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?

• Duration: How long will the pleasure last?

• Certainty or uncertainty: How likely is it the looked for pleasure will occur?

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

• Fecundity: The probability that the pleasure will be followed by sensations of the same
kind.

• Purity: The probability that the pleasure will not be followed by sensations of the
opposite kind.

• Extent: How many people will be affected?