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Topic: Felicific calculus

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	Felicific calculus - Encyclopedia, History, Geography and Biography
		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.
		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.
		Some critics argue that the happiness of different people is incommensurable, and thus a felicific calculus is impossible in practice.
	www.arikah.net /encyclopedia/Felicific_calculus (974 words)

	Felicific calculus
		The felicific calculus was a hypothetical method for calculating the degree or amount of happiness that a specific action is likely to cause.
		Felicific calculus was introduced by Jeremy Bentham, a Utilitarian, in order to introduce a scientific method for calculating happiness, as happiness is the determining factor of the morality of an action for Utilitarians.
		Critics claim the felicific calculus fails as a moral theory because there is no principle of fairness.
	www.ebroadcast.com.au /lookup/encyclopedia/fe/Felicific_calculus.html (177 words)

	calculus
		Fundamental to calculus are derivatives, integrals, and limitss.
		Differential calculus is concerned with finding the instantaneous rate of change (or derivative) of a function's value, with respect to changes within the function's arguments.
		Calculus has been extended to differential equations, vector calculus, calculus of variations, time scale calculus and differential topology.
	www.fact-library.com /calculus.html (966 words)

	Felicific calculus - Encyclopedia Glossary Meaning Explanation Felicific calculus (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-20)
		An example of the felicific calculus in action is as follows.
		This is sometimes known as the 'good innings' argument, according to which the older you are the less claim you have to life.
		Critics point that the happiness of different people is incommensurable, and thus a felicific calculus is impossible in practice.
	www.encyclopedia-glossary.com /en/Felicific-calculus.html (1010 words)

	Utilitarianism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-20)
		From the principle of utility, he found pain and pleasure to be the only absolutes in the world: "nature has put man under the governance of two sovereign masters: pleasure and pain." From this he derived the rule of utility: that the good is whatever brings the greatest happiness to the greatest number of people.
		Many of the early utilitarians hoped that happiness could somehow be measured quantitatively and compared between people through felicific calculus, although no one has ever managed to construct a detailed one in practice.
		It has been argued that the happiness of different people is incommensurable, and thus felicific calculus is impossible, not only in practice, but even in principle.
	www.sevenhills.us /project/wikipedia/index.php/Utilitarianism (2050 words)

	Calculus - Books, journals, articles @ The Questia Online Library
		Calculus Ratiocinator: An Ultimate Presupposition...communication; the second view, of language as calculus ratiocinator, is not meant to indicate...
		The felicific calculus of modern medicine: the survival of...problems with this medical felicific calculus, but these have not been regarded as...found to be desirable.) For any such calculus to work, it is clear that commensurable...
		CALCULUS OF VARIATIONS branch of mathematics concerned with...only on the variables themselves, as in the ordinary calculus, but also on an additional arbitrary relation, or constraint...that can be treated by the methods of the variational calculus; the solution to this special case is the circle.
	www.questia.com /search/Calculus (1450 words)

	Designing a Moral Personality
		Flowchart 1 shows the general framework for the utility (felicific) calculus (version 1).
		II) The structure of this calculus does not make explicit such premises as (1) that the morality of an action stems from its consequences and not from our intentions and, (2) that social utility is equal to the sum of the individual utilities of persons involved.
		That is, we would be well served if we could better answer questions about whether to count each prick of the pin as an individual instance of a painfull action (1-10 on the scale), or the incident involving a million pin pricks as one instance (likewise 1-10 on the scale).
	www.mind.ilstu.edu /misc/morality/zydek/design.html (1112 words)

	::: husdal.com ::: Transportation Vulnerability - Philosophy of Science (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-20)
		The underlying principle of his felicific calculus is still applied in modern-day cost-benefit analysis, but has also found its way into politics and economics.
		The felicific calculus was sketched by Bentham in chapter 4 of his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, see Burns et al.
		Bentham's felicific calculus was said to be impossible in practice, because the (different) happiness of different people was incommensurable and could not added together into a single value.
	www.husdal.com /gis/philosophy.htm (5924 words)

	Utilitarianism - Wikipedia
		Utilitarianism suffers from a number of problems, one of which is the difficulty of comparing happiness between different people.
		Many of the early utilitarians believed that happiness could somehow be measured quantitively and compared between people, through a felicific calculus, although no one has ever managed to construct one in practice.
		It has been argued that the happiness of different people is incommensurable, and thus a felicific calculus is impossible.
	nostalgia.wikipedia.org /wiki/Utilitarianism (522 words)

	Felicific calculus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-20)
		It is also known as the "Utility Calculus", the "Hedonistic Calculus" and the "Hedonic Calculus".
		The man would then experience pain (pleasure calculus).
		Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, London, 1789, chap.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Felicific_calculus (960 words)

	calculus history - Books, journals, articles @ The Questia Online Library
		The family, after leaving Antwerp...developers both of the ordinary calculus and of the calculus of variations, he was the first...of integral and exponential calculus and was also a founder of the...
		is dominated by the development of the methods of the calculus and their application to such problems, both terrestrial and celestial...
		is largely the history of the individual branches...Physics In mathematics the calculus invented by Newton and G. W...priority in the invention of the calculus.
	www.questia.com /search/calculus-history (1570 words)

	Artificial Intelligence and Consequentialism
		An important development Bentham made was the felicific calculus (also referred to as the hedonic calculus).
		Making a moral decision based on the what amount pleasure or pain a certain action will cause to a certain amount of people is referred to specifically as act utilitarianism.
		This form of utilitarianism uses pre-established rules of morality which are known to cause the greatest amount of good for the greatest amount of people when making ethical decisions.
	www.mind.ilstu.edu /misc/morality/zydek/consequence.html (517 words)

	utilitarian calculus (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-20)
		This has sometimes been called the "utilitarian calculus." An act would be moral if it brings the...
		Bentham envisaged the calculus could be used for criminal law...
		The term calculus' must not be taken literally, since it...
	learning-gd.com /articles/309/utilitarian-calculus.html (271 words)

	Calculus WIZ: Wolfram Research's Calculus Tutor
		The Calculus WIZ solvers let you plug in actual homework computations, allowing you to double-check your work and avoid the drudgery of complex computations.
		Calculus WIZ tutorials let you find exactly what you're looking for when you need a little extra help on any given topic.
		Calculus WIZ brings mathematics to life with three-dimensional graphics and charts that help you to better understand the problems you are solving.
	www.wolfram.com /wiz (305 words)

	Felicific calculus (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-20)
		Bentham's felicific calculus contained the following sequence of instructions:
		If the doctor attend him first in all probability his wife and child would be dead.
		This is sometimes knwon as the 'good innings' argument, according to this line of argument, the older you are the less claim you have to life.
	1-free-software.com /en/wikipedia/f/fe/felicific_calculus.html (932 words)

	Ah Huat's Home Page: Love - What is Happiness?
		Bentham upheld a psychological hedonism in which pleasure is the goal of all purposive behaviour.
		He attempted to work out a "felicific calculus" in which the value of a given unit of pleasure (or pain) could be calculated by judging it for qualities like intensity, duration, certainty or uncertainty, propinquity or remoteness, fecundity, purity, and the extent of number of persons affected.
		Bentham believed that such a "felicific calculus" would be practically useful in assessing rational scales of punishment (too little pain would not deter; too much would unnecessarily detract from utility).
	www.geocities.com /Tokyo/4968/love/article/article015.html (841 words)

	E~CRC Student Discuss (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-20)
		To judge the right action, Bentham needed a means of measuring pleasure and pain, this he call ‘felicific calculus’.
		Bentham introduced some sophistication into the scheme by weighting both more heavily if the pain and pleasure are more intense, longer in duration, more certain to occur, will happen sooner or will lead to other pleasures.
		Mill’s view of pleasure rejected ‘felicity calculus’, pleasure could not be measured if not all pleasures were equal.
	www.camre.ac.uk /discus/messages/26/135.html?1098614822 (2447 words)

	Felicific Calculus Encyclopedia Article, Definition, History, Biography (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-20)
		Looking For felicific calculus - Find felicific calculus and more at Lycos Search.
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	www.karr.net /encyclopedia/Felicific_calculus (1128 words)

	the hedonic calculus
		hedone pleasure) a method of working out the sum total of pleasure and pain produced by an act, and thus the total value of its consequences; also called the felicific calculus; sketched by Bentham in chapter 4 of his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation 1789.
		When determining what action is right in a given situation, we should consider the pleasures and pains resulting from it, in respect of their
		Bentham envisaged the calculus could be used for criminal law reform: given a crime of a certain kind it would be possible to work out the minimum penalty necessary for its prevention."
	faculty.mc3.edu /gpasquar/PHI_100/Publish/HC.htm (157 words)

	Science Wow: The hedonic calculus
		www.sciencewow.com Science Wow 12: "The hedonic calculus a method of working out the sum total of pleasure and pain produced by an act, and thus the total value of its consequences.
		value of its consequences; also called the felicific calculus; sketched by Bentham in chapter 4 of his...
		Bentham envisaged the calculus could be used for criminal law reform"
	sciencewow.blogspot.com /2004/12/hedonic-calculus.html (71 words)

	Utilitarianism
		The "felicific calculus" (the calculus of felicity) is used as a synonym for hedonic calculus although it has potential to denote a more complex notion of happiness.
		The same calculus applies to all denominations of pleasure and pain (common denominations being welfare and discomfort).
		The hedonic calculus is always based on the idea of usefulness and one's own interest.
	www.uri.edu /personal/szunjic/philos/util.htm (5246 words)

	Jeremy Bentham, "Happiness Is the Greatest Good"
		Abstract: Bentham supports the principle of utility with the hedonistic or felicific calculus: a method or calculating the right thing to do by means of a quantitative scale.
		Explain whether you think the use of the hedonistic calculus for the individual and for society is feasible.
		Bentham attempts to quantify pleasures in the hedonistic calculus.
	philosophy.lander.edu /ethics/notes-bentham.html (553 words)

	Term Paper on Comparison between Utilitarianism and Idealism
		Then, felicific calculus should be used by the population.
		The scale from the felicific calculus should be adjusted as time goes on so that it evolves well with the new technological, economical and historical facts.
		But this is only an utopic idea because nobody would be able to create and maintain a "fair" felicific calculus scale since nobody can totally get to the basic principles of morality.
	www.swiftpapers.com /essay/Comparison_between_Utilitarian-160690.html (198 words)

	[No title]
		To do this people should conduct a ‘felicific calculus’: in other words they should weigh up the costs and benefits of their actions.
		This is simply a means of weighing up whether or not to go ahead with public projects: projects such as a new motorway, a hospital or the Channel tunnel.
		Such cost-benefit analyses can be seen as a modern form of ‘felicific calculus’.
	wps.prenhall.com /wps/media/objects/63/65090/Case01b.doc (590 words)

	Notes from the Lounge: Counting the Ick Factor
		Matt makes the case that utilitarians have to count other regarding preferences, such as the squeamishness of some heteros about open discussion of homosexuality, in assessing public policy.
		In fact, there's a sort of perverse incentive to overstate one's own level of revulsion and to attempt to persuade others to share it, so as to get more "points" in the felicific calculus.
		To the extent that it's coherent to do a second-order utilitarian evaluation of which preference sets are desirable (it is if you're a hedonistic utilitarian; it probably isn't if you're a preference-satisfaction utilitarian, and I don't know where Matt falls) then it seems pretty clear that, for instance, sadistic preferences are suboptimal.
	www.juliansanchez.com /notes/archives/2003/11/counting_the_ic.php (471 words)

	felicific calculus
		Using the calculus, one can attempt to work out the likely consequences of an action in terms of the pain or pleasure of those affected by the action.
		The calculus is attributed to English utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham.
		Helicon Publishing is a division of Research Machines plc.
	www.x-stream.co.uk /reference/encyclopaedia/hutchinson/m0023829.html (125 words)

	UCL: Bentham Project, Journal of Bentham Studies
		With Bentham’s felicific calculus, however, rank orderings are meaningless in the absence of interested persons with their respective intensity weights.
		The felicific calculus reveals, for Ben, a significant net pleasure advantage of Act A over Act M (9 net pleasure units to 6.8).
		Bentham’s procedure relates validly the amount of potential hedonic pleasure from a choice under consideration to the amount of realized hedonic pleasure once the choice is taken only if expectations are accurately represented by an objective probability distribution that is known to the agent.
	www.ucl.ac.uk /Bentham-Project/journal/nlwarke.htm (6168 words)

	Just don't call it paternalism
		In his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789), Jeremy Bentham describes his "felicific calculus"â”an algorithm for working out the amount of happiness likely to be caused by a given action.
		So the felicific calculusâ”including such variables as intensity, duration, certainty, propinquity, fecundity and purityâ”provided people with a scientific method for determining how to behave morally.
		This approach to an aspect of human existence as apparently intangible as happiness seems anachronistic, a curious artefact of late-Enlightenment optimism.
	www.prospect-magazine.co.uk /printarticle.php?id=6814&category=155&issue=503&author=&AuthKey=b707a407daa745d3de7ead85ff140d66 (1137 words)

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