On the third chapter of John Stuart Mill’s “Utilitarianism”, he explores the built-in sanctions, external and internal, that are faced when not following the philosophical ideas provided by utilitarianism. External sanctions manifest in the form of peer pressure or divine pressure to act a certain way and internal sanctions originate within human’s own conscience. Internal sanctions can be said to be feelings that come as a result of violating duty and influence our own actions. These feelings are powerful and provide the strongest influence. Mill states that people will follow moral principles if those are presented as objective facts and not as subjective feelings, but also argues that a person’s motivation to act a certain way is due to subjective feelings. One of the issues presented by Mill is whether sentiments to act morally are “innate or implanted” in a person’s consciousness. His opinion is that although those sentiments from good morals are not part of human nature they can be cultivated, the same can be said for bad morals. He later on goes on to point out that utilitarianism stems from general happiness due to the aforementioned natural sentiments. Happiness has its roots at…show more content… Internal sanctions are much more delicate since a child that is nurtured to think human suffering is okay will grow up and live its life accepting that as a fact. It can be a double edged sword scenario where the reader can agree with Mill that society should focus on educating individuals to internalize good morals that will cause one to question its own actions through natural sentiments. If society as a whole acts morally, it will bring about a snowball effect where external sanctions such as fear of not been accepted will cause others to follow good moral
