Murder can increase utility in the economist's utility function
That is really immaterial though and computationally moot. Ok so his "utility function" is negative. Is that it, is that the difference? Besides, I would argue that reevaluating it on those terms does a poor job of actually describing motivation in a coherent set.
Yet murdering is a net negative in the ethicist's utility function.
It isn't in the economists? These things aren't neutral.
The broader aspect that economists seek is normative. You said it yourself in the economists assumptions. Assumptions are not exogenous when calculating value, try as they may.
Most good studies in their presentation will explain why their methodology is as it is, and why understanding their paper will solve a problem or lead to a conflict resolution. That was the purpose behind applied economic game theory, optimizing equilibrium in previously zero sum outcomes and eliminating dominated strategies for competition. One cannot successfully separate economics from ethics ( I would argue for all but the explicitly classifying sciences (Chemistry, Cladistics etc...) this holds true).
If we are simply talking about mathematical notation, then feel free to slap a negative sign on the expected utility portion for terrorists in the "aggregate worldwide utility" formula. It still won't make any sense in practice.
That is really immaterial though and computationally moot. Ok so his "utility function" is negative. Is that it, is that the difference? Besides, I would argue that reevaluating it on those terms does a poor job of actually describing motivation in a coherent set.
No. His utility from murder is greater than his utility from not-murder. Cops describe this as 'motive'.
One cannot successfully separate economics from ethics ( I would argue for all but the explicitly classifying sciences (Chemistry, Cladistics etc...) this holds true).
Yes one ca...
Recently I argued that the economist's utility function and the ethicist's utility function are not the same. The nutshell argument is that they are created for different purposes - one is an attempt to describe the actions we actually take and the other is an attempt to summarize our true values (i.e., what we should do). I just ran across a somewhat older post over at Black Belt Bayesian arguing this very point. Excerpt: