Preference Utilitarianism Vs Hedonism

The Hedonistic utilitarianism’s view is that happiness is the ultimate good. According to two hedonistic utilitarian philosophers, Bentham and Mill, happiness is the surplus over pain and everything we do is motivated by a desire to maximise pleasure and minimise pain. Preference utilitarianism, on the other hand, is the view that what is good for a person and what is good overall is determined entirely by people’s preferences. In what follows, I will argue that Preference utilitarianism is not more plausible than Hedonistic utilitarianism.
Hare, a preference utilitarian, view is that human logic applies to moral assertions and that moral judgements can be made in terms of people’s preferences. According to Hare, there are two levels of moral …show more content…
According to Nozick we do not want to plug into Nozick’s pleasure experience machine which means that other experiences matter other than conscious experiences . It also shows that we desire to live in contact with reality. (Tann book). Peter Singer, once an unmistakable preference utilitarian, has moved away and now consider himself a hedonist. I agree with Peter Singer when he states that we need to appreciate the strengths of intuitions that we have against plugging into the machine. Singer compares these intuitions with the intuitions we have for not wanting to drink a glass of apple juice if a sterilized cockroach has been dipped into it (experience done by Jonathan Haidt). Intellectually we know that the juice is harmless i.e. the cockroach has no diseases, however our intuitions tell us that this is simply gross. These intuitions are the result of our nature of purpose human beings i.e. we act purposely, and immediate pleasures are overridden for the sake of larger purposes also known as the paradox of hedonism. Therefore Nozick’s experience machine is not sufficient reason for abandoning hedonism in favour of preference …show more content…
Mainstream economic theory denies that interpersonal comparisons between intensities of preferences are possible . If such comparisons are impossible, it is even more difficult to see that comparisons between past, present and future preferences of a single person fare any better. My future self is not available to examination now. It is not much easier to tell what my preferences would be if I could dispose of some preferences that I now want to dispose of. Interpersonal comparisons of happiness or pleasure, on the other hand, even if they are difficult to make with any precision, are meaningful, at any rate . Edgeworth and Bentham seem not to have found interpersonal comparisons of well-being problematic. A hedonistic unit can be found to measure how much the circumstance of one individual is enhanced when a specific change is achieved, when contrasted with how much the circumstance of someone else is impoverished. It is sensible to acknowledge that sub-noticeable differences of well-being are morally important, and the smallest sub-noticeable distinction ought to be taken as our unit in our moral calculations. The estimation is in two measurements, intensity and time and the classical utilitarian formula should be based on felt time as opposed to physical time. In contrast to preference utilitarianism, the overall plausibility of