On Liberty

It seems like Mill often uses the argument that 'x is not contradictory to utilitarianism because it falls under the umbrella of utilitarianism' and he does the same thing with liberty it seems. His argument makes sense. I'm a little confused as to why he's worried about freedom of action... in a utilitarian society being followed to the letter wouldn't all rational people act morally? I guess there are always those rouge irrational people running amok. He seems to be reasurring people that utilitarianism is not opposed to freedom and individuality, which is nice to read because utilitarianism sounds very robitic at times, like it's compleately about using reason and taking all the emotion (humanity?) out of ethics.

Mill also argues that society should only interfere with an individual's freedom when they are infringing the rights of another person... I think I picked up on most of the important things... see you in class tomorrow to make sure.

Justice

Mill certainly has a lot to say about Justice. After discussing what justice means to different people he seems to come to the conclusion that justice is an individual response to when a person feels their rights have been violated. I may be getting this wrong but I think the point Mill is making is that justice can't be part of utilitarianism because it is so individual and utilitarianism is about finding a universal ethical system. As usual I look forward to seeing what it's all about in class.

Reading Mill

Okay... I think I get what he means by proof. I was really confused when he said you couldn't use reason to understand Utilitarianism because it seems to me we use reason to explain and justify almost everything. He seems to be saying that you need to use proof, as in evidence, to beleive something is valid. I think he mentions something about how reason is disputable but proof is not. Although that sounds resonable... oh no. I better drop this reason/proof buisness before I confound myself.
I now see why we talked about happiness since Mill thinks happiness encompasses all things that people desire... which I'm going to agree with. We don't do anything that doesn't either give us pleasure or is a step toward getting pleasure. It is interesting that he has a definite system on how to make a moral decision, you choose whatever causes the least amount of pain and the most pleasure for the most people.

I think I hit on all the important things... now to go read other peoples blogs and walk through the freezing weather to class tomorrow to see what I missed or got totally wrong. :)

Immorality of Pain

To make a moral theory based on the supposition that people seek pleasure and happiness and avoid pain doesn't seem very hard. I would argue that causing another person pain is immoral because it denys their human right to seek pleasure. So you should seek happiness for yourself, but never in a way that causes another person pain. I'm assuming that the theory only has to work in a perfect world, because in this one people can't seem to get anything they want without causing another person pain, at least emotional pain. I'm an acting major, so I can't get a role that I want that will give me happiness without disappointing everyone else who wanted the role.

So perhaps there needs to be a certain level of pain for the action to be considered immoral, since we cannot determine every little side effect our doings will have on other people... or we would never do anything. It would be difficult to determine a rule by witch you measure pain to determine immorality. Not sharing a bag of gummy bears with your friends might make them unhappy but it's not exactly immoral... however not sharing food with someone who is starving to death could be immoral. Perhaps it should be based on how your decision effects the other person's quality of life.

I think I like that last thought the best. Based on the Happiness vs. Pain moral structure, I'm going to say that it is immoral to cause someone pain that is significant enough to damage their quality of life. Something that doesn't change their quality of life but is still painfull falls under the heading of rudeness.

Those are my thoughts.

Onora and Kant

It seems to me that O'Neil's argument centers around using Kant's ideas because she thinks that a set of children's rights based on an obligatory system would be better than a set of fundamental rights. Her argument seems to be that it's better to enforce parental obligations than children's rights, because it's harder for a child to claim their own rights than it would be to enforce the obligations of a parent to care for their children.



I liked her explanation of how an obligation can automatically infer a right for a specified group. Having these obligations can automatically lead to fundamental rights. She's arguing that an obligation is better because if you follow your obligations then fundamental rights are automatically ensured. I think another thing she is getting at is that with an obligation, in the adult/child example, since it is an obligation the child does not need to have rights, which could be waived in certain situations.



Part of the problem with using obligations as guidelines is that different people feel they have fulfilled obligations at different times. For example: You are obligated to feed your children. One person might feel like one slice of toast every day fulfills that obligation. Unless you are specific enough with an obligation (You are obligated to feed your children three healty meals every day) different people could come to different conclusions and see nothing wrong with their actions. But if we judged by obligation than something like this would probably be detected.