Lecture 19 Notes

Background

1. John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
2. From Philosophy Prodigy to Burnout--Mill was an excellent philosopher and student at a very young age, but he also tired of his studies at a young age.

Formulation of the Doctrine

1. Mill's Formulation--"Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to promote the reverse of happiness."
2. Key Point: Emphasis Upon Consequences of Actions
3. Questions about Mill's Definition
1. "Tend to Produce Happiness"
• "Tend to Produce" or Produce"?  If an action tends to produce happiness but in a particular case does not in fact produce happiness, is the action moral in that case?
• Which things produced really count?  For example, how far into the future do we count things that are produced by our actions?
• What is meant by "happiness"?
• Whose happiness?
• Can we measure happiness?
2. Introducing a Notion of Utility
• This is an attempt to make Mill's doctrine more sophisticated.
• Hedons are units of happiness.
• Dolars are units of unhappiness.
• Utility = Hedons - Dolars
3. Note: Total Utility is What Matters.  So...
• Moral acts can sometimes produce pain (but overall they produce less pain than other options).
• Immoral acts can sometimes produce pleasure (but overall they produce less pleasure than other options).

Revised Formulation

1. An act is right if and only if there is no other act the agent could have performed that has higher utility.
2. Virtues
1. Captures common sense views of morality.  For the most part, the actions that we consider right will be right on this formulation and the actions that we consider wrong will be wrong on this formulation.
   
2. Grounds morality in something objective.  It tries to dervie an "ought" from an "is" (i.e., we ought to do that which performs the highest utility).