GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

328
ETHICS
It is of course the case, as I have already pointed out,
that, having passed the most careful judgment that I can
on the data available as to the probable effects of my
action, I may nevertheless judge wrongly. Things, in fact,
may turn out unexpectedly, so that an action from which
I have every reason to anticipate the best possible results
actually produces very bad results. In such circumstances
it would, on Bentham's view, be my duty to perform a
wrong action, since it would be my duty to perform the
action which I had reason to think would have the best
possible results, and the fact that the action in question
had bad results and was, therefore, a wrong action
would not affect this duty.
That Happiness or Pleasure is alone Desirable as an
End. I turn to the second main contention of the
utilitarians that, when we are assessing the consequences
of actions, only pleasure or happiness (the two words
may be used synonymously) needs to be taken into account,
since only pleasure is valuable. This maxim is laid down
in a number of celebrated passages, of which I give three.
The first is from Bentham:
4
'Nature has placed man under the governance of
two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them
alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to
determine what we shall do. . . . We owe to them all
our ideas; we refer to them all our judgments, and all
the determinations of our
withdraw himself from this
life. He who pretends to
subjection knows not what
he says."
The second is from John Stuart Mil:
"Desiring a thing and finding it pleasant, aversion to
it and thinking of it as painful are phenomena entirely
inseparable ... in strictness of language, two different
modes of naming the same psychological
fact: to think
of an object as desirable (unless for the sake of its conse-
quences), and to think of it as pleasant, are one. and the
same thing; and to desire anything, except in proportion