Utilitarianism : An Ethical Theory

Mill construes this theory to be shaped by the principles that “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.” According to Mill, what determines the right action in any given situation is if the action minimizes pain for everyone and maximizes pleasure for everyone. The ultimate focus is for the action to produce more good than bad. For him, the highest good in life is pleasure and the only way to maximize it is to act upon it (if it doesn't cause pleasure, do not do it). However, the pleasure cannot be solely for yourself; it has to be for everyone (based on the well-being of

He was a committed advocate of utilitarianism. Mill made it known that he was a strong supporter of giving the power back to the minorities. The minority citizens in a society are the people who always challenge the system and keep the society advancing and evolving. He recognized that the only way we as a society can evolve and prosper is to find a way to give the minority a voice.

Mill’s harm principle of ““One should not interfere with other people’s lives unless those people are doing harm to others” (p.G3), is in other words, if a person do not cause harm to others, there is no reason to prevent his/her actions. Mill’s belives that an individual is the supreme sovereign of his/her own acts. Even when the decisions taken may be some harm upon him/her, the responsibility of these actions is only on the individual.

After presenting his first argument, Mill looks at possible criticisms of his reasoning and responds to them. Firstly, people, by their nature, are born to make mistakes and

Mill’s rebuttal to the third objection is based off that Christians do not read the Bible every time they have to make decisions. Furthermore, Mill says that ever since humans have existed we have learned from our ancestors what certain effects result from certain actions and that through time we have the consciousness to tell apart from what’s right and wrong. It is true that as humans we want to perform actions that promote pleasure and the absence of pain, but most of our human experiences follow common-sense morality. Mill provides a distinction in utilitarianism where he gives a fundamental principle of morality and a subordinate principle through what he calls the criterion of rights and the decision procedure: “Whatever we adopt as

In the first rescue situation, continuing on to save the lives of five people as opposed to one seems like a no-brainer to a utilitarian. Mill would have told the rescuers that the solution would have been reducing the pain of five people as opposed to that of

John Stuart Mill claims that the CI is false, because when applied to certain situations, it may lead to the intuitively wrong conclusion for there would be no contradiction “in the adoption by all rational beings of the most outrageously immoral rules of conduct.” An example illustrating this is as follows: Suppose there is someone with the intention to kill another at the door of one's home. The potential murderer inquires as to whether the person he or she seeks to kill is in their home when in fact the targeted person is in their home. The homeowner wants to keep the person safe, and wishes to act on a maxim that “in order to get what I want, I will deceive this murderer.” Intuitively, lying to save another's life is the morally correct action. When applying the CI, however, this person cannot

Explain in your own words the logic of Mill’s argument, and critically discuss whether happiness should be the criterion of morality.

To begin, Mill would take the situation of Tom and Mary and say that Tom made the right choice in giving away Mary’s organs. Mill has a theory that all moral decisions should be chosen only to promote the greatest amount of happiness overall because that is the goal that all beings strive for. This is called the Greatest Happiness Principle (GHP). Mill explains in his article

John Stuart Mill was an enormously influential philosopher in nineteenth century Britain. Unlike Locke, he was to a greater extent focused on utilitarianism and harm reduction. (Heydt, 2006) Utilitarianism, or the doctrine that actions are right and moral if they benefit the majority, should compel the person to do the “right thing”. When an action is right, it promotes positive reaction among the individuals and if it is wrong, it will do the opposite. (Encyclopædia Britannica, 2015) Everything considered, Mill opined following the state was the morally right thing to do. But realistically, how many people would consider giving up their own personal gain for the gain of others? Humans are fairly gluttonous beings and to expect them to give up what matters to them in the interest of others is not a viable option. Not only is this an issue, but if something is detrimental to one or more persons in the group, would it not be ruinous to the community as a whole by upsetting the balance and tenor of an area within the community? What

Mill has an “eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” standpoint. If a person commits a terrible crime, they are nowhere near reaching a desirable end, nor do they have capacity to be virtuous, as Aristotle would say. If somebody is guilty of murder, then life in jail is too mild of a punishment for the crime he committed. It goes the other way around too. If somebody is guilty of theft, then life in jail may be too hard of a punishment for that particular crime. Mill believes the only efficient punishment is one that is exactly equal to the crime. He doesn’t think a murderer should be allowed to live on with the potential to murder again. Another thing Mill focuses on is general responses among a society. He believes the only way to find desirable pleasure is to ask people and get a general response. So if you asked the family of a murder victim what they would like to see happen to the murderer, a probable general response would be to have him sentenced to death as well, and that is exactly what should happen.

John Stuart Mill believes that a state and society are permitted to override the liberties of individual only when an individual is doing something that will harm others. That’s mean unless the individual is harming others, the government should not interfere with an individual life. He believes that everyone has the rights to make their own choices, and has the responsibility to protect one another. So if one is trying to harm themselves without harming others, then the society should not do anything by take away individual freedom. The society should let a person do whatever they want for their own happiness. However, if an individual trying harm him or herself trough their action, but he or she actions might harm others, then the society

The argument Mill makes is characterized by a few premises. The first is that society is known to enforce opinions and beliefs upon the individual in hopes of maintaining a utilitarian good based upon a common set of truths that the society believes in. Due to this, individual liberty is often suppressed for the good of everyone else. When someone has dissenting views, they will be suppressed by the majority. Yet Mill’s believes that dissent is good because it helps to progress society by disconfirming our believes through listening and reasoning with those who are different. By addressing different views, people are able to develop their own ideas and as a society we are able to reach a better understanding of a utilitarian truth. For Mill, humans are not

There are three main objections against utilitarian view in which Mill responds to. The first being that, the utilitarian standard of right and wrong is “too high for humanity” (Utilitarianism, 418). In the reading it states that, “it is exacting too much to require that people shall always act from the inducement of promoting the general interests of society” (Utilitarianism, 418). This is implying that that it would too high of a person to have the ability to always make a decision based on how it will affect people in a society. According to Mill, this objection is misunderstanding the meaning of utilitarianism. The meaning of Utilitarian view does not say that people

     The protection of this "individuality" poses a problem. What causes harm and what ultimately leads to good? When should government step in and when should it let things be? Knowing where that line is tough. Mill's answer to this is that society has jurisdiction over every aspect of behavior that, "affects prejudicially the interests of others." More specifically society has no interest in the aspects of one's life that affect only the individual acting, or others, for that matter, that are affect at their own consent. Society has no right to keep a person from doing with his life what they wish, and it is stupid to do so their own good for nobody will every truly know what someone else aspires to do. Though Mill rejects the concept of the social contract he does believe that people do have obligations to the society in exchange for the protection of their freedom. And if one acts in a manner that harms the society as a whole then they are subject to punishment. Not