Utilitarianism: a psychophysical perspective

Abstract

The psychological doctrines of empiricism, associationism, and hedonism served as intellectual sources for the development of utilitarianism in the 18th century and psychophysics in the 19th. Utilitarianism, first articulated by Bentham in 1781, makes four implicit but nevertheless important psychophysical assumptions: (1) that utilities, which reflect "benefit, advantage, pleasure, good or happiness," are quintessentially psychological concepts; (2) that utilities are quantitative; (3) that utilities are commensurable across different objects; and (4) that utilities are commensurable across individuals. Although utilities sometimes reflect the satisfaction of biological needs, they commonly represent psychological valences or values, whose subjective strengths may themselves derive, dynamically, from processes of decision-making.