Mill The Rule Bender?

As the objections to utilitarianism are mounting, Mill keeps trying to fend them off. One of the objections to utilitarianism is that it basically allows for people to bend the rules so long as it is not hurting anyone, such as telling “little white lies”

Mill’s defense of this is that although initially there may be no consequences, there is an importance in the “moral fabric” of society. This makes sense because if people continually told lies, they would begin to question nearly everything anybody said to them. Therefore the long term effect would be a decrease in happiness.

In addition Mill also gives a little wiggle room for being dishonest in special circumstances. An example discussed in calls would be telling a lie to thwart a potential murder from finding his or her victim or not telling a terminally ill person that they are about to die. There are certain cases where lying does seem to be a moral thing.

I would have to disagree with Mill on this occassion. It does seem that lies are generally a bad thing, however some special circumstances warrant deception. It would be one thing to keep telling lies to people, it is another to tell a lie to protect somebody from danger or extreme unhappiness.

Make up: Mills to Pay the Bills

According John Stuart Mill, utilitarianism is the ultimate theory in not only ethics, but for life in general. However, being that the utilitarian theory is extreme, there are many critics of it. One of the arguments that Mill comes under fire for is that utilitarianism is a cold and unsympathizing theory that does not take into account past actions, or the character of the person.

To this Mill responds that one could make this argument against any theory of morality. In other words, no theory judges an action to be good or bad based on the person doing them. He then goes on to say that just because somebody does do a good action still does not make them a good person and vice versa.

I feel that this argument is a poor one. Suppose a child, or a handicapped person, or even somebody that was simply incapable of knowing what right from wrong performs an action that decreases overall happiness. It would make no difference who it was: whether it was the 3 year old or the 30 year old, both actions would be just as wrong, and this just doesn’t seem right. If a person does something wrong and KNOWS that it is wrong, it seems that it is worse than someone who did the same action NOT KNOWING that it was wrong. To make a claim that there isn’t a single moral theory in the entire world that is capable of making this distinction is just as extreme as the theory of utilitarianism itself.