Mill on Conscience and the Utility Principle

John Stuart Mill

Mill on Conscience

As Plato often stressed in Republic and other dialogues, the external motives for moral behavior do not guarantee that people will do the morally right act or refrain from wrongful conduct.   The favor of others motivates the bad person to maintain a good reputation, not necessarily to do what is morally right.  There are bad people who know how to “game the system.”  They manage to maintain a good reputation because they know how to lie, cheat and steal without ever being found out (Republic, 362c). 

In chapter III of Utilitarianism, John Stuart Mill  proposes another motive for being moral, a motive that will have a stronger prohibitive effect on a person who contemplates wrongdoing.  He suggests that the motive we seek is to be found internally, in ourselves.  It is called “conscience.”

Mill defines “conscience” as

"…a feeling in our own mind; a pain, more or less intense, attendant on violation of duty, which in properly cultivated moral natures, rises, in the more serious cases, into shrinking from it as an impossibility" (27).  

This is what is lacking in the person who is only taught that being moral is a means to keeping a good reputation in the community.  If he does not have a conscience to restrain him, then he will violate a moral duty whenever he can safely get away with this.  There is little or no internal pain that this person feels when contemplating a future wrongful deed.

[Conscience is a prospective moral feeling, that is, it is what we feel before we violate a rule of right conduct.  Remorse and guilt are retrospective.  They are feelings we must encounter after the violation.]

Mill refers to conscience as the “ultimate sanction of all morality” (28).  Hence, the feeling of conscience should also be the sanction of the utilitarian moral standard, there being no reason why this feeling “may not be cultivated to as great intensity in connection with the utilitarian as with any other rule of morals” 28).

Is it possible for feelings of conscience and remorse to attach themselves to the utilitarian principle?

This begs the meta-question: “What kind of question is this?”  Is it a scientific question, answered empirically, with reference to observation and experience, or is it a philosophical question, answered analytically, with reference to relevant concepts and their interrelationships? 

Perhaps the best way to answer the  question is to look at Mill’s methodology.  Here is his argument for the conclusion that conscientious feelings (conscience) can and do serve as a sanction for the utilitarian standard.

1. Conscientious feelings (conscience) can firmly attach to the utilitarian standard only if there is a natural sentiment for the utilitarian morality.

2. There is a natural sentiment for the utilitarian morality: the social feelings of mankind (the desire to be in unity with our fellow creatures).

3. Therefore, conscientious feelings can firmly attach to the utilitarian standard.

The argument is deductive, and it is valid, that is, if we accept the premises as true, then the conclusion must be true. 

But are the premises true?  In premises 1 and 2, the term natural sentiment is a concept often used in the nineteenth century to express the view that morality is based on a sentiment or feeling that is part of our natural makeup (Oxford Reference).  This does not mean that the feeling is innate, nor does it mean that everyone has these feelings.  Mill believes that it is acquired in the same way that speaking and reasoning are acquired.  And like speaking and reasoning, some people develop it to a high degree by cultivation.  Others develop it to a lesser degree, and still others do not develop it at all. 

In premise 2, Mill gives a name to the natural sentiment.  It is “the social feelings of mankind--the desire to be in unity with our fellow creatures” (30).  This is reminiscent of Aristotle, who famously wrote:

Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human. Society is something that precedes the individual. Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god (Politics)

Mill goes somewhat farther than Aristotle by writing not just that humans are “social,” but that they have “social feelings, the desire to be in unity with our fellow creatures.”  Mill agrees with Aristotle that humans are beings who naturally “partake of society.”  Mill adds to this the observation that after a relatively short period, humans will begin to have “a temporary feeling that the interests of others are their own interests” (31).  That feeling, with proper cultivation, soon becomes permanent:

Not only does all strengthening of social ties, and all healthy growth of society, give to each individual a stronger personal interest in practically consulting the welfare of others, it also leads him to identify his feelings more and more with their good, or at least with an even greater degree of practical consideration for it.  He comes, as though instinctively, to be conscious of himself as a being who of course pays regard to others.  The good of others becomes to him a thing naturally and necessarily to be attended to, like any of the physical conditions of our existence (31).

This is clearly an empirical claim about human nature.  However, social psychologists in the twentieth century cite obvious counter-examples that falsify the idea that humans are naturally oriented toward each other in the ways suggested by Aristotle and Mill. 

We engage in acts of loyalty, moral concern, and cooperation primarily toward our inner circles, but do so at the expense of people outside of those circles. Our altruism is not unbounded; it is parochial. In support of this phenomenon, the hormone oxytocin, long considered to play a key role in forming social bonds, has been shown to facilitate affiliation toward one's ingroup, but can increase defensive aggression toward one's outgroup. Other research suggests that this self-sacrificial intragroup love co-evolved with intergroup war, and that societies who most value loyalty to each other tend to be those most likely to endorse violence toward outgroups (Waytz).

By extension, social psychologists would also disagree with Mill that the desire to be in unity with our fellow creatures is something we naturally feel toward all humans, no matter what we know about their race, ethnicity, social class or religion.   

 In fairness to Mill, he does point out that our moral feelings are susceptible “of being cultivated in almost any direction.”  If they are cultivated to favor one’s ingroup, it is still the case that people in these groups will have social feelings for one another, even if they are weaker or nonexistent for those who are in outgroups. 

If we agree to the limited claim that humans naturally have social feelings, but only for persons in their ingroup, then it does not follow that conscience is or can be “the ultimate sanction of the greatest happiness morality” (33). The conclusion (3) of the preceding argument does not follow from the premises because there is no natural sentiment for the utilitarian morality.  The utilitarian principle requires us to promote the greatest happiness for the greatest number, not the greatest happiness for the people in my ingroup.  The internal sanction of conscience may act as “a powerful binding force,” but it only binds us to promote the interests of people in our inner circle, not those outside the circle.

This does not mean that the desire to be in unity with our fellow creatures cannot ever extend to a desire to be in unity with all persons.  It means only that this desire does not naturally so extend.  If it does extend to outgroups, it does so by education.  You have got to be taught to identify your feelings with the good of those outside your ingroup as much as you identify your feelings with the good of those in your circle. 

So did Rogers and Hammerstein get it backwards when they wrote this controversial song for their 1958 musical South Pacific?

You've Got to be Carefully Taught

[Verse 1]
You've got to be taught to hate and fear
You've got to be taught from year to year
It's got to be drummed in your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught

[Verse 2]
You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade
You've got to be carefully taught

[Verse 3]
You've got to be taught before it's too late
Before you are six or seven or eight
To hate all the people your relatives hate
You've got to be carefully taught

[For more commentary on Mill's famous books Utilitarianism and On Liberty, go to my book Understanding John Stuart Mill: The Smart Student's Guide to Utilitarianism and On Liberty.  Click on the book cover image just below the free book offer on my website: houlgatebooks.com]