Jeremy Bentham to the fundamental concepts employed in his model of utilitarian decision making. His work is considered to be an early precursor of modern welfare economics. Bentham stated that pleasures and pains can be ranked according to their value or "dimension" such as intensity, duration, certainty of a pleasure or a pain. He was concerned with maxima and minima of pleasures and pains; and they set a precedent for the future employment of the maximisation principle in the economics of the consumer, the firm and the search for an optimum in welfare economics. Bentham advocated "Pauper Management" which involved the creation
The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life is the measure of the various goods and ills which men recognize, so that the philosopher may settle the true order of human obligations." As James sees it, the psychological question is whether human ideas of good and evil arise from "the association of [certain ideals] with act of simple bodily pleasures and reliefs from pain." He believes that some elements of our moral sentiment do have such a source, and that Jeremy Bentham and his followers have done the world a lasting service by pointing that out. But he doesn't believe that association and pleasure/pain calculus are adequate to