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The felicific calculus is an algorithm formulated by utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) for calculating the degree or amount of pleasure that a specific action is likely to induce. Bentham, an ethical hedonist , believed the moral rightness or wrongness of an action to be a function of the amount of pleasure or pain that it ...
In the 1780s, for example, Bentham maintained a correspondence with the ageing Adam Smith, in an unsuccessful attempt to convince Smith that interest rates should be allowed to freely float. [48] As a result of his correspondence with Mirabeau and other leaders of the French Revolution , Bentham was declared an honorary citizen of France. [ 1 ]
Hedonism is subdivided into egoistic hedonism, which only takes the agent's own well-being into account, and universal hedonism or utilitarianism, which is concerned with everyone's well-being. [46] [43] Intuitionism holds that we have intuitive, i.e. non-inferential, knowledge of moral principles, which are self-evident to the knower. [46]
Another example is the felicific calculus formulated by utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham for calculating the degree or amount of pleasure that a specific action is likely to cause. [2] Bentham, an ethical hedonist, believed the moral rightness or wrongness of an action to be a function of the amount of pleasure or pain that it produced ...
Impulsive criminals, a category which included alcoholics and the insane, were to be imprisoned. Professional criminals were psychologically normal individuals who utilize the hedonistic calculus before committing their crimes, and thus require "elimination," either by life imprisonment or transportation to a penal colony overseas.
The Introduction also contains Bentham's famous discussion of the "felicific (or hedonic) calculus"—his proposed method for determining which future course of action would produce the greatest net amount of pleasure over pain. According to Bentham, seven factors should be considered in weighing the value of a pleasure or pain: its intensity ...
The idea of a rational agent is important to the philosophy of utilitarianism, as detailed by philosopher Jeremy Bentham's theory of the felicific calculus, also known as the hedonistic calculus. The action a rational agent takes depends on: the preferences of the agent; the agent's information of its environment, which may come from past ...
Influential schools of virtue ethics in ancient philosophy were Aristotelianism and Stoicism. According to Aristotle (384–322 BCE), each virtue [e] is a golden mean between two types of vices: excess and deficiency. For example, courage is a virtue that lies between the deficient state of cowardice and the excessive state of recklessness.