Utilitarian Ethics and Decision Making
1. Briefly explain what utilitarian ethics is and the process one would go
through to make a decision based on utilitarian principles.
2. Looking at decision–making in the public safety realm, in what type of
decision might utilitarian principles yield the best results or, at very least, be
necessitated by the situation?
3. Finally, how broadly are people assigned stakeholder status in a public
safety utilitarian decision?
4. Could you and your family be stakeholders or would you, and by extension
them, be excluded from stakeholder status because you “signed up for the
job?”
5. In other words, as a public servant, should what is “good” for you be part of
the calculation?
