Lecture Notes for Mill, Utilitarianism

John Stuart Mill (1806-73) published Utilitarianism in 1861.

1. Starting Point: Mill's Complaint (from a section of Utilitarianism you were not assigned): After more than two thousand years, we still have no agreed upon view of the foundation of morality--i.e. of the ultimate standard of moral right and wrong. What is it? Where does it come from? How do we know it? In the absence of such a standard, ethics has tended to be "not so much a guide as a consecration of men's actual sentiments."

2. Where to Look for a Solution? There seems (to Mill) to be a single, down-to-earth standard or principle implicit in all moral views insofar as they are really plausible: namely, the "principle of utility."

3. The Principle of Utility (PU, or the "Greatest Happiness Principle"): Actions are right insofar as they ________________________________________________________________________

________________ (320).

Whose happiness is relevant to the PU? (323)

Happiness is understood in terms of pleasure (and the absence of pain and suffering), which he takes to be the only thing that is _________________________ ; everything else besides pleasure has only instrumental value at best, insofar as it helps to produce pleasure. This is a broadly "hedonistic" conception of happiness and of value. (320)

Some object that this hedonism (the view that pleasure is the ultimate goal in life) is "a doctrine worthy only of swine." Does Mill agree? (Find the place in the text where Mill raises and answers this objection, and be sure you understand it.)

4. Higher and Lower Pleasures: There are differences in intrinsic value--and hence in true desirability--among various kinds of pleasure; some are worth more than others. (321-322)

What is to be maximized according to the PU is not just the raw quantity of pleasure in the world, but overall intrinsic value, which means not just adding up all the pleasure produced by your actions, but giving each pleasure its appropriate weight and including that in the equation, counting some pleasures (higher ones) as having more value than others (lower ones).

What does Mill think is required for human happiness? (321-322)

What does Mill mean by saying that "it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied"? (322) Do you agree?

5. Some Questions: Is pleasure (even given Mill's elevated view of certain pleasures) really the only thing with any intrinsic value, as Mill claims? Is all pleasure good? (Aren't there perhaps some pleasures which are intrinsically bad, and which shouldn't count at all in our decisions about what to do, as anything worthy of being promoted?) What, according to Mill, makes some pleasures intrinsically worth more than others? Is Mill's answer really the whole story?

6. Another Problem: The Experience Machine (a hypothetical thought-experiment from the late Robert Nozick, which I'll talk about). If you would refuse to plug in for life, what does this show about your values? What does this suggest about hedonism?