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This thread can drone on as long as one likes! Until someone addresses a couple of elephants on the sofa:

(1) What is "good"? How is "goodness" to be defined?

(2) Ought we to be good? Is there such a thing as a moral imperative to be good?

Sorry to harp on the obvious like that but, as the ancients realised, you must start by defining your basic terms and, with luck, you'll find that many of the questions answer themselves.

The relevance of mathematics would be fairly obvious to anybody who had taken Philosophy 100 in Utilitiarian ethics. But please don't underestimate the philosophy of arithmetic. It is at least as problematic as the philosophy of any other branch of mathematics, precisely because it deals with the most primitive or elemental levels of the science.

Jeremy, the great Bentham, father of utilitarianism, proposed a simple mathematical formula called the felicific calculus. It does go into minute detail (visit Wikipedia for more), but the point of it all is mathematized ethics. @jgill I'm sure will be a valuable consultant in this matter, but he might/should charge a reasonable fee for his contribution to the topic if he chooses to do so.

Jeremy, the great Bentham, father of utilitarianism, proposed a simple mathematical formula called the felicific calculus — Agent Smith

I just had a look at the subject of felicific calculus in Wiki and found Bentham's "algorithm" quite interesting, I don't know if anyone has ever examined the subject of "pleasure" in such a detailed manner. And, if we consider that pleasure is closely connected to ethics, then we can say that this "algotithm" applies also to ethics, in general.

However, this is only an effort to "quantify" pleasure, and by extension, ethics.

An algoritithm involves computation --that's why I used the word within quotation marks-- and quantification involves measurement. And none of the factors involved in the formula --except for duration-- are measurable, at least, not to a sastisfactory degree. So, the model presented by Bentham is a method of evaluating actions on a relative and quite general basis. And even then, it is quite difficult to compare two actions in order to judge which is exactly more ethical (or unethical) than the other. We can only have an idea about this. So, in fact, this method or model can only serve as a description of the factors involved in the identification of an action in terms of pleasure or ethics.

Anyway, this was a great contribution to the topic, @Agent Smith. :up:

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Jeremy, the great Bentham, father of utilitarianism, proposed a simple mathematical formula called the felicific calculus — Agent Smith

It's simplistic arithmetic with poorly defined variables. I wonder if it's used in economics, the Dismal Science? Tononi's Phi function is a far more recent and much more complicated attempt to apply math to loose or badly understood features of existence, like how much consciousness might a certain stone possess? The level of sophistication of the latter compared to the former is staggering, but even so not convincing.

My own brief exposure to my math used as a tool in the social sciences is a recent paper on decision making in groups, where a result in the arid but highly sophisticated realm of complex analysis was appropriated and rephrased in those psychological terms, to questionable ends.

I was wondering when you'd reply. Good assessment report as far as I'm concerned. The mathematics is simple, too simple? :chin:

How would you have approached the subject if you were consulted by Bentham?

How would you have approached the subject if you were consulted by Bentham? — Agent Smith

I would suggest he consult with a statistician or data analyst and do surveys and polls or watch human behavior and see where that might take him. Applying hard math to a soft problem is usually ill-advised. :cool:

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