One traditional form of utility analysis assesses an option's utility by tallying the utility derived from the option's realization or frustration of the agent's goals. For example, reading War and Peace may achieve the goal of absorbing Tolstoy's great novel but frustrate the goal of painting the house. Each goal's weight depends on its realization's utility. The utility of reading the classic is then a sum of weights positive for goals it realizes and negative for goals it frustrates. This chapter refines and elaborates the method of utility analysis, which I call intrinsic utility analysis.

Section 1.1 applied intrinsic utility analysis to the social utility of a new safety standard. The analysis used some of society's goals: health, security, and prosperity. Such goals form a dimension of analysis for utilities. Intrinsic utility analysis relies on the dimension of goals – that is, considerations appealing directly to goals. Other forms of analysis rely on other dimensions, or types of consideration. This chapter explains how intrinsic utility analysis uses goals to calculate utilities. Later chapters introduce additional methods of utility analysis.

Intrinsic utility analysis is named after its elements. It reduces utilities to intrinsic utilities. Intrinsic utility is a new, noncomprehensive type of utility, so named because it assesses only the intrinsic features of objects of desire and aversion. Section 2.2.1 introduces intrinsic utility as part of an explanation of intrinsic utility analysis.