Philosophy Discussion

Mill's Principle of Utility

Please work with your classmates to construct a high-quality, extended academic discussion of the following questions. As always in our class, please work together to clarify concepts, explore questions, and analyze specific passages from our excerpt of Mill's Utilitarianism.

• What, according to Mill, is greatest happiness principle? Exactly how does he think that principle can be used to determine whether a proposed course of action would be the right or the wrong thing to do?
• How easy or hard is to to apply the utilitarian "hedonistic calculus"? Does performing these calculations require us to know exactly what will happen in the future? If not, how can we be confident that we understand what the consequences of a proposed action will be?