frameworkutilitarian

Frameworkutilitarian is a term used particularly in ethics and decision analysis to describe an approach that combines utilitarian welfare evaluation with formal decision-making frameworks. It treats welfare outcomes as the primary criterion for judging actions while recognizing that decisions occur within rules, institutions, and constraints.

Core idea: maximize expected net utility across affected individuals, but not at any cost; the framework imposes constraints such as rights, legal duties, professional norms, and policy constraints, guiding which actions are admissible.

Methodology: define context, identify stakeholders, enumerate actions, estimate utilities and probabilities, and compute expected welfare under each action; then select the action that provides the best welfare within the framework's constraints.

Variants and relations: it often integrates with multi-criteria decision analysis, Bayesian decision theory, or risk-based planning; it is distinct from classic act or rule utilitarianism by explicitly situating the moral calculation inside a predefined decision process.

Applications: public policy analysis, AI ethics and governance, corporate risk management, and research ethics, where decisions must align with operational rules while pursuing welfare gains.

Criticism: challenges include measuring welfare, aggregating diverse welfare components, distributional concerns, potential clashes between welfare and rights, and the influence of the chosen framework on outcomes.

See also: Utilitarianism, Welfare economics, Decision analysis.