The latter part of the second volume of Mill’s book concerns the active or volitional part of the human mind. Mill notes that the cognitive and volitional sides of human mind share the same structure - for instance, volitional side also deals with sensations and ideas. The difference is, Mill suggests, that while sensations of the theoretical part are, in a sense, indifferent to the mind, the sensations of the volitional part are not, being either pleasant or such that the mind would want prolong, or painful or such that the mind would want to stop them. Mill makes it sound like the trivision of sensations would be hard and fast, while one might object that e.g. a sensation pleasant now might become indifferent and even painful, if it has to be endured too long.
Like indifferent sensations, pleasant and painful - or interesting - sensations can also be revived in ideas, Mill says, and such ideas of pleasant and painful sensations are called desires and aversions. This choice of nomenclature seems peculiar. Mill himself points out one possible point of contention: we also say that we desire things like cake, which are not sensations. In fact, Mill says, in all such cases we ultimately desire some sensation, e.g. the taste of the cake. Yet, there is a more important point of contention, because we can think of a pleasure we’ve had without desiring it. Mill offers the explanation that desires are actually only ideas of future pleasures. This explanation seems insufficient, because we could think of future pleasures and still not yet desire them. Indeed, it seems far more plausible to take desire as a primitive concept, especially as Mill’s explanation of pleasures already implicitly referred to it (pleasure is a sensation we would want or desire to continue).
In case of pleasant and painful sensations, Mill continues, we also make associations to their causes. In fact, thinking about such causes might affect us more than thinking of the pleasures and pains themselves. For instance, we might think of a past stomach ache with indifference, but still avoid the food that we think caused this sickness at the time. Mill appears to think that such affections are not just caused, but also defined merely by such associations, which seems again insufficient - surely they also contain the aspect of us wanting to gain or avoid something.
Mill notes that we often have stronger affections toward more remote causes of pleasures and pains. For instance, people often desire wealth, power and dignity more than, say, food. Mill has a quite convincing explanation for this peculiarity: remote causes, like money, allow us to gain more and a larger variety of pleasures than mere immediate causes.
An important subset of affection toward remote causes concerns other persons. In some cases, Mill notes, such affections are awakened by shared experiences and common interests. Then again, he adds, we also have a general compassion toward all humans, because the similarities with them make us associate their pleasures and pains with our own pleasures and pains. The more similarities we have toward some group of people, the more affection we have for them, for instance, in case of people from the same class (in a pre-Marxist fashion, Mill insists that only privileged classes could have such a class consciousness).
Mill touches also aesthetic affections, but unfortunately, not in any great detail. His main point is that we call sensations beautiful and sublime not because of themselves, but because of associations they convey in us. Thus, the humming of a beetle is found beautiful, not because of any intrinsic feature, but because it awakens in us the notion of summer. Because such associations may vary from one person to another, there is no universal criterion of beauty, Mill concludes: black seems ugly in a culture, where it is associated with death, beautiful in a culture, where it is associated with festivities. What is especially lacking in Mill’s account is the explanation what kind of associations are required for calling something beautiful or sublime.
When we have an idea of ourselves as the only possible cause for gaining some future pleasure or for averting some future pain (or some of their causes), we have a motive, Mill defines. Clearly, this definition works only if we assume, like him, that all thoughts of future pleasures involve desire. In any case, motives can work against one another, and indeed, Mill insists, only another motive can prevent us putting one into action. Different people are affected in different measures by same motives, and a particular affinity to some motive is called disposition. Mill notes that in common parlance we often confuse affections, motives and dispositions: thus, we may speak of lust when speaking of a positive affection toward sex (idea of sex as causing desirable sensations), of a motive for engaging in sexual relations (idea of ourselves as instigators of sex) or of a disposition to engage in sexual relations.
In a Humean manner, Mill considers cause and effect to be nothing more than a name for a regular association of certain events. Thus, he sees no problem in saying that sensations cause certain bodily actions - we can say that a pungent odour makes us sneeze, while a certain sensation in our stomach makes us hiccup. These examples might make Mill’s analysis of causation seem suspect, since it seems more likely that in such cases the sensation is not really the cause of the bodily movement , but merely shares with it a common cause (some bodily process).
In any case, because Mill thinks sensations can produce bodily movements, he sees no difficulty in ideas causing them also. In fact, he points out laughter caused by humour or weeping caused by sadness as examples of this kind of causation. Of course, Mill adds, such uncontrolled weeping is still not voluntary action. What is still required is the presence of a desire: when motives make us act, they are called will.
Mill does not then believe in any motiveless will. He insists also that will cannot awaken its own motives - this would be like baron Munchhausen lifting himself from his own hair. This rather plausible suggestion makes Mill go even so far as to suggest that it has no effect on the train of ideas, being just a process of translating ideas into action. Mill considers two possible objections. First is the notion that we often seem to will to recollect something. Mill’s answer is that actually we always only desire to do so. Similarly, to the second objection that we often will to attend to some sensations or ideas, Mill answers that attending means just that we find these sensations or ideas interesting. Mill’s answers seem just verbal confusions, since he admits that the very element that makes acts into acts of will (desire or interest) is involved also in these two cases. One might even rephrase the objections in a manner suggesting that there is a choice involved. Suppose we are attending to something complex, like a bicycle. The idea we have of it has different aspects, and we may then choose to attend to one of these aspects, say, one of the tires. Couldn’t we then say that we willed or wanted to attend to the tire?
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