Might be worth noting, utilities in this sense are preferences, which may or may not matter intrinsically. On preference/desire theories of well-being, your life goes better the more you get of what you want. But on, say, hedonist theories of well-being, your life goes better the more happiness you have (where happiness is often understood as a positive balance of pleasure over displeasure). Historically, ‘utilities’ in economics referred to happiness rather than preferences. This switched in the early 20th century with work by Pareto and Robbins and others.
Yeah, the view that utilities aren’t comparable has more legs on preference-satisfactionism than it does on hedonism. On the face it is quite weird to say that the utilities, in the hedonistic sense, are not comparable. Can we compare the utility of a man being tortured with that of a man enjoying watching The Sopranos? DALYs, QALYs and WELLBYs are utility metrics that make utility comparable across people.
Might be worth noting, utilities in this sense are preferences, which may or may not matter intrinsically. On preference/desire theories of well-being, your life goes better the more you get of what you want. But on, say, hedonist theories of well-being, your life goes better the more happiness you have (where happiness is often understood as a positive balance of pleasure over displeasure). Historically, ‘utilities’ in economics referred to happiness rather than preferences. This switched in the early 20th century with work by Pareto and Robbins and others.
Yeah, the view that utilities aren’t comparable has more legs on preference-satisfactionism than it does on hedonism. On the face it is quite weird to say that the utilities, in the hedonistic sense, are not comparable. Can we compare the utility of a man being tortured with that of a man enjoying watching The Sopranos? DALYs, QALYs and WELLBYs are utility metrics that make utility comparable across people.