Mill's view on moral knowledge

Mill's view on moral knowledge

John Stuat Mill argues for what is known as Utalitarism. This being a form of natrualism where it is believe good actions cause happiness, then the right action is the most likely to cause the most amount of happiness. In otherwords, since happiness is a natrual property, it is therefore goodness.

Happiness = Goodness

Mill's justification for this is it is true that in the end we are focused on obtaining happiness. It is a natrual fact - theres nothing strange or supernatrual about this claim (unlike certain transendentalists). Mill goes on to claim that there is an ultimate goal in life, and that is happiness as it is the ultimently desired. Hense, happiness is ultimently good. Mill then concludes that happiness is good and only good.

Further more, he goes on to say that people who believe 'happiness is good' therfore have moral knowledge of this position, and that those who disagree with this assertion have made an error. In otherwords:

'If X is good, it is true that it causes being happy'

and...

'If X is bad, it is true it causes unhappiness'

Note here that all truths being refered to are posteriori. So are based on experiance. Mill is arguing that we can obtain moral knowledge through our observation of action and events and the effects they have on peoples happiness. No form of abstract, a priori reasoning is required.







Your thoughts on the theory?

Edited by ex nihilo - 16/2/2012, 07:54

ex nihilo,

I don't think your summary of Mill's views is very helpful. A better summary can be found here:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mill-mor...litical/#ProUti

If I'm following your thoughts about moral knowledge, you may want to look at these bits from the article:


and

Leaving Mill aside for the moment, let me implore you to use a spellchecker.
And the opposite of a priori is a posteriori.

I used old notes for this, so they may not be accurate. Just checking to see if they were ok or not.