Bentham's 7 Dimensions

Imagine someone in your family has made a delicious cake. It’s your favourite flavour and you
have the impulse to eat the whole thing in secret without allowing anyone else a slice.
Apply Bentham’s utility principle with the 7 dimensions outlined on the previous slide to this
scenario. What action should you take?

• Intensity: How strong is the pleasure?

I like chocolate cake a lot!

• Duration: How long will the pleasure last?

It might take me about half an hour to eat the cake and each mouthful will be delicious.

• Certainty or uncertainty: How likely is it the looked for pleasure will occur?
Very likely because I know I really love this flavour.

• Propinquity (remoteness): How soon will the pleasure occur?

As soon as I lift a slice to my lips.

• Fecundity: The probability that the pleasure will be followed by sensations of the same
kind.
If I eat the whole cake at once then there won't be any left. It could be months before I
have such a cake available to me again.

• Purity: The probability that the pleasure will not be followed by sensations of the
opposite kind.
I have never eaten a whole cake in one sitting. There is a chance I will feel sick.
• Extent: How many people will be affected?

My whole family will be really disappointed because they were also looking forward to
eating it. If they realise it was me who ate it (as they probably will) then they will make
my life unpleasant for at least a week.

Conclusion: Even though I really like chocolate cake, if I only have one slice of cake now then
I can make the pleasure of eating it more fecund, because I will be able to have another slice
tomorrow. It also means I avoid the risk of being sick (uncertainty and purity dimension) and
being censured by my family (extent dimension).