"What Makes Right Acts Right"

¶ … Right Acts Right?" By W.D Ross

Ross shuns Mill's utilitarianism as well as Kant's deontology, asserting that ethics can't be reduced to any single good, as is claimed by these theories. Instead, he writes that moral acts are those that generate the greatest good; 'good', here, can imply many, diverse things, including pleasures and duties. He starts off the essay by assessing what individuals take into consideration while deliberating about what action to take. When an individual reflects on a promise he/she made, the individual normally doesn't consider it with regard to its consequences. Furthermore, keeping the promise isn't thought of as good because it results in the best outcomes (What makes right acts right, n.d.). Under ordinary circumstances, the word 'promise' itself suffices to demand that the promise be kept; however, this obligation can be annulled if breaking of the promise does more substantial good. Ross contends that, instead of any one simple principle of how one must act, there are numerous ethically relevant facts (like, one's will, relationships, consequences, etc.) that create a conditional or prima facie duty. Therefore, in the absence of any significant countervailing concern, an individual has a conditional duty to abide by the promise, be truthful, be nice to friends, etc. To ascertain whether one has an actual (or proper) duty, one must consider all the morally relevant particulars of one's situation (What makes right acts right, n.d.). The author has come up with a number of conditional duties (i.e. duties arising from promises, from previous relationships, from outcomes, from one's wrongdoings, etc.), to compare his approach with utilitarianism. While the latter is an essentially simple theory, compared to his list of duties, he believes that it doesn't possess adequate explanatory power. One could, for instance, create the same amount of overall happiness through aiding a stranger, rather than a friend; utilitarian theories don't offer any reason for choosing to aid a friend. Ross, however, writes that one, obviously, must help the friend, his conditional-duties list accounting for this choice; according to Ross, this is a more explanatorily-strong principle than utilitarianism. As no theoretical reason exists to presume that moral values need to be reduced to any one good (e.g. pleasure), he believes that the right act can best be understood when considering a number of goods (What makes right acts right, n.d.).

Ross's essay arrives at a concept of prima facie (conditional) duty; his essay has been deemed by some modern authors as worthy of being integrated with a revised version of some of Kant's deontology aspects. The author disagrees with utilitarian ethics' commitment to perceiving number of goods as grounds for making an act right (recent treatments render this as making good before right). Ross opposes this position, referring to an individual promising something because he believes he must; here, Ross assumes the man doesn't give any thought to the consequences of his pledge. However, while this appears to be a direct and simple opposition to utilitarianism, the author, in reality, reluctantly accepts a point of utilitarian theory, as he acknowledges that such circumstances may arise wherein fulfilling a vow may have extremely adverse consequences, and the right thing would be to break the promise (Banham, 2010). Therefore, while the promise can be fulfilled for reasons not pertaining to its consequences, the act of breaking the promise arises out of consideration for its consequences. The essay then follows with examples helping to clarify the statement, like the fact that the pledge may be regarding a relatively trivial thing, and its non-fulfillment may be because of, say, attending to accident victims. However, this example doesn't demonstrate the real point, as its salient feature has been already described through references to outcomes; therefore, Ross' works seems to become outcome-sensitive. However, this does not entail for Ross that the cause for sensitivity is because of the individual's commitment to do more good to the world. When this isn't the reason, one can find grounds for consequence-sensitivity, which don't cause one to accept consequentialism (Banham, 2010). Therefore, the prima facie concept is introduced by Ross as a means to express consequence-sensitivity. The conception here is that this sort of sensitivity results in case of a clash between two parties, for some moral obligation to be carried out; both can't be adopted under the circumstances. The author terms these as "cases of conscience." Here, Ross' terminology is awkward; he admits freely that this conditional duty hasn't become a binding (and actual) duty yet, but is still only conditional. Also, the term "prima facie" indicates that it might be nothing but a deceptive aspect, leading one to consider the "duty" as a moral obligation, while Ross doesn't hold this view, as he rather believes that these "duties" include factors which render them rather plainly, such as for involving a 'claim' upon us (Ross, however, also has issues with the term "claim," as this primarily refers to others, and not ourselves). The basic point about these duties is, they depend on a specific circumstance that can't seriously be considered as having no ethical significance (Banham, 2010).