Work Classification Layer
Compare Works
Pick two or more works to set their attribute fingerprints, dimension-by-dimension passages, and shared school embodiments side by side. Especially useful for author-stage comparisons (Wittgenstein early vs late) and for setting a single tradition's foundational texts against each other.
Utilitarianism
Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness — and pleasures differ in kind, not only in quantity
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | Utilitarianism |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Non-Deterministic |
| Time · Traversability | Linear |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Uni-directional |
| Space · Extent | Infinite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Space · Curvature | Flat |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Local |
| Matter · Extent | Infinite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Matter · Conservation | Conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Single |
| Observer · Space Instance | Single |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Immediate |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Immediate |
| Observer · Physicality | Embodied |
| Observer · Agency | Active |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | None |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Constructed |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | Finite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Energy · Conservation | Conserved |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Irreversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Relational |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Personal Conservation | Non-conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Continuous |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
Utilitarianism
Mill's framework is post-Newtonian, broadly realist about temporal succession. The moral argument is temporally extended — happiness aggregates across lives and across generations — but Utilitarianism does not theorise time as such.
Space
Utilitarianism
Not engaged philosophically. Standard background.
Matter
Utilitarianism
Standard background; ethics happens to embodied human beings with real bodies that feel real pleasures and pains.
Observer
Utilitarianism
The utilitarian observer is the rational, embodied, pleasure-and-pain-bearing human being; plural, active, and able to deliberate about how to maximise the aggregate good. Moral authority is constructed: the principle of utility is the highest moral criterion, reached by reflection on what we actually pursue. Metaphysical agency is None (Mill is broadly agnostic).
Energy
Utilitarianism
Not engaged. Standard.
Information
Utilitarianism
Empirical moral knowledge — the felt experience of pleasure and pain — is the relational informational currency of utilitarian deliberation. Personal information is not conserved across death; Mill's "Three Essays on Religion" (posthumous 1874) treats immortality as a possible but unproven hope.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
Mill's distinction between higher and lower pleasures (chapter 2) has been criticised as inconsistent with the aggregative structure of utility — if pleasures can be ranked qualitatively, the calculus is not simply additive. The proof of the principle of utility in chapter 4 (the "happiness is desired, therefore desirable" argument) has been attacked as a naturalistic fallacy since G. E. Moore (1903). Modern preference utilitarians (Singer, Harsanyi) and rule utilitarians (Brandt, Hare) develop the position in directions Mill's text supports without compelling.