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Bentham's Bulldog's avatar

It's always been obvious to me that utility is interpersonally comparable. Setting a person on fire is worse than poking someone else with a stick is.

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Neonomos's avatar

Actual utility is an agent-relative experience. It’s not comparable across parties since it’s entirely subjective. Although there are certain extremes that wouldn’t fall into anyone’s utility function, society can’t make public policy based on subjective states. Pursuit of utility is within the domain of the individual and their close personal relationships.

This argument instead makes the case for maximizing certain objective factors, or primary goods, that tend to put people in a better position to maximize their own subjective well-being. These should be increased regardless of one’s subjective preference for them.

No one would agree to maximizing someone else’s happiness because who knows what makes them happy. But people would agree to maximizing a collective pot of generally useful resources.

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