Ethics lecture 7 - Mill 1

Here's the handout:

Three Accounts of the Good Life

1. Objective list
--a. external list, e.g. God’s commands.
--b. flourishing: objective needs, interests, potential; successful cultivation of human and individual nature.

2. Desire-satisfaction
--a. actual desires
--b. improved desires: reflectively-endorsed desires; or desires I would have if I had full information and rationality; or desires I would have if I were fully developed.

3. Happiness
--a.simple hedonism: happiness = pleasure (and the absence of pain); pleasure = single, simple mental state; good-makers = intensity, duration.
--b. complex hedonism: happiness = various, complex mental state; good-makers = intensity, duration, felt character, causal properties, authenticity… i.e. anything a competent judge would appeal to in discriminating between goods.