PHILOS 2D03 Chapter Notes - Chapter John Stuart Mill: Summum Bonum, Self-Denial
Document Summary
In all of philosophical history, such little progress has been made concerning the criterion of right vs. wrong. What concerns the summum bonum? ( = the greatest good??: been regarded as the main problem of speculative thought. Our moral instinct: we cannot be certain to believe that our moral senses pick out what is right or wrong, our moral faculty supplies us with only the general principles of moral judgments. It belongs with reason and not sense perception. Intuitionist school of ethics: the principles of morals are evident a priori: knowing the meanings of terms in which they are expressed and assenting to them. Inductivist school of ethics: right and wrong are questions of observation and experience just as truth and falsehood are. **both schools hold equally that morality must be deduced from principles** Utilitarian theory = aka the happiness theory .