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
Jeremy Bentham experiments on animals, providing that the experiments had in mind a particular goal of benefit to humanity, and had a reasonable chance of achieving that goal. He wrote that otherwise he had a "decided and insuperable objection" to causing pain to animals, in part because of the harmful effects such practices might have on human beings. In a letter to the editor of the "Morning Chronicle" in March 1825, he wrote: Bentham said that it was the placing of women in a legally inferior position that made him choose, at the age of eleven, the career of a reformist. Bentham