Mill memorise quotes

Mill’s sanction theory of wrongness

“We do not call anything wrong, unless we mean to imply that a person ought to be punished in some way or other for doing it; if not by law, by the opinion of his fellow creatures; if not by opinion, by the reproaches of his own conscience."

Mill on perfect obligation

“Duties of perfect obligation are those in virtue of which a correlative right resides in some person or persons”

Mill on Justice

“Justice implies something which it is not only right to do, and wrong not to do, but which some individual person can claim from us as his moral right”

Mill’s conception of a right

"To have a right, then, is, I conceive, to have something which society ought to defend me in the possession of."

Mill’s view of rights as SECURITY

"to every one's feelings the most vital of all interests"

Mill’s synthesis of justice

“Justice is a name for certain classes of moral rules, which concern the essentials of human well-being more nearly, and are therefore of more absolute obligation, than any other rules for the guidance of life.”

Desire and pleasant quote

“to desire anything except in proportion as the idea of it is pleasant, is a physical and metaphysical impossibility”

Proportionality doctrine

“Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain and the privation of pleasure.”

Only things desirable as ends

“Pleasure and freedom from pain are "the only things desirable as ends”

Doctrine of the swine objection (Mill sets out to defend against it —> Humans have ‘higher’ faculties)

“The objection to utilitarianism that it reduces human life to "no better than a beast's pleasures.”

Competent judges

“On a question which is the best worth having of two pleasures…the judgment of those who are qualified by knowledge of both, or, if they differ, that of the majority among them, must be admitted as final”

Socrates vs fool example

“It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question.”

Categorical preference claim for higher faculties

“Few human creatures would consent to be changed into any of the lower animals…no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base, even though they should be persuaded that the fool, the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they are with theirs”

Resigning the higher pleasures

“even though knowing it to be attended with a greater amount of discontent… would not resign it for any quantity of the other pleasure which their nature is capable of”

Dignity and the higher faculties

“its most appropriate appellation is a sense of dignity, which all human beings possess in one form or other, and in some, though by no means in exact, proportion to their higher faculties”

Act-utilitarianism definition

Act consequentialism + welfarism = Act-Utilitarianism

Mill’s Utilitarian doctrine (Paired with Proportionality doctrine)

“Happiness is desirable, and the only thing desirable, as an end; all other things being only desirable as means to that end”

Mill appealing to empirical introspection for his proof

“To be incapable of proof by reasoning is common to all first principles; to the first premises of our knowledge, as well as to those of our conduct.”

Desired/desirability quote (“The only proof capable of being given that a thing is visible, is that people actually see it. The only proof that a sound is audible, is that people hear it… In like manner, I apprehend…)

“the sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything is desirable, is that people do actually desire it.”

Mill’s composition fallacy
(From: No reason can be given why the general happiness is desirable, except that each person, so far as he believes it to be attainable, desires his own happiness)

“happiness is a good: that each person's happiness is a good to that person, and the general happiness, therefore, a good to the aggregate of all persons.”

Mill’s ingredients of happiness (Ch.4)

“The ingredients of happiness are very various, and each of them is desirable in itself, and not merely when considered as swelling an aggregate”

Mill on virtue

“Virtue, according to the utilitarian doctrine, is not naturally and originally part of the end, but it is capable of becoming so; and in those who love it disinterestedly it has become so, and is desired and cherished, not as a means to happiness, but as a part of their happiness.”

Mill on money becoming a part of happiness

“money is desired not for the sake of an end, but as part of the end. From being a means to happiness, it has come to be itself a principal ingredient of the individual's conception of happiness.”

Will vs. pleasure

“This state of the will is a means to good, not intrinsically a good; and does not contradict the doctrine that nothing is a good to human beings but in so far as it is either itself pleasurable, or a means of attaining pleasure or averting pain”

Mil’s desirable and desired

“The sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything is desirable, is that people do actually desire it.”