JB/027/039/001

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Ins. Pleasures and Pains - how measured NOTE

Persons at large will be apt, I doubt, to be startled
a little when they come to see the word value applied
to a pain: the word value in common speech
not being usually applied to any other objects than what
are looked upon as desirable. It will not however appear
extraordinary to any persons who are in the least
degree conversant with algebraical speculations: algebraists
have as frequent occasion to attribute a negative
value to the objects under their consideration as a positive:
and where a positive quantity represents a
gain, a negative quantity represents a loss. I should
not however Notwithstanding this warrant I should not
have given this unusual sense to the word value
if I could have found any other word that had was more
readily susceptible of the same neutral signification import I had occasion to express.

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NOTE

The same difficulty will probably occur to the
applying the word purity to the exclusion of desirable
such as pleasures, that I apprehended might
occur to the applying the word value to objects
undesirable. Nor do know that I have can I find so good a warrant
in this case as in the former. But I have the
same plea of necessity for my excuse.

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Pleasures and Pains - how measured Ins:

I am aware that the remoteness of the latter part
of the greater pleasure during it's continuance is
a circumstance that diminishes it's value: inasmuch
that a pleasure which spread out if one may in
point of duration, would not be quite so valuable
as a pleasure of the same magnitude that spread
out in point of intensity. [But the influence of the
circumstances is too trifling to be here insisted on].
Accordingly a hundred a year for thirty years
come when it will is not so valuable as a thousand year (commencing
from the same time) for three years.

As to the degree of remoteness, in what proportion
the in which the value of a pleasure
is diminished by it's remoteness, this will be rather
difficult to ascertain. The proportion in which the value of an a sum of
money that is of a fund of pleasures is diminished by this circumstance
is different in different countries, according
to the rate of interest.

What has been observed concerning the
manner in which the value of a pleasure is affected
by the circumstances of remoteness and uncertainty, is
far from being a matter of mere speculation. It
is exemplified and verified by every day's experience.
The value of a sum of money is affected exactly in
this manner: and how or what way is it that a sum of money can be
valuable but as a fund of pleasures; or what comes to
the same thing of the means of averting pains?

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Identifier: | JB/027/039/001 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 27.
Date_1		Marginal Summary Numbering
Box	027	Main Headings	comment on the commentaries
Folio number	039	Info in main headings field	pleasures and pains - how measured
Image	001	Titles
Category	text sheet	Number of Pages	4
Recto/Verso	recto	Page Numbering	3
Penner	jeremy bentham	Watermarks	[[watermarks::w [britannia with shield motif]]]
Marginals		Paper Producer
Corrections		Paper Produced in Year
Notes public		ID Number	9129
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