If you’re looking for a utility function that reproduces human behavior in all contexts, I’d say the empirical evidence is overwhelming that humans don’t have utility functions, bounded or otherwise.
Practically, I agree, but I would maintain that people do have utility functions—it’s just that they are so complex that they are impossible to write down as a neat mathematical expression, just like it’s practically impossible to construct a function to accurately predict next week’s weather.
But if we define the utility function as the relation between (many!) input variables and the ultimate behavior chosen, certainly it exists. Just like that illusive function for predicting the weather.
Practically, I agree, but I would maintain that people do have utility functions—it’s just that they are so complex that they are impossible to write down as a neat mathematical expression, just like it’s practically impossible to construct a function to accurately predict next week’s weather.
But if we define the utility function as the relation between (many!) input variables and the ultimate behavior chosen, certainly it exists. Just like that illusive function for predicting the weather.