Objective Morality & Moral Psychology

"There is a little morality in all good psychological reasoning." 

Through the philosophy of psychology we learn that there are innate senses and emotional potentials in man, that become actuated by circumstances and events, and embedded into the mind's memory, forming the conscience or super-ego of individual moral agents.

Some pleasures and pains are subjective and personal but there are still those that are objective, normal, and as experience of all Human's: collectively. This collective morality becomes the global, national, states (tribal) "legal" power over the people, which it uses to condemn, imprison, and punish, those who infringe upon it. Economically, man is rewarded for his work and gains pleasure in his trade. 

Hedonic calculus is a way of measuring what is moral or immoral, and should assist us when we inquire into our own desires and will, asking ourselves the questions that are relevant at that time and place, for those sets of circumstances.

Through the historical examination of ethical philosophy, we encounter a fiber of truth, that runs through the entire fabric of moral and psychological philosophy. It is in this history and in these philosophical terms that man can be lead to a more objective sense of morality. From the readings of Protagoras to the readings of the Utilitarians (to what was not covered in this blog: Positive Psychology); what you can learn from these philosophers is that morality is a common science, not a common myth. And that psychology is ever endowed with a mission to lead man to his best state, to find his own pleasures, and happiness in the world which he lives in and the world which he manipulates through his own agency.

The moral philosophy in the whole of this blog is insufficient. We now have access to the valuing of behaviors based on the impact of our decisions on the ecosystem, on economic factors, on the health of the body or preventing human illness, on defending scientific truth, on the national and global rights of human beings and other living organisms.

Bentham's Hedonistic Moral Psychology

The felicific calculus is an algorithm formulated by utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1747–1832) for calculating the degree or amount of pleasure that a specific action is likely to cause. Bentham, an ethical hedonist, believed the moral rightness or wrongness of an action to be a function of the amount of pleasure or pain that it produced. The felicific calculus could, in principle at least, determine the moral status of any considered act. The algorithm is also known as the utility calculus, the hedonistic calculus and the hedonic calculus.

To be included in this calculation are several variables (or vectors), which Bentham called "circumstances". These are:

1. Intensity: How strong is the pleasure?
2. Duration: How long will the pleasure last?
3. Certainty or uncertainty: How likely or unlikely is it that the pleasure will occur?
4. Propinquity or remoteness: How soon will the pleasure occur?
5. Fecundity: The probability that the action will be followed by sensations of the same kind.
6. Purity: The probability that it will not be followed by sensations of the opposite kind.
7. Extent: How many people will be affected? (1)

Jeremy Bentham, jurist and political reformer, is the philosopher whose name is most closely associated with the foundational era of the modern utilitarian tradition. Earlier moralists had enunciated several of the core ideas and characteristic terminology of utilitarian philosophy, most notably John Gay, Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, Claude-Adrien Helvétius and Cesare Beccaria, but it was Bentham who rendered the theory in its recognisably secular and systematic form and made it a critical tool of moral and legal philosophy and political and social improvement. 

In 1776, he first announced himself to the world as a proponent of utility as the guiding principle of conduct and law in A Fragment on Government. In An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (printed 1780, published 1789), as a preliminary to developing a theory of penal law he detailed the basic elements of classical utilitarian theory. The penal code was to be the first in a collection of codes that would constitute the utilitarian pannomion, a complete body of law based on the utility principle, the development of which was to engage Bentham in a lifetime’s work and was to include civil, procedural, and constitutional law.

 As a by-product, and in the interstices between the sub-codes of this vast legislative edifice, Bentham’s writings ranged across ethics, ontology, logic, political economy, judicial administration, poor law, prison reform, international law, education, religious beliefs and institutions, democratic theory, government, and administration. In all these areas he made major contributions that continue to feature in discussions of utilitarianism, notably its moral, legal, economic and political forms. Upon this rests Bentham’s reputation as one of the great thinkers in modern philosophy.(2)

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felicific_calculus

2, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bentham/