Thought Itself

For this lecture, please read John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism.

John Stuart Mill (1806-1873 CE) was the founder of Utilitarianism and a champion of progressivism, individual freedom, women’s rights, and the abolition of slavery.  His father wrote The History of British India in 1818, and Mill was involved with his father in the British East India company from 1823 to 1858, the corporation that helped Britain maintain their economic hold over India via colonialism. Mill’s father had his son study Greek at the age of three and Latin at eight, as well as Aristotle’s logic at the age of twelve. Mill also studied the work of the great British philosophers such as Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley and Hume. Unfortunately, Mill refused to subscribe to the Thirty Nine Articles of the Church of England (1571), the defining document of English Protestantism, and so Mill was not eligible to study at the Universities of Oxford or Cambridge, so Mill followed his father in working for the British East India Company instead. Mill met and corresponded with several prominent philosophers and political thinkers, and wrote several influential works, including his System of Logic in 1843, On Liberty in 1859, and Utilitarianism in 1861.

Mill’s family was friends with the philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), and Mill’s father had Bentham tutor Mill as a child.  It was Bentham who taught Mill about Epicurus of ancient Greece, who taught that the goal of individual and social life was happiness. Bentham adopted this as the central pillar of his own philosophy, which he called the greatest happiness principle, and he argued that the greatest happiness for the greatest number is the true measure of right and wrong. Mill wrote his Utilitarianism to defend Bentham’s greatest happiness principle, and wrote that if we call it the happiness or pleasure principle, people think it is gluttonous and hedonistic, but if you call it utilitarianism, people think it is dry and stuffy. Bentham studied to be a lawyer at Oxford, though he never practiced law. His most famous work is his An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789), in which he argued for the greatest happiness principle, the separation of church and state, freedom of expression, equal rights for women, the right for women to obtain divorce, the right of women to hold office, the decriminalization of homosexuality, animal rights, the abolition of slavery, the abolition of capital punishment and of physical punishment. In the work, Bentham wrote:

“Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne.”

Bentham came up with seven measures of pleasure, including intensity, duration, certainty, proximity, productiveness, purity and extent. He believed that any form of punishment should be evaluated by these measures to see if the punishment of the individual or group would cause more pleasure or pain overall for society.  He also argued that excessive punishment can cause additional new vices to form which can threaten society, and that we should develop a felicitous calculus, or felicific calculus, a system for calculating how much pleasure and pain particular practices caused. Unfortunately, while Bentham and Mill’s ideas have remained influential, particularly in British and American law, such a calculus has failed to materialize. Lewis Carroll, author of Wonderland and a logician who read and appreciated Mill’s work on logic, once wrote to a friend that he was offended that she claimed to enjoy drawing more than he did, and asked her as a joke to calculate how many penny-buns worth of pleasure it gave her per hour so they could compare, mocking Bentham’s idea of a felicitous calculus.

Bentham called his philosophy consequentialism, the position that morals, laws and principles are merely tools for the obtainment of collective human happiness.  However, it was Mill who found the word ‘utilitarian’ in a Christian text that used the term negatively.  The more conservative author of the text, who sounds much like Kant, said that we should not be “merely utilitarian” in our actions, following principles only when they lead to happiness and the consequences we desire.  Mill picked up the name from the text and developed his own thinking in line with Bentham, his mentor, becoming Utilitarianism’s founding father and central spokesman.  Mill applied this progressive model of thought to logic, mathematics, economics and ethics.  In all of these subjects, he advocated rethinking basic principles and assumptions based on the ongoing experiences of their usefulness. Any truth, no matter how accepted according to tradition, is to be questioned if it is not bringing about the long term and overall happiness of humanity.  Political laws, ethical morals, mathematical rules, and scientific understandings are to be continuously examined and developed such that they are best A) for the greatest number of people, and B) over the longest period of time.  It is wise and best to take the social view and the long term view.

Neo-Confucians of the Song Dynasty such as Wang Yangming debated about whether we should more treat others the way we want to be treated or not treating others the way we don’t want to be treated, two sides of the “Golden Rule” found across human cultures in ethical discussions.  The difference between Bentham and Mill reflects these positive and negative sides, and also parallels pro-active socialism and laissez-faire capitalism.  Bentham argued that we should maximize happiness and do things for others we want done for us, such as collecting taxes from everyone to provide education for everyone, whether or not they can afford it.  Mill, who is quite influential in American law and legal theory, argued that we should minimize pain, doing things for others when they prevent harm, and otherwise leaving individuals free.  For example, consider that in Denmark, more socialist in ways than America, and thus more Bentham than Mill, there are places funded by taxes that alcoholics can go to get treatment, and also places they can go to drink themselves to death on their social welfare check, places that many Americans would not want to pay for. While this prevents alcoholics from being homeless in the street, it does so by taxing everyone, such that Mill might argue it infringes on individual liberty.

Another difference between Bentham and Mill is the issue of whether or not there are higher, more refined pleasures that are better pursue than baser pleasures. For Bentham, one kind of pleasure is just as good as any other, arguing that playing tiddlywinks is just as worthy as listening to Beethoven.  Mill argued that there are “higher pleasures”, and that, “It is an unquestionable fact that those who are acquainted with, and equally capable of appreciating and enjoying both, do give a most marked preference to the manner of existence which employs their higher faculties.” Mill argued that, rather than a felicitous calculus, we can ask people what they want, as well as see what they choose to do. He additionally thinks that cultures in human history show preference for the higher, more refined pleasures, and that this is because they are not simply crude and intense, but intellectual and profound.

Mill married his wife Harriet in 1851 after the two had been friends for many years, and Mill declared his rights over her as her husband under Victorian law repudiated, renouncing his control over her as a man.  They collaborated on The Subjection of Women (1869) and The Enfranchisement of Women (1851), arguing that gender inequality was morally unjust and economically inefficient, and for women’s access to education and autonomy.  Note that the argument has two parts, that it is 1) wrong to be unfair to individuals based on their gender, and 2) not as good for laissez-faire economics to discriminate based on gender. Consider that it was only in the mid-1970s that women could apply for credit cards without having their fathers or husbands cosign and underwrite them. It is unfortunate but true that contemporary banking would likely not limit women’s access to debt, including credit cards and student loans. Mill himself said that his wife was the inspiration for many of his ideas, and though they were only married for a period of seven years, they were highly productive as a couple.  Unfortunately Harriet died of a lung condition in 1858.

Let us turn to Mill’s text Utilitarianism, and examine his arguments. Mill’s Utilitarianism first appeared in three installments of Frasier’s Magazine in 1861 as a defense of Bentham’s “greatest happiness principle.”  Mill’s two opponents are Kant and his followers, as well as the intuitive school who argued that we can tell what is right and wrong by our immediate feelings.  Mill argues against Kant’s deontological ethics position that we should take experience into account.  However, against the intuitive school, Mill argues, like Kant, that we should reason what is best rather than follow our immediate intuitions and feelings.  Mill praises Epicurus, but adds that we should also incorporate doctrines from Stoicism and Christianity as well from ancient Greek and Roman thought to combat selfishness.

Mill opens with the observation that what is the greatest good in life has been foundational to philosophy since ancient times, and divided many into separate schools of thought.  Mill argues that actions are to be valued in terms of their ends, opening with a position comparable to Aristotle.  Mill argues that we need a test to see if acts and ends are good or bad, and that the intuitionist position, that we can simply feel immediately what is good or bad, is not sufficient.  Like Kant, Mill argues that we should look to reason, and not simply to immediate feelings, to come up with greater overall understandings of what acts and ends are good or bad.  However, against Kant, Mill argues that we cannot simply reason a priori, before and apart from all experience, but should rather use observation and experience as integral to the test we need to reason about what acts and ends are good or bad.  Mill also argues that if we do come to fundamental morals and rules, we must also have ways of deciding which take precedence over which when they conflict in various situations, which Kant did not consider, but we did with Asimov’s I, Robot.

Mill backs Bentham and criticizes Kant for being a consequentialist in spite of himself, writing, “the principle of utility, or as Bentham latterly called it, the greatest happiness principle, has had a large share in forming the moral doctrines even of those who most scornfully reject its authority.  Nor is there any school of thought which refuses to admit that the influence of actions on happiness is a most material and even predominant consideration in many of the details of morals, however unwilling to acknowledge it as the fundamental principle of morality, and the source of moral obligation.  I might go much further, and say that to all those a priori moralists who deem it necessary to argue at all, utilitarian arguments are indispensable… I cannot help referring, for illustration, to a systematic treatise by one of the most illustrious of them, the Metaphysics of Ethics, by Kant.  This remarkable man, whose system of thought will long remain one of the landmarks in the history of philosophical speculation, does, in the treatise in question, lay down an universal first principle as the origin and ground of moral obligation; it is this: ‘So act, that the rule on which thou actest would admit of being adopted as a law by all rational beings.’  But when he begins to deduce from this precept any of the actual duties of morality, he fails, almost grotesquely, to show that there would be any contradiction, any logical (not to say physical) impossibility, in the adoption by all rational beings of the most outrageously immoral rules of conduct.  All he shows is that the consequences of their universal adoption would be such as no one would choose to incur.”

Mill says that this work will consider how rational the Utilitarian and Consequentialist position of ethics is, and that the “chief obstacle” to its acceptance is that its meaning is misunderstood, so he will clarify things.  Many think that Utilitarianism is about immediate satisfaction, “mere pleasures of the moment,” as Mill puts it, and so they think that Utilitarianism is hedonistic and immoral.  Mill argues that if we are taking the long view and the social view, looking for happiness over the longest amount of time, for the most amount of people, he is confident that we will see that most ethics is based on happiness and best consequences.  It is particularly interesting that Kant and others trust human reason as a good source of truth, but distrust human happiness as a bad source of ignorance.  Mill is opposed to this picture, and trusts reason and happiness to work together in concert.  After Mill and Utilitarianism, we will consider the position of Nietzsche, Sartre and Existentialism, which overturns and inverts the position of reason over desire we find in Plato, Aristotle, Kant and Mill in the name of individualism and the creation of meaning via desire.

Mill argues, following Epicurus and Bentham, that, “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.”  However, he goes further, and says that the theory is grounded in the more radical claim, “that pleasure, and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends; and that all desirable things (which are as numerous in the utilitarian as in any other scheme) are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain.”  This would include reason, and following Mill’s calling Kant out by name, suggests that Kant only finds reason, logic and objectivity true, beautiful and trustworthy because he finds them pleasurable, and not because Kant merely has desireless respect via good will.  Indeed, it would mean that Kant, and everyone other than Kant, only seek reason, truth, respect and good will because each of these bring humanity happiness and keep us from pain, which is the only reason Kant or anyone else finds these desirable.  Nietzsche also makes this point, and quite radically, accusing Kant of filtering his desires through abstract reasoning and becoming confused as to their source.

Mill writes: “such a theory of life excites in many minds… inveterate dislike.  To suppose that life has (as they express it) no higher end than pleasure – no better and nobler object of desire and pursuit – they designate as utterly mean and groveling; as a doctrine worthy only of swine, to whom the followers of Epicurus were, at a very early period, contemptuously likened…  When thus attacked, the Epicureans have always answered, that it is not they, but their accusers, who represent human nature in a degrading light; since the accusation supposes human beings to be capable of no pleasures except those of which swine are capable… for if the sources of pleasure were precisely the same to human beings and to swine, the rule of life which is good enough for the one would be good enough for the other.  The comparison of the Epicurean life to that of beasts is felt as degrading, precisely because a beast’s pleasures do not satisfy a human being’s conceptions of happiness.  Human beings have faculties more elevated than the animal appetites, and when once made conscious of them, do not regard anything as happiness which does not include their gratification.”

Mill says, “there is no known Epicurean theory of life which does not assign to the pleasures of the intellect, of the feelings and imagination, and of the moral sentiments, a much higher value as pleasures than to those of mere sensation… It is quite compatible with the principle of utility to recognize 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.”  Mill does not propose a complicated felicitous calculus, a la Bentham, but rather Mill proposes a simple test that could be called democratic and egalitarian: “Of two pleasures, if there be one to which all or almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference… that is the more desirable pleasure.”  He then extends this test to the issue of “higher” pleasures, and concludes, “it is an unquestionable fact that those who are equally acquainted with, and equally capable of appreciating and enjoying both, do give a most marked preference to the manner of existence which employs their higher faculties.  Few human creatures would consent to be changed into any of the lower animals, for a promise of the fullest allowance of a beast’s pleasures; no intelligent human being would consent to be a fool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base, even though they should be persuaded that the fool, the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they are with theirs.”

Mill, like Kant, admires the Stoics for their dedication to autonomy and sense of dignity, and cites these as higher pleasures, and thus more satisfying to human desires.  Not only is this a good argument for Mill to use against Kant, but it would be a good argument for Epicureans to use against Stoics in ancient Greece and Rome.  If Kant or the ancient Stoics argue that desire is base and beneath the higher faculties of reason or will, Mill and the Epicureans would answer, like Nietzsche, that they have become confused, as they would not desire reason, good will, individual autonomy, dignity or acceptance of fate if these were not desirable and sought as higher, more fulfilling human pleasures.  Mill writes, “Whoever supposes that this preference takes place at a sacrifice of happiness – that the superior being, in anything like equal circumstances, is not happier than the inferior – confounds the two very different ideas, of happiness, and content…  It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.  And if the fool, or the pig, is of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question.  The other party to the comparison knows both sides.”

Mill says that opponents could object that many humans are tempted by desire to embrace lower pleasures in place of higher pleasures, but this shows “infirmity of character” which also occurs when they choose a more foolish bodily pleasure over a wiser bodily pleasure, or presumably a more foolish “higher” mental pleasure over a wiser mental pleasure.  Mill admits that many who do not develop a better character, “pursue sensual indulgences to the injury of health, though perfectly aware that health is the greater good.”  He also admits that, “many who begin with youthful enthusiasm for everything noble, as they advance in years sink into indolence and selfishness.”  However, Mill argues that this is not voluntary, and rather, “Capacity for the nobler feelings is in most natures a very tender plant, easily killed, not only by hostile influences, but by mere want of sustenance; and in the majority of young persons it speedily dies away if the occupations to which their position in life has devoted them, and the society into which it has thrown them, are not favorable to keeping that higher capacity in exercise… they addict themselves to inferior pleasures, not because they deliberately prefer them, but because they are either the only ones to which they have access, or the only ones which they are any longer capable of enjoying.” This brings in environment, important to Mencius and Xunzi in ancient China for facilitating human growth.

Mill says it is not about immediate happiness or intensity of happiness, two of Bentham’s measures of pleasure, but rather, “the greatest amount of happiness altogether; and if it may possibly be doubted whether a noble character is always the happier for its nobleness, there can be no doubt that it makes other people happier, and that the world in general is immensely a gainer by it.”  Mill thus argues that Utilitarianism is about attaining the end of “the general cultivation of nobleness of character,” which brings Aristotle’s ethics under Mill’s umbrella, just as Mill did with Kant.  Of the three central ethical positions we consider for the class, those of Aristotle, Kant and Mill, Mill’s is the latest in its position in history, and Mill argues that the other two rivals are in fact in agreement with his own position.  It also fits well with his position that it is about the happiness of the most overall, as we do often value nobility of character in others compared to their indulgence in immediate, intense pleasures.

Mill then extends this to a position compatible with Buddhism, beyond Kant, as the development of noble character is about the happiness of the self, but also the happiness of all other sentient beings, beyond the smaller group of rational beings.  We seek happiness for all conscious beings, not simply those who share the ability to think.  We will consider this again when we examine Peter Singer, who bases his ethics in Utilitarianism and comes to conclusions that many consider controversial and somewhat extreme.  While Bentham and Mill were considered radical in their day for seeking a much wider acceptance of humanity, Singer is considered quite radical by many today for seeking a much wider acceptance of animals in our obligations towards the happiness of others.  Singer also uses the language that Mill and Mahayana Buddhism does, in committing to “all sentient beings.” Note that Mill aims, beyond Kant, at the happiness of all sentient beings, and not merely at what is logical for all rational beings.

Wittgenstein once wrote that he was not sure why we are here, but he was pretty sure it was not to be happy.  Mill says that some reject happiness as unobtainable in life, which is what Wittgenstein was likely thinking, as many are unhappy and do not have the means to achieve great happiness.  Mill argues that it is true that it is impossible to be happy throughout life, if by “happy” we mean, “a continuity of highly pleasurable excitement,” as, “A state of exalted pleasure lasts only moments, or in some cases, and with some intermissions, hours or days, and is the occasional brilliant flash of enjoyment, not its permanent and steady flame.”  Rather, we should and do seek, “not a life of rapture; but moments of such, in an existence made up of few and transitory pains, many and various pleasures… worthy of the name of happiness.  And such an existence is even now the lot of many, during some considerable portion of their lives.  The present wretched education, and wretched social arrangements, are the only real hindrance to its being attainable by almost all.”  Clearly Mill believes in social progress, and that the goal of his ethics is already obtainable by many, which is evidence of its practicality and obtainability.

Mill incorporates tranquility, the valued quality of character that the ancient Indian, Greek and Chinese thinkers we studied highly prize from different positions, and unites this with excitement to present happiness as a complex: “The main constituents of a satisfied life appear to be two, either of which by itself is often found sufficient for the purpose (of our happiness): tranquility, and excitement.  With much tranquility, many find that they can be content with very little pleasure: with much excitement, many can reconcile themselves to a considerable quantity of pain.  There is assuredly no inherent impossibility in enabling even the mass of mankind to unite both; since the two are so far from being incompatible that they are in natural alliance, the prolongation of either being a preparation for, and exciting a wish for, the other.  It is only those in whom indolence amounts to a vice, that do not desire excitement after an interval of repose; it is only those in whom the need of excitement is a disease, that feel the tranquility which follows excitement dull and insipid, instead of pleasurable in direct proportion to the excitement which preceded it.”

In current understandings of emotionality in psychology, there are at least two dimensions of emotionality, 1) good and bad, as well as 2) tense and calm.  This gives us at least four combinations, noted by Edgar Allen Poe in his detective stories and later identified with the characters of Winnie the Pooh: 1) feeling good and calm, like Pooh Bear, 2) feeling good and tense, like Tigger, 3) feeling bad and calm, like Eeyore, and 4) feeling bad and tense, like Piglet, as well as Rabbit, and sometimes Owl.  Clearly, we are drawn to feel good, and thus feel both good and calm at times, as well as good and excited at other times.  Perhaps we are always feeling all four, at different levels towards different aims and ends.  In 2012, this was put forward by the neurologist Hugo Lövheim in the form of the Lövheim Cube of Emotions.

In his detective stories, Poe has his detective Dupin, who was the model for Doyle’s later Sherlock Holmes, tell his assistant, his Doctor Watson, that we should pay careful attention to the behaviors of others to see what others are seeking to gain and avoid, as well as when they are ready to act or resigned to inaction.  In the first words of Poe’s first detective story, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, the narrator, like Doctor Watson, tells us what Dupin later tells him in the course of their investigations, that the great chess player does not simply look at the pieces, but at their opponents, and if you play cards while watching the emotions of your opponents, you can see when they like or dislike their cards, as well as when they are excited to play a card or depressed and can’t.  If you play this way, Dupin later tells the narrator, you can read others like a book, and it is as if their cards are turned outward towards you. Dupin then shows that he can read the others in the story, and thus solves the murder mystery.

Compatible with Poe, and his detective Dupin, who argues that we must have compassion for others to be truly brilliant in our thinking, Mill says that the reason many who have the means and opportunity for happiness are not happy is their, “caring for nobody but themselves.”  Those who are interested in others, and, “who have also cultivated a fellow-feeling with the collective interests of mankind, retain as lively an interest in life on the eve of death as in the vigor of youth and health.  Next to selfishness, the principle cause which makes life unsatisfactory, is want of mental cultivation.”  Mill says that there is so much to enjoy and interest us in the world, such that anyone who has a small amount of enjoyment and interest in others and the world as a whole is capable of, “an existence which may be called enviable.”  Such a person can suffer great evils, and still have a life that others would call happy.

Mill says that the great evils of life, “the great sources of physical and mental suffering – such as indigence (poverty), disease, and the unkindness,” can be hard to avoid, but, “most of the great positive evils of the world are in themselves removable, and will, if human affairs continue to improve, be in the end reduced within narrow limits.  Poverty, in any sense implying suffering, may be completely extinguished by the wisdom of society, combined with the good sense and providence of individuals.  Even that most intractable of enemies, disease, may be indefinitely reduced in dimensions by good physical and moral education, and proper control of noxious influences; while the progress of science holds out a promise for the future of still more direct conquests over this detestable foe.”  Mill certainly has an 1800s idea of positive progress in modern times with advancements in science and technology.  Unfortunately, as we will discuss with Nietzsche and his more cynical take on modernity, World War I and II put a damper on this enthusiasm for many in Europe, as would new concerns after WWII with forms of increasing environmental destruction and economic exploitation.

Critics of Mill and Utilitarianism have pointed out an interesting problem that we can call the Paradox of the Bad Example.  Mill addresses this paradox, as do many modern Utilitarians.  Consider that everything bad that happens can serve as a great example of what not to do, and thus is good as a learning experience.  While this does not seem problematic in itself, it could lead an individual, institution or culture to do bad on purpose in order to learn from it.  The American philosopher Daniel Dennett uses Three Mile Island as an example.  After the nuclear reactor there exploded, it led to much better nuclear standards and restrictions.  This might lead someone to conclude that causing harm can be beneficial and affordable if more good than the initial harm is the result.

Consider animal testing, as well as the infamous Tuskegee Study.  In 1932, the US Public Health Service began studying the effects of untreated syphilis in black men who believed they were receiving treatment but were in fact guinea pigs, a study which lasted forty years until 1972 when its existence was leaked to the press.  Consider Nazi scientists, the most infamous being Dr. Mengele, the Angel of Death from Auschwitz, who, in part inspired by American Eugenicists, did experiments on Jews, including Jewish children.  Mill and Utilitarians would of course reply that such experiments do more harm than good if we take the long and social view, as it would create a culture in which human life has little value or respect.

Mill completely agrees with Kant in so far as we need a test for principles and an overall principle to serve as this text.  For Kant, this test is ‘can it always be followed?’, while for Mill the test is ‘does following the principle make people happy as a consequence?’.  Both come up with a supreme principle.  Thus, for Kant, one should never lie because the principle is most important as beginning or all good action, while for Mill, one should never lie as long as this has good consequences because this is the most important as end of all good action. Both also come up with a pure ‘good in itself’: Kant’s is intention (the good-in-itself beginning of an act) and Mill’s is happiness (the good-in-itself end of an act).  Both say that it is impossible to argue for this good-in-itself, but it simply shows itself in us.  Mill admits that there will be continuous problems whichever way we use the principle, but we are evolving in a positive direction slowly and we should stick to the Utilitarian view even when there are problems if we truly (and he thinks we do) desire good consequences basically as human beings.

Many could say that ‘use’ and ‘happy’ can easily lead to how we abuse the environment.  More relevant today, Mill loved deep forests and argued that wilderness was necessary in the long view of use and happiness.  This poses us an interesting question: when utilitarianism asks us to take the long view, how long a view can we take?  If we pollute the earth and ignore it for hundreds of years, our long view could still be too short for comfort.  Here is a chart someone made of how long it could take for things to recover.

Kant says we should never lie.  Should we lie, and when, according to Mill?  Daoists, much like Robin Hood, would not hesitate to lie for the promotion of the public good rather than themselves, which they don’t make public.  Primatologists say that there are many examples of apes, our closest animal ancestor, hiding fruit behind their backs from others, or engaging in deceitful behavior, although there is still much debate about how much this is intentional, and by design, or instinctive, but the same can be said of human behavior, as studies do show that humanity lies and deceives across cultures much to the same extent.  In one story, a baboon turned to baboons chasing him and gave the call for leopard, and then watched as the others ran off, clearly not believing there was a leopard.

We practice lying to children, who cannot tell the difference between fiction and reality before three or four, which is why they wonder where Thomas the Train Engine lives in real life.  The Inuit are never angry with children, but they believe in lying mercilessly to children between two and four, as the children first learn language, telling them terrifying myths that they do not believe as adults to quickly adapt children to present dangers in their environment, and the children do not grow to resent the adults who tormented them in these ways, rather continuing to do the same to the younger generation, with practices remarkably consistent across Inuit tribes that haven’t had contact in many generations, perhaps centuries.

There are two stories about lying to children instrumentally, for the public good, that I often tell.  One of my students wrote that as a young girl she had a pet goldfish and accidentally killed the fish by cleaning its bowl with hand soap.  When she saw her fish was dead her mother, who did not want to torture the young girl with the truth, told her that the cat had walked by and the fish had a heart attack.  Notice the utilitarianism here, and that Kant, much like the goldfish, would be mortified. Secondly, there was a news story about a boy in Thailand who was stuck on the roof of a tall building, and he would not climb into the arms of the firefighters who climbed a ladder to rescue him, so one of them dressed up in a Spider-Man costume, and the boy threw open his arms and leaped into the waiting embrace of Spider-Man, who carried him down to safety.

As we mentioned with Kant, the Trolley Problem is a classic thought experiment for ethics classrooms in Britain and America that is designed to compare Kant and Mill’s ethical positions of deontology and utilitarianism. Specifically, if a trolley is bearing down on five people, and if we have the option of pulling a lever and switching the trolley to a track where only one person would be killed, should we pull the lever? Kant would argue that we should not pull the lever, as we should stick to our principles and not cause violence to an innocent person, even if this would result in the consequences of five people being killed independent of our actions. Mill would argue that we should pull the lever, as we should act in order to minimize the violence to innocent people and aim for best consequences. Here is a gamified version of the trolley problem that we can play as a class together, taking a show of hands for who choses to pull the lever and going with the overall consensus. Overall, this game can show us that while we often choose to pull the lever, going with Mill, it is difficult to determine any of our choices by way of a mathematical felicitous calculus of the sort that Bentham sought.

There is also a humorous piece called Lesser-Known Trolley Problem Variations by Kyle York at McSweeney’s that includes several confusing entries, including:

The Cancer Caper: “There’s an out-of-control trolley speeding towards four workers. Three of them are cannibalistic serial killers. One of them is a brilliant cancer researcher. You have the ability to pull a lever and change the trolley’s path so it hits just one person. She is a brilliant cannibalistic serial killing cancer researcher who only kills lesser cancer researchers. 14% of these researchers are Nazi sympathizers, and 25% don’t use turning signals when they drive. Speaking of which, in this world, Hitler is still alive, but he’s dying of cancer.”

The Ethics Teacher: “There’s an out-of-control trolley speeding towards four workers. You are on your way to teach an ethics class and this accident will make you extremely late. You have the ability to pull a lever and change the trolley’s path so it hits just one person. This will make you slightly less late for your class.”

The Meta-Ethical Problem: “There’s an out-of-control trolley speeding towards Immanuel Kant. You have the ability to pull a lever and change the trolley’s path so it hits Jeremy Bentham instead. Jeremy Bentham clutches the only existing copy of Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals. Kant holds the only existing copy of Bentham’s The Principles of Morals and Legislation. Both of them are shouting at you that they have recently started to reconsider their ethical stances.”

There is another collection of variations on the Trolley Problem found at The Mind Collection that includes the following entries on John Rawls’ veil of ignorance, the Myth of Sisyphus, and campaign contributions.