PHILOS 2D03 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: John Stuart Mill, Hedonism, Consequentialism
12 Mar 2018
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Pleasure itself, together with the exemption of pain". Utility is: whatever increases pleasured in the widest possible sense and decreases pain in the widest possible sense: aka happiness. Pleasure + freedom from pain are the only things desirable as ends. A normative claim: actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness, a form of consequentialism. Are actions just hedonist then: (the pursuit of pleasure?, answer: no, utility does not mean expediency (doing what seems best at the time to make you feel good) Of two pleasures, the one that has a superior quality will be given preference. The competent judge will consistently prefer and seek to satisfy those pleasures that accord with our higher faculties. Higher faculties involve qualitatively greater pleasures than the lower and these ought to be preferred to the lower when they are competing.
