Philosophy Paper

PHI 101-G Introduction to Philosophy, Spring 2021 Instructor: Hwan Ryu

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Introduction to Philosophy – Week 11 (1) Mill’s Utilitarianism

Greatest Happiness Principle

- “[A]ctions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.” - Happiness: Pleasure, and the absence of pain. - Happiness of everyone: “(...) not the agent’s own greatest happiness, but the greatest amount of happiness altogether.” - Impartiality: “[U]tilitarianism requires him to be as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator.” - Importance of cultivation: “Utilitarianism (...) could only attain its end by the general cultivation of nobleness of character (...)” - “A sacrifice which does not increase, or tend to increase, the sum total of happiness, it considers as wasted”

Pleasure as the only value

- Desirable as ends: Pleasure and freedom from pain are the only things that are desirable as ends. All desirable things are desirable because they tend to promote them. - An initial response: “But certainly life has higher ends than pleasure!” - Mill’s response: We should distinguish ‘swine’s pleasure’ and ‘human pleasure’, “pleasures of the intellect, of the feelings and imagination, and of the moral sentiments”. - Pleasure has two dimensions: Quantity and quality.

Pleasures with higher-quality and lower-quality

- Test: “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.” - Result: “[I]t is an unquestionable fact that those who are equally acquainted with, and equally capable of appreciating and enjoying, both, do give a most marked preference to the manner of existence which employs their higher faculties.” - Happiness vs. satisfaction: Happiness and satisfaction are distinct. In particular, choosing small amount of higher-quality pleasure at the cost of some deficiency in lower-quality pleasure is not a sacrifice of happiness, but rather a sacrifice of satisfaction. In such a case, human beings would usually be able to bear the deficiency. - “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied.”

PHI 101-G Introduction to Philosophy, Spring 2021 Instructor: Hwan Ryu

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Objections and replies (1) Happiness is unattainable.

- Mill’s reply: “The happiness which [the philosophers who claimed that happiness is the end of life] meant was not a life of rapture; but moments of such, in an existence made up of few and transitory pains, many and various pleasures, with a decided predominance of the active over the passive, and having as the foundation of the whole, not to expect more from life than it is capable of bestowing.” - Both tranquility and excitement are important. These two components would be in balance if the humankind as a whole is properly cultivated.

(2) Utilitarianism demands too high standard for humanity.

- “They say it is exacting too much to require that people shall always act from the inducement of promoting the general interests of society.” - Mill’s reply: “[T]his is to mistake the very meaning of a standard of morals, and confound the rule of action with the motive of it.” In order for your action to be morally right, your motivation for the action need not concern the general interest at all. In particular, your action would be equally right if its motivation were self-interest. (Exception: When your power would affect public utility.)

(3) Utilitarianism renders men cold and unsympathizing

- “[I]t chills their moral feelings towards individuals; that it makes them regard only the dry and hard consideration of the consequences of actions, not taking into their moral estimate the qualities from which those actions emanate.” - Mill’s reply: We should distinguish evaluation about actions and evaluation of actions. “There is nothing in the utilitarian theory inconsistent with the fact that there are other things which interest us in persons besides the rightness and wrongness of their actions.”

(4) We cannot calculate every time when we’re making choice

- “[T]here is not time, previous to action, for calculating and weighing the effects of any line of conduct on the general happiness.” - Mill’s reply: Cumulated experiences can guide us so that we may act in a right way.