According to Bentham, calculating the total amount of pleasure and pain produced by an action requires considering the intensity, duration, certainty, closeness in time, fecundity, and purity of the pleasures and pains produced by an action, as well as their extent.

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Jeremy Bentham, the founder of utilitarianism, proposed that the moral rightness of an action is determined by its utility, specifically the net balance of pleasure over pain it produces. To calculate this, he suggested considering several factors: intensity, duration, certainty, propinquity (closeness in time), fecundity (likelihood of leading to further pleasures or pains), purity (chance of not being followed by sensations of the opposite kind), and extent (number of people affected).

According to Bentham, Calculating the Total Amount of Pleasure and Pain