Felicific calculus

In his method of hedonistic calculus, or the felicific calculus, happiness is measured in a two-step process. The first step is quantifying pleasure into seven categories: intensity, duration, certainty, propinquity, fecundity, purity, and extent. In other words, the resulting happiness of an action…

Picture this, that it is dinner time with your family and they all want pizza but you want chinese. As a result it would give more people a pleasure to be getting pizza even though it may give you displeasure. Simply because would produce the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people, therefore you get pizza for dinner. This is a simple application of Jeremy Bentham's the greatest happiness principle. Basically the greatest happiness principle is the idea that you should do actions…

Myrick believes that his experiments are morally praiseworthy due to the vast benefits that the world will attain if he is able to cure paralysis. With Bentham’s proposal of the Felicific Calculus, a numerical value is placed on every human being and the correct action can be determined though calculating the “net” happiness for the most amount of people. The justification of Dr. Myrick’s experiments are quite clear in the mind of the…

Jeremy Bentham (1749-1832) was an English political philosopher and legal reformer who founded the theory of utilitarianism in An Introduction of Principles and Moral Legislation in 1789. Utilitarianism is a teleological theory derived from the Greek term telos, meaning ‘end’ or ‘goal’ because it holds that the final consequence of an action determines its moral validity, regardless of whether the nature of that intention. Bentham began with his definition of human nature, proclaiming that…

Throughout human history, torture has been used to methodically obtain information by inflicting psychological or physical pain on an individual. The practice of torture has been prohibited under The United Nation’s Declaration of Human Rights, which has been sanctioned by 155 nations (The United Nations, 1984). Nevertheless, the United States has ratified the use of torture as recently as 2008. The Bush administration allowed the use of torture methods in interrogations of individuals connected…

Legalization of Medical Marijuana and the Doctrine of Utilitarianism Introduction Utilitarianism is one of the moral theories that is best known and influential. According to this theory, the moral worth of an action is mainly determined its contribution towards utility that enhances happiness and pleasure. It is mainly concerned with the pleasure that people get through the moral actions taken. The focus is on the greatest number of people. In the pursuit of this theory, then legalization of…

Essay Option 1: Vacation in Omelas It’s the beginning of the summer season in the beautiful land of Omelas. The citizens of Omelas are busy preparing for the much anticipated summer festival. Music was playing, people were dancing, and children played in the streets. Jeremy Bentham and Immanuel Kant stroll through the downtown village and overhear a discussion between some older children. The children have discovered the child being kept against it’s will in a basement is there to preserve the…

Sexuality: A Moral Issue Karl Rahner describes personhood as the, “condition of the possibility.” Personhood is something that is developed in each person as they become an adult and it is what makes each human unique. This personhood is what gives actions their human importance. So, it is personhood that gives each person the right to be themselves and to be unique. Recently, there has been a lot of commotion around the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Queer community (LGBTQ). The…

Nigel Warburton, the author of A Little History of the World, was born in 1962. Warburton attended the University of Bristol where he received his BA, along with a PhD from Darwin College, Cambridge. During Warburton’s career, he was a Lecturer in Philosophy at Nottingham University and a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the Open University. He regularly teaches courses about the Philosophy of Art at Tate Modern, and presents programs for BBC Radio 4. Warburton also runs a Philosophy weblog…

Introduction: The book “Would You Kill the Fat Man?” by David Edmonds, presents a philosophical discussion on the ethical dilemma called the trolley problem. The situation that is proposed is that a runaway train is headed towards a group of five people who are tied to the track. Unless the train is stopped, it will inevitably kill all five of the people. You are standing nearby and have the option to pull a lever to to redirect the train to a different route, which has one man tied to the track…