Will and the Hedonistic Fallacy

Moore's charge that Utilitarianism commits a 'naturalistic fallacy' is perhaps fatally compromised by his question-beggingly positing a distinction between 'natural' and 'non-natural', one that Mill can easily reject. It also obscures a converse issue, one that can be called the 'Hedonistic Fallacy'. For, Mill's equation of 'pleasant' and 'good', rather than reducing the latter to the former, can be interpreted as reducing the former to the latter, thereby ascribing to 'x is pleasant' an evaluative connotation lacking in mere Hedonism. Entailed in that ascription is a denial of the teleological concept of Pleasure--for, an evaluation is at least partly prescriptive, and, hence, is preparatory to subsequent behavior, i, e, is no mere End. That denial, in turn, opens Pleasure to the analysis, following Spinoza, that it is a surplus of strength, and, thus, is incipient Motility, i. e. Will. So, the 'Hedonistic Fallacy' is the interpretation of Pleasure as a mere End, a fallacy which Mill partly exposes when he presents 'pleasant' as equivalent to an evaluative term.