PHIL 2103 Study Guide - Quiz Guide: John Stuart Mill, Supererogation, Act Utilitarianism

• School: University of Arkansas
• Department: Philosophy
• Course: PHIL 2103
• Professor: Eli Hess

Document Summary

Difficulty 1: measuring well-being must do 4 things: 1. Add up all benefits it produces: 2. Add up all harm it causes: 3. See whether balance is greater than that of any other available action. Difficulties measuring degrees of knowledge, virtue, love, happiness and friendship: utilitarianism has no way of answering this once we allow that both autonomy and happiness are intrinsically valuable. John stuart mill it is better to be socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. Maximize the quality and quantity of our pleasures. Utilitarianism is true only if there is a precise unit of measurement that can determine the value of an action"s results: 2. There is no such unit of measurement: 3. Difficulty 2: utilitarianism is very demanding: deliberation must know all options faced and their likely results, motivation must not always try to do what is optimific.