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The Possible Incomensurability of Utilities and the Learning of Goals - Bruce Edmonds
5. Conclusion
There is no a priori reason to support the assumption that agents act as if they maximise a single utility. Further if one assumes that agents do act as if they have different utilities that are not meaningfully mapped onto a single utility function, then this does explain some of the observed behaviour of agents including some of those who are interacting in situations of monetary transaction.
Thus support for this assumption can only come from empirical evidence which we deliberately have not touched on here. We will only note that, at best, such evidence is highly equivocal (for a recent example see [2]) and so is not able to preform a strong justificatory role for the assumption at the present time.
The Possible Incomensurability of Utilities and the Learning of Goals - Bruce Edmonds - 05 SEP 97
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