The Difference Between Utility and Utility

The description you gave of economic theory completely ignores the origins of micro and macro economics, price theory and comparative economics.

The assumptions that underlie these disciplines are normative.

Steve Levitt's finding that the availability of abortion caused a lagged decrease in crime.

Actually that is descriptive statistics. Just as I pointed out before - economics without normative conclusions is statistics.

Doubtful, but in your undergrad you might have read one of the following:

Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments

John Maynerd Keynes' General Theory of Employment

John Kenneth Galbraiths Affluent Society

Marx' Kapital

Even more doubtful Friedman or Rothbard

These are all philosophical works and serve as the foundations for the economics discipline. All detail first theories about how markets form and work, and second how to make these markets more efficient based on their own unique goal seeking behavior.

More than likely however you predominately used the Baretto Howland Econometrics, Joe Mankiw's Microeconomics, Paul Krugman's International Economics or some other such text which does not describe the assumptions which developed the theories behind standard economic concepts. Yes, full employment is in fact a normative conclusion.

I do not dispute that there is a significant descriptive aspect to economics, especially at the undergraduate level - Once you start to actually do economic analysis in real life, and public policy is a blatantly example, it becomes clear that it is indeed normative.

This discussion got off track however. What we are discussing now does not really add to the discussion at hand, and that is arguably of my own doing because I brought the point up. My reply originally was an attempt to refute a false dichotomy and perhaps I did not do a well enough job of pointing that out. So let me do that now.

Utilitarianism as developed and introduced by Bentham was devised as a way to measure the unitless "utility" for the ends of driving normative change towards hedonistic goals. It is possible to divorce the method from it's origins and use the formulaic theory to simply describe a preference set. Doing this however only gives us a statistical metric firmly in the realm of mathematics, something which requires little knowledge of markets. Economists have used utility in both manners, more heavily using the latter in recent decades. Thus if you are using utilitarian theory normatively you are truly using the original economic theory, not simply the statistical methodology which was birthed from it.

People around here seem to use the terms interchangeably without proper context. When I see someone here say "maximize utility" either you you using Bentham's hedonistic calculation method in which the goals are implicit and you mean maximize hedonistic happiness, OR you are using the divorced economic mechanization and are incoherent because you have not defined your goal seeking terms.

Economics can conclude "If you want X then you should do Y".

This is what economists are trying to do now. Yet, implicit in their advice are normative economic principals that comprise the set list of X: Full employment, lower inflation, lower taxes, higher revenue etc...Obviously whoever wants x is normatively seeking a solution. As a result the analysis must then also and it is implicit in the formulation.

The economists themselves may have no feelings one way or another but they are using the economic and statistical principals toward normative ends, even if they are not their own. This is why I found the economic discipline so frustrating. Everyone want's to be a human calculator, forgetting that they are being used to solve someone else's philosophical dilemma.

Z is something that probably will happen therefore Z is something that should happen. This tends to invoke my contempt, particularly since it is seldom applied consistently.

As well it should. What you described is still normative, only it applies a naturalistic fallacy spin on the normative conclusion.

Murder can increase utility in the economist's utility function

That is really immaterial though and computationally moot. Ok so his "utility function" is negative. Is that it, is that the difference? Besides, I would argue that reevaluating it on those terms does a poor job of actually describing motivation in a coherent set.

Yet murdering is a net negative in the ethicist's utility function.

It isn't in the economists? These things aren't neutral.

The broader aspect that economists seek is normative. You said it yourself in the economists assumptions. Assumptions are not exogenous when calculating value, try as they may.

Most good studies in their presentation will explain why their methodology is as it is, and why understanding their paper will solve a problem or lead to a conflict resolution. That was the purpose behind applied economic game theory, optimizing equilibrium in previously zero sum outcomes and eliminating dominated strategies for competition. One cannot successfully separate economics from ethics ( I would argue for all but the explicitly classifying sciences (Chemistry, Cladistics etc...) this holds true).

If we are simply talking about mathematical notation, then feel free to slap a negative sign on the expected utility portion for terrorists in the "aggregate worldwide utility" formula. It still won't make any sense in practice.