Bentham And Mill
Bentham and Mills
Utilitarianism has captured the imagination of generations of men so completely. Its simplicity attracts most people and creates a general thesis stating that pleasure and happiness are what everyone desires. According utilitarian’s the moral idea of what is “good” can best be understood in terms of the principle of happiness. “The greatest happiness of the greatest number.”
Principle of Utility
Bentham:
• Nature of mankind is governed by two sovereign masters: pain and pleasure.
• We desire pleasure and want to avoid pain.
• We do desire pleasure to the judgment that we ought to pursue pleasure.
• Only pains and pleasures give us the real value of actions, and in private and public life we are concerned with maximizing happiness.
• Pleasure and pain give the real values to acts, so they also constitute the efficient causes of our behavior.
• Bentham distinguishes four sources from which pleasure and pain can come and calls them sanctions.
o Physical -
o Political -
o Moral – acting out on God’s displeasure
o Religious – account of some sin
• A legislator’s chief concern is to decide what forms of behavior will tend to increase the happiness of society and what sanctions will increase happiness.
• Morality depends directly on the consequences.
• Morally obligatory is that which produces the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people, happiness being determined by reference to the presence of pleasure and the absence of pain.
• One could differentiate right and wrong (morally speaking) by pleasure or pain.
Mill:
• Mill believed there were higher and lower pleasures and that sensual pleasure were "lower" while intellectual pleasures were "higher."
• The greatest happiness principle holds that actions are right if they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.
Pleasure-Pain Calculus
Bentham:
o We use a mathematical test to calculate pleasure or pain....
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