1 / 10

MILL 1

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. BACKGROUND. Empiricism vs. Rationalism in Ethics

len
Download Presentation

MILL 1

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript


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

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

  3. 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.

  4. 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.”

  5. 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)

  6. 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?]

  7. 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.

  8. 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.

  9. 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.

  10. 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

More Related