 I gotta say, I really do enjoy myself out here, it's a bit of exercise, I get to enjoy the beauty of nature, I get to talk philosophy, I even get to exert some creativity with the videos. I choose a place to point the camera and I try to have some basics and composition. Even what I say is an exercise in creativity, there's lots of ways to express these concepts and I try to find the one that's the most useful or the one that's going to be best for comprehension. All this has to contribute to my happiness. I am happy being out here, I enjoy myself, it's a wonderful experience. So it's pretty easy to think that happiness has at least something to do with morality. We're asking the question, remember this question of morality is how are we to live our life and it seems like happiness ought to have something to do with that. Well in this chapter we're looking at a view called utilitarianism, utilitarianism says that happiness not only has something to do with morality, that's all there is to morality. So let's just be clear here what's happening. The only thing that has any kind of moral consideration is happiness, is happiness. Now this means that laws in the society are moral only to the extent that they contribute to happiness and if a law does not contribute to happiness, if it actually causes more suffering or unhappiness or misery then you're not morally obligated to follow the law. The only thing that matters is happiness, it doesn't matter what abstract rules say, so if we're talking about social contract theory, it doesn't matter necessarily what rational agents say just so long as what they say actually promotes happiness. There really aren't any such things as rights, there's just happiness and morality is measured just in terms of that happiness. There's no fidelity to a culture or to a religion, to any deity, all that matters is happiness and this is called utilitarianism. So we're going to look at at least some applications of what utilitarianism means and try to sort out exactly what's happening here. So this idea that happiness is the only thing that matters when we're talking about morality is summarized in this principle of utility and roughly what this means is that you ought to act in the way that produces the most happiness. You ought to act in the way that produces the most happiness. So to be clear this doesn't mean what's excluded from this is you ought to act in a way that produces some happiness. It has to be the most happiness and like I said this is the only moral consideration is is happiness for the utilitarian. Now a question is going to come up really quick as to exactly what is happiness. We've looked at some ideas suggested in virtue ethics, we've even looked at some ideas when we're talking about interests, when we're talking about benefit. So this has a great deal of relevance here. So exactly what counts as happiness is going to be an interesting question and we're going to look and Rachel's provides us with three cases that we're going to look at and we'll see how he's thinking about happiness and it's worth asking yourself what do you think happiness is. So let's look at those three cases but keep in mind this principle of utility that it is the principle of utility you ought to act in the way that produces the most happiness. The first case that Rachel's looks at is Stigmund Freud's death and the way he describes it is that Freud near the end of his life was just an abject misery because of cancer and the various symptoms that went along with it, the various ways that he was suffering because of his cancer and he asked his friend to end his suffering to kill him, to kill Freud. So what Rachel's is trying to push on here is that Freud would be happier dying rather than continuing on and suffering. At the very least, you might even push it this way, say well Freud wouldn't necessarily be happier being dead because you can't be, if you don't exist then you can't have happiness at all. Freud was suffering, he had kind of like a negative mark in the happiness ledger book where he was no longer happy and all that was happening there was suffering and pain and to carry further what would be evil under this view. So Freud is pushing on this idea that in the euthanasia case the utilitarian would say that yeah you should euthanize Freud because that would end his suffering and it would decrease the amount of suffering in the world therefore overall there would be more happiness in the world. Now Rachel's kind of slips here, he says something very subtly how you know since Freud is the one that's suffering that his is the relevant suffering it's like well you you might wonder about that because utilitarianism does not specify that one person's suffering is more important than another, that one person's happiness is more important than another. Indeed you know Rachel says by pushing on reason and impartiality up to this point exactly who is suffering really isn't at what's question or really isn't relevant to the to the to the calculus it's just the suffering okay or the happiness so you might wonder in this room for the utilitarian to think something like this that you suppose there were 20 people who just couldn't bear the pain of Freud's death and they would bear it for years and years and years and years to come should Freud have been euthanized then since they would have been miserable at his death you know it's not clear here with this just with this first case I mean there is something to say about the suffering of Freud and that does that does look like it's a morally relevant reason. There's other ways you can also look at this suppose yeah we have plenty of people today who are near death but they're being kept alive and you know keeping somebody alive who's in poor health is really expensive so utilitarian might look at that and say yeah you're spending all these resources to keep one person alive and it's really expensive but you could take those resources and spend them on people who are you know in need of food and shelter and you can make them happier versus this one person that we're you know paying a lot of we're spending a lot of resources on to keep alive so you know exactly who's happy really isn't at what's question here the question is what is the happiest right it's not just the happy the happiness of one person that's evolved it's all people that are involved so this this is really kind of an interesting thing here for for in this case with the euthanasia so this pointing out here is that it doesn't really matter who's happiness what matters is the greatest amount of happiness so it's interesting about the Freud case when we're talking about happiness is the relationship of happiness to suffering where suffering is just not neutral in this situation it's innocence taking away from the happiness that that exists right so when we're talking about happiness with the very least eliminate suffering but we also had to have some happiness on top of that or in other words if your only choice is to eliminate suffering or to have suffering you should eliminate suffering regardless of other consequences another question that comes up is you know who's happiness matters here who's happiness counts that is that is going to be an interesting question I'm not sure it's clearly answered in this chapter the next question or the next case that Rachel's looks at is the legalization of marijuana now it's interesting about this is that there are simply more consequences than the immediate effect of using marijuana and Rachel's is is kind of pushing on this is you know he says yeah you know there's there are mild dangers or mild sufferings associated with long term use of marijuana he calls it mild cognitive impairment and there also maybe some additional problems such as you know you know we have problems with people that are drinking well you know drinking and driving well you probably can have some similar problems with people who are under the effect of marijuana right so what what he's pushing on here is there's more in determining whether an act determining whether marijuana makes you happy than simply you know just that act in that moment had to consider the long-term consequences and how that is going to affect everything else so he mentioned you know all the law enforcement all the all the resources being devoted to the to to enforcing the law against marijuana and you know he says that you know since we're spending all this money on law enforcement we can make things a lot easier on ourselves we can make produce a lot more happiness if we didn't spend this money on on enforcing a law against marijuana and you know that's something to consider sure you know there's also something else to consider is that you know a lot of a lot of people suffer a great deal for marijuana to be grown and imported across our across the borders you know there's there's a lot of people who are working in growing the marijuana and processing and we're not getting paid a fair wage there are people who die and die horribly as you know as a matter of business and in the marijuana trade and you know we might say well a lot of that would stop if we simply made it legal well maybe here but that's not really happening here it's also happening across our borders so you know and again that's not the end of the story either but there are lots of consequences to consider when you're thinking about this happiness something else is happening here as well Rachel's is pushing on this idea of the physical pleasures as happiness and that that's important you know you do need pleasure for happiness so you know we're dealing with physical pleasures as happiness here in this section and you know physical pleasures are important they are important to happiness if you if you do an experience pleasure in your life you're going to be miserable you're gonna suffer from depression you're probably gonna be very bitter and angry so it's not to say that pleasure is completely irrelevant to happiness but it's probably not the only thing that's relevant to happiness I mean one of the things that Rachel's considers when he's talking about the cost of of marijuana is not just the financial cost but the cost on your cognitive ability so he's he's hinting at this idea that your cognitive abilities are gonna matter when it when it when we're considering happiness you know he thinks that you know he says that long-term use of marijuana has a mild cognitive impairment and that's enough to say well you shouldn't have long-term or frequent use of marijuana as you be occasional use because you don't want to lose your cognitive abilities well if you're not if you don't want to lose your cognitive abilities right then there's more to happiness and simply pleasure because it's really simple to be pleasured or in a state of pleasure all the time and to be really unintelligent right to not develop your cognitive abilities at all as a matter of fact we think that's kind of a worst state in life if you don't develop your cognitive abilities at all so we're already setting up this interesting question when we're talking about happiness or you know certainly the physical pleasures are involved but there's also cognitive abilities now you know I enjoy I like for instance I enjoy working out problems of mathematical logic I enjoy thinking about concepts now the the joy that I have and doing that is not really the same thing as you know your average Friday night at a nightclub right that's a different sensation right there I enjoy thinking about concepts but I'm not sure I might even use the word pleasure but it's not the same kind of pleasure as hanging out with my friends and you're having a really good time so you're having a fun time or in other words there's a what maybe the way of saying is it is that there's a real difference between intellectual pursuits and fun intellectual pursuits and fun and Rachel says introduce this idea whether you wanted to or not that there's more to happiness than than simply the play then simply the fun or simply the pleasures is also at the very least there's the cognitive intellectual pursuits can you hear that got a little musical accompaniment out here with the various wildlife you can hear the I think it's a chaketa in the back I think it's a chaketa I'm not an expert in an insect you have the jacada in the background making a noise I've seen several lizards out here I'm sure there are several more around me right now I'd be willing to bet there's at least a deer or two that can hear my voice at the moment well these are all things that can experience at least something that that's like suffering when you look at insects they appear to want to live they try to function in a way and they try to avoid damage I try to avoid what we might you know what we might think of is suffering animals do the same thing animals appear to experience paint and you know as a matter of fact it was really good evidence that shows that they actually experience what we experience as pain because they have a lot of the same hardware you know mammals and such they have a lot of the same hardware we do when we're talking you know I talk about the nerves and and the regions of the brain we're talking about pain so an interesting question pops up here you know are there you know especially when we're talking about who's suffering matters well not only like who but the individual but what kind of thing is suffering what kind of things experiencing happiness so what we're dealing with happiness with the utilitarian we're dealing with a lot more critters than humans humans are only one critter to consider we got lots of non-human critters out there the jacadas the deer the lizards I've seen there's a fly sitting on the bitch right bench right next to me that's that's another critter you know there are lots of birds around me right now although I can't see them they're not moving right now there's something to consider when we're talking about their kind of suffering now it's important to remember that you know the happiness for a bird for a jacada for a lizard well it's going to be different than our own at least at least some differences we're talking about physical pain that seems pretty straightforward now we're talking about the you know the joy and happiness that a human being can experience especially we're referring to what we what we talked about earlier as these you know these cognitive pleasures these cognitive joys as cognitive happiness well it's a different kind of thing then than a chacada or lizard or a deer you know most critters if not all critters don't have an active mental life like we do there's some borderline cases and you will discuss that in class maybe like maybe I could show some examples you know the like for instance Coco the gorilla was able to use sign language so she had language so she probably had concepts right there there are other critters out there that seem to have something like language so maybe they have concepts as well but you know no critter on the planet does what we do as far as you know philosophy mathematics history science so there's a real difference there question is how much difference does all that matter so for instance with this park here you know I'm sitting on a bench there's a pathway it's been cut through the park and this has had an impact on the wildlife in the area my presence here has an impact on the wildlife in the area now I'm here amongst other things to experience beauty and to experience that that joy which is which is more than just a physical pleasure when we talked about ideas of beauty before you know there's something happening more with beauty than than just appearances now does that mean that you know our desire to create a park outweighs the desires of the critter to live undisturbed that's an interesting question we you know even just fulfilling that wants to create a park to cut a path to the park that brings with it a certain kind of satisfaction achievement a certain kind of joy does that outweigh the critters satisfaction with life and having a park or having an area that's undisturbed and these these are more interesting questions when we're trying to deal with happiness and suffering for the utilitarian it's gonna involve a lot of metaphysics it's gonna involve a lot of physics too and this is something worth considering again where we're especially we're comparing the Freud case is whose happiness matters you know if our cognitive joys override any pleasure any physical pleasures well that really seems like it overrides any critters pleasure any critters satisfaction with life so what are we supposed to do with that you know there there's something to what the utilitarian has to say about happiness it's worth thinking about these questions about about happiness another really great thing the utilitarian brings to the table as consequences right so remember for the utilitarian the kind of act isn't really what's important here what's important is is the production of happiness so that forces us to think about the consequences of our actions and that's a really good thing to do is to think about consequences the utilitarian however says you know yes happiness is important and yes consequences are important and by the way those are the only things that are important as happiness and consequences it could be a tough pill to swallow