PP110 Chapter Notes -John Stuart Mill, Empirical Evidence
Document Summary
John stuart mill did not invent utilitarianism, but he gave it what is arguably its single greatest and most influential formulation. Mill believed that all human knowledge comes ultimately from sense- experience. The notion of happiness is a very important art of. His theory of happiness was a kind of hedonistic one. Mill thought of happiness as a kind of pleasurable mental state. For mill, a happy life is, roughly, one filled with as many pleasurable sensations as possible, and as few painful ones. He thought that rational people seeking their own happiness would aim to arrange their lives so that, over time, they will have more longer- lasting pleasures than short-lived ones, and more intense pleasures than dilute ones. According to utilitarianism, a certain unit of pleasure or pain should matter equally to me whether it belongs to me, to a member of my family, to a stranger across the world, of even to an animal.
