A Test of Right and Wrong (1/28/15)

Jayson Paul
A test of right and wrong must be the means, one would think, of ascertaining what
is right and wrong, and not a consequence of having already ascertained it. 1
On my first reading of Mills Utilitarianism Essay (published in Frasers Magazine,
1861) this was the assertion which gave me the most pause. Im going to try to
trace out this assertions place in Millers general argument and say a little about
what my thoughts on it are.
Chapter 1 of Mills Utilitarianism gives General Remarks on what Mill will consider
to be the problem of misunderstanding Utilitarianism as a doctrine for the
foundation of a moral imperative. The statement in question comes at the end of a
comparative analysis of foundations in moral and scientific/mathematical method, a
discussion itself apparently inspired by a similarity Mill observes in what he calls
first principles in both morality and science. More accurately, Mill discusses the
similarity between what he calls the foundation of morality and the first principles
of science/mathematics. Mill claims that similar discord to that which exists among
the first principles of all sciences exists among philosophers about the foundations
of morality. He goes on to say that, in the case of the sciences, this does not impair
the trustworthiness of the conclusions of those sciences. His explanation for this
being that what is fundamental in the sciences, its doctrines, do not depend for
their basis on its first principles. This seems merely to say that what we regard (or
perhaps, more clearly, teach) as the basis for understanding a discipline in the
sciences or mathematics (Mill uses algebra as an example) is not the epistemic
justification for the discipline itself; this justification Mill himself regards as being
metaphysical.
Here Mill shifts to discuss the qualitative difference between the sciences and
morality in this regard, namely that, in morals or legislation the particular truths
do not follow from the general theory (In science it is the case, according to
Mill, that first principles follow the metaphysical justification).
I believe that he is claiming here that in morals, the general theory (what is right
and wrong) follows from the particular truths (tests of what is right or wrong and
their results), but by this point Im thoroughly confused on several points:
1. In the preceding sentence to the main statement about A test of right and
wrongMill makes a claim about all actions being for the sake of some end
and that they take their whole character and color from the end to which
they are subservient. This seems to undermine exactly what the statement
in question says, it seems to say that the general theory (the end) necessarily
depends on the particular truths (the rules of action).
2. This all seems a rather pointlessly obtuse way of saying that there is a
particular directionality to epistemic justification in morality. I question the
1 Mills, John Stuart. Utilitarianism and the 1868 Speech on Capital Punishment.
Second Edition. 2001 Hackett Publishing Co.

need to even compare morality to science and introduce these ideas of first
principles if it were, in fact, just to say that in regards to morals there is no
metaphysical truth to appeal to, that we must build our basis for a morality
on individual cases or tests.