Mill 100% Utilitarianism

Define utilitarianism

An ethical theory which claims that welfare is the only moral value. Therefore, right actions maximise net value (maximising act consequentialism), where each “unit” of welfare is the same for each person.

Doctrine of the Swine

Challenges the claim of welfarism.

Utilitarians claim that actions are to be judged solely by the amount of pleasure they produce.

It is only an animal that behaves as though pleasure is all that’s worth having.

But we clearly think that humans are different; there are things besides our own pleasure which are of moral importance.

Expand on why doctrine of the swine seems plausible

Bentham famously said “Pushpin is as good as poetry”. Intuitively, many of reject this, as it seems to reduce all “noble” practices as measurable by pleasure.

Our intuition tells us there has to be more than this kind of emotive pleasure.

Mill’s response to doctrine of the swine

Pleasure is much more complex and sophisticated than the proponents allow.

It presupposes that human being are not capable of having pleasures outside of those which swine are capable.

However, this is not true. There is exist higher pleasures: the pleasure of using higher faculties. It is still fundamentally an emotion;

This type of pleasure is worth more.

Robert Nozick’s challenge?

He sets out to say that even if “high” pleasure exists, it is not the only thing that matters. It is more than people’s experiences from the inside.

Machine: maximum pleasure, can choose which type, believe that you’re actually in there.

BUT it seems like we want to do things, rather than simply experience them. There is value in reality itself.

ALSO: What we are seems important to us. We seem unwilling to enter a transformation machine either.

Mill’s defence of utilitarian part 1?

First step: defend the idea that pleasure is morally valuable.

 P1: The only admissible source of evidence for propositions asserting that some kind of object K is desirable is that individuals, in fact, desire K.

 P2: Therefore, if individuals do, in fact, desire happiness/pleasure, then that is evidence that happiness/pleasure is desirable.

 P3: Individuals do, in fact, desire happiness/pleasure.

 C1: Therefore, there is evidence that happiness/pleasure are desirable.

Mill’s defence part 2:

P4: For K to be desirable is for K to be worthy of desiring.

 P5: For K to be worthy of desiring is for K to be morally valuable.

 C2: Since (from C1), there is evidence that happiness/pleasure is desirable, it follows

(from P4 and P5) that there is evidence that happiness/pleasure are morally valuable.

Justify it being a value-monism of pleasure

Second step: show that pleasure is the only thing that’s morally valuable.

 Mill: wherever people appear to desire for something other than pleasure, they really

just desire the pleasure associated with that thing.

 Therefore, there is only evidence that pleasure is valuable.

 Hence, we should conclude that value-monism about pleasure is true.