Of the value of each distinguishable pleasure which appears to be produced by it in the first instance.Begin with any one person of those whose interests seem most immediately to be affected by it: and take an account,.extent: the number of persons to whom it extendsīentham's felicific calculus contained the following sequence of instructions on analysing an action: To these six, which consider the pleasures and pains within the life of a person, Bentham added a seventh element, in order to account for possible variations among the number of people involved:ħ. purity: the probability it has of not being followed by sensations of the opposite kind.fecundity: the probability it has of being followed by sensations of the same kind.Variables, or vectors of the pleasures and pains included in this calculation-which Bentham called " elements" or " dimensions"-were: Since classical utilitarians considered that the rightness of an action was a function of the goodness of its consequences, and that the goodness of a state of affairs was itself a function of the happiness it contained, the felicific calculus could, in principle at least, establish the moral status of any considered act. The calculus was proposed by Bentham as part of his project of making morals amenable to scientific treatment. It is also known as the " Utility calculus", the " Hedonistic calculus" and the " Hedonic calculus". The felicific calculus was an algorithm formulated by Jeremy Bentham for calculating the degree or amount of happiness that a specific action is likely to cause, and hence its degree of moral rightness.
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