Felicific calculus private be thy end:<br> If it be public, wide let them extend<br> Such pains avoid, whichever be thy view:<br> If pains must come, let them extend to few. The units of measurements used in the felicific calculus may be termed "hedons" and "dolors". They may be regarded as similar to the utilitarian posends and negends. Felicific calculus 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 cause. Bentham, an ethical hedonist, believed the moral rightness or wrongness of an action to
An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation intensity, its duration, its degree of certainty, its propinquity or remoteness, its fecundity (i.e., its tendency to produce further pleasures or pains), its purity (i.e., whether it is purely pleasurable or painful, or is mixed with its opposite), and its extent (i.e., the number of persons to whom it extends). An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation 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." Bentham's "most important theoretical work," it is where Bentham develops his