Critical Analysis Of Mill's Pig Thesis

According to Mill, pleasure should depend on quantity and not quality. For instance, the people who had any feeling of moral obligation are the most desirable pleasure, because those people do not think pleasure as right or wrong (38). “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied” What Mill is trying to say in this assertion is that human beings should not sacrifice their pleasure for others. Also, Mill states that men lose their aspiration when they are too focused on inferior pleasure. If a human does not have no pleasure or feel no pain, then he would not know how to love or desire virtue. When there is pleasure, there will be painful as

The pursuit of pleasure has also been condemned by critics as being little more than the promotion of one’s own interests, with no regard to the happiness of others. Mill disputes this as being narrow-minded, clarifying that the pleasure principle which forms the foundation for utilitarianism, “what is right in conduct, is not the agent's own happiness, but that of all concerned” (Mill 16). With this acknowledgment, however, comes the criticism that people cannot possibly be motivated by something as satisfying the collective good of society. Mill countered this by pointing out, “The utilitarian morality does recognize in human beings the power of sacrificing their own greatest good for the good of others” (Mill 16). To the objection that pleasure is an acceptable end is contrary to Christian principles because it is “godless,” Mill states, “If it be a true belief that God desires, above all things, the happiness of his creatures, and that this was his purpose in their creation, utility is not only not a godless doctrine, but more profoundly religious than any other” (Mill 21).

Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill are known for their theories about utilitarianism. Both of them agree that the ethical right thing to do would be to maximize utility in any given situation. Yet, both of them disagree when it came to defninig pleasure. Bentham’s theory generalizes pleasure as just the same type of emotion felt by anyone and in any situation. Mill’s theory on the other hand stated that there are two different types of pleasure: the higher intellectual pleasure and the lower physical pleasure

The usefulness of his calculus, and the way Bentham defined pleasure came into question from one of his students, J.S. Mill who found his approach too general and simplistic. Mill rejected Bentham’s idea that all pleasures are the same and can be compared, he felt that there were different types or ‘levels’ of pleasure, and that some are more desirable or valuable than others. He decided that some pleasures or more desirable and meaningful than others, that there are

30). Mill, in contrast to Bentham, distinguished differences in the quality of pleasures that made some intrinsically preferable to others independently of the intensity and duration. Other philosophers in the Utilitarian tradition have identified certain wholly non-hedonistic values without giving up on their Utilitarian credentials. Even in restraining the recognition of intrinsic value and disvalue to joy and sadness, other philosophers have argued that those feelings cannot sufficiently be further categorized in terms of pleasure and pain and have thus preferred to defend the theory concerning maximizing happiness and reducing pain and sadness. It is vital to note that even for the hedonistic utilitarians, enjoyment and suffering are not thought of in solely sensual terms; happiness and suffering for them can be components of experiences of all sorts. Their argument is that, if an experience is not enjoyable or painful, then it is a subject of indifference and has no intrinsic

Jeremy Bentham was one of the first philosophers to present a fully developed system of utilitarianism. He thought that we, as humans, should evaluate the consequences of our actions, determine whether each action is morally right or wrong, and tally the pleasure and pain that comes as a result of our actions. Is it right for me to donate to charity? Is it right for me to cheat on my government test? These questions we ask ourselves fall under Bentham’s theory known as act-utilitarianism because it focuses on the consequences of every action we perform. Bentham argues that the “greatest happiness of the greatest number of people” (Bentham) is how we should determine right from wrong. He also believed “mankind is under the

One of the first misconceptions of Utilitarianism that Mill addresses is that it is often interpreted as the opposition of pleasure. Mill corrects this falsehood by stating the following: “Those who know anything about the matter are aware that every writer, from Epicurus to Bentham, be contradistinguished from pleasure, but pleasure itself, together with exemption from pain; and instead of opposing the useful to the agreeable or the ornamental, have always declared that the useful means these, among other things” (Mill, 2007, p. 5). Utilitarianism is, in

John Stuart Mill introduces his assessment of Utilitarianism by stating how a standardized system in which people’s actions may be judged to differentiate between right and wrong has been minimal in progress. He expresses the misconception with the way utility is understood by the general populous and other philosophers. The struggle to lay the foundations in what constitutes as right and wrong dates longer back than 2000 years ago.

As stated above, consciousness requires some form minimum of cognitive capacities, animals lack any form of cognitive capacities, leaving higher pleasures distinctively unique to human beings. The central question in the article is whether or not animals experience a form of basic consciousness, and if so, what is the content of their awareness, a question that can help us better understand them, their way of life, and what type of pleasures they experience. Referring back to Mill's Utilitarianism, Mill argues that higher pleasures are more desirable and more valuable than lower pleasures. Utilitarian writers, in general, agree that higher pleasures are superior to lower pleasures because they place an emphasize on mental pleasures over bodily pleasures. And in general, Utilitarian writers agree that although you can enjoy more lower pleasures, you cannot consider quality alongside quantity; the level of your happiness should depend on the quantity of your pleasures.

Mill also states that an existence with the possibility of happiness must be “…to the greatest extent possible, secured to all mankind; and not to them only, but, so far as the nature of things admits, to the whole sentient creation (234)”. Utilitarianism not only focuses on the attainment of happiness, but the prevention of pain and unhappiness. (230)

Ergo, Mill distinguishes between higher and lower pleasures in order to respond to The Philosophy of Swine Objection. However, the distinction between quality and quantity is not new. Mill himself asserts that »utilitarian writers in general have placed the superiority of mental over bodily pleasures.«7 What is new in Mill’s theory is that he rejects to measure pleasure in any kind of numerical scale. His scale is an ordinal scale, in which pleasures are ordered in terms of preference, i.e. pleasure A is greater than pleasure B and so on. The problem with that measurement is that it is not transitive, which means that if pleasure A is greater than pleasure B and pleasure B is greater than pleasure C, it does not follow that pleasure A is greater than pleasure C, simply because we are not talking about quantity but quality. For example, I may prefer banana ice cream to chocolate ice cream, and I may prefer chocolate ice cream to strawberry ice cream, but I may also prefer strawberry ice cream to

John Stuart Mill adds more arguments to Bentham’s view of Utilitarianism, which are important factors to consider when discussing this topic. Utilitarianism is the idea to promote the greatest happiness to the general society as opposed to oneself (Mill, 114). Each pleasure is said to have its own difference in quality, so people are able to make the choice between two pleasures (115). Mill believes mental pleasures reign more important than bodily pleasures seeing that bodily pleasures are seen as inferior to the greater good (115). It takes a higher grade of pleasures to make a human satisfied and pleased. “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied” (116). An important factor for choosing higher pleasures over inferior pleasures is that you only have time for one pleasure and if you chose the inferior pleasure it will be wasted (117). However the standards of what is right and wrong are not decided by the person’s own happiness but the happiness of everyone who is concerned in the decision (117). Being a Utilitarian forces you to stay an

In Utilitarianism, Mill addresses many objections to his general moral theory of promoting happiness and decreasing pain. Through Mill's rebuttals to the objections, his ideas about well-being become clear. Although his moral theory is important to understand the basis upon which his ideas about well-being sit, they miust stand alone so that one can determine to which theory of well-being Mill adhered. Mill's ideas about well-being spring from his explanation of the difference between contentment and true happiness. Leading up to his ultimate discussion of the distinction, Mill attempts to clear up misunderstandings about what pleasure and happiness are. The swine objection involves misunderstandings about pleasure and the difference between animals and humans, and Mill addresses it in clearing up the misunderstandings. The objection claims that

Though the terms act and rule utility came after the time of Bentham and Mill, it can still be noted that Bentham was clearly an act utilitarian and the Mill was a rule utilitarian. This paper will cover two subjects of discussion related to utility, Bentham, and Mill. The first is a consideration of the way in which Bentham goes about reconciling the ethical hedonist he promotes with the psychological egoistic hedonism he endorses. The second is really three smaller issues: the way Bentham and Mill would direct us to apply the principle of utility, how this is comparable to the employment of the hedonistic calculus, and the possibility that the differences in their views may make us come to different moral decisions.

In this paper I will present and critically assess the concept of the principle of utility as given by John Stuart Mill. In the essay “What Utilitarianism Is” #, Mill presents the theory of Utilitarianism, which he summarizes in his “utility” or “greatest happiness principle” # (Mill 89). Mill’s focus is based on an action’s resulting “happiness,” # pleasure and absences of pain, or “unhappiness,” # discomfort and the nonexistence of contentment, rather than the intentions involved (Mill 89). After evaluating Mill’s principle, I will then end this essay by discussing my personal opinion about the doctrine and how I believe it can be altered to better suit real-life situations.