Utilitarianism

Mill begins by saying that if we are looking for something like a scientific proof for any ethical system we misuse the term "proof", or at least deploy it in an improper setting when we try to apply it to ethics. I found this fascinating because I think I frequently am lost in ethics because it's mode of proving itself is foreign to me and I did not study the theories on their own terms. Because ethics seeks what is good, "whatever can be proved to be good, must be so by being shown to be a means to something admitted to be good without proof," (184). Ethics, then, is an intellectual pursuit, and not an ends, and, "the formula may be accepted or rejected, but it is not a subject of what is commonly understood by proof."(184)

In part II, Mill defends utilitarianism from the historic critiques of similar systems like Epicureanism, and in so doing helps to positively shape what he conceives as the "rule of Happiness". Utilitarianism, he says, is not the Bacchanalian pursuit of pleasure that it is sometimes characterized as, nor is it the cold spreadsheet analysis of pure utility. Instead, utilitarianism seeks happiness by satisfying the noblest human wants for the most amount of people. We might momentarily stray into immediate or beastly pleasure but it is our sense of dignity, the thing that separates us from beasts and ignorant people, that must eventually be satisfied to achieve pleasure. The biggest question I have for Mill is one he brings up himself when he writes, "What is there to decide whether a particular pleasure is worth purchasing at the cost of a particular pain[?]"(189). He says to answer this we must rely on the testimony of the experienced, but aren't there many choices that we make that don't manifest their full costs, or their full pleasures for that matter, until long after we have made them? When is someone experienced enough to be counted as reliable testimony for the costs and benefits of a decision? We can surely limit the scope of what will be affected by our moral decisions, Mill says on 196 that 999 out of 1000 of our decisions are ones that regard private utility and don't require considering the broad public interests of the decision, but I still think it is a problem that we can't more fully measure the pains and pleasures that will be unleashed by our decision. After all, if the backbone of utilitarianism is picking the option that maximizes pleasure and diminishes it's opposite we first must be able to get the facts of each option.