MILL 1

UTILITARIANISM: GREATEST HAPPINESS FOR THEGREATEST NUMBER

JOHN STUART MILL 1806-1873

Champion of Personal liberty

Women’s rights

Agent for Social progress

A founder of

liberalism as political movement

BACKGROUND

Empiricism vs. Rationalism in EthicsEmpiricist Ethicists:

Epicurus (341-270 BCE)Bentham (1748-1832)Inclusion of animals

RAA argument: A world without pleasure or pain

has no good or bad.

The Greatest Happiness Principle

Happiness is the summum bonum (640, 643): “pleasure and freedom from pain are the only things desirable as ends,…”

Greatest Happiness Principle (643): “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.”

The Greatest Happiness Principle

Note: GHP concerns actions

[but may be applied to anything:

persons, practices, laws, devices, etc.

Happiness =DEF “pleasure and the absence of pain” (643, cf. 646)

“Questions of ultimate ends are not amenable to direct proof” (642)

GHP - COMPLICATION 1

Quantity vs. Quality (643-5)Assumption: there are higher (mental)

and lower (bodily) pleasures

“It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied, better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.” (644)

[better=more pleasant?]

GHP - COMPLICATION 1

SO: We should choose the higherpleasures.

Why? Because they give us greater pleasure. [greater?]

How do we know? Decision of “competent judges,” those who have experienced both types of pleasure (645), by majority rule. Also see: discussion of moral progress, p. 647.

GHP - COMPLICATION 1

PROBLEM:

If higher quality pleasures are more intense or durable, no distinction in quality is needed.

If not, then pleasure is not sufficient.

GHP - COMPLICATION 2

Self vs. Others (645-649)

GHP “…standard is not the agent’s own greatest happiness, but the greatest amount of happiness altogether”

“[W]hole sentient creation” must be considered (646).

Explains heroes/martyrs.

GHP - COMPLICATION 2

PROBLEM:

Individual rights are [must be?] sacrificed for the general good.

Examples:

1. The philosopher and the rugby team: confrontation in The Beaver

2. Rawls: Innocent hanged to curtail rioting