Bentham's Utilitarianism and the Felicific Calculus

Custom and authority. The fact that a rule is old, or that a great authority stated it, tells you nothing about whether it produces happiness. This is his answer to the prescriptive theory of chapter 360.

Moral sentiment as a standard. Any principle which says that an act is wrong because one feels it to be wrong makes each person's feeling the measure, which is what Bentham called the principle of sympathy and antipathy and rejected as no principle at all: it is despotism dressed as morality.

The felicific calculus

Bentham's proposal that the value of a pleasure or pain can be measured. The dimensions are set out in chapter IV and are the most examinable material in this chapter.

Considered by itself, the value of a pleasure or pain is greater or less according to four circumstances.

1. Intensity, how strong it is. 2. Duration, how long it lasts. 3. Certainty or uncertainty, how likely it is to occur. 4. Propinquity or remoteness, how soon it will occur.

When the value is considered for the purpose of estimating the tendency of an act, two more are added.

5. Fecundity, the chance it has of being followed by sensations of the same kind: pleasures if it is a pleasure, pains if it is a pain. 6. Purity, the chance it has of not being followed by sensations of the opposite kind.

Bentham himself says these last two are strictly scarcely to be deemed properties of the pleasure or the pain itself, which is a qualification students almost always omit and which shows him to be a more careful writer than his reputation suggests.

And where a number of persons are concerned, a seventh.

7. Extent, the number of persons affected.

How the calculation runs. For each person affected, sum the values of all the pleasures on one side and all the pains on the other; take the balance; then repeat for every person and add the balances. If the total is on the side of pleasure, the act is good in its tendency for that community; if on the side of pain, bad.

What the calculus is for

An answer that treats the calculus as an absurdity has missed the point, and Bentham was aware of the difficulty.

It is a standard, not a procedure to be gone through before every act. Bentham says the process is not to be strictly pursued before every moral judgment, and that it may be kept in view as a standard by which the accuracy of any such judgment may be tested.

Its real target is legislation. A legislator deciding between two rules, each of which will affect a very large number of people, needs some way of comparing them, and the alternative to a calculus is custom, prejudice or the interest of whoever is drafting.

It made suffering visible. Because extent counts and each counts for one, the calculus forces a legislator to count the pain of the poor, the imprisoned, the transported and the enslaved, and that is what Bentham's followers used it for.

The criticisms of Bentham specifically

Pleasures cannot be measured, still less compared between people. There is no unit of pleasure and no way of establishing that one person's satisfaction is greater than another's.

Quality is ignored. Bentham treats all pleasures as differing only in quantity, which produces the notorious implication that a simple amusement is as good as poetry if it yields the same quantity. This is exactly the objection Mill answers at chapter 650.

Psychological hedonism is false as psychology. People act from duty, habit, love, spite and principle, often against their own pleasure.

The move from is to ought is unearned, as above.

It has no place for rights or for distribution. Because only the total is counted, a distribution that concentrates misery on a minority passes if the total is large enough. This is chapter 660's central objection.

It is a doctrine of a calculating individual, and its picture of human beings as adding machines was resisted from the start, notably by Carlyle who called it a pig philosophy, and by Dickens, whose Gradgrind is a portrait of it.

Bentham's achievement

The reform programme. Almost everything Bentham argued for was eventually done: the codification of law, the abolition of archaic offences and procedures, penal reform, the reform of evidence, the extension of the franchise, and the removal of legal disabilities.

A method. The demand that every institution justify itself by its effects on the people it affects is now how policy is argued everywhere, and cost benefit analysis is his invention in a modern form.

And a warning that is also his. Because he made the test entirely aggregative, he supplied the tool with which majorities can be shown to be entitled to override minorities, and the answer to that had to come from elsewhere.

A worked example

A State is deciding whether to permit a chemical plant near a small town. Two hundred thousand people in the region will gain employment and cheaper goods. Four thousand people living beside the plant will suffer a measurable increase in respiratory illness.

Apply the seven dimensions to the four thousand. Intensity: illness is severe. Duration: chronic, lasting decades. Certainty: high, if the epidemiology is sound. Propinquity: immediate. Fecundity: illness produces further pains, loss of work and of income. Purity: it produces no compensating pleasures. Extent: four thousand.

Apply them to the two hundred thousand. Intensity: employment and cheaper goods, moderate. Duration: long. Certainty: moderate, since employment depends on the plant continuing. Propinquity: some delay. Fecundity: income produces further goods. Purity: high. Extent: two hundred thousand.

The result. On a straightforward aggregation the plant is approved, and the four thousand's chronic illness is outweighed by a moderate benefit spread over fifty times as many people.

What the exercise shows. First, that the calculus is genuinely useful: it forced the decision maker to count the illness, to ask about duration and certainty, and to notice fecundity, which a political process would not have done. Second, that it contains no point at which the answer becomes no. Increase the number of beneficiaries and any burden on the four thousand is justified.

The two replies inside utilitarianism. The rule utilitarian says a rule requiring emission standards and compensation produces more happiness over many such decisions than case by case calculation. And a utilitarian may point out that a rupee, or an hour of relief, is worth more to somebody who has little of it, which gives the doctrine a distributive tendency without giving it a distributive principle.

Distinctions that carry marks

What Bentham is NOT

He is not saying morality is whatever feels nice. The principle is impartial and aggregative and constantly requires a person to sacrifice their own pleasure.

The calculus is not to be performed before every act. Bentham says so expressly; it is a standard against which judgments can be tested.

He is not indifferent to the poor. The reverse: extent and equal counting are what make the poor visible in the calculation, and his followers used it accordingly.

"Nonsense upon stilts" is about natural rights, not about rights. Bentham thought rights created by law were real and valuable; what he denied was rights existing before any law.

Quick revision

1. The opening: nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure, which alone point out what we ought to do and determine what we shall do.
2. Two claims in it: psychological hedonism, that people are moved by pleasure and pain, and ethical hedonism, that these are the standard of right and wrong. The second does not follow from the first.
3. What he rejected: natural rights (nonsense upon stilts), the social contract (a fiction), custom and authority, and moral sentiment as a standard, which he called the principle of sympathy and antipathy.
4. The calculus, four dimensions of the pleasure itself: intensity, duration, certainty, propinquity. Two of the act: fecundity, purity. One of the community: extent.
5. Bentham himself notes that fecundity and purity are scarcely properties of the pleasure itself.
6. The calculus is a standard, not a procedure, and its real target is legislation.
7. Criticisms: pleasures cannot be measured or compared between persons; quality is ignored; psychological hedonism is false; the is to ought move is unearned; there is no place for rights or distribution; and it pictures human beings as calculating machines.

Test yourself

1. Quote and analyse Bentham's opening proposition. That nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure, which alone point out what we ought to do as well as determining what we shall do, the standard of right and wrong and the chain of causes and effects both being fastened to their throne. It contains two distinct claims: a psychological one, that people are as a matter of fact moved by pleasure and pain, and a moral one, that pleasure and pain are the standard of right and wrong. The standard objection is that the second does not follow from the first, since the fact that people are moved by something does not establish that it is what they ought to pursue.

2. Set out the felicific calculus. Considered by itself, a pleasure or pain has four dimensions: intensity, duration, certainty or uncertainty, and propinquity or remoteness. When the value is considered in order to estimate the tendency of the act producing it, two more are added: fecundity, the chance of being followed by sensations of the same kind, and purity, the chance of not being followed by sensations of the opposite kind. Where a number of persons is concerned there is a seventh, extent, the number affected. The values are summed for each person, the balance taken, and the balances added across everybody affected.

3. What did Bentham reject, and why? Natural rights, which he called nonsense, and imprescriptible natural rights nonsense upon stilts, on the ground that a right is the creature of law and that asserting one before any law confers it mistakes what one wants for what exists. The social contract, as a fiction, the state resting in fact on the habit of obedience. Custom and authority, since the age of a rule or the eminence of its author says nothing about whether it produces happiness. And moral sentiment as a standard, which he called the principle of sympathy and antipathy, because it makes each person's feeling the measure and is therefore no principle at all.

4. Is the calculus absurd? Give the argument on both sides. Against it: there is no unit of pleasure, no way of comparing satisfaction between persons, and the exercise cannot be performed with the precision the language suggests. For it: Bentham says expressly that it is not to be strictly pursued before every judgment but kept in view as a standard by which the accuracy of a judgment may be tested; its real target is legislation, where a legislator comparing rules affecting very large numbers needs some method and the alternative is custom, prejudice or the interest of the drafter; and because extent counts and each counts for one, it forces the suffering of the poor and the imprisoned into the reckoning, which is what his followers used it for.

5. What is Bentham's principal weakness as a political doctrine? That it is purely aggregative. Because only the total is counted and gains to some offset losses to others, a distribution that concentrates severe suffering on a minority passes the test whenever the number of beneficiaries is large enough, and there is no point at which the doctrine returns the answer no. It therefore supplies the tool by which majorities can be shown entitled to override minorities, and the correction had to come from outside it, from rights, from Mill's addition of quality and liberty, and from rule utilitarianism.