How does utilitarianism define happiness

This is very bad because the moral obligations involving rights are especially stringent. Reply : For Utilitarianism, rights are parasitic on general utility. So, for Mill one has a right only if society benefits from it. However, this is sufficient to guarantee certain rights, e.

So, Mill can claim that certain acts are not just wrong because they don't maximize utility, but unjust as well because they impinge on one's right. Still, how many rights PU can actually generate is unclear. At first, RU seems to be a good response to make in the face of the. It seems less plausible,. In cases.

It requires us to follow the. Group Exercise. Get into groups of three members. Each group will be responsible for coming up. You may not use any of the situations. The situation must involve a person who has to make a choice between two main alternatives, each of which has very different consequences.

After coming up with your example and discussing it as a group, assign each. Describe the situation in writing and state the two alternatives that must be. State which alternative utilitarianism seems to favor and why. State the commonsense moral principle that utilitarianism appears to conflict. Write a response on behalf of utilitarianism, using the Denial strategy. Here you are trying to convince someone that utilitarianism actually agrees with. Here you are trying to convince someone that utilitarianism really.

Each member will present their portion of the assignment to the class, and then. The Utilitarians were social reformers They supported suffrage for women and those without property , and the abolition of slavery.

Utilitarians argued that criminals ought to be reformed and not merely punished although Mill did support capital punishment as a deterrent. Proponents emphasized that utilitarianism was an egalitarian doctrine. Utilitarianism and the Enlightenment The science of the Enlightenment featured theories with a very small number of general laws and vast explanatory power.

Utilitarianism fit right in: it was an ethical theory compatible with science and featuring a single law of morality with great explanatory power. It was a sort of science of morality. Utilitarianism is a form of consequentialism Consequentialism : Whether an action is morally right or wrong depends entirely on its consequences.

An action is right if it brings about the best outcome of the choices available. The Good : Things goals, states of affairs that are worth pursuing and promoting. So, according to Utilitarianism, our one moral duty is to Maximize pleasure and minimize pain.

Objection : There is more to life than pleasure; knowledge, virtue and other things are important too. Mill: "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 adifferent opinion, it is only because they only know their own side of the question".

Objection : Utilitarianism implies that we should always act in order to maximize happiness; this is too strict a requirement. It is asking too much of people to be always motivated to promote the general happiness.

Regardless of motivation, Utilitarianism does require that people always act to maximize overall happiness. According to Mill, these are rules that tend to promote happiness, so we should internalize them as good rules to follow.

If it is clear that breaking a subordinate rule would result in much more happiness than following it, then you should break it. So, we should perform the action that we have most reason to believe will bring about the best consequences of the alternatives available. Given the probabilities, it is more reasonable to believe that borrowing money will bring more happiness. Specifically, it is wrong to harm certain individuals in order to make other people happy.

A Thought experiment: The Case of the Inhospitable Hospital Suppose that Jack is in the hospital for routine tests, and there are people there who need vital organs right away. A doctor has the opportunity to kill Jack and make his death look natural. It would maximize happiness to cut Jack up and give his heart to one patient, his liver to another, his kidneys to still others, and so on. Utilitarianism seems to imply that the doctor should kill Jack for his organs.

But that would be morally wrong. Thought Experiments Scientific Experimentation. Scientists create situations in laboratories in order to test their theories. They want to find out what would happen when certain conditions hold—if what actually happens under those conditions agrees with what their theory predicts will happen, then the theory is confirmed.

CW 10, Mill gives no concrete case. Since he wrote — together with his wife Harriet Taylor —a couple of articles on horrible cases of domestic violence in the early s, he might have had the likes of Robert Curtis Bird in mind, a man who tortured his servant Mary Ann Parsons to death [see CW 25 The Case of Mary Ann Parsons , ]. Mill answers in the negative. People should follow the rule not to kill other humans because the general observance of this rule tends to promote the happiness of all.

This argument can be interpreted in a rule utilitarian or an indirect act utilitarian fashion. Along indirect act utilitarian lines, one could maintain that we would be cognitively overwhelmed by the task of calculating the consequences of any action. We therefore need rules as touchstones that point us to the path of action which tends to promote the greatest general happiness. Just as the Nautical Almanack is not first calculated at sea, but instead exists as already calculated, the agent must not in individual cases calculate the expected utility.

In his moral deliberation the agent can appeal to secondary principles, such as the prohibition of homicide, as an approximate solution for the estimated problem. Apparently, the act utilitarian interpretation finds further support in a letter Mill wrote to John Venn in He states:. I agree with you that the right way of testing actions by their consequences, is to test them by their natural consequences of the particular actions, and not by those which would follow if everyone did the same.

But, for the most part, considerations of what would happen if everyone did the same, is the only means we have of discovering the tendency of the act in the particular case. CW 17, Mill argues that in many cases we can assess the actual, expected consequences of an action, only if we hypothetically consider that all would act in the same manner. This means we recognize that the consequences of this particular action would be damaging if everyone acted that way.

A similar consideration is found in the Whewell essay. Here Mill argues: If a hundred breaches of rule homicides, in this case led to a particular harm murderous chaos , then a single breach of rule is responsible for a hundredth of the harm.

This hundredth of harm offsets the expected utility of this particular breach of rule CW 10, Mill believes that the breach of the rule is wrong because it is actually harmful.

The argument is questionable because Mill overturns the presumption he introduces: that the actual consequences of the considered action would be beneficial. If the breach of the rule is actually harmful, then it is to be rejected in every conceivable version of utilitarianism. The result is trivial then and misses the criticism that act utilitarianism has counter-intuitive implications in particular circumstances. There is one crucial difficulty with the interpretation of Mill as an indirect act utilitarian regarding moral obligation.

If the function of rules was in fact only epistemic, as suggested by indirect act utilitarianism, one would expect that the principle of utility — when the epistemic conditions are satisfactory — can be and should be directly applied. But Mill is quite explicit here. From an act utilitarian view regarding moral obligation, this is implausible.

Why should one be morally obliged to follow a rule of which one positively knows that its observance in a particular case will not promote general utility?

As mentioned, Mill arrives at a different conclusion. His position can be best understood with recourse to the distinction between the theory of objective rightness and the theory of moral obligation introduced in the last section.

Seen from the perspective of an all-knowing and impartial observer, it is — in regard to the given description — objectively right to perpetrate the homicide. However, moral laws, permissions, and prohibitions are not made for omniscient and impartial observers, but instead for cognitively limited and partial beings like humans whose actions are mainly guided by acquired dispositions.

Their capacity to recognize what would be objectively right is imperfect; and their ability to motivate themselves to do the right thing is limited. Because humans cannot reliably recognize objective rightness and, in critical cases, cannot bring themselves to act objectively right, they are not obliged to maximize happiness.

For ought implies can. In regard to the given description, the fact that the assassination of a human would be objectively right does not imply that the assassination of this human would be morally imperative or allowed.

In other words: Mill differentiates between the objectively right act and the morally right act. With this he can argue that the assassination would be forbidden theory of moral obligation. To enact a forbidden action is morally wrong. Roughly said, actions are right insofar as they facilitate happiness, and wrong insofar as they result in suffering. This is important. Mill emphasizes in many places that virtuous actions can exhibit a negative balance of happiness in a singular case. But as we have seen, this is not his view.

Virtuous actions are morally right, even if they are objectively wrong under particular circumstances. Accordingly, the First Formula is not to be interpreted as drafting a moral duty.

It is a general statement about what makes actions right reasonable, expedient or wrong. The First Formula gives a general characterization of practical reason. Subsets of right ones are morally right actions; subsets of wrong actions are morally wrong. We generally believe that not all actions must be judged in regard to a moral point of view. This does not exclude us from valuing actions, which are not in the moral realm, in regard to prudence.

Many artists would presumably not be comfortable with the thesis that good art arises from the goal of facilitating the happiness of humankind. This however is not what Mill means.

Apart from cases of conflict between secondary principles, the First Formula does not guide action. Just as Mill speaks in a moral context about how noble characters will not strive to maximize general happiness CW 8, , he could argue in an aesthetic context that artists should work from a purely aesthetic point of view. The rules of artistic judgments, nonetheless, are justified through their contribution to the flourishing of human life.

To summarize the essential points: Mill can be characterized as an act utilitarian in regard to the theory of objective rightness, but as a rule utilitarian in regard to the theory of moral obligation. He defines morality as a system of rules that is protected by sanctions. Mill does not write, as one might expect, that only the action which leads to the best consequences is right.

The actual formula, in contrast, has to do with gradual differences right in proportion. Actions which add to the sum of happiness in the world but fail to maximize happiness thus can be right, even if to a lesser degree. This is confusing insofar as it would be unreasonable to prefer that which is worse to that which is better.

For every good there is a better that one should reasonably choose until one succeeds to the best. If the First Formula expresses the ideal of practical reason, then one should expect that it requires maximization. He probably does not want to suggest that an agent should not choose the best local option. But the local best option must not represent the objective global best. This may be the reason why Mill does not refer to maximization in the formula of utility.

According to the formula of utility, actions are more or less correct insofar as they facilitate happiness CW 10, It is doubtlessly not the same to say that an action is right if it actually facilitates happiness, or to say that it is right if it tends to facilitate happiness. The model seems to be roughly this: At the neutral point of the preference scale, actions have the tendency — in regard to the status quo — to neither increase nor decrease the mass of utility in the world.

All actions that tend to facilitate happiness are right, all actions that tend to be harmful are wrong, but all are not in the same measure. An action has a high positive value on the scale of preference, if its tendency to facilitate happiness is high.

An action has highly negative value on the preference scale, if its tendency to evoke unhappiness is high. That an action tends to produce a particular consequence means that this consequence has a high probability.

Mill could have wanted to say that an action is right in proportion to the probability with which it promotes happiness. This makes sense when we compare options that produce the same amount of happiness. But what about cases in which two actions produce different amounts of pleasure? One plausible answer is that both dimensions must be regarded: the amount of happiness and the probability of its occurrence. Action A is better than action B , if the expected happinessfor A is greater than the expected happiness for B.

The best action is one that maximizes the amount of expected happiness. In the final chapter of Utilitarianism , Mill turns to the sentiment of justice. Actions that are perceived as unjust provoke outrage. The spontaneity of this feeling and its intensity makes it impossible for it to be ignored by the theory of morals. Mill considers two possible interpretations of the source of the sentiment of justice: first of all, that we are equipped with a sense of justice which is an independent source of moral judgment; second, that there is a general and independent principle of justice.

He names the integration of justice the only real difficulty for utilitarian theory CW 10, Mill splits this problem of integration into three tasks: The first consists in explaining the intensity and spontaneity of the sentiment of justice. The second task is to make plausible that the various types of judgments about justice can be traced back to a systematic core; and the third task consists in showing that the principle of utility constructs this core.

In a nutshell, Mill explains the sentiment of justice as the sublimation of the impulse to take revenge for perceived mortifications of all kinds. If it is known that one will not accept interventions in spheres of influence and interest, the probability of such interventions dwindles. The preparedness to take revenge tends to deter aggression in the first place. Thus, a reputation for vindictiveness — at first glance an irrational trait — arguably has survival value.

This helps to explain why the sentiment is so widespread and vehement. Our sentiment of justice, for Mill, is based on a refinement and sublimation of this animal desire.

This natural extension of the impulse of revenge with the help of the social feelings represents a step in the direction of cultivating and refining human motivation. People begin to feel outrage when the interests of the members of their tribe are being violated or when shared social rules are being disregarded. Gradually, sympathy becomes more inclusive. Humans discover that co-operation with people outside the tribe is advantageous. As soon as humans begin to think about which parts of the moral code of a society are justified and which parts are not, they inevitably begin to consider consequences.

This often occurs in non-systematic, prejudiced or distorted ways. Across historical periods of times, the correct ideas of intrinsic good and moral rightness will gradually gain more influence. We are not, however, to infer that its acceptance or rejection must depend on blind impulse or arbitrary choice.

By happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain and the privation of pleasure. It is quite compatible with the principle of utility to recognize the fact that some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others. It would be absurd that, while in estimating all other things quality is considered as well as quantity, the estimation of pleasure should be supposed to depend on quantity alone.

If I am asked what I mean by difference of quality in pleasures, or what makes one pleasure more valuable than another, merely as a pleasure, except its being greater in amount, there is but one possible answer. 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. It is indisputable that the being whose capacities of enjoyment are low has the greatest chance of having them fully satisfied; and a highly endowed being will always feel that any happiness which he can look for, as the world is constituted, is imperfect.

But he can learn to bear its imperfections, if they are at all bearable; and they will not make him envy the being who is indeed unconscious of the imperfections, but only because he feels not at all the good which those imperfections qualify. 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. The other party to the comparison knows both sides. Capacity for other nobler feelings is in most natures a very tender plant, easily killed, not only by hostile influences, but by mere want of sustenance; and in the majority of young persons it speedily dies away if the occupations to which their position in life has devoted them, and the society into which it has thrown them, are not favorable to keeping that higher capacity in exercise.

Men lose their high aspirations as they lose their intellectual tastes, because they have not time or opportunity for indulging them; and they addict themselves to inferior pleasures, not because they deliberately prefer them, but because they are either the only ones to which they have access or the only ones which they are any longer capable of enjoying.

A state of exalted pleasure lasts only moments or in some cases, and with some intermissions, hours or days, and is the occasional brilliant flash of enjoyment, not its permanent and steady flame. Of this the philosophers who have taught that happiness is the end of life were as fully aware as those who taunt them. The happiness which they 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.

A life thus composed, to those who have been fortunate enough to obtain it, has always appeared worthy of the name of happiness. The main constituents of a satisfied life appear to be two, either of which by itself is often found sufficient for the purpose: tranquillity and excitement. With much tranquillity, many find that they can be content with very little pleasure; with much excitement, many can reconcile themselves to a considerable quantity of pain. There is assuredly no inherent impossibility of enabling even the mass of mankind to unite both, since the two are so far from being incompatible that they are in natural alliance, the prolongation of either being a preparation for, and exciting a wish for, the other.

In a world in which there is so much to interest, so much to enjoy, and so much also to correct and improve, everyone who has this moderate amount of moral and intellectual requisites is capable of an existence which may be called enviable; and unless such a person, through bad laws or subjection to the will of others, is denied the liberty to use the sources of happiness within his reach, he will not fail to find this enviable existence, if he escapes the positive evils of life, the great sources of physical and mental suffering —such as indigence, disease, and the unkindness, worthlessness, or premature loss of objects of affection.

As between his own happiness and that of others, utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator. In the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth, we read the complete spirit of the ethics of utility. The internal sanction of duty, whatever our standard of duty may be, is one and the same—a feeling in our own mind; a pain, more or less intense, attendant on violation of duty, which in properly cultivated moral natures rises, in the more serious cases, into shrinking from it as an impossibility.

This feeling, when disinterested and connecting itself with the pure idea of duty, and not with some particular form of it, or with any of the merely accessory circumstances, is the essence of conscience. The only proof capable of being given that an object is visible is that people actually see it. The only proof that a sound is audible is that people hear it; and so of the other sources of our experience. In like manner, I apprehend, the sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything is desirable is that people do actually desire it.