 So this is what we're dealing with today. What question is Mill trying to answer? And if you remember, all the philosophers we looked at this semester have been trying to answer the question How should you live your life by answering a different question? And then Mill is no different in that regard. So let's recall, shall we? We had Hume and we had Sumner, and they were trying to answer the question How are moral beliefs justified? And remember, Hume said your moral beliefs are justified by your passions, what you want, and Sumner said your moral beliefs are justified by the culture. After that we had Glaucon and Hobbes, and they were trying to answer the question Who's interest in most important? Now they both agreed that one's own interest in most important and interesting difference between them was that Glaucon said since your interest in most important justice is bad, Hobbes said since your interest in most important justice is good. All right, then we had Aristotle and Epicurus. At least the first part of the Aristotle reading we had, they were both trying to answer the question, what has moral worth? What is actually worth pursuing? Epicurus, if you remember, said pleasure is what has moral worth. This is a view called hedonism, and Aristotle said what has moral worth is unimmonia, which is this kind of good spirit, the different parts of which you are working together in kind of a harmony. The first reading of Aristotle tried to answer the question, what has moral worth? The second reading of Aristotle dealt with the question, how does one acquire what has moral worth? Now remember Aristotle's claim here is that virtues, these habits that conform to the relative mean, these produce the right kinds of states in you that then produce eudaimonia. Okay, well then we had Locke, Locke was trying to answer the question, how should you live your life by answering what are your rights? And remember his answer to that question was that your rights are determined by natural law. You can live your life as you see fit, as long as you lived according to natural law. Okay, now this brings us to Mill. So what question is Mill trying to answer? Is he trying to answer one of these previous questions, or is he trying to do something different? Well you might think he's trying to answer the question, what is happiness? Now he spent some time giving us an account of pleasures, okay, but he's not giving us happiness. He's certainly not doing exactly what Aristotle is doing, as far as eudaimonia is concerned. He's not trying to give a full exposition of happiness. It's going to be sort of involved in his project, but it's not the main point overall. He's not even trying to answer the question, what is utilitarianism? Now utilitarianism is going to fall out from his discussion. Okay, that's fine. But he's not trying to give an exposition of one of the moral theories. He's advocating a particular view. And what Mill is doing, he's actually trying to answer two questions, just like Aristotle. He's trying to answer the question, what has more worth? And the question, how does one acquire what has more worth? Now he differs from Aristotle on both these points, incidentally. He sides with Epicurus. When it comes to answering what has more worth, he says pleasure as well. And he has some differences with Epicurus. He's not advocating a pure Epicurian position, but he is trying to say that what has actual more worth is pleasure. This is what's worth pursuing in your life. And how do you acquire it? Aristotle is going to talk about acquiring more worth through character, through virtue. Mill differs. He says how you acquire more worth is one act at a time. His is a consequentialist view. The consequences of your action determine its moral worth. Not your character, not your rights, not your wants, not your desires, not the culture, nothing like that. The consequences determine whether your act is moral or immoral, and the consequences that matter is pleasure. And what sums us up together in the greatest happiness principle. The greatest happiness principle states that an act is right to the extent that it promotes pleasure, and wrong to the extent that it promotes its opposite. The maximization of pleasure is the point of every act, or should be, is what Mill says. Maximization of pleasure is the, should be the pursuit of every act, should be the consequence of every act. Can you excuse me? I misspoke that. Should be the consequence of every act. This is what you should aim at. Your intent doesn't matter. Your state of mind, what you want, your character, your rights, none of this matters. The only thing that matters is whether your act produced the greatest pleasure.