Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
1789. An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation is a book by the English philosopher and legal theorist Jeremy Bentham "originally printed in 1780, and first published in 1789." [1] Bentham's "most important theoretical work," [2] it is where Bentham develops his theory of utilitarianism and is the first major book on the topic.
t. e. Jeremy Bentham (/ ˈbɛnθəm /; 4 February 1747/8 O.S. [15 February 1748 N.S.] – 6 June 1832) was an English philosopher, jurist, and social reformer regarded as the founder of modern utilitarianism. [1][2][3][4][5] Bentham defined as the "fundamental axiom " of his philosophy the principle that "it is the greatest happiness of the ...
Bentham's work opens with a statement of the principle of utility: [26] Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do. ... By the principle of utility is meant that principle which approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever according to ...
Hedonism. 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 ...
t. e. Act utilitarianism is a utilitarian theory of ethics that states that a person's act is morally right if and only if it produces the best possible results in that specific situation. Classical utilitarians, including Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and Henry Sidgwick, define happiness as pleasure and the absence of pain. [1]
The main forerunner of the utilitarian principles since the end of the 18th century was Jeremy Bentham, who believed that utility could be measured by some complex introspective examination and that it should guide the design of social policies and laws.
The term E-utility for "experience utility" has been coined [2] to refer to the types of "hedonistic" utility like that of Bentham's greatest happiness principle. Since morality affects decisions, a VNM-rational agent's morals will affect the definition of its own utility function (see above).
Initially, the term utility equated usefulness with the production of pleasure and avoidance of pain by moral philosophers, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. [5] In line with this philosophy, the concept of utility was defined as "the feelings of pleasure and pain" [6] and further as a "quantity of feeling". [7]