PHLA11H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Lactose Intolerance, Public Utility, Experience Machine
Document Summary
An act"s utility = the sum of all the pleasure it produces minus the sum of all the pain it produces. Dolor a unit of pain: e. g. you are lactose intolerant, but unaware of this frank has made homemade ice cream for you. Utility (you eat the ice cream = (5+8) 15 = -2. Mill considers and replies to three objections. Objection 1: a doctrine worthy of swine: an objection to hedonism. If some pleasures should not be encouraged, not all pleasures are not good. If some pleasures are more valuable than others, there must be a criterion for such a determination (e. g. human fulfillment or well-being) which is pleasurable only indirectly. Thus, all actions and experiences are not judged by one reductive standard, but rather according to a variety of different qualities of pleasure in correspondence with the type of experience. Higher pleasures intellectual pleasures, pleasures of the imagination and creativity, aesthetic pleasures.
