Editing Utility (section)

==Discussion and criticism==
Cambridge economist [[Joan Robinson]] famously criticized utility for being a circular concept: "Utility is the quality in [[commodities]] that makes individuals want to buy them, and the fact that individuals want to buy commodities shows that they have utility".<ref>{{cite book |first=Joan |last=Robinson |year=1962 |title=Economic Philosophy |location=Harmondsworth, Middle-sex, UK |publisher=Penguin Books }}</ref>{{rp|48}} Robinson also stated that because the theory assumes that preferences are fixed this means that utility is not a [[testability|testable]] assumption. This is so because if we observe changes of peoples' behavior in relation to a change in prices or a change in budget constraint we can never be sure to what extent the change in behavior was due to the change of price or budget constraint and how much was due to a change of preference.<ref>{{cite web |last=Pilkington |first=Philip |title=Joan Robinson's Critique of Marginal Utility Theory |work=Fixing the Economists |date=17 February 2014 |url=https://fixingtheeconomists.wordpress.com/2014/02/17/joan-robinsons-critique-of-marginal-utility-theory/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150713112846/https://fixingtheeconomists.wordpress.com/2014/02/17/joan-robinsons-critique-of-marginal-utility-theory/ |archive-date=13 July 2015 |df=dmy-all }}</ref>{{Unreliable source?|date=June 2023|reason=A blogpost from a fringe website is not a reliable source, link to a scholarly article|certain=y}} This criticism is similar to that of the philosopher [[Hans Albert]] who argued that the ''[[ceteris paribus]]'' (all else equal) conditions on which the [[marginalist]] theory of demand rested rendered the theory itself a meaningless [[tautology (language)|tautology]], incapable of being tested experimentally.<ref>{{cite web |last=Pilkington |first=Philip |title=utility Hans Albert Expands Robinson's Critique of Marginal Utility Theory to the Law of Demand |work=Fixing the Economists |date=27 February 2014 |url=https://fixingtheeconomists.wordpress.com/2014/02/27/hans-albert-expands-robinsons-critique-of-marginal-utility-theory-to-the-law-of-demand/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150719164628/https://fixingtheeconomists.wordpress.com/2014/02/27/hans-albert-expands-robinsons-critique-of-marginal-utility-theory-to-the-law-of-demand/ |archive-date=19 July 2015 |df=dmy-all }}</ref>{{Unreliable source?|date=June 2023|certain=Yes|reason=A blogpost from a fringe website is not a reliable source, link to a scholarly article}} In essence, a curve of demand and supply (a theoretical line of quantity of a product which would have been offered or requested for given price) is purely [[ontological]] and could never have been demonstrated [[empirically]]{{Dubious|date=June 2023|reason=There have been studies that see a D&S Curve, it's also what you do in Micro classes in Uni.}}.

Other questions of what arguments ought to be included in a utility function are difficult to answer, yet seem necessary to understanding utility. Whether people gain utility from coherence of [[wants]], [[beliefs]] or a sense of [[duty]] is important to understanding their behavior in the utility [[organon]].<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Klein|first1=Daniel|title=Professor|journal=Econ Journal Watch|date=May 2014|volume=11|issue=2|pages=97–105|url=http://econjwatch.org/file_download/826/CompleteIssueMay2014.pdf|access-date=November 15, 2014|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141005153234/http://econjwatch.org/file_download/826/CompleteIssueMay2014.pdf|archive-date=5 October 2014|df=dmy-all}}</ref> Likewise, choosing between alternatives is itself a process of determining what to consider as alternatives, a question of choice within uncertainty.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Burke|first1=Kenneth|title=Towards a Better Life|date=1932|publisher=University of California Press|location=Berkeley, Calif}}</ref>

An [[evolutionary psychology]] theory is that utility may be better considered as due to preferences that maximized evolutionary [[Fitness (biology)|fitness]] in the ancestral environment but not necessarily in the current one.<ref name=AEP>{{cite book |last1=Capra |first1=C. Monica |last2=Rubin |first2=Paul H. |title=Applied Evolutionary Psychology |date=2011 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=9780191731358 |chapter=The Evolutionary Psychology of Economics|doi=10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199586073.003.0002}}</ref>