The utilitarian ethic developed by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill has been one of the most influential approaches to ethics ever devised. In your discussion forum for this week you might want to think about just how this ethic prescribes individual conduct (e.g., should I keep my promise to help my friend study for his exam this weekend or skip out on him and spend the weekend at the beach with friends) and how it also prescribes more general social policies (e.g., should our society practice capital punishment or not). How does a utilitarian go about deciding such issues? What does this ethic presuppose about human motivation and goals? Is pleasure the most important goal for humans? What distinguishes the importance of different pleasures (just their "quantity" or does their "quality" also play an important role)?

So, think about these and whatever other issues you might find interesting, objectionable, or just puzzling and present your comments and/or questions to each other.