According to Ross, what states of affairs are intrinsically good

¶ … Ross

According to Ross, what states of affairs are intrinsically good? Explain and evaluate his argument for his view.

William David Ross is one of the all times ethical philosophers from Scotland who was mastered in Greek Philosophy and moral ethics in the context of moral philosophy. Born on April 1877 and died in May 1971, Ross is well-known for his work "The Right and the Good" published in the year 1930. In this book, he has described certain intrinsic values which are considered ethically and morally good for a society. He argued that if something or some action is claimed to be good and virtuous, then it must prove itself. He rejected those consequentiality theories that focus on the consequences of people's actions towards a particular situation or circumstances. Instead, he deduced a new theory of intrinsic values for the states of affairs in which he argued that morality comes from inside and the consequences highly depend upon maximizing the internal morality and ethical norms. He put forward a concept of pleasure in doing some good, that one finds pleasure when he/she does something related to moral ethics, like assisting a senior citizen in crossing the road or to help someone carry a heavy luggage etc. This sense of pleasure develops virtue inside the person correspondingly which is one of the intrinsic values of the states of affairs. Hence pleasure and virtue can be measured on the same ratio by an ordinal scale and Ross claims that these two things are considered intrinsically good. Without focusing only on the consequences, the virtuous disposition and actions that contain pleasure within themselves are equally valued and appreciated.

Ross argued in "The Right and the Good" that the world contains as much virtuous persons as the vicious ones who find pleasure in doing bad and harmful activities to the society. Hence by this law of nature, this state of affairs gets balanced and the natural element of the earth and the world remain preserved as it cannot remain unbalanced by one extreme action or majority of virtuous or vicious people. If the universe would contain only or the majority of virtuous people, then it will counteract with the laws of nature and the universe will become unbalanced as there will be much pleasure than pain in the universe. Same is the case with vicious people that they will cause only pain in the universe and there will be no or very less pleasure which will disturb the universal laws and will create unbalance within the society. This is the reason by which most philosophers and moralists, according to Ross himself, do not agree with this point-of-view of supposing pleasure as a value. They say that since the criminals and bad people amongst the society finds pleasure in harming other people and in spoiling and looting of valuable assets, thus overall the term pleasure cannot be regarded as a moral value. Virtue promotes the sense of pleasure while vice promotes the sense of destruction and misery. Hence there comes a high contrast between kindness and cruelty which cannot be measured with the same scale. It can also happen in such situations that people who tend to make virtues and are good remain unhappy and the person who is bad and promotes vice remains happy. At this point, Ross says that if the virtue does not bring happiness for the very person who performs this, then it will not be considered just. It is better enough that the one who is good should be happy with his/her good deeds, which according to Ross are termed as prima facie duties. These duties are different from different person's aspects as everyone is not encountering with the similar circumstances. All the prima facie duties have equal importance and one performed at a time neglecting the other one is the most important one in that time, which can be termed as the absolute obligation. Thus the pleasure and virtue are two important states of affairs which are considered intrinsically good.