Morality In Captain Janeway's 'Star Trek'

According to Mill’s arguments and views on happiness, it is convincing that happiness is good: that each individual’s happiness is a beneficial thing to them. As well as, the proof of happiness is when people actually desire it and feel like they have never desired anything else (44). Mill defines happiness as intended pleasure and freedom from pain. Utilitarianism and happiness are linked to each other because the morality of a human action should do the right thing that is useful or beneficial to the society, which happiness is involved. For example, a person sees an elderly struggling carrying the grocery bags, and then the person comes over and helps. The outcome makes both of the people feel happy and it constitutes the society a better place. When people want to break away from unhappy people will take other people’s happiness away to make them happy.

Mill states that the “utility or the greatest happiness principle holds that actions are right in portion as they tend to promote happiness…by happiness is intended pleasure” for “pleasure and freedom are desirable ends” (Mill, 7) He talks more about the utilitarian perspective, that is, we increase the levels of happiness for others. Following this logical equation, when pleasure is achieved it increases the intensity of happiness that was intended for others which constructs man’s dignity as a caring human being. Additionally, we attain the internal pleasure that renders power.

Throughout his work Mill explains his principles and what he believes our laws should look like. In Mill’s harm principle he states

If our secondary principles are prone to revision and even deletion then either Mill is an act-utilitarian who allows use of rules that tend to maximize utility to guide our action on simple, or at least morally commonplace, decisions but holds the ultimate test of moral rightness to be the application of the Utilitarian Principle to actions; or he is a rule-utilitarian that says the criteria for determining rightness of action may be wrong, revised, or discarded.

Mill’s harm principle of ““One should not interfere with other people’s lives unless those people are doing harm to others” (p.G3), is in other words, if a person do not cause harm to others, there is no reason to prevent his/her actions. Mill’s belives that an individual is the supreme sovereign of his/her own acts. Even when the decisions taken may be some harm upon him/her, the responsibility of these actions is only on the individual.

Mill’s school of ethics has affected criminal justice and the effects linger on to this day. This paper will discuss the impact John Stuart Mill’s school of ethics in liberalism and utilitarianism have had upon criminal justice. John Stuart Mill was born in 1806 in London. His father, James Mill, was an inspiration to him. Mill received his education from his father, with the advice and assistance from Jeremy Bentham.

In his first assumption, the Utility assumption, Mill asserts that “liberty can only be interfered with if it threatens bodily harm to another.” (Mill, On Liberty) However, there are many actions that cannot be labeled as “bodily harm” which nevertheless ought to be unlawful. A more appropriate standard is the principle of man’s natural rights. With the two requiring the most diligence to uphold in civil society being property, and the pursuit of happiness. In as much, Mill would not hold equivocal social harm to physical harm. However, I see social harm as an evil that could just be equally, if not more so detrimental to one’s pursuit of happiness. Examples of this may include defamation. For, ruining a man’s good name in society, could not be counted as “physical harm”. Nevertheless, a man engaging in defamation may induce enough social harm to significantly effect another man’s ability to pursue his own eudemonia. Other practices that may be counted as social harms that ought to be unlawful is the formation of monopolies that prevent other people from pursuing the labor of their choice, or discrimination among employers or places of education on the basis of gender, racial, or ethnic

“The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure.”

Question 2) In Utilitarianism, the utilitarian principle is defended as the foundation of morality compared to the civil and social liberty emphasized in On Liberty in the form of society’s power over an individual (Mill, 1). In this paper, I argue that Mill’s Utilitarianism cannot be reconciled with On Liberty on the basis of contradicting principles in both books and the visible tensions between the defense of individual liberty and the promotion of the utility principle. In fact, the contradiction lies in the notion of the greatest happiness principle versus individual rights.

Chapter 5 of Utilitarianism contains Mill’s response to the objection that justice is not based on utility. In his introduction Mill claims that an incomplete understanding of the idea and sentiment of justice, not a mistaken interpretation of utility, leads people to believe justice is inconsistent with utility. Chapter 5 gives an analysis of justice, its ideas and its sentiment, with Mill concluding that when properly understood, justice is consistent with and subordinate to utility, rather than opposed to it. In this paper I will argue that amidst Mill’s response to the initial objection, his argument lacks clarity and an objective analysis as to exactly why justice is based on utility.

Both Kant and Mill describe morality as a responsibility towards positive impacts. Kant views morality as thought out actions leading to positive outcomes for others through means of using ones conscience (Kant, Immanuel, 2). Therefore, a person’s actions should result in a positive impact on others, and a person should think carefully before doing something to ensure that. Immorality as defined by Kant describes self-centered actions that do not benefit any other human being while Mill’s theory focuses on the majorities’ happiness. However, if the action leads to dissatisfaction and disappointments, Mills regards such a situation as immoral. For both Kant and Mill, moral actions result in a certain level happiness or societal

John Stuart Mill’s idea of the 'harm principle' argues that the government may only justifiably interfere in individual actions to prevent harm, or the threat of harm, to others, or to the greater community. Mill’s argument is designed to protect the greater collective society from what he states are individual actions that could prove to be detrimental for the state, including the use of addictive drugs and suicide. Mill states that this is the only time that the government should interview with the actions of the individual within society because of it, for Mills, is an example that would bring a concern to others, and harm. Similar to Mills is Frances Declaration of

According to John Stuart Mill, utilitarianism is the concept in which “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness.” He argues that happiness should be distinguished between high and low pleasures. Hence, pleasures that engage the higher faculties of the human body are seen as more satisfying than the baser pleasures in life, such as watching movies with friends. Mill follows by arguing that utilitarianism, in the end, can be seen as morally binding. This is true because if utilitarianism were to be adopted as an ethical stance, people would naturally embody the standards of utility and happiness as if they were second nature or law. Thus, Mill’s links happiness, which he describes as intended

Mill writes of utilitarianism in the eponymous work Utilitarianism. According to his work utilitarianism is a means of deciding the moral value of actions. Mill’s theory takes a consequentialist view of actions, saying that the moral worth of an action is decided by the outcome, or consequence. This decision of moral worth is determined by whether the outcome maximizes happiness and minimizes the reverse of happiness. Mill writes that “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.” Happiness is defined as pleasure and the absence of pain according to Mill, and the action must be considered for the outcome it brings to the most people. This happiness, or pleasure and lack of pain,

John Stuart Mill, in his Utilitarianism, turns morality into a practical problem. His moral theory is designed to help one evaluate his moral principles and senisibilites and be able to ajudicate conflictions in moral conflicts. Mill postulates that actions are right so far as they tend to promote happiness and minimize pain. This theory manifests itself as an impartial promotion of happiness. Morally "right" actions are ones which promote the greatest happiness for the greatest number number of people and reduce pain. Utilitarian moral theories need to be coupled with theories of well-being, so that we can point to what is being maximized through the moral theory's operation. Mill's moral theory is