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Some quantitative concepts of value and utility from a utilitarian point of view

✍ Scribed by C. L. Sheng


Publisher
Springer US
Year
1989
Tongue
English
Weight
996 KB
Volume
26
Category
Article
ISSN
0040-5833

No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.

✦ Synopsis


This paper clarifies and interprets some basic quantitative concepts of value, utility and utility function from a utilitarian point of view. First, I discuss the question as to whether value is objective or subjective. I hold that value is subjective and statistical in nature (although from the various subjective values of a certain object a norm can usually be obtained). Second, I emphasize the distinction between use value and exchange value in relation to utility. Third, I propose a law of diminishing incremental interest, which refers to the incremental (marginal) utility of money. Fourth, I identify the utility of money with the von Neumann-Morgenstern utility. Fifth, I question the necessity of the usual normalization of utility functions and the restricted linear transformation (and the consequent concept of "strategic equivalence"). Sixth, I discuss in detail the terminal values and utilities of a utility function from a philosophical rather than mathematical point of view, particularly the boundedness of a utility function and the magnitudes of V 0 and U 0 . Finally, I conclude that, in order to be able to have interpersonal comparisons of utility, utility should have the same dimension as value rather than no dimension, and the normalization problem should be reconsidered in the light of terminal values and utilities.


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