Mill’s utilitarianism Flashcards
mill’s utilitarianism
Mill disagrees with Bentham on the basis that only the amount of pleasure matters whereas all pleasures are measured of equal value and disregards the quality of pleasure.
higher pleasure
pleasures of the mind such as:
o Poetry
o Maths
o Art
o Music
Lower pleasures
pleasures of the body such as:
o Food o Drink o Sex o Drugs o Sleep
We need to achieve the lower pleasures to have access to the higher pleasures.
Relation between higher and lower pleasure:
Mill argues that, if our physical needs are met, people will prefer the pleasures of thought, feeling and imagination to pleasures of the body and the senses, even if our ‘higher’ capacities mean we can experience terrible pain, boredom and dissatisfaction.
appreciating the higher pleasures can be more demanding.
Our ability to experience higher pleasures can be undermined by hard work, lack of time, infrequent opportunities to experience them, and etc.
We may seek lower pleasures simply because those are more readily available to us.
question+answers of pleasure
decide which pleasure to persuade?
we need to consult people who know what they are talking about.
Having been to an art gallery once doesn’t count as having experienced the pleasures of art and listening to just one pop song doesn’t count as having experienced the pleasures of pop music.
Mill says that one pleasure is higher than another if almost everyone who is ‘competently acquainted’ with both prefers one over the other.
criticism - does it make sense still from a hedonistic pov?
is it still hedonistic utilitarianism? the distinction means some pleasures can be better but bring less pleasure. if this is the case we are no longer seeking to maximise pleasure.
response- red isn’t blue
mill may be claiming that higher and lower pleasures are simply not comparable and are not measured to the same standard ie lower pleasures are not less pleasant than higher pleasures.
red is not blue. no matter how red it is there will be no blue. they are simply different.
we can only seek someone who has experienced both and ask which is better or worse.
mill also doesn’t see happiness just as a question of pleasure. human have the capacity to reason and develop
criticism- loses simplicity
what makes utiliatarism so appealing is its simplicity.
weighting up the pleasures and subtracting the pain
when mill introduced the notion of quality some of the simplicity disappeared.
library= 10 gyms?
criticism- elitism
cultural elitism
argued that the term- higher pleasures = the things that mill and his finds like to do.
snobbishly dismissive of the pleasures of the masses.
Nozick’s experience machine
imagine being faced with the chance of plugging into a virtual reality machine.
This machine will produce the experience of a very happy life, not only with many and various pleasures and few pains but (the experience of) many successful achievements.
if we plug in, we will not know that we are in a virtual reality machine. We will believe that what we experience is reality. However, we must agree to plug in for life or not at all.
Nozick argues that most of us would not plug in.
Explanation <3
We value being in contact with reality, even if that makes us less happy, even if we experience fewer achievements.
what we want is not a psychological state at all; it is a relation to something outside our minds.
we want achievements; but we want real achievements, not just the psychological state of experiencing an achievement.
Nozick concludes that we cannot understand what is good just in terms of our subjective psychological states, such as pleasure.
criticisms of the pleasure machine
list
it isn’t pleasure we seek but state of affairs in the world things outside our heads
it isn’t pleasure that we seek but the specific actions activities and objects themselves
pleasure is a way of talking about behaviour not sensations
it isnt pleasure we seek but states of affairs in the world things outside our heads
- what people often want is a state of affairs in the world, they want their children to be happy, or for people to think well of them, or for there to be more dolphins.
- People want states of affairs not for the sensations that might then result in their heads, if it was sensations, we’re after, then surely we would step into the machine, but many wont, as what they seek are things in the real world and not sensations and deceptions.
it isnt pleasure that we seek but the specific actions activities and objects themselves
- imagine collecting stickers, you’re missing one and have been trying to get it for ages, you really want it. Bentham would claim that the sticker is just a means to your ultimate aim, which is the pleasure it will give you. However, you may feel strongly that what you actually want is the sticker, not the pleasure it will give.
- But if I offered to give you something of equal amount of pleasure that you would gain from getting the missing sticker, but some another source ie unreleased music, then you might be tempted but would still probably claim that it is the sticker you want, not just a certain quantity of pleasure.
- Henry Sidwick claimed that it is the specific activities/objects in life that we desire and not pleasure itself. I might want to play volleyball for the intrinsic qualities of the game, the squeak of the floors, the impact of blocks, etc not for any specific sensation called pleasure.
pleasure is a way of talking about behaviour not sensations.
- We gain pleasure from lots of things: anime, good music, vibe sess. These are all things I seek to do but there doesn’t seem to be a specific mental sensation linking them all. Behaviourists and others would claim that pleasure isn’t a specific sensation, instead they claim it’s a way of talking collectively about all of those things that we seek to do ie calling things pleasurable= what we seek.If this is true then he psychological hedonism theory is empty, if we can define pleasure as what we seek then the sentence, we seek pleasure means we seeks what we seek which is a tautology (true by definition) and tells us nothing new about the world, this may be why Bentham, thought it was always possible to show that we seek pleasure- because its true by definition.
- Is not clear that pleasure is a mental sensation or a way of talking about activities we prefer to do because some utilitarians believe that we should focus on satisfying people’s preferences rather than maximising their pleasure.
