Reference no: EM133613060

Assignment:

1. How would you define happiness? Is it something that can be defined at all? What is its relationship to pleasure? Are they the same or different? Why?

Can you think of a situation where the right thing to do seems to depend on how the happiness is distributed as opposed to the total amount of it? (Note that Mill's theory does not speak to how the happiness should be distributed.) If so, describe it.

2. I'll start with an example: I have 100 pieces of candy.

Act A: I give 100 friends each one piece of candy.

Act B: I gave all the candy to my greedy friend Sally.

Let's suppose Sally does not get sick from all that candy, but becomes extremely happy, 100 times happier than any of the people who would have received one piece. Mill's GHP would say each act - distributing to everyone or giving it all to Sally - in this case is equally good. But does this seem like the right result? Doesn't it seem unfair to give it all to Sally? If it seems unfair, and if "unfair" seems intuitively to be "morally wrong", then we have an objection to Mill's theory about moral rightness.

3. Mill's Greatest Happiness Principle (GHP) is this:

"The doctrine that the basis of morals is utility, or the greatest happiness principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong in proportion as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness." (top left-hand side of p. 5, Utilitarianism)

Describe an act and justify it by appeal to Mill's GHP (that is, make the case that the act will result in greater overall happiness than not doing it).

Example: A man who owns 100 acres of forest land decides to donate 20 acres for a park and campground that can be enjoyed by many people. Without having more details, this on the face of it would be justified on utilitarian grounds in that it would increase the overall amount of happiness, assuming there is no one who would be made unhappy by the man giving away his land.

4. Utilitarianism and Ethical Egoism, as two opposing theories in ethics, have something in common. What is it? (If several people have already posted a correct answer you cannot use your answer here to earn a "make-up point" )

5. Hedonistic utilitarianism is the view that the moral rightness of an act consists in the amount of pleasure it produces. Mill is usually considered a hedonistic utilitarian although he does distinguish not only between amount of pleaure but quality of pleasure, with some pleasures being higher.

Let's say there's a cake, and only one piece left. We must dispose of the cake now - we can't save it for later. We are both hungry. Do I get the cake or do you? Or do we divide it in half or
divide it up some other way?

(a) What does the hedonistic utilitarian say we should do?

(b) What if eating cake makes me extremely deliriously happy, while you gain only a normal amount of pleasure from it? Let's say I would get 10 times as much pleasure as you would eating that cake. What does the hedonistic utilitarian say in that case?