Project SherlockEst. Knowledge

Book

1863

Utilitarianism

John Stuart Mill

Actions are right in proportion as they promote happiness, and Mill defends this against the charge that pleasure is too base a standard by distinguishing higher from lower pleasures.

Before you start

Assumes: no prior ethics — Mill is defending a position he expects you to find crude, in plain prose

Read these first

Not a difficulty warning — a route. These are in the library too.

An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and LegislationJeremy Bentham, 1789Grounds all morals and law in the single principle of utility, and proposes a felicific calculus for weighing the pleasure and pain an act produces.

Groundwork for

Works in the library that name this one as a prerequisite.

Principia EthicaG. E. Moore, 1903Goodness is a simple, indefinable property, and every attempt to define it in natural terms commits what Moore calls the naturalistic fallacy.

Filed under Ethics & Moral Philosophy in Philosophy.