WHAT UTILITARIANISM IS

UTILITARIANISM BY JOHN STUART MILL CHAPTER II. WHAT UTILITARIANISM IS.

• The Project Gutenberg eBook of Utilitarianism, by John Stuart Mill.

• The chapter that contains “Unsatisfied Socrates over satisfied pigs,” which is abbreviated as “Unsatisfied human beings are better than satisfied pigs, and unsatisfied Socrates is better than satisfied fools” in some places.

• What is utilitarianism?

  • It is a mistake to consider effect utility and pleasure pleasure as opposites

• The creed that accepts “utility” or “principle of maximum happiness” as the basis of morality holds that actions are right the more they tend to promote happiness happiness and wrong the more they tend to bring about the opposite of happiness.

  • By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure.

• Although the definition of pleasure is not clear, it is

  • It does not affect the theory of life on which the moral theory is based.
    • and the mill thinks, factually or not, it’s not so subtle.

• 「 The purpose of life is pleasure 」

  • The counter-argument is that the doctrine is “worthless only to pigs.”
    • This is where the “pig” comes in.
  • When attacked in this way, the Epicureans have always replied that it is not they but their accusers who are expressing themselves in a way that undermines human nature. This is because this accusation assumes that man is incapable of anything but the pleasures that pigs are capable of.
    • In other words, to criticize the Epicurean cross school of thought that “the purpose of life is pleasure” and say “what a pig!” is to assume that “humans can only get the same pleasure as pigs,” isn’t that the one who is putting humans down? The counterargument is that
    • If the source of pleasure is exactly the same for man and pig, then a sufficient rule of life for one will be sufficient for the other.
    • Humans have a higher capacity than pigs, and once they are aware of it, they do not consider anything that does not satisfy them to be happiness.
      • Much higher value to the pleasure of the intellect, the pleasure of the emotions and imagination, the pleasure of moral feelings, than to the pleasure of mere sensation.
      • Acknowledging the fact that some pleasures are more desirable and more valuable than others is entirely consistent with the principle of utility. It is unreasonable to think that the evaluation of pleasure depends solely on quantity, when in the evaluation of everything else, not only quantity but also quality is taken into account.
        • This is where “quality of pleasure” comes in.

• What is the difference in the quality of pleasure

  • What makes some pleasures more valuable than others simply as pleasures, except that the quantity
  • There is only one possible answer. If one of the two enjoyments is preferred by all who experience both, then it is the more desirable enjoyment.
    • Here comes the basic premise of the comparison, “Those who have experienced both”

• The paragraph of purpose begins here

• People who know both equally prefer a way of being that allows them to utilize their higher abilities.

  • For example, intelligent people do not like to be fools.
    • This is Mill being too steeped in his own values to make a well-founded claim.
      • And people who want to bonk with alcohol or marijuana prefer to reduce their cognitive abilities with drugs rather than face their painful situation with their bare-bones high cognitive abilities.
      • Can we say that increasing cognitive ability is, in other words, happiness?
        • Related: Flowers for Algernon.
        • Related: depressive realism theory.
  • A person with superior abilities will need more to make him or her happy, will likely suffer more severely, and will be subject to suffering in more ways than someone of inferior type.
    • The most appropriate name is sense of dignity (sense of dignity)
      • Anything that detracts from dignity is not an object of desire.

• Those who believe that a superior being is no happier than an inferior being are confusing two very different ideas: happiness and contentment.

  • The less capable an entity is of enjoying it, the more likely it is to fulfill it fully.
  • I see that you use “satisfaction” to mean “complete fulfillment.”
  • Highly capable beings feel that the happiness they get is incomplete because the world is incomplete
    • So here’s what I mean.
      • 
    • We can learn to tolerate imperfection.
      • This is an unsubstantiated claim.
    • I don’t envy those beings who don’t feel imperfect.
      • Because a “being that feels no imperfection” is merely a being that feels no “imperfect goodness at all.”

• Here is an example sentence

  • Better to be a human being, even if unsatisfactory, than to be a contented pig.
  • Better to be an unsatisfied Socrates than a satisfied fool!
  • If the pigs and fools disagree with this, it is because they only know their side, and the other side (man or Socrates) knows both sides
    • And Mill thinks, but do we really “know both sides of the human-pig equation”?

      • Of the two enjoyments, if there is one that is preferred by all who experience both, it is the more desirable enjoyment.

        • Implicit in this principle of comparison is the assumption that it is possible to “experience” both

      • People who know both equally prefer a way of being that allows them to utilize their higher abilities.

        • Immediately after, this makes it something like “intelligent people” and “non-intelligent people” who can’t experience both.
        • The whole is an empty set, so whatever is asserted is true and cannot be disproved
          • Related Positive integers less than 1 are greater than 1.
      • I think the word “side” in this is confusing.
        • 
        • “I know both sides” becomes “I know A and B,” but what was needed here was “I know X and Y,” not “I know X and Y.
        • A can’t be B, so maybe this is what’s happening.
          • 
            • I know both, but the other person only knows one.

There’s a hole in Mill’s argument and I’m “unsatisfied,” but if you’re asking me if I want to be “unsatisfied Socrates over satisfied pig! Nice word!” and if you ask me if I want to be a satisfied fool, well, subjectively, I don’t want to be.

• People who are not frustrated by the imperfections of the world cannot improve the world.

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