8 - Power and Versatility

Summary

Multidimensional utility analysis is a versatile tool for decision making. It creates a decision space with room for many varieties of utility analysis. A decision maker may employ whichever analysis best suits the problem she faces.

My version of multidimensional utility analysis accommodates various traditional forms of utility analysis and ensures their consistent conjoint application. Its cornerstone is intrinsic utility analysis. My new formulation of it establishes its credentials and guides the formulation of other methods of utility analysis. It refines those methods of utility analysis to make them more accurately handle considerations such as aversion to risk.

Multidimensional utility analysis requires a decision space in which to locate and separate reasons for options. Given the idealizations about agents and their decision problems, the finest-grained reason is a chance for realization of a person's basic intrinsic attitude. Such reasons occupy the points of my decision space. When agglomerated various ways, they yield an option's utility. The forms of agglomeration furnish my methods of utility analysis. Intrinsic, expected, and group utility analyses fully survey reasons for options.

The decision space I adopt not only makes precise and unifies traditional forms of utility analysis, but also suggests new forms of utility analysis such as partial utility analysis. The new forms of analysis present new ways of organizing the reasons behind traditional utility analyses. They make multidimensional utility analysis even more versatile.