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Mill’s act-utilitarian interpreters on Utilitarianism chapter V paragraph 14

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Dale E. Miller*
Affiliation:
Philosophy and Religious Studies, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA, USA

Abstract

In the fourteenth paragraph of the fifth chapter of Utilitarianism, J. S. Mill writes that ‘We do not call anything wrong, unless we mean to imply that a person ought to be punished in some way or other for doing it; if not by law, by the opinion of his fellow-creatures; if not by opinion, by the reproaches of his own conscience.’ I criticize the attempts of three commentators who have recently presented act-utilitarian readings of Mill – Roger Crisp, David Brink, and Piers Norris Turner – to accommodate this passage.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Journal of Philosophy 2017

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