoes, of new and old
potatoes, damsons and greengages, etc.
– goal = “doing honour to a small party of neighbours”
 poultry is more appreciated than cod, nevertheless
comparative prices may decide in favour of cod.
– Superior goal = violin lessons for kids  relative
prices matter also in this case  There is (almost)
always a maximum cost that may induce an individual
to renounce to superior pleasures.
– (‘More’) superior goal = “relieving the Indian famine”
 always balanced out with lower wants!
Wicksteed
• “We have thus arrived at the conclusion that all
the heterogeneous impulses and objects of
desire or aversion which appeal to any
individual, whether material or spiritual, personal
or communal, present or future, actual or ideal,
may all be regarded as comparable with each
other; for we are, as a matter of fact, constantly
comparing them, weighing them against each
other, and deciding which is the heaviest. And
the question, 'How much of this must I forgo to
obtain so much of that ?' is always relevant.”
Wicksteed
• Behind the way in which our housewife balances
goals against each other there is decreasing
marginal utility  individual equilibrium at equal
marginal utilities weighed by prices
• Does not imply that total utility is equal: the
shape and slope of marginal utility curves varies.
• Superior vs inferior pleasures:  different
trends, but always balanced against each other
U’
Playing violin
Water
Bread
Q
P
Dvl
Dvl’
Dw
Db
Q
Wicksteed
• “In a story of South America, after the war, we are told of
a planter who, when warned by his wife in the middle of
his prayers that the enemy was at the gate, concluded
his devotions with a few brief and earnest petitions, and
then set about defending himself. Had he been a
formalist those final petitions would never have been
uttered at all; but under the circumstances the impulse to
prayer, though sincere and urgent, became rapidly less
imperative and exacting relatively to the urgency of
taking steps for defence, as the successive moments
passed” [Wicksteed 1910, 79-80].
Wicksteed
• Extreme cases: the martyr and the hero
– The martyr pays with life his determination not to depart “from
the formula of his confession”. Does this example falsify the
assertion that every choice is relative?
– NO: “This only means that to him the total difference between
the command of things in the circle of exchange that he already
enjoys, and an indefinite or unlimited command of them, does
not weigh as heavy in his mind as the dishonour or the
discomfort of the specific thing that he is required to do. It does
not mean that his objection is "infinite." It merely means that it is
larger than his estimate of all the satisfaction that he could derive
from unlimited command of articles in the circle of exchange,
and this is a strictly, perhaps narrowly, limited quantity”
U’
Being loyal
Continuing to live
Q
Wicksteed
• Wicksteed suspects that the current
meaning of superior pleasures reflects
instinctive moral judgment (discarded by
Mill)
• Example: learning to smoke costs some
pain as learning to play violin, but it is not
so admired.
Conclusions
• Lessons:
1. Marginalist economists discarded qualitative
definitions of superior pleasures as self-contradictory
and incompatible with hedonistic analysis.
2. They argued that Benthamite quantitative analysis
was sufficient to capture all the characteristics of
superior pleasures. In particular they emphasised the
function of
• externalities, in the shape of Bentham's and Jevons's
“dimensions” of fecundity, purity, +extension;
• decreasing marginal utility and satiation, that may explain
discontinuities without having to resort to infinite differences.
Conclusions
3. Marginalist economists explained that due to the
phenomenon of satiation, the satisfaction of some
inferior pleasures is the condition that allows the
emergence of superior goals.
4. They demonstrated that superior and inferior goods are
submitted to the same psychological laws, i.e.:
–
–
–
decreasing marginal utility;
satiation;
they are balanced against each other and against inferior
goods in every practical choice.
5. However they may follow different patterns as regards
marginal and total utility.
Conclusions
6. Axiomatic or argumentative demonstration of
superiorities has low practical significance when we
observe the choices of individuals, including
intellectuals, fundamentalists and, to some extent,
heroes and martyrs. And even when we consider their
choice from the more normative point of view of
rationality or utility maximisation. Individuals do balance
inferior and superior pleasures against each other and
choose that combination that maximises utility under the
constraints of available resources and given costs.
7. Genuine albeit unconscious moral judgments
sometimes surreptitiously intervene into the definition of
superior pleasures.
Conclusions
 Without sharply deciding in favour of one
or the other side in present controversies,
the early reception of Mill's distinction
helps avoiding unnecessary errors.