Utilitarianism may be viewed as an instance of a more general theory of right consequentialism, which holds that right and wrong can only be assessed by the goodness of consequences. This general kind of theory can perhaps be most easily understood by considering the form of consequentialism. Consequentialism is that an act is right if, of those available to the agent at the time, it would produce the greatest overall net value in the end. Utilitarian views are based around the concept of attaining happiness and Mill maintains hedonism; happiness or pleasure is the only intrinsic good for persons. Mill believes, that a hedonist should, maintain that pleasures involving cultivated intellectual, emotional, and imaginative faculties are intrinsically better. In Mill's utilitarian theory, he holds that there are qualitative pleasures as well as quantitative. Mill made a distinction between qualities of pleasure. Pleasures are not different with respect simply to their quantity, their intensity and duration, but also with respect to which is more satisfying. Some pleasures are better than others. For example, intellectual and emotional pleasures are better than purely physical ones, which he thought of as the pleasures of pigs, not human beings. He attempted not to make this a way to sneak in elitist values under the cover of hedonism. He argued that the test of whether one pleasure was better than another was to let people experience both in and informed way and see which they preferred.
Mill's theory of utilitarianism can be disputed in many ways by many different people, all to which Mill refutes in his own essay Utilitarianism. One such objection to Mill's belief in the human's need for pleasure, in which some believe that this emphasis on pleasure is likened to that of a swine. This argument against the pleasure principle is that humans would be on the same level of a swine, that is pigs only care about pleasure also.