PHIL 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Egotism, Peer Pressure, Rationality
Document Summary
Bentham says that money (% of income) is the most accurate measure of pleasure and pain. Equal % of income means equal pleasure/pain. The relationship is not proportional: twice as much money does not produce twice as much pleasure. Rich man has perhaps 10000 times as much income as a worker. Rich man only gets 2, 5, or 10 times as much pleasure from his income as a worker. Poor people are more efficient in converting $ into utility than the rich are. Hence giving money to the poor is better than giving it to the rich (cid:862)ma(cid:396)gi(cid:374)al utility(cid:863) Yes, in it increases the income of the poor. Marginal utility of something = the amount of utility from one more unit of that thing. (cid:862)declining marginal utility of income(cid:863) = the (cid:373)o(cid:396)e $ you ha(cid:448)e, the less pleasure an extra dollar yields. Bentham says people never treat labor as an intrinsic good.
