Utilitarianism 1

I think I like this book, it takes some concentration but it is a little easier to follow and Mill gets to the point in fewer pages, which is something many philosophers have trouble with. Many of them are far too wordy (I hate you, Descartes...) so their point gets lost and confused. Or Hume, I liked Hume's ideas but I wanted to take the Treatise and throw it against a wall.

Anyway, as of now Utilitariansim makes sense to me (but I don't pretend to have a full understanding of it). Basically Utilitarianism is the logical or reasonable decisions which produce the most amount of good or the least amount of bad for the most people. I take the word utility to mean useful or practical. To use the WWII example from class the other day, if we applied utility to that situation allowing the Germans to bomb the English village in order retain the knowledge of how to crack the german's secret code would have been not the right thing to do but the appropriate thing to do. It would save far more people in the long run. It may seem cold, and I think it is safe to assume that anyone would assume the person who would make the decision to allow the village to be bombed would have made said decision heartlessly. Even I am guilty of this thought. But on second thought I would say that the decision would be very difficult and painful to make and would have haunted that person for the rest of their life.

As for those people who argue against Utilitarianism, saying that happiness is an unreasonable and unachievable goal for human beings I say whatever. As Mill pointed out those things which we find most desirable in life are those things that make us happy. "-if human nature is so constituted as to desire nothing which is not either a part of happiness or a means of happiness, we can have no other proof, and we require no other, that these are the only things desirable. If so, happiness is the sole end of human action, and the promotion of it the test by which to judge of all human conduct; from whence it necessarily follows that it must be the criterion of morality, since a part is included in the whole." (p.213:9) I like this, a practical ethical system that is based on not only on what is needed for our society to function as a group but that happiness is the goal for both the group and the individual.
Another interesting claim against Utilitarianism is that it is a godless philosophy. I like how Mill counters this as well. "If it be a true belief that God desires, above all things, the happiness of his creatures, and this was his purpose in their creation, utility is not only not a godless doctrine, but more profoundly religious than any other." (198:22) It was the first part of this sentence that struck me in particular to the rest, because it reminded me of one of my favorite books (and probably one of the greatest books ever written), Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah by Richard Bach. If anyone is reading this blog, please read this book, and if you decide not to read the whole thing (it's barely 100 pages) at least read the first chapter, which is what I referring to, but I won't explain further because I don't want to spoil it.

There was something in Mill's writing which I found a little puzzling or more intriguing. When he was talking about education or intelligence and basically said that those with greater intellectual faculties have a more acute sense of what happiness and pain are than say a fool, and therefore experience happiness to a greater degree and seek to attain more because it takes more to make them happy, and on the same turn experience pain more acutely than others. Maybe I am misunderstanding the point he is making, and he makes his argument well but I can't say that I totally agree with it.