UTILITARIANISM: GREATEST HAPPINESS FOR THE GREATEST NUMBER

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Presentation transcript:

UTILITARIANISM: GREATEST HAPPINESS FOR THE GREATEST NUMBER MILL 1 UTILITARIANISM: GREATEST HAPPINESS FOR THE GREATEST NUMBER

JOHN STUART MILL 1806-1873 Champion of Personal liberty Women’s rights Agent for Social progress A founder of liberalism as political movement

A world without pleasure or pain BACKGROUND Empiricism vs. Rationalism in Ethics Empiricist 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)

Quantity vs. Quality (643-5) 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 higher pleasures. 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