Mill on Utilitarianism

Question 1

Mill Quote on Bentham’s Happiness Principle

Answer 1

“The Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness.” (Mill, 1863)

Question 2

Bentham’s Act Utilitarianism

Answer 2

• Act Utilitarianism: Greatest happiness for the greatest number

Teleological: The ends justify the means.

Quantitative view of pleasure

Question 3

Bentham Quote Justifying Utilitarianism

Answer 3

‘Nature has placed mankind under the government of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure’

Question 4

5 Criticisms of Bentham’s Act Utilitarianism

Answer 4

1) As it is teleological, it can allow for anything, including violation of human rights as long as it satisfies the majority. Bentham considered natural rights as ‘nonsense on stilts’.

2) Hedonic calculus is not practical as far too many factors to way up for every action you perform

3) If everyone were following Act Utilitarianism, then the consequent society would not be good one. The whole point of an ethical system is that the society that would be produced if everyone were to act according to it, would be an ethical one.

4) Swine objection. Pursuit of bodily pleasures is no way to spend your life.

5) Unforeseen consequences are… not foreseeable.

Question 5

Mill’s Rule Utilitarianism

Answer 5

Rather than using Bentham’s hedonic calculus whenever encountering a moral dilemma, Mill believed in following rules
which would lead to the greatest good for the greatest number.

Mill defends utilitarianism while rejecting pure hedonism for a qualitative conception of happiness.

Some of Mill’s rules include
- The Harm Principle
- Qualitative, rather than Quantitative, Pleasure

Question 6

Higher and Lower Pleasures

Answer 6

Higher pleasures require effort to understand and are ACTIVE, such as poetry and philosophy

Lower pleasures, are often bodily and PASSIVE such as sex and drugs

Competent judges can distinguish between higher and lower pleasures

Criticised as Classist

Question 7

Bentham Quote on Natural rights

Answer 7

‘Natural rights is simple nonsense: […] nonsense upon stilts.’ - (Anarchical Fallacies, 1796)

Question 8

How does Mill critique the quantitative aspect of Bentham’s utilitarianism ?

Answer 8

Hedonistic utilitarianism is a ‘doctrine worthy only of swine’. It values all pleasures as the same. Drugs can be preferred over poetry if it meets the Hedonic Calculus.

‘Human beings have faculties more elevated than the animal appetites’.

Mill argues that ‘some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and valuable than others’, and thus creates higher and lower pleasures.

Question 9

Criticism of Mill’s Higher and Lower Pleasures

Answer 9

There are people who ‘pursue sensual indulgences [even] to the injury of health’.
Mill suggests that they do so because of ‘infirmity of character’, which arises because they lack the cultural resources (their work, surrounding society, etc) to maintain interest in the higher pleasures. They are not ‘competent judges’

Mill argues that ‘competent judges’ can decide what is a higher and lower pleasure and the ‘majority’ view of their number is ‘final’.

Deference to the majority implies the relevance of subjective tastes (which threatens the firmness of the higher/lower distinction), whereas the view that the majority of judges may be wrong seems to invite the charge of elitism.