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    Carmelics

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Utilitarianism as Mill conceives it requires protecting individuality and higher pleasures, generating rights-claims the harm principle alone cannot specify.

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    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.Rights-claims logically follow from harm prevention itself: protecting individuality prevents the harms of conformity and stagnation, so Mill needs no additional theoretical machinery.
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    • 2.Attributing a robust theory of positive rights to Mill overshoots his text; he grounds everything in utility and consequence, not independent rights-generating principles.
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    • 3.If higher pleasures require protection via rights, this introduces a non-utilitarian foundational commitment that actually undermines rather than completes utilitarian reasoning.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.Mill explicitly argues that intellectual and moral pleasures are qualitatively superior, requiring conditions only individual liberty and development can provide.
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    • 2.The harm principle alone permits suppressing individuality if majority preference maximizes overall utility, contradicting Mill's express commitment to protecting it.
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    • 3.Mill's distinction between higher and lower pleasures logically entails specific conditions for accessing them—education, autonomy, diversity—that constitute substantive rights beyond mere non-harm.
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