Mill: Utility!

Enter Philosophical Ethical Theory

Where is the Good?

Inside the Subject

Character: Aristotle

Pleasure: J.S. Mill

Will (Second-Order): Kant

Outside the Subject

God’s Commands:

Aquinas

Ethical Theory Overview

Kant: Good is in a “good will” of a rational being satisfying the duty of the greatest maxim: to only act as if my action were to be made a universal law.

Mill: Good is the maximization of pleasure (happiness) and the minimization of pain.

Mill and Utility

• Mill: Good is the maximization of pleasure (happiness) and the minimization of pain.

For Mill, pleasure is both the good and the motivation

Mill:

1) By experience alone (a posteriori) we recognize that pleasure is the greatest end.

2) Whatever is the greatest end, is the greatest good.

3) So, pleasure is the greatest good.

Problem for Mill and Utility• What is the greatest Pleasure???? Quantity or Quality?

• Quantity Maximization: • Greatest duration• Greatest number of instances

• Quality Maximization:• Greatest diversity of qualities? (Renaissance Man?)• Greatest amount of a singular quality? (Don Juan?)

Mill’s Answer: “Human beings have faculties more elevated than the animal appetites, and when once made conscious of them, do not regard anything as happiness which does not include [qualitative] gratification.” (Chapter 2)

Quality Maximization:

• “Of two pleasures, if there be one to which all or almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference, irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, that is the more desirable pleasure.”

– Example: Rock climbing or Beach Combing Vacation

• Whichever is the preferred action, based on the pleasure garnered from the act, is the right act.

Utilitarianism: Two views

• Consequentialism: whether an act is morally right depends only on consequences (as opposed to the circumstances or the intrinsic nature of the act or anything that happens before the act).

TWO KINDS OF VALUE– Actual Consequentialism = whether an act is morally right

depends only on the actual consequences (as opposed to foreseen, foreseeable, intended, or likely consequences).

– Value Consequentialism = moral rightness depends only on the value of the consequences (as opposed to other features of the consequences).

Vacation: Rock Climbing

• The Good: You free-climb a 5.11c line and experience significant euphoria.

• The Bad: You fall 60 ft. on your second climb up a 5.12 and break both of your legs.

Vacation: Beach Combing

Good: You get a lot of sun and find some cool looking shells. You also see lots of beautiful sunsets.

Bad: You only got a lot of sun, found some cool looking shells, and saw lots of beautiful sunsets.

Which vacation was good?

• By Act consequentialism, Rock climbing was bad and so the beach combing is the good.

• By Value consequentialism, Rock climbing was the good.

Further Problems for Mill

Further Objection1: Pleasure gain and pain avoidance is not a legitimate end.

Further Objection 2: Pleasures are not quantifiable, and thus not maximizable, because they admit of different incomparable kinds and types (e.g. rational, physical, aesthetic, spiritual, etc.)

Further Objection 3: Leads to seemingly inhumane claims, like aborting/killing severally disabled infants. (see Singer)

Sum: Utility vs. Good Will

• Utility (Mill) cares about consequences of greatest happiness.

• Good Will (Kant) cares about the intentions of ones actions directed at treating others as ends.