PHI 1102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: John Stuart Mill, Preference Utilitarianism, Experience Machine
1 Feb 2016
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Motivation: simplify morality into an easily usable principle of action which will clarify what is most important about morality. Empiricist foundation: comes from criticism of our ordinary moral intuitions as too muddy, unclear, contradictory, vague. Criticism also of intuitions of other moral philosophers who can provide no proofs as concrete as the empirical. Must resort to god, or to the forms, or axiomatic intuitions. Empiricist proof that happiness is the human end. Empiricism: theory of knowledge; says that we can only know that things are real if we can ground them in proofs that start in sense perception (being able to see, hear, touch things) Proofs about tangible things have to start on this basic foundation that we can all agree is there. Good and bad = pleasure and pain. Bentham looked at moral ideas and tried to ground them in what he considered to be common to all beings.
