How did Jeremy Bentham’s hedonic calculus attempt to compare pleasure and pain?

Created from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles.

Jeremy Bentham’s "hedonic calculus" (or "felicific calculus") was an attempt to create a systematic, quantitative method for determining the morality of an action by measuring its impact on happiness. Bentham, a hedonist, believed that pleasure and pain were the only intrinsic values and disvalues, respectively.12

To compare these feelings, Bentham proposed that a moralist could sum up the units of pleasure and pain for everyone affected by an action, both immediately and in the future. The calculation required evaluating several factors:1
* Intensity: How strong the pleasure or pain is.3
* Duration: How long the feeling lasts.3
* Certainty: How likely the feeling is to occur.3
* Propinquity: How soon the feeling will be experienced.3
* Fecundity: The likelihood that the feeling will lead to further sensations of the same kind.3
* Purity: The likelihood that it will not be followed by the opposite sensation.3
* Extent: The number of people affected.3

By balancing these units, Bentham aimed to determine the "net surplus" of pleasure over pain, with the goal of promoting the "greatest happiness of the greatest number".23