Before the tellishment argument can be considered, one must ask what happiness is in the utilitarian sense. According to John Mill’s Utilitarianism, “There is no known Epicurean in the theory of …show more content…
One could try to say that because justice was not served, the decision did not fulfill the greatest happiness principle. However according to Mill it is not actual justice that needs to be served, but mere “moral sentiment” or the feeling that justice has been served, which according to this particular example, is the case (Mill, 82). Not to mention if justice can be equated with a right action, then utilitarianism should be able to say what that right action is; if it cannot, then it is not a valid moral theory. According to Vaughn, “[proponents of utilitarianism] say, that actions that seem to conflict with our moral intuitions almost always produce such bad consequences that the actions cannot be justified even on utilitarian grounds” (Vaughn, 79). If that is so, then why not stick with moral theories that are consistent with “our moral