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According to dictionary.com, the definition of utilitarianism is, “the ethical doctrine that virtue is based on utility, and that conduct should be directed toward promoting the greatest happiness of the greatest number of persons.” John Stuart Mill follows this same belief; that everything is based towards promoting the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people.
Mill observes that many people misunderstand utilitarianism by interpreting utility as in opposition to pleasure. In reality, utility is defined as pleasure itself, and the absence of pain. Another name for utility is the Greatest Happiness Principle. This principle holds that "actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure." Pleasure and the absence of pain are, by this account, the only things desirable as ends in themselves, the only things inherently "good." Thus, any other circumstance, event, or experience is desirable only insofar as it is a source for such pleasure; actions are good when they lead to a higher level of general happiness, and bad when they decrease that level.

The most significant aspect of the reading, however, is Mill's discussion of the higher and lower pleasures. Over the years, utilitarianism's critics have often objected that it tries to compare things that are fundamentally changed, by artificially computing the amount of utility they bring. For example, by reducing the value of an experience or action to the utility, or pleasure, inherent in them, utilitarianism "cheapens" certain experiences: is it fair to compare riding a bike to writing an extensive persuasive paper, based on the pleasure each brings? Mill argues that utility is not simply a measurement of the psychological feeling of pleasure; rather, there are different qualities of pleasure, and...