I'm aware, but my point is that you're not making a synthetic claim - you're not proving the (axiological) meaningfulness of a concept. You're just saying "I use this word 'utility' to describe the satisfaction of wants".
It doesn't really answer any of the questions that were posed, about how you can measure and compare the 'want-satisfying-ness' of different things. How do you measure the degree of want? How do you measure the degree to which a want is satisfied? How do you compare those across human beings?
If by 'trivial' in your original comment you meant 'trivial' in the technical sense[0], then I'd agree with that. "I define 'utility' as 'satisfaction of wants'" is a statement that neither predicates nor proves anything of the world.
It does answer the questions by reformulating them in exactly the way you did, which immediately highlights the GPs confusion: They somehow missed the subjective and relative aspects of the concept as it is used. There is no objective and absolute measure of want-satisfying-ness (or whatever).
> It's probably more like arguing that leprechauns don't exist.
> In any case, I'm not saying utility can't exist. I'm saying some universal utility can't exist, or if you wish: sorry, guys, you can't determine my utility function for me. I'll do it myself, thank you very much.
It doesn't really answer any of the questions that were posed, about how you can measure and compare the 'want-satisfying-ness' of different things. How do you measure the degree of want? How do you measure the degree to which a want is satisfied? How do you compare those across human beings?
If by 'trivial' in your original comment you meant 'trivial' in the technical sense[0], then I'd agree with that. "I define 'utility' as 'satisfaction of wants'" is a statement that neither predicates nor proves anything of the world.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triviality_(mathematics)