People do not focus on being poor for instance but it does not mean that being rich provides complete happiness. Mill says that ethical decisions should be based on pleasure. Therefore when he states that pleasure is the sole requirement for happiness, it is questionable because pain indirectly affects happiness. Pain is an indirect factor because it is not the object of ones happiness but it is an obstacle, which you have to overcome. If you were to avoid all pain, then how would you truly ever know what pleasure feels like? Real pleasure comes only after experiencing pain. If a person always wins the tic tac toe game then the pleasure they feel turns into an expectation. Thus it is not true pleasure. If the loser of the tic tac toe game after 20 years finally wins he can feel the desired pleasure that he was seeking. Another problem is one that deals with the justification of happiness. What is happiness for one person is not necessarily happiness for the other. If there were a basket of oranges given to a starving group of people, one person might be happy to have the orange because it is his favorite fruit and wont be starving now, but one person might be deathly allergic to oranges and so he will be left starving. The intentions of one person might be to pull the victim form a burning building only to shoot them outside. This proves that it is morally right even if the intentions were wrong. Intentions play a very important role when it concerns morality. There is no way to really know if the intentions of the person are moral. Another side to the problem has to deal with impure thoughts. An impure thought does not become a sin until someone else knows about it. No matter if the secret is told or kept to yourself it is still a sin. If all the people in the world thought you were right, still there is no way for you to be morally correct. Mill did not really justify the criteria for the rules of happiness. Bentham...
