Digital SAT Reading and Writing Practice Question #297

Text 1 Utilitarianism, as articulated by John Stuart Mill, posits that the morality of an action is determined by its capacity to maximize overall happiness. Critics often argue that this framework reduces ethical decision-making to a mere calculus, potentially justifying the suffering of a minority if it yields a sufficiently large benefit to the majority. To Mill, however, higher-order pleasures—such as intellectual and moral development—carry vastly more weight than base, momentary pleasures. Mill argued that this qualitative distinction inherently protects individual rights, as true justice is a requisite for achieving the highest societal utility. Text 2 Modern act-utilitarians frequently discard Mill’s qualitative distinction between "higher" and "lower" pleasures, arguing that such categorizations are hopelessly subjective and culturally biased. Instead, they champion a strictly quantitative approach to utility, measuring happiness purely by intensity and duration. While this avoids the elitism inherent in Mill's philosophy, it reopens the door to the exact vulnerability Mill sought to close: the terrifying possibility that systemic injustice could be mathematically rationalized if the aggregate societal satisfaction is high enough. Based on the texts, how would the author of Text 2 most likely respond to Mill’s defense of utilitarianism in Text 1?