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Thanks, Tim Leonard, for the enlightened discussion of the Anglophone 
literature. If your description is accurate (and I have no reason to doubt 
it), it is remarkable how this literature was able to disregard 
developments elsewhere. 
 
First, there is Vilfredo Pareto's notion of "ophelimity," which sought to 
completely circumvent many of the problems 
that occupied the 20th century British writers by discarding the term 
(Pareto, Manual of Political Economy, Ch. 3). (The indifference approach 
introduced by Pareto -- and Edgeworth -- was incorporated into the 
Anglophone lit, however.) 
 
Second, there seems to be no recognition of the 20th century Austrian 
Ludwig von Mises, in which "Utility means...simply: causal relevance for 
the removal of felt uneasiness. Acting man believes that the services a 
thing can render are apt to improve his own well-being, and calls this the 
utility of the thing concerned."(Mises, Human Action, 1966 [German, 1940], 
p. 120). (Of course, whatever language "acting man" might use, _economists_ 
have called the expected differential in well-being "utility.") Thus, 
"utility" resides in the mind alright; but not necessarily in the mind of 
the actor. The expected differential, however, does reside in the minds of 
people who economists have chosen as their subject matter. Elsewise, 
economics is the science of behavior, not choice. 
 
Third, this most abstract definition seems to have been largely anticipated 
by American Herbert Davenport in his penetrating 1902 critique of how 
economists had been using the concept of marginal utility. Davenport's 
critique basically blew the indifference approach (and the mathematical 
approach based on it) away before the dust had  
settled around it (in "theory," that is). 
 
Davenport, H.(1902) "Proposed Modifications in Austrian Theory and 
Terminology."Quarterly Journal of Economics. 16 (May): 355-384. 
 
Except for Lionel Robbins, the Brits seem to have completely overlooked 
Davenport. His name is conspicuous in Mark Blaug's _Economic Theory in 
Retrospect_, my undergraduate koran, by its absence. 
 
Of course, even  the later American historians of thought (as opposed to 
the American historians of the economics profession) paid little attention 
to Davenport. The name is not in Ekelund and Hebert's index either. Where 
is the utility in that? 
 
 
Pat Gunning 
 
 
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