© 2004 John Waters, Socratic Ideas Ltd – All Rights Reserved

VOCABULARY SCHOLARS KEY ISSUES EXAMPLES QUOTESHISTORICALOVERVIEW

• Act• Rule• Preference• Felicific Calculus• Instrumental• Consequential• Egalitarian• Perfect / bounded

rationality• QALYS: Quality

Adjusted LifeYears

• PersonhoodRational

Self-conscious Sentient Establish relationships Communicate• Speciesism

• David Hume

• Jeremy Bentham

• John Stuart Mill

• Mary Wolstoncraft

• G.E. Moore

• R.M. Hare

• Peter Singer

• Empirical challenge to metaphysical belief and Biblical authority• Autonomy versus ecclesiastical (church) heteronomy• Private / Public acts• Other goods besides pleasure and happiness?• Quantity / Quality of pleasures / suffering• “Cost Benefit analysis”• Lack of justice / intrinsic goods e.g QALYS• Naturalistic Fallacy• Egoism vs altruism• Does utility require a deontological framework?

• Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World - John the Savage claims the right to be unhappy•Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Illych -other goods besides pleasure• Tiananmen Square 1989– utility may suppress individual liberty• Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mocking Bird – difference between Act and Rule utilitarianism e.g. importance of justice• John Harris’ National Organ Lottery, QALYS, `cost-benefit.

• “Liberty, Fraternity, Equality.” (Rousseau, French Revolution)• Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. (Jeremy Bentham)• “Metaphysics: cast it to the flames for it contains nothing but sophistry and illusion. (David Hume)• “The question is not `Can they reason?’ `Can they talk?’ But `Can they suffer?’” (Jeremy Bentham)• “The ingredients of happiness are various.” (J.S. Mill)

• Child of the Enlightenment / Age of Reason• French Revolution: rejected aristocracy• Victorian England: Debtors’ Prisoners and Bentham’s Penal Reform.• Darwinian challenge to the Bible; Bentham a radical empiricist: good scientifically proven by the Felicific Calculus.• Aristotle and The Lake Poets - role of eudaimonia in Mill’s utilitarianism• Social Reforms: Mill’s liberalism paves the way for reforms