Can Ordinal Utility Exist?

It is often assumed that the measurement of utility attains the status of an ordinal but not of an interval scale. If utility arises from integrating information from different dimensions or attributes and trade-offs are permitted, such utility satisfies either interval scale status or only weak (often very weak) ordering can be attained. If, on the other hand, utility is regarded as determined behavioural from preference orders, it is very difficult to rank the goods without resorting to ratings based on interval scales unless the number of items is small. The combination of these two considerations should lead us to question seriously whether in practice ordinal utility is attainable unless interval scale status is also attainable