It’s not as clear as you think it is. I’m not familiar with any common definition of “utility” that unambiguously means “the satisfaction of needs”, nor was I able to locate one in a dictionary.
“Utility” is used hereabouts as a numerical value assigned to outcomes such that outcomes with higher utilities are always preferred to outcomes with lower utilities. See Wiki:Utility function.
Nor am I familiar with “sophist” used as an adjective.
Utility is generally meant to be “economic utility” in most discussions I take part in notwithstanding the definition you’re espousing for hereabouts.
I believe that the definition of utility you’re giving is far too open and could all too easily lead to smiley world.
It is very common to use nouns as adjectives where no distinct adjective already exists and thus saying someone is “sophist” is perfectly acceptable English usage.
(economics) The ability of a commodity to satisfy needs or wants; the satisfaction experienced by the consumer of that commodity.
It ambiguously allows both ‘needs’ and ‘wants’, as well as ambiguous ‘satisfaction experienced’.
The only consistent, formal definition of utility I’ve seen used in economics (or game theory) is the one I gave above. If it was clear someone was not using that definition, I might assume they were using it as more generic “preference satisfaction”, or John Stuart Mill’s difficult-to-formalize-coherently “pleasure minus pain”, or the colloquial vague “usefulness” (whence “utilitarian” is colloquially a synonym for “pragmatic”).
Do you have a source defining utility clearly and unambiguously as “the satisfaction of needs”?
No you’re right it doesn’t nail it down precisely (the satisfaction of needs or wants).
I do believe, however, that it more precisely nails it down than the wiki on here.
Or on second thoughts maybe not because we again come back to conflicting utilities: a suicidal might value being killed as higher utility than someone who is sitting on death row and doesn’t want to die.
And I was using the term utility from economics since it’s the only place I’ve heard where they use “utility function” so I naturally assumed that’s what you were talking about since even if we disagree around the edges the meanings still fit the context for the purposes of this discussion.
It’s not as clear as you think it is. I’m not familiar with any common definition of “utility” that unambiguously means “the satisfaction of needs”, nor was I able to locate one in a dictionary.
“Utility” is used hereabouts as a numerical value assigned to outcomes such that outcomes with higher utilities are always preferred to outcomes with lower utilities. See Wiki:Utility function.
Nor am I familiar with “sophist” used as an adjective.
Utility is generally meant to be “economic utility” in most discussions I take part in notwithstanding the definition you’re espousing for hereabouts.
I believe that the definition of utility you’re giving is far too open and could all too easily lead to smiley world.
It is very common to use nouns as adjectives where no distinct adjective already exists and thus saying someone is “sophist” is perfectly acceptable English usage.
Yeah, that doesn’t quite nail it down either. Note Wiktionary:utility (3):
It ambiguously allows both ‘needs’ and ‘wants’, as well as ambiguous ‘satisfaction experienced’.
The only consistent, formal definition of utility I’ve seen used in economics (or game theory) is the one I gave above. If it was clear someone was not using that definition, I might assume they were using it as more generic “preference satisfaction”, or John Stuart Mill’s difficult-to-formalize-coherently “pleasure minus pain”, or the colloquial vague “usefulness” (whence “utilitarian” is colloquially a synonym for “pragmatic”).
Do you have a source defining utility clearly and unambiguously as “the satisfaction of needs”?
No you’re right it doesn’t nail it down precisely (the satisfaction of needs or wants).
I do believe, however, that it more precisely nails it down than the wiki on here.
Or on second thoughts maybe not because we again come back to conflicting utilities: a suicidal might value being killed as higher utility than someone who is sitting on death row and doesn’t want to die.
And I was using the term utility from economics since it’s the only place I’ve heard where they use “utility function” so I naturally assumed that’s what you were talking about since even if we disagree around the edges the meanings still fit the context for the purposes of this discussion.