Julio Huato wrote:
u_i = u(c_1, ..., c_i, ..., c_n) That's all. Now please tell me, where is the utilitarian ethics embedded there, since you have ample room to determine the content of each of the c's, the form of u(.), and the content of u_i? You use scare quotes to refer to "internal relations,"...
But in this type of economic theory you do *not* have "ample room to determine...the form of u(.)..." The form of u(.) must be *linear* if it is to be in any sense workable. Now, mathematically "internal relations" means that each of the variables making up "u(.)" is a function of all the others, so that the "form of u(.)" has to be nonlinear, and therefore useless. Shane Mage "When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even downright silly. When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true." (N. Weiner)
