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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