Mill's Argument For Utilitarianism

On Mill’s argument for utilitarianism In Mill’s definition of utilitarianism he thinks that it’s based on the principle of “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. Mill also uses the moral principle. Now what does Mill exactly mean by “happiness”, he defines happiness as pleasure minus the pain. Mill believes that there are qualitative differences in pleasure and pain. When Mill is first starting to talk about utilitarianism he starts by replying to the misconceptions about it. He says that most people think that utilitarianism is the opposition to pleasure, when in reality utilitarianism is defined as pleasure itself minus pain. Some people now refer to utilitarianism as the greatest happiness principle, “actions are

By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure,” as stated before. According to this actions are good when they lead to a higher level of happiness, and bad when they decrease that level of happiness. Mill claims that it is based and demeaning to reduce the meaning of life to pleasure. Once people are aware of their higher pleasures they will never choose to not fulfill those pleasures. Some pleasures are just simply more valuable than others. Mill then tells us how we know if a pleasure has higher quality than another by saying that if you would choose a pleasure over a different pleasure even if it’s accompanied by discomfort and not trade it for a greater amount of another pleasure. Mills also say that someone would not choose a lower existence instead of a higher existence. All actions and