Mill's claim that some pleasures are superior to others on grounds of difference in quality is one of the most controversial claims in his utilitarian ethics. Many critics have asserted that he abandoned hedonism in supposing that there are qualitative differences among pleasures. Some defenders of Mill have used passages from other writings to analyze the distinction as merely one of quantity. Mill's presentation leaves a number of questions unanswered. I claim, however, that Mill is correct in analyzing pleasures and pains as differing in quality as well as quantity, and that this is a consistent hedonist position. I deny, however, that those experienced in the pleasures that employ our distinctively human faculties always prefer them to those involving only animal faculties.

In this chapter I first summarize the section of Chapter 2 of Utilitarianism in which Mill introduces the notion of qualitative differences in pleasures and point out the probable influence of Francis Hutcheson. Next I seek to give the most charitable interpretation to what Mill says, so as to make the theory as plausible as possible, but I do point out ambiguities and objections. Then I present other criticisms and discuss the extent to which they can be dismissed or answered.

Mill introduces the notion of qualitative differences between pleasures as an answer to the objection that hedonism, the theory of life on which Mill's utilitarianism is founded, is a doctrine worthy only of swine.