As someone who is very mathematically oriented, the utilitarian concept of felicific calculus greatly intrigued me. As Webster defines, and we already established in class, felicific calculus is "a method of determining the rightness of an action by balancing the probable pleasures and pains that it would produce." Jeremy Bentham is credited with the original creation of felicific calculus, and Mill is credited with several modifications to the theory. Bentham and Mill define several variables for the calculation of an actions rightness. These variables are as follows:
Intensity, I, is a measure of how intense the pleasure or pain you will receive is.
Duration, D, is how long the pain/pleasure will continue.
Certainty, C, is the probability of pain/pleasure occurring.
Propinquity, N, is the time it will take for the pain/pleasure to happen.
Fecundity, F, is the probability of the pleasure causing more pleasure in the future.
Purity, P, is the probability of the pain causing more pain in the future.
Extent, E, is the number of people that you will affect.
In these calculations, D is in units of seconds while all other variables seem to be unitless values. To set up the equation, some assumptions must be made. There are three rules given for these assumptions:
1. Whether you like something or not is a personal decision.
2. Preference has a transitive property (ie, if you like lasagna more than ravioli and ravioli more than spaghetti, then you must also like lasagna more than spaghetti), similar to the transitive properties found in mathematics.
3. One will generally prefer more pleasure to less pleasure, but less pain to more pain.
With these variables and guidelines, one can set up a summation similar to the one above (and presumably integrate the function). While this isn't exactly the sort of calculus Newton or Leibniz would find enjoyable, I think it is an interesting mathematical take on making moral decisions.
Sources:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/felicific%20calculus
http://philosophy.lander.edu/ethics/calculus.html
Very neat; I didn't know they made an actual equation to calculate the utility to come from an action. Some critics of utilitarianism would say "There's no way to measure happiness mathematically," but lo and behold, here's a way. Then, they'd say it's inaccurate, and there would be some situations where this would give an incorrect answer, since there is some other variable that we forgot to consider. If there is such a situation, then all we need to do is put the unforeseen variable into the equation, and it now covers those specific situations. Then, they'd say it doesn't give perfect answers, but that's somewhat of a pointless critique if they don't have a better equation.
ReplyDeleteIt would be interesting to make a computer program that uses this or a similar equation to determine what the greatest possible happiness is in a certain situation. Of course, it would have to be a very advanced computer program, since it would have to simulate a material world for an action to take place in, and it would have to simulate parts of the human brain to determine the intensity of the pleasure, among other things. Difficult, but not impossible.
While this is an interesting concept I find it bothersome that there are unit-less variables. I understand why the variables are unit-less because how would you be able to define a unit for things like the intensity of pleasure. After having learned some background on Mills and Bentham I am not surprised in the least that they created and fine tuned an actual formula. The formula also works off of several assumptions about how the action will affect others. But that is the same with any moral decision and theory because we are not all mind readers.
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