John Stuart Mill´s The Greatest Happiness Principle

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I will be explaining John Stuart Mill’s view on ethics. This includes explaining the “Greatest Happiness Principle”, happiness, unhappiness, quality of pleasure, lying, and the relevance of time with his view. I will then explain how I agree with the principle of Rule Utilitarianism. I will also consider the objection of conflicting rules in Rule Utilitarianism as well as that of negative responsibility, giving my response to each.
Mill claims that morals find their root in Utility, otherwise called the Greatest Happiness Principle.(513) The essence of this is that actions are right in proportion to how much happiness results from them and wrong in proportion to how much they cause the reverse of it.(513) In defending this, he claims that in truth, every action we make, we decide based on this principle.(513) Thus, the best life to live is one that is the most filled with happiness, and has the least unhappiness in it.
Happiness is intended pleasure or absence of pain.(513) Both this definition and the following definition for unhappiness suffer from really understanding what pleasure and pain are, the use of competent judges and those principles below aid in that.(513)
Unhappiness is presence of pain or absence of pleasure.(513)
Mill, in response to objections about pleasure, claims that there are some pleasures that are better than others. He states that the life of a reasoning, thinking person is superior to a human, rather than just the appetite of an animal.(513) In supporting this claim, he mentions how those who support a similar view have written before that the pleasures of the mind are superior than the body.(513) To support this idea, Mill mentions the idea of competent judges. For someone to be a competent judge be...

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..., and states that very few people need to worry about things at a higher level than friends and family, and those will have the resources to do so.(516)
I have considered Mill’s ethical theory of Utilitarianism, specifically Rule Utilitarianism. After considering the objections of Negative Responsibility and conflicting rules, I have explained that it is plausible that an individual has a moral responsibility to only really focus on their own happiness and the happiness of those around them. I have also explained that it is fairly trivial to solve the issue of conflicting rules by pondering modifications of rules or even new ones. I’ve explained Mill’s response to the “no time” objection, given his views on lying. I’ve given the definitions of happiness, unhappiness, qualities of pleasure and the role of competent judges in that, and the Greatest Happiness Principle.

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