The right answer is that utilitarians aren’t summing utility functions, they’re just summing some expression about each person. The term hedonic function is used for these when they just care about pleasure or when they aren’t worried about being misinterpreted as just caring about pleasure and the term utility function is used when they don’t know what a utility function is or when they are willing to misuse it for convenience.
Oh, I completely misunderstood that.
The right answer is that utilitarians aren’t summing utility functions, they’re just summing some expression about each person. The term hedonic function is used for these when they just care about pleasure or when they aren’t worried about being misinterpreted as just caring about pleasure and the term utility function is used when they don’t know what a utility function is or when they are willing to misuse it for convenience.