Ch. II
What is Mill’s reasoning for the claim that a life of combining higher and lower pleasures is better than (that is, creates more pleasure than) a life consisting solely of the lower pleasures, and better than even a life consisting of "the fullest allowance" of lower pleasures?
What is the point of this distinction, anyway? That is, if we excised from his theory the distinction between higher and lower pleasures, then how would his theory be harmed?
Ch. III
In arguing against "the transcendental moralists," Mill is addressing Kantians. (Kant wrote of the "things in themselves" to which Mill refers.)
Mill in this chapter claims that the ultimate sanction of any moral theory is a subjective feeling, yet Mill’s moral theory is certainly one in which there is an objective moral truth for any given action. (My believing that action X maximizes utility doesn’t entail that action X does maximize it, and so doesn’t entail that X is the right action.) What’s going on? Is Mill showing in this chapter a yearning to be a subjectivist about morality?
Ch. IV
Mill’s third paragraph in this chapter has attracted more criticism than sweetness does bees. Can you find the two moves he makes in this paragraph that might have led people to accuse him of committing two (unrelated) fallacies?
Mill goes on in the chapter about how the utilitarian framework allows that virtue is desired not simply as maximizing utility (which Mill apparently would concede to critics would be a strong objection to utilitarianism), but “desired disinterestedly, for itself.” Given that utilitarians think that all else is subservient to maximizing utility, how could a utilitarian make room for virtue being valuable in itself? In other words, how can Mill make this room (as he evidently wants to do in the fifth paragraph) given what he has just said in the second paragraph? (Hint: his attempt involves what he takes to be the difference between the means/end relationship and the part/whole relationship.)
Mill sets out in this chapter to defend utilitarianism against the objection that it cannot make sense of the moral importance of such notions as justice, equality, and rights. What exactly is the objection? And what exactly is Mill response?
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