felicific formal

The felicific calculus could, in principle at least, determine the moral status of any considered act.

America's felicific stagnation shouldn't be ignored, Bok argues, whatever the explanation.

He suggested a procedure called hedonic or felicific calculus, for determining how much pleasure and pain would result from any action.

Bentham even designed a comprehensive methodology for the calculation of aggregate happiness in society that a particular law produced, a felicific calculus.

He also suggested a procedure for estimating the moral status of any action, which he called the Hedonistic or felicific calculus.

The units of measurements used in the felicific calculus may be termed hedons and dolors.

For instance, some utilitarists prefer means that generate happiness in the near future; time distance is a parameter in the felicific calculus.

Bentham's utilitarianism is known for arguing that the felicific calculus should be used to determine the rightness and wrongness of acts.

He adopted Jeremy Bentham's felicific calculus to economic behavior, allowing the outcome of each decision to be converted into a change in utility.

Propinquity is also one of the factors, set out by Jeremy Bentham, used to measure the amount of (utilitarian) pleasure in a method known as felicific calculus.

In his exposition of the felicific calculus, Bentham proposed a classification of 12 pains and 14 pleasures, by which we might test the "happiness factor" of any action.

Utilitarianism substituted pleasure and pain for the attribution of natural rights in citizens and, through the felicific calculus, sought to place morals and politics on an empirical foundation.

Much criticism later showed how this could be twisted, for instance, would the felicific calculus allow a vastly happy dictator to outweigh the dredging misery of his exploited populus?

The felicific calculus is an algorithm formulated by utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham for calculating the degree or amount of pleasure that a specific action is likely to cause.

Thus granted institution of a rule against murder is in general felicific, we should abide by it even when individual calculation of the results of a particular murder might show it to be beneficent.

For rule utilitarianism, in contrast, once a rule is shown to be felicific, it is established as something to be obeyed, unless perhaps in very special cases, and is not to be considered merely as one factor to be weighed against others.

Indeed, the author's very choice of terms calls to mind the effort of Jeremy Bentham, some 200 years ago, to create a "felicific calculus" - a method of analysis that could be used in organizing society to yield the greatest happiness for the largest number of people, while reducing human suffering to some absolutely inescapable minimum.

Rules are, indeed, important for act utilitarianism, too, and not only as rules of thumb, but rather as felicific habits; still, the effects on people, s inclination to stick with generally felicific rules is simply a consequence of an individual act to be weighed along with all of its other consequences.