PHIL110B Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Tripe, Peanut Butter, Eudaimonia
10 Dec 2012
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Document Summary
The greatest happiness principle, or utility, is that actions are right in proportion to the amount of happiness they provide, and wrong in proportion to the opposite of happiness they provide. Happiness is considered to be pleasure and lack of pain. no reference to the past; only reference to the future. You have ten dollars in your pocket. According to the greatest happiness principle, the only desirable outcomes are pleasure and a lack of pain; therefore, the extent to which certain pleasures provide happiness is important in determining moral standards. This preference is due to the moral obligation to choose the first preference over the other, despite the lesser happiness provided. Therefore, higher pleasures are better because you can teach a higher level of thinking to more humans (hence, higher pleasures), to make them happy, hence a higher overall level of happiness.
