1 Who was the most direct intellectual influence on Mill's utilitarianism?
Correct. Jeremy Bentham, a close friend of Mill's father, founded classical utilitarianism. Mill was raised as Bentham's intellectual heir and spent much of his career revising Bentham's views.
Mill's utilitarianism grew directly out of the work of a family friend who raised him in it. Revisit Mill's Life and Context.
2 In Chapter 1, Mill concedes that:
Correct. Mill grants that first principles cannot be proved in the strict sense, because there is nothing more basic to derive them from. He offers considerations that can move a rational mind instead.
Mill does not abandon utilitarianism in Chapter 1. Ask what he says about whether any ultimate principle can be strictly proved.
3 The Greatest Happiness Principle holds that actions are right insofar as they:
Correct. The Greatest Happiness Principle: actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, and wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.
Mill's principle judges actions by their consequences for happiness. The other options describe Kant, virtue ethics, and Aquinas.
4 Mill's distinction between higher and lower pleasures is intended to:
Correct. Bentham counted pleasures by quantity alone. Mill adds quality: some pleasures, such as those of the intellect and moral sentiments, are more valuable in kind, not just in amount.
Mill is refining Bentham, not abandoning hedonism. Ask what Mill adds to Bentham's purely quantitative measure of pleasure.
5 Mill's famous remark that "it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied" is part of his response to which objection?
Correct. Critics called utilitarianism a 'doctrine worthy only of swine.' Mill replies that human beings have higher faculties, and anyone who has experienced both kinds of pleasure prefers the higher, even with dissatisfaction.
Mill's remark answers a specific charge about pleasure, that a pleasure-based ethics degrades human beings. Ask which objection that is.
6 To say utilitarianism is aggregative means:
Correct. Utilitarianism adds up happiness and unhappiness across everyone affected. An action is judged by its total effect, not by its effect on any one person.
'Aggregative' means adding together. Ask what utilitarianism adds up when it evaluates an action.
7 The key difference between act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism is that:
Correct. Act utilitarianism asks which particular action produces the most happiness. Rule utilitarianism asks which general rules would produce the most happiness if followed, then judges actions by those rules.
Both versions are consequentialist. The difference is what the principle of utility is applied to: each action, or general rules of conduct.
8 To the objection that we cannot predict the consequences of our actions, Mill's response is:
Correct. Mill says humanity has had its whole history to learn the tendencies of actions. Our inherited moral rules record that experience, so we need not calculate from scratch every time.
Mill does not deny that consequences matter or that they are hard to predict. Ask what he thinks humanity's accumulated experience gives us.
9 Mill's account of the ultimate sanction of morality grounds moral motivation in:
Correct. Mill grounds the ultimate sanction in human social feeling, our natural desire to be in unity with others, which education and social progress can strengthen.
Mill argues the deepest motive to be moral is not fear of punishment, religion, or an innate moral faculty. Ask what feature of human nature he appeals to in Chapter 3.
10 In Mill's terminology, internal sanctions refer to:
Correct. Internal sanctions are the feelings within us: conscience and the pain of violating duty. External sanctions come from others: the law, public opinion, or God.
Mill divides sanctions into external and internal. Ask which kind arises within the person's own mind.