A utility function is just a representation of preference ordering. Presumably those properties would hold for anything that is merely an ordering making use of numbers.
You also need the conditions of the utility theorem to hold. A preference ordering only gives you conditions 1 and 2 of the theorem as stated in the link.
Good point. I was effectively entirely leaving out the “mathematical” in “mathematical representation of preference ordering”. As I stated it, you couldn’t expect to aggregate utiles.
A utility function is just a representation of preference ordering. Presumably those properties would hold for anything that is merely an ordering making use of numbers.
You also need the conditions of the utility theorem to hold. A preference ordering only gives you conditions 1 and 2 of the theorem as stated in the link.
Good point. I was effectively entirely leaving out the “mathematical” in “mathematical representation of preference ordering”. As I stated it, you couldn’t expect to aggregate utiles.
You can’t aggregate utils; you can only take their weighted sums. You can aggregate changes in utils though.