Feb. 26-Ethics Notes
Utilitarianism:
There are no rights except those which spring from maximizing happiness.

Objections continued:
3. It is too difficult to evaluate or calculate the consequences of all of our actions.

4. Isn't there more to life than pleasure or happiness? (ex. Nozick's pleasure machine)

-Mill's higher and lower pleasures.
higher pleasure: Intellectual or cultural action. (fine wine, opera)
lower pleasure: physical, simple, blue collar pleasure (sex, Budweiser, Temptation Island)
-If we took the masses and exposed them to the higher pleasures, they would not gravitate toward the lower ones.
-It is better to live unfulfillingly in pursuit of higher pleasures than to settle for the lower ones.

Objection:
5. Crass hedonism

Objections to the higher and lower pleasures:
1. Bourgeois elitism-Mill assumes that the pleasures of the upper class are more valuable.
2.Mills is trying to smuggle values other than pleasures into utilitarianism (ie. art, knowledge, etc.

Brave New World

Mustafa Mond (represents utilitarianism)vs. the savage.
-Freedom is valued by Huxley. The savage is the hero.

6. How long must we wait to find out if what we have done is right?
-Mills:long enough. Short time for less important things; longer for more important things.

Williams: Utilitarianism makes people compromise their integrity.

1. George offered bio warfare job. The competition was "gung ho" about the idea of war. George has moral qualms about it. He takes the job as the lesser of two evils.

2.Jim is in a S. American dictatorship. Pedro lets him shoot one captive to save the lives of nine.

Williams: We are not morally obligated to participate in evil, that good may come.