W.D. Ross on Prima Facie Duties and What Makes Acts Right

Introduction to Ross's Ethical Framework

In his essay "What Makes Right Acts Right?" W.D. Ross rejects both Mill's utilitarianism and Kant's deontology, asserting that ethics cannot be reduced to any single good, as claimed by these theories. Instead, he argues that moral acts are those that generate the greatest good, where "good" can imply many diverse things, including pleasures and duties. He begins by assessing what individuals take into consideration while deliberating about which action to take.

When an individual reflects on a promise he or she has made, Ross observes that the individual normally does not consider it with regard to its consequences. Furthermore, keeping the promise is not thought of as good merely because it results in the best outcomes. Under ordinary circumstances, the word "promise" itself suffices to demand that the promise be kept; however, this obligation can be annulled if breaking the promise does more substantial good.

Ross contends that, instead of any one simple principle governing how one must act, there are numerous ethically relevant facts — such as one's will, relationships, and consequences — 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 promises, be truthful, be kind to friends, and so on. To ascertain whether one has an actual (or proper) duty, one must consider all the morally relevant particulars of one's situation.

Critique of Utilitarianism and Kantian Deontology

Ross developed a number of conditional duties — duties arising from promises, from prior relationships, from outcomes, from one's past wrongdoings, and others — in order to compare his approach with utilitarianism. While utilitarianism is an essentially simple theory, he believes it does not possess adequate explanatory power when placed alongside his list of duties.

One could, for instance, generate the same amount of overall happiness by aiding a stranger rather than a friend. Utilitarian theories offer no compelling reason to choose to aid the friend over the stranger. Ross, however, argues that one obviously must help the friend, with his conditional-duties framework accounting for this choice. He regards this as a more explanatorily powerful principle than utilitarianism. Since no theoretical reason exists to presume that moral values must be reduced to any single good — such as pleasure — he believes that right action is best understood by considering a range of goods together.

Prima Facie Duties and Conditional Obligation

Ross's essay arrives at the concept of prima facie (conditional) duty, an idea that some modern authors have deemed worthy of integration with a revised version of certain aspects of Kantian deontology. Ross disagrees with utilitarian ethics' commitment to treating the maximization of goods as the sole grounds for making an act right — a position recent treatments describe as placing the "good" before the "right."

Ross opposes this position by referencing an individual who keeps a promise because he believes he simply must, without giving any thought to the consequences of his pledge. The author has come up with his list of conditional duties to capture this intuition: that many moral reasons for acting are not reducible to the production of good outcomes, but arise from the specific relationships and commitments that constitute a person's moral situation.

References

Banham, G. (2010, February 8). W.D. Ross and prima facie duties. Retrieved from http://kantinternational.blogspot.com/2010/02/wd-ross-and-prima-facie-duties.html

What makes right acts right. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.cengage.com/philosophy/book_content/0495094927_feinberg/introductions/part_5/Proposed_Standards_of_Right_Conduct/ross.html