The hedonic calculus (OCR A-Level Religious Studies): Revision Notes

The hedonic calculus

📎 Hedone: Greek for pleasure "Sum up all the values of all the pleasures on the one side and those of all the pains on the other. The balance, if it is on the side of pleasure, will give the good tendency of the act upon the whole." - Bentham

The Hedonic Calculus

The Hedonic Calculus is Bentham's attempt at creating a tool to give us empirical data about pleasure.

He devised 7 questions to help determine whether an action will produce the most pleasure or pain: Certainty: How guaranteed is it that the action will bring pleasure? Extent: How many people are likely to benefit from that pleasure? Duration: How long will the pleasure last? Fecundity: How likely that this action or pleasure will bring about more pleasures? Intensity: How deep is the pleasure, or, how much pleasure is there? Propinquity: How close (nearby) is the pleasure? Purity – Is the pleasure spoiled by any pain? How good is the pleasure?

The Sadistic Guard

An innocent man is wrongly imprisoned and three guards take pleasure out of torturing the man while he is in prison.

Whilst more pleasure has been produced, as opposed to pain, following the hedonic calculus, the act would not be seen as right or moral.

Strengths of the hedonic calculus

• It provides clear guidelines to help guide us in choosing the right actions
• It acknowledges the difference between short and long-term pleasure.
• It provides structure and guidance to humans, to help define pleasure and what should be guiding our decisions.

Weaknesses of the hedonic calculus

• Realistically, practically the hedonic calculus will have no significant impact when humans have to make decisions in the moment.
• Despite the hedonic calculus providing more guidance, it remains the fact as Kant highlights that we cannot predict the future and therefore any use of the hedonic calculus will be limited.
• The hedonic calculus fails to acknowledge that evil actions can be used to justify an act
• The hedonic calculus fails to acknowledge the impact of family ties and emotion on decision-making. For example: someone may choose to save a family member as opposed to three strangers despite that action causing more pain than pleasure.
• The hedonic calculus requires the measurement of pleasure, which is highly subjective. This makes measuring pleasure and the use of the hedonic calculus complicated and inaccurate.