From cardinal to ordinal utility theory: Darwin and differential capacity for happiness.

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Lionel Robbins Remembers

JUST SIX YEARS AFTER his Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science created a stir in economics with its query about the scientific status of interpersonal utility comparisons (Robbins [19321 1935: 136-140), Lionel Robbins remembered how he came to be a "provisional" utilitarian:

 
   My own attitude to problems of political action has always been 
   one of what I might call provisional utilitarianism.... I have 
   always felt that, as a first approximation in handling questions 
   relating to the lives and…