Mill's Utilitarianism › Pleasures Higher and Lower

Here Mill breaks decisively from Bentham. Not all pleasures are created equal. > "It is better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied." This single sentence launched a thousand philosophical debates. Mill argues that someone who has experienced both intellectual and physical pleasures will consistently prefer the intellectual ones, even if they bring less raw intensity. The person who knows both poetry and pushpin will choose poetry. ::: {.callout-note title="Competent Judges"} The only legitimate arbiter of which pleasures are higher is someone who has experienced both and can compare them. Such "competent judges" consistently prefer mental over bodily pleasures, and moral over intellectual pleasures. ::: This move accomplishes several things at once. It answers the "pig philosophy" objection: utilitarianism doesn't recommend whatever produces the most intense sensation, but whatever produces the highest quality of satisfaction. It also explains why we might value human life over animal life, since humans can experience qualitatively superior pleasures. But this creates new problems. Who counts as a competent judge? What happens when competent judges disagree? Mill assumes a perhaps implausible unanimity among those who have tasted both high and low pleasures. Consider the heroin addict who previously loved Beethoven: has she lost her competency, or does her preference reveal something about the real relative value of chemical versus aesthetic pleasure? Mill never fully resolves these tensions. What he offers instead is a picture of human flourishing richer than Bentham's crude hedonism, one where developing intellectual and moral capacities matters intrinsically, rather than serving only as means to further pleasure.