Questions on Utilitarianism:

50. What is the principle of utility?

(an action is right in proportion to its tendency to produce the greatest happiness)
51. What is meant by the greatest happiness?
(that of all affected by the action; utilitarians are altruistic hedonists)
52. What do utilitarians mean by happiness?
(they're hedonists)
53. What was the purpose for which Bentham first formulated utilitarian ethical doctrine?
(legislative and judicial reform)
54. What was Bentham's position on determining the utility of an action?
(only the quantity of pleasure and the quantity of pain matter; develop the "hedonic calculus")
55. What are the problems with a purely quantitative scale of pleasures?
(the life of the "pig" becomes preferable to the life of the "Socrates")
56. How does Mill seek to improve upon Bentham's version of utilitarianism?
(adds a scale of qualitative distinctions among pleasures; some are "better" than others)
57. How does Mill propose to determine which pleasures are of "better" quality?
(the vote of the majority of all who have had competent experience of both)
58. How does Mill explain why the great majority of people pursue what Mill would consider
low quality pleasures?
(poor education and wretched social circumstances have killed their ability to enjoy the higher
pleasures, thus making them incompetent to judge)
59. What's the problem with this?
(Mill begs the question in assuming he knows which pleasures are highest by assuming he
knows who is competent to judge)
60. What is the problem with trying to defend hedonism and also to rank different qualities of
pleasures?
(it sets up another standard other than pleasure, in order to rank pleasures,
and that standard then becomes the grounds for determining the moral worth of an action
rather than pleasure)
61. How does Mill reply to the challenge that utilitarianism makes people selfish?
(not the agent's own, but the pleasures of all affected)
62. Why is altruistic behavior good according to utilitarianism?
(it maximizes happiness for greatest number)

63. Why is the "sacrifice" of the noble character (altruistic agent) justified on utilitarian grounds?
(by sacrificing his/her own pleasures, greatest happiness of all is maximized)
63. How does Mill reply to the criticism that there is not enough time or experience to calculate
the consequences of an action?
(we apply utilitarian calculations to rules beforehand, then act on the rules; there is the
experience of the whole human race)
64. How does Mill reply to the challenge that utilitarianism is a godless doctrine?
(if God desires human happiness, God is a utilitarian)
65. Why does Mill believe each agent ought to work for the maximum pleasure of all affected?
(each agent desires his/her own pleasure, therefore the highest pleasure of all is a good to all
persons)
66.What's wrong with this argument?
(fallacy of composition; what is true of the parts of a whole need not be true of the whole)