Given that Utilitarianism would have us judge an action based on the consequence

Question

Given that Utilitarianism would have us judge an action based on the consequences it produces, why does Mill reject the idea that Utilitarianism entails that we should just do whatever is expedient in the moment or on some particular occasion? Hint: To answer this, you should consider Mill’s discussion of lying, and the rule that people should tell the truth. And, according to Mill, how do particular moral conventions or intermediate rules of societies relate to Utilitarianism’s fundamental principles?

Hint: The answer to the first question should help you address the second.

Explanation / Answer

John Stuart Mill clearly admitted the qualitative differences among pleasures and other values and what kind of pleasure or joy one seeks depends on one's own training and culture (=education). It is also interesting to note that Mill already had insight into the human value cognition such that, while uneducated and inexperienced, one knows only the pleasure of lower rank, the educated one with high endowments can see both the lower pleasure as well as the intellectual, higher joy. Mill maintained that quality must be taken into consideration even in the case of pleasure.

The utilitarian morality does recognize in human beings the power of sacrificing their own greatest good for the good of others. It only refuses to admit that the sacrifice is itself a good. A sacrifice which does not increase, or tend to increase, the sum total of happiness it considers wasted. The only self-renunciation which it applauds, is devotion to the happiness, or to some to the means of happiness, of others.

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