What are the epistemological problems with utilitarianism?

According to utilitarianism, the action that can create the vastest amount of happiness is the best action. If however, it cannot create any happiness, the action that creates least amount of unhappiness is the best action. This is called the greatest happiness principle, which is based on the statement that the goal of a human being is to be happy. However, what is happy?

According to Bentham, happiness consists in pleasure, and the unhappiness consists in pain. He went further and claimed that the happiness is commensurably. For instance, say fried likes playing football and shopping, whereas Jim likes programming and playing tennis. It seems that they do not have much in common. However, fried will get pleasure from playing football and shopping, whereas Jim will get pleasure from programming and playing tennis. All these hobbies they have are broken down in to pleasures which are very much in common, so it is commensurably. Furthermore, if a person gets pleasure from philosophy and another gets pleasure from hide-and-see, we they are all broken down to the kind of pleasure level, it seems that the only distinction is the quantity of the pleasure. Apparently Bentham was too concentrated on the quantity of the pleasure, but not the quality of the pleasure. Because there are, I think, some difference between the pleasure that is produced by hide-and-see and the pleasure that is provided by philosophy.

Mill’s utilitarianism responds it by saying that there are, indeed, distinctions, with is called higher and lower pleasure by Mill. Obviously, the pleasure that produced by philosophy is higher, and the pleasure the person gets from hide-and-see is lower. However, it is quite hard to draw the horizon between the higher and lower pleasure. For example, is drinking a higher or lower pleasure? It would be a lower pleasure for some people, because alcohol can make people dizzy and do all sort of silly things. On the other hand, it is a higher pleasure, in fact a great pleasure, for some other people, in fact a great pleasure. As Ernest Hemingway wrote in his book on Bullfighting Death in the afternoon:


Wine is one of the most civilised things in the world and one of the natural things of the world that has been brought to the greatest perfection. One can learn about wins and pursue the education of one’s palate with great enjoyment all of a lifetime. A person will increasing knowledge and sensory education may derive infinite enjoyment from wine.
(Hemingway 1987)

Obviously, it is quite ambiguous for Mill’s utilitarianism in the sense that it is quite difficult to draw a conclusion.

In addition, we can also criticise on the fact that he claimed that one is familiar with both higher and lower pleasures will always choose a higher over a lower pleasure. Because it is not always correct. For instance, though it is no doubt that a person who enjoys philosophy very much will not willing to lose it in his life; occasionally he will leave philosophy and choose other ‘lower pleasure’ like watching TV, eating pasta etc.