John Stuart Mill was concerned that Bentham’s theory was limited to a certain extent that law was the primarily concern. So he introduced a theory of utility for the common person which also substituted ‘pleasure’ for ‘happiness’ and moved from mere quantity to evoking the quality of happiness as well. Mill distinguished that there were two forms of pleasure, higher pleasures and lower pleasures. He wrote “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig dissatisfied, better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied” The mind will be stimulated from the higher pleasures and the body will be stimulated from the lower pleasure. In addition, if physical needs were met then surely humans would prefer a higher pleasure.
Act utilitarianism was one of Bentham’s key ideas of utilitarianism. Act utilitarianism states that when faced with an action, we must first consider the consequences of that action so then we can determine the most happiness from any given situation. For example not killing a specific person will prevent sadness for that person's family. Opening the door for the lady carrying a box will make her happy. It uses the ‘greater good’ as we as humans like to achieve the best from anything and expect the end result to generate the most happiness.
Rule utilitarianism, which was developed by Mill, highlights the centrality of rules in morality and establishes the best overall rule by determining the course of action which results to happiness. Rule states that you must obey the rule even if it doesn’t lead to the greatest pleasure. The rule should always take president over any given situation.
A key distinction between Bentham’s and Mills theories lie differences. Act utilitarianism was one of Bentham’s key ideas. Bentham approached this idea to be that he treated each individual separately, without any rules to guide the individual. Mill on the other hand proposed that one should make rules based upon the consequences of that action. E.g. stealing tends to cause pain, so we should have a rule against stealing. So, despite supporting the same principle idea, we can see that Mill and Bentham arrived at two very different approaches to morality, with Mill avoiding some of the fundamental and debateable idea put forward by Bentham.
ii) Bentham’s theory, hedonic calculus seems to be merely the subjective desires of Bentham rather than a revelation of any objective criteria. Objections posed to Bentham’s theory followed that the value of life is more than a balance of pleasure over pain. The hedonic calculus causes problems as if we were to apply duration of pleasure or pain it would be impossible as we all react to pain/pleasure differently. For example, if five rapists were to rape the same woman, then using the hedonic calculus, their pleasure would overweigh the woman’s pain.
Also, Bentham only appeared to measure happiness in a quantity system. Mill progressed from the quantity pleasures to quality pleasures. For the example, I will use the likes of the flower seller in Covent Garden. The flower seller enjoys her weekly bottle of gin, but according to Mills principle they should be educated in order to find the greatest pleasure in going to the opera, along with the well-to-do classes.
In addition, we as humans cannot predict consequences of an action. If morality is based on results, then we would have to have awareness in order to accurately predict the consequences of any action. We would then have to judge the consequences themselves. When results occur, we must still ask whether they are good or bad results. Utilitarianism provides no objective and reliable grounds to judge results because results are the mechanism used to judge the action itself.
However, if we were to compare the modern form of utilitarianism to the hedonic principle and the principle of utility, Negative utilitarianism would have the most equal rights as it maximises the good and minimises the bad. In addition, with negative utilitarianism; the good could possibly mean people being happy and the bad could mean people being un-happy, or the good is people getting what they want in life and the bad is people not getting what they want out of life. Although most utilitarian’s agree that whatever the good and bad are, we ought to bring about as much of the former and as little of the latter as possible. E.g. suppose that I have a choice to make: I can either make the happiest man in the world even happier than he already is, or I can alleviate some of the suffering of the unhappiest man in the world. This would mean that if I were to alleviate some of the suffering from the unhappiest man, the happiest man would still be happy and not affected from the choice but yet the unhappiest man becomes happier than he already was. Therefore, I should always choose to alleviate suffering rather than promoting happiness.