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I must echo Robin Neill's earlier puzzlement about this whole conversation. 
 There seems to be an underlying assumption that utility is a "thing" that 
can be "measured," and that, more specifically, it is connected with a 
subjective feeling (a hedonic conception of utility) that neuroeconomics 
could pinpoint. 
 
>From an Austrian perspective, this whole view is misguided.  Utility is 
not measurable, cardinal, or hedonic.  If I may quote myself from my 
chapter on the Austrian Marginalists in the Blackwell Companion to the 
History of Economic Thought: 
 
For Menger, the subjectivity of value is what underlies his discussion of 
marginal utility.  It is only after he has defined value that he moves on 
to talk about utility.  In defining utility, he simply refers to it as "the 
capacity of a thing to serve for the satisfaction of human needs, and hence 
(provided the utility is recognized) it is a general prerequisite of 
goods-character" (1981 [1871]: 119).  In Menger's conception of 
marginalism, utility is not understood as a cardinal value that can be 
totalled up, nor is it even anything "measureable" in any meaningful way.  
It is, as Menger notes, understood as a "capacity," and one that is in the 
eye of the beholder.  Utility is not the same as value, as value can only 
be applied to economic goods.  Utility is therefore necessary for value, 
but it is not sufficient.  Non-economic goods have utility but not  value, 
as they do not figure into the economizing decisions humans make.  More 
precisely, non-economic goods are ones where "the satisfaction of human 
needs does not depend upon the availability of concrete quantities of 
[them]" (1981 [1871]: 119).  Non-economic goods like air do not have to be 
judged in terms of specific concrete quantities, rather they are 
ominpresent in some sense. 
 
If the Austrian view is correct, and it may not be, the search for utility 
as a measurable hedonic in the brain is fruitless.  Utility is just the 
economic actor's judgment of an object as having the capacity to help her 
achieve some end.  Value is what happens when utility meets the economizing 
decisions of human actors. 
 
Steven Horwitz 
 
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