The Legend of Jeremy Bentham

If you are a frequent visitor to theDIHEDRAL, you may have noticed a new link at the top of this page. Bentham Bot!

Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) was an English philosopher who argued something refreshingly simple: the right choice is whichever one produces the most happiness and the least suffering. He called it utilitarianism, and in 1789 he went one further, he tried to actually measure it.

He called this measuring device the felicific calculus. It’s basically a formula for weighing pleasure and pain across seven factors: intensity, duration, certainty, propinquity, fecundity, purity, and extent. Bentham was looking for a number to help decide whether a thing was worth doing.

I know this sounds ridiculous, but Bentham was actually a really bright guy!¹

Young Jeremy Bentham was writing legal treatises as a teenager and started attending Oxford at twelve years old. He was an intellectual who exhibited no fear in taking on an entire legal and moral system that everyone else considered untouchable. He’s known as the father of utilitarianism (increase happiness and reduce suffering). Most philosophers were content to argue about that in the abstract. Bentham wanted to quantify the process based on the following factors.

• Intensity — how strong the pleasure or pain is.
• Duration — how long that feeling lasts.
• Certainty — how likely it actually happens.
• Propinquity — how soon it happens.
• Fecundity — whether it leads to more of the same feeling afterward.
• Purity — whether it comes with a downside or nit.
• Extent — how many people it affects, not just you.

With that, I always thought that an app allowing users to calculate possible decisions according to Bentham’s felicific calculus would be useful, fun, and a little bit educational. And so I present the Bentham Bot!

Seven sliders, one verdict, built on a peculiar philosopher’s actual formula. Now you’ve got someone (something?) to blame if things don’t turn out well!

If you are as indecisive as me, this tool can be a life saver, hopefully not in the literal sense, but you never know?

You aren’t sure if you want to go on that road trip? Bentham Bot!

You can’t decide if you want Tacos or Pizza? Bentham Bot!

You are thinking about reading Jeremy Bentham’s Fragment of Government? Bentham Bot!

Basically anything you need help deciding and Bentham Bot has you covered! Think of it like a magic 8-Ball with math instead of magic, and Bot instead of Ball!

I hope you’ll have some fun poking around with the Bentham Bot, you can click here, or just click the tab above!

And if you aren’t sure that you want to poke around with Bentham Bot? Bentham Bot!

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1. He believed animals could suffer and deserved moral consideration this was two centuries before the idea was trending on Social Media. He designed a prison, the Panopticon, that never got built, because apparently “under total surveillance at all times” wasn’t gonna be the vibe. He left instructions in his will for his skeleton to be dressed in his own clothes and put on permanent display, kind of cooky, but it happened! To this day, Bentham’s actual preserved body, dressed head to toe, sits in a glass case at University College London, reportedly it’s still wheeled into the occasional faculty meeting, present but not voting.