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johlstei comments on Another question about utilitarianism and selfishness - Less Wrong
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Regarding preference utilitarianism, why can't the negative utility of not having a preference fulfilled be modelled with average or total utilitarianism? That is, aren't there some actions that create so much utility that they could overcome the negative utility of one's preference not being honored? I don't see why preference fulfillment should be first class next to pleasure and pain.
Sorry if this is off-topic, that was just my first reaction to reading this.
See here for some standard criticisms of hedonic (pleasure/pain based) utilitarianism.
Also see the discussions of wireheading on LW.
Incidentally, I should point out that in the economics and decision theory literature, "utility" is not a synonym for pleasure or some other psychological variable. It's merely a mathematical representation of revealed preferences (preferences which may be motivated by an ultimate desire for pleasure, but that's an additional substantive hypothesis). I tend to use "utility" in this sense, so just a terminological heads-up.