FREE ESSAY ON JEREMY BENTHAM

JEREMY BENTHAM

Jeremy Bentham 
Over time, the actions of mankind have been the victim of two vague labels, right and
wrong. The criteria for these labels are not clearly defined, but they still seem to be
the standard by which the actions of man are judged. There are some people that abide by
a deontological view when it comes to judging the nature of actions; the deontological
view holds that it is a person's intention that makes an action right or wrong. On the
other hand there is the teleological view which holds that it is the result of an action
is what makes that act right or wrong. In this essay I will be dealing with
utilitarianism, a philosophical principle that holds a teleological view when it comes
the nature of actions. To solely discuss utilitarianism is much too broad of topic and
must be broken down, so I will discuss specifically quantitative utilitarianism as
presented by Jeremy Bentham. In this essay I will present the argument of Bentham
supporting his respective form of utilitarianism and I will give my critique of this
argument along the way. 
Before the main discussion of the Bentham's utilitarianism gets underway, lets first
establish what utilitarianism is. As stated in the introduction, utilitarianism is a
teleological philosophy that is primarily concerned with the results of an action when
determining the nature of that act. Utilitarianism operates primarily under the greater
happiness principal, in other words, utilitarians believe that one should only act in
such a way that the results of that act should produce the greatest amount of happiness
for the greatest for the greatest number of people. It is due to this view that
utilitarianism is often criticized for being too hedonistic because it places the moral
value of an act only on how much that act effects happiness. The teleological nature of
utilitarianism also can serve as a problem because it pays no attention to the intention
an action and can make acts of an immoral nature justifiably right. I will use the
example that a professor of mine used in which a man tries to snatch an old lady's purse
and in his struggle to do so he pulls her out of the way of a speeding vehicle thus
saving her life. This act, although it started with mischievous intent, ended with a life
being saved and surely produced the greatest amount of happiness for the old lady. In the
utilitarian eye this act is morally acceptable and right due to the fact that happiness
was produced. 
Jeremy Bentham was a utilitarian philosopher with his own version of this particular of
this teleological view called Quantitative Utilitarianism. Bentham's utilitarianism
argument starts by giving his principle of utility which judges all actions based on its
tendency to promote or diminish happiness of whoever is involved, be it a community or an
individual. According to Bentham, an action is right if, it increases happiness and
decreases suffering and is wrong it does not. Also included in his view of utilitarianism
is a way to calculate the general tendency of any act and its affect on a community. The
calculation is based on the seven circumstances of the act, which are: its intensity, its
duration, its certainty or uncertainty, its propinquity or remoteness, its fecundity
(tendency to be followed by sensations of like kind), its purity (tendency not to be
followed by sensations of unlike kind), and its extent (number of people affected). With
these circumstances in order, one can start to calculate the nature of the act and
according to Bentham after the completion of the process, one can make an accurate
assessment of the true nature of the act. Here is where my critique of Bentham's
Quantitative Utilitarianism comes into the picture. I will present Bentham's process in
his own words and then offer my observation as to where he went wrong. 
The community is a fictitious body composed of the individual persons who are considered
as constituting as it were members. The interest of the community then is, what?-the sum
of the interests of the several members who compose it…..To take an exact account
then of the general tendency of any act, by which the interests of a community are
affected, proceed as follows. Begin with any one person of those whose interests seem
most immediately to be affected by it: and take an account, 
1. Of the value of each distinguishable pleasure which appears to be produced by it in
the first interest. 
2. Of the value of each pain which appears to be produced by it in the first interests. 
3. Of the value of each pleasure which appears to be produced by it after the first. This
constitutes the fecundity of the first pleasure and the impurity of the first pain. 
4. Of the value of each pain which appears to be produced by it after the first. This
constitutes the fecundity of the first pain and the impurity of the first pleasure. 
5. 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 be on the side of pleasure, will give the good tendency
of the act upon the whole, with respect to the interests of that individual person; if on
the side of pain, the bad tendency of it upon the whole. 
6. Take an account of the number of persons whose interests are concerned and repeat the
process for each. Sum up the numbers expressive to the degrees of good tendency…do
this again in regard to whom the tendency is bad upon the whole. Take the balance, which,
if on the side of pleasure, will give the good general tendency; if on the side of pain,
the general evil tendency 
Maybe it is my mentality, but a number of things in the preceding passage were and still
remain unclear to me. The first thing that I will take up issue with is Bentham's
perspective about the interests of the community. The interest of the community is said
to be a sum of the total interests of its several members. It is never specified what how
exactly this total is acquired or even if the members of the community would agree on
whatever is considered the community's interest. If the members would agree then that
means that everyone in the community had the same interest to begin with. If the members
would not agree, then how can you go about adding up their conflicting interests? These
interests, when attempting to get a total seem like they would cancel each other out
which wouldn't make for much of sum total. Things of this nature (individual interests)
are so relative that it would be impossible as well as pointless to even try to place any
kind of concrete value, which brings up another point. What kind of value are these
individual and community interests supposed to have? In order to add things up they must
have some sort of value. Because of Bentham's failure to offer some sort of method for
combining individuals' interests and since he failed to offer some sort of concrete value
for these abstract things, his perspective on the interest of the community remains
unclear to me. 
The second issue that I am going to take up lies in Bentham's method of calculating the
general tendency of an act that affects a community's interest. For starters, the process
itself is too arduous. There are too many things that need to be done in order to come to
the final conclusion and on top of that, the process instructs you to repeat however many
times necessary. Secondly, the terms fecundity and purity seem like the same thing. I can
not see the difference between taking into account the chance of something being followed
by something else of same nature and taking into account the chance of something not
being followed by something of opposite nature. If I am trying to estimate the chances a
pleasurable sensation has of being followed by another pleasurable sensation, is that not
the same as trying to estimate the chances a pleasurable sensation has of not being
followed by a painful sensation. In both scenarios I am trying to see if the original
pleasurable sensation will be followed by another pleasurable sensation. Thirdly, the
problem of again rises about value. In the first case, the value for interests went
unspecified, now in this case it is the value of pleasure and plain. Throughout Bentham's
explaining of how to calculate how an act affects a community's interest, he once again
fails to give some kind of value for pleasure and pain. We are instructed to take every
pleasure and every pain into account and them sum up all the values in order to get a
balance, but there is no value. Bentham also repeats the mistake of treating abstract
concepts as concrete concepts. Just like individual interests, pleasure and pain are
relative. The ways that pleasure and pain affect people vary and what is pleasurable for
one person may not be pleasurable for another. Another problem with this method has to do
with the end product of the account process. Bentham says that after all of the values of
pleasure and pain are summed up, if the balance is on the side of pleasure the act as a
whole has a good tendency, as the same for pain. But what if there is no side that the
balance lay on? Hypothetically speaking, if there were a community of 200 people and
after all of the values of pleasure and pain were added up and the results were split
down the middle, what tendency would the act have? In order to even start to answer this
there would have to be some sort of value for the pleasure and pain. The values would
also have to differ in order to get a definite end result, certain pains and pleasures
would have to weigh more than others, but that's Qualitative Utilitarianism. As for
Bentham and Quantitative Utilitarianism this is all I have to say, it's all that I could
muster. 
In conclusion, Bentham's essay does read well. He is very precise in keeping his argument
consistent. If there were some kind of way to give things like pleasure and pain definite
values, then his quantitative method would be that which all other methods would go by.
But things of that nature vary too much and too often to even try to try.