 In IPML, Bentham directed this analysis against a host of ethical propositions he sought to eliminate as competing alternatives to the utility principle, such as “moral sense”, “common sense”, “law of reason”, “natural justice”, and “natural equity”. All are dismissed on the grounds that they are merely empty phrases that express nothing beyond the sentiment of the person who advocates them. Not representing verifiable reality, such phrases could not be considered useful. Indeed, they were surely pernicious, serving as a “pretense, and aliment, to despotism; if not … in practice, a despotism however in disposition” (1970, 28n). By comparison, “utility” was a principle rooted in the empirical and verifiable facts of the felt experience of pains and pleasures.