ow can you measure one person's happiness against another's? For instance, if a businessman was to buy a lake and convert it into a site for water-skiing, boating and the like, but the lake was already being used by the local fishing fraternity, who would obtain the greater happiness from the lake? Would the loss of the fisherman's enjoyment from the lake be offset by the enjoyment gained from the new users of the lake and the pleasure that the management would get if the venture were profitable? How does the pleasure derived from fishing compare to the pleasure derived from water-skiing, boating and profits, and how do these compare to other pleasures such as sex or eating. An attempt to create a system by which the value of different happinesses was measurable was constructed by both Mill and Bentham.
             Bentham (1748-1832) thought that the source of any happiness was irrelevant, that happiness was just a blissful mental state, pleasure with the absence of pain. Although it occurred in different intensities, they were all of the same kind, and therefore could be measurable, and given certain weightings. To do this Bentham devised a calculation system that measured pleasures on different merits such as intensity, longevity, ability to evoke other pleasures and so on. Bentham termed his system 'felicific calculus'. This was criticised as being a crude method that was a 'doctrine only worthy of swine', as it based its entire philosophy on the summation that life has no higher end than pleasure. Mill (1806-1873) attempted to rectify this criticism with a modification to Bentham's theory. Mill replied to this objection in his 1863 work, Utilitarianism.
             'the accusation supposes human beings to be capable of no pleasures except those of which swine are capable.'
             Mill seemed to think that there was a distinction between what he termed higher and lower pleasures, with the higher pleasur...