This is an area that is generally plagued with ambuiguities and inconsistent usage. - which makes it even more important to be clear what we mean. I think this will usually this will require the use of adjectives/modifiers, rather than attempting to define already ambiguous words in our own idiosyncratically-preferred ways.
Instantaneous vs. life-time (or smaller life-slice) utility seems to make a clear distinction; decision-utility (i.e. the utility embodied in whatever function describes our decisions) vs. experienced utility (e.g. happiness or other psychological states) seem to make clear-ish distinctions. (Though if we care about non-experienced things, then maybe we need to further distinguish either of these from true-utility.)
But using “utility” and “happiness” to distinguish between different degrees of time aggregation seems unnecessarily confusing to me.
This is an area that is generally plagued with ambuiguities and inconsistent usage. - which makes it even more important to be clear what we mean. I think this will usually this will require the use of adjectives/modifiers, rather than attempting to define already ambiguous words in our own idiosyncratically-preferred ways.
Instantaneous vs. life-time (or smaller life-slice) utility seems to make a clear distinction; decision-utility (i.e. the utility embodied in whatever function describes our decisions) vs. experienced utility (e.g. happiness or other psychological states) seem to make clear-ish distinctions. (Though if we care about non-experienced things, then maybe we need to further distinguish either of these from true-utility.)
But using “utility” and “happiness” to distinguish between different degrees of time aggregation seems unnecessarily confusing to me.