Explain the objection to utilitarianism from “no guidance”. Explain Mill’s response. Does this objection succeed?

Expert Solution

Mill modified Bentham's utilitarianism, he proposed that actions are right in as much as they promote happiness and wrong in as much as they promote the opposite of happiness, where happiness is pleasure and the absence of pain. Moreover, he said that pleasures differ in their quality, so that humans enjoy higher pleasures than animals. Mill gives us no guidance for comparing the quality with the quantity of pleasure.
Mill emphasizes that the principle of utility justifies right actions. It explains what makes them right. But it does not have to be a conscious motive; it does not even have to be a practical test of what is right or wrong. Most right acts are done from other motives. And most people facing moral decisions rely on common-sense moral rules rather than utilitarian calculation.
Mills view on no guidance is that you should choose the action that you think will produce the best consequence because there is no way to know what the consequence will be before the action is performed.

Hayet Jeridi answered 1 year ago

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