Objection 8

The objection to the Utilitarian this time is that, if an actions moral weight can be determined by weighing the overall effect on happiness and pain then a person must take this into account before following through with any action.  BUT there is not enough time before the action to weigh the value of happiness and pain.  Therefore Utilitarian is wrong because it does not give the person doing the action enough time to consider whether it is right or wrong to do so, and how could you hold someone accountable for something if they didnt know what they were doing is wrong.  The direct quote is “There is not time previous to action for calculating and weighing the options of my line of conduct on the general happiness” (Mills 329).

Mills is respons is this  ” there has been ample time namely the whole past duration of the human species, during all that time mankind must have been learning by experience…mankind must by this time have aquired postivie beliefs as to the effects of some actions on their happiness and the beliefs which have thus come down are the rules of morality” (Mills 329).

What Mills is sayin is that we do not need to weigh the effect on overall happiness before we do something because we already know what consequences will result form our actions based upon past experience.  Maybe when you are a baby you do not know right from wrong, but that is part of growing up, and once you do become aware of what is right and what is wrong you remeber it for the rest of your life and you can not forget this. 

In class we said what if something new comes about and we do not know whether it is right or wrong, like piratign music over the internet. The response is that even though we might not recognize this activity at first, we can relate it to similar activitys and base its moral value upon that.

Mills response is that

~ by Jon Rothman on October 20, 2007.