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Well, remember: economic damages are precisely that - economic remedies provided in the face of non-economic harm in an attempt to make the plaintiff whole.
You don't bring a wrongful death suit because the only damage done to you and your family is economic. Yes, that's a part of it - but there's certainly much less tangible damage done, and this is recognized not only by the severity of the economic damages awarded, but also by the possibility of punitive economic damages as well. Since the decedent can't be brought back from the dead, money's the next best thing, basically (and unfortunately).
Continuing with this analysis, the harm inflicted and the economic damages recoverable as a result in court in the case of copyright infringement can be two entirely separate issues as well.
Economics factor into the damages awarded - so things like profit from illegal dissemination can increase the awarded damages, but you don't actually need to make profit from illegally disseminating work in order to be a copyright infringer.
Therefore, there's some other less tangible interest besides economics that's protected by copyright law. This is evinced by things like nominal damages and statutory minimums - even if you don't make any profit at all from the infringement, you can still be found liable.
In my opinion, this "less tangible" interest is a tacit recognition of the moral ownership of an author to her work - it'd be tough to classify it as anything else since, as I noted, it isn't necessarily economic.
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