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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 ...
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Based on the idea that individual experiences of pleasure and pain can be quantified, Jeremy Bentham proposed the hedonistic calculus as a method to combine various episodes to arrive at their total contribution to happiness. This makes it possible to quantitatively compare different courses of action based on the experiences they produce to ...
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 ...
His seminal work is concerned with the principles of legislation and the hedonic calculus is introduced with the words "Pleasures then, and the avoidance of pains, are the ends that the legislator has in view." In Chapter VII, Bentham says: "The business of government is to promote the happiness of the society, by punishing and rewarding....
Bentham also suggested a procedure for estimating the moral status of any action, which he called the hedonistic or felicific calculus. Principle of utility. The principle of utility, or "greatest happiness principle", forms the cornerstone of all Bentham's thought. By "happiness", he understood a predominance of "pleasure" over "pain".
What to know about the addition.
"3. What is Good? Hedonistic vs. Pluralistic Consequentialisms". Consequentialism. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Crisp, Roger (2021). "Well-Being". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Theories of Well-Being, in William MacAskill & Richard Yetter-Chappell (2021), Introduction to Utilitarianism