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MPW2153 MORAL STUDIES2013
ASSIGNMENTTOPIC 17: Write an essay to explain the Ross’s Prima Facie Duties.
ASSESSMENT CRITERIA TOTAL MARKS GIVEN MARKSCover page 1Table of content 1Introduction 2Content 2Conclusion 2Reference / Citation 2Appendix 2Total 20
TO BE COMPLETED BY STUDENTSI / We declare that this coursework is my / our own work.NAME ID NUMBER PROGRAMME SIGNATURENorman Ong Qi Xuan 010759 Foundation in Engineering
Chew Lee Xiuan 010805 Foundation in Engineering
Tay Hwang Chiat 010819 Foundation in Engineering
TO BE COMPLETED BY LECTURERGRADE / MARK AWARDED COMMENTS:
DATE: LECTURER'S SIGNATURE:
TABLE OF CONTENT PAGE NO.
INTRODUCTION 1 - 3
CONTENT 4 - 8
CONCLUSION 9 - 11
REFERENCE/CITATION 12
APPENDIX 13 - 15
Introduction
(Skelton, 2012)William David Ross was born on 15th April 1877 in Thurso,
Scotland. He spent his early childhood in India where his father was an
educator. At the age of six, he went back to Royal High School, Edinburgh
and the University in Edinburgh to continue his studies. William David Ross as
known as W.D.Ross, was a Scottish philosopher. He was well known for
works in ethics. Among all the works he has done, the best known work was
“The Right and the Good.” He was also a translator of Aristotle’s work. Not
only that, W.D.Ross joined army in the year of 1915 and held a lot of different
positions in philosophy field.
(Skelton, 2012),Ross once said that “moral convictions of thoughtful and well-
educated people are the data of ethics just as sense-perceptions are the data
of a natural science”. In this world, there are cases of knowledge which can
neither be proved nor proved, even by the philosophers. Therefore, moral
distinctions were implemented to test the moral theories, and these moral
distinctions act as a moral reflection of many generations. W.D.Ross was
considered as an odd philosopher because he thought that main common
sense conviction to be more significant compared to simplicity or
systematization, unlike the others. However, W.D.Ross appeared to be sitting
on the fence, as he gave an unclear stance to care about the thoughts of well-
educated people or the so called “normal people”. Whatever the case may be,
W.D Ross’s thoughts can only be precisely emerge after a through account of
its content provided. W.D.Ross’s sensitivity to the dictates of common sense
morality is what makes him contributes to the moral field.
In order to have a clearer view on W.D.Ross’s thought on moral.
Understanding the contents of his famous work, (JW Gray,2011) “The Right
and the Good” is the best choice you can ever ask for. In “The Right and the
Good”, morality was explained to be can’t fully comprehensive or used to
differentiate the right and wrong in every circumstances. There’s no one
single moral principle or rule that can do so. What William David Ross was
trying to claim is that people will learn to do the right choice and balance the
conflicting obligations and values as they make moral progress at the time
being. There won’t be a perfect solution for every case at this time, or in the
future. The best choice for everyone is to do the acts with higher moral values
although it may have to sacrifice another act with lower moral values.
(Skelton, 2012) “The Right and the Good” was separated into two major parts,
“The Right” and “The Good”. W.D.Ross believed that each of us had duties
that we were ought to do so. There are a lot of different duties in everyone’s
life. (Christina Lee, n.d), first, “Duty of fidelity”, a duty to keep promises that
one made. Other than that, “Duty of reparation”, a duty to correct a previous
wrong we have done. Besides that, “Duty of gratitude”, a duty to return
services to those who had gave us their helping hands or gained benefits
from. In addition, “Duty of beneficence”, it is a duty to maximize the aggregate
good. Lastly, the “Duty of non-maleficence”, which is a duty not to harm
others. These are the duties that W.D.Ross implemented. However, he looked
at these duties in different manners just like what was mentioned earlier.
Among all these duties, duty of non-maleficence is the most important for his
view. What comes after the duty of non-maleficence is duty of fidelity, duty of
reparation and duty of gratitude. As these three duties play an important role
in having good relations with others. Duty of beneficence come the least
important. All of these duties were included in one of the major part in “The
Right and the Good”, which is the “The Right”.
(Skelton, 2012) Now we have come to another part, “The Good”. Justice,
pleasure, knowledge and virtue is what “The Good” is all about. As usual,
W.D.Ross doesn’t take all of these equally important. Ross thought that
“virtue” is the most important among these four values. This is because
people with virtue will always have the desire to give pleasure and save pain
from others. If everyone has virtue, this world would be in peace. What comes
after next is “knowledge”. Knowledge is more important than the right opinion,
as the new generation lack of it. Among these four values, pleasure would be
in the last place. As for justice, it doesn’t have a fix ranking in this hierarchy,
but it was assumed to place in between pleasure and knowledge.
With the information above, we can roughly get the idea of how wonderful is
the morality that William David Ross is trying to bring out. But I don’t think
that’s enough to understand what kind of person he actually is. I’m sure there
are still attractive sides of him that makes him an amazing philosopher in that
era. Let’s read through this and expect for more!
Content
Ross’s prima facie duties is a non-consequentialist theory where how a
person act morally or not is not affected by what the consequences that
comes out of it. Ross main criticism on utilitarianism is that the concept only
considers limited aspects of the relationship between people, like the
relationship between harmer to the harmed and beneficent to beneficiary. This
leaves out other relationships like the relationship of parent to child, creditor to
debtor and spouse to spouse.
Ross has a different view on ethics compared to Kant’s duty ethics, where
both are non-consequentialist theories. He established prima facie duties that
everyone must comply with, unless there are strong serious reasons that they
should not adhere, which mean consequences do matter too in his theory.
Ross’s innovation it that all the principles are stated as prima facie and not
absolute obligations. In a way, prima facie duties are principles that specifies
an act whether it is good or bad. Ross’s too suggests that each of this duty is
the responsibility of everyone in the society.
(Dr.Jan Garrett,11/08/2004) Prima facie duties contain 8 duties that are listed
by Ross, which are fidelity, reparation, gratitude, non-injury, harm-prevention,
beneficence, self-improvement and justice.
i. Fidelity is mainly speaking about having integrity ethics but in a more
specific sense. Fidelity talks about keeping promises and contracts that
are made and being honest about it.
ii. Reparation is a duty to make up for any actions that might have caused
harm or hurt to someone.
iii. Gratitude means being grateful for any good action done to an
individual. Showing gratitude in return is encouraged if possible.
iv. Non-maleficence has two category:
a. Non-injury is a duty to strongly avoid, not just prevent injury to
others, physically or psychologically.
b. Harm-prevention is similar to non-injury, with a slight difference that
the harm is caused by anything other than the person him/herself.
This duty is usually merged with non-injury but still has a slight
difference.
v. Beneficence is the duty to go good to others.
vi. Self-improvement means trying to act to promote one’s own good, like
health, intelligence, happiness and security.
vii. Justice is a duty where it requires that one act in ways that weighs out
the benefits and burdens equally.
Prima facie means conditional, therefore prima facie duties mainly means
conditional duties. Ross states that these duties are a brief way to refer to the
characteristic of an act, whether it is morally right or wrong.
Ross states that this list is the best representation of the core commitments of
common-sense morality. (Skelton, 2012) This is not a complete and final list,
but all of the core responsibilities, like keeping a promise, are probably
something that can’t be morally wrong in any part of the world. Ross justifies
his list of basic prima facie duties by claiming that his rules of right conduct
are self-evident and needs no proof.
That an act, qua fulfilling a promise, or qua effecting a just distribution of
goods, or qua returning services rendered, or qua promoting the good of
others, or qua promoting the virtue or insight of the agent, is prima facie
right, is self-evident; not in the sense that it is evident from the beginning of
our lives, or as soon as we attend to the proposition for the first time, but in
the sense that when we have reached the sufficient mental maturity and
have given sufficient attention to the proposition it is evident without any
need of proof, or of evidence beyond itself. It is self-evident just as
mathematical axiom, or the validity of a form of inference, is evident. In both
cases we are dealing with propositions that cannot be proved, but that just
as certainly need no proof. (Ross, 1930)
In almost everything, there is no good idea that cannot be misused. Ross was
well aware of this and is the main reason why he made guidelines, not rules.
Examples on how some prima facie duties may be misused are as follows:
i. The prima facie duty of beneficence is misapplied is it is used to
promote one’s happiness by violating the person’s freedom and rights.
ii. The prima facie duty of non-injury may be misused if one uses it to
justify from refraining from telling a person what he/she needs to know
for the sake of her future moral development or long-term well-being
because it causes short-term distress and displeasure.
iii. The prima facie duty of self-improvement may be misapplied if one
prefers to prioritize own pleasure rather than knowledge and virtue.
There will be circumstances where prima facie duties will conflict with each
other. A very simple example is when a cop is faced with the decision of
shooting the convict that possesses firearm and has high potential to hurt
people around him. As a cop, shooting is not encouraged unless it is
necessary. If the cop doesn’t take action, and just wait for the convict to
surrender under gun point, he is applying justice, non-injury and beneficence
as he is sparing the convict his life and any injury. Without taking action, the
convict might have hurt people around him already, and that contradicts harm-
prevention and justice as well. There is an epistemological criticism that says
that there are doubts when we have to decide which duties have greater
priority than others. How do we determine when there is a reason that is
important enough to override certain prima facie duties?
In circumstances like this, (Skelton, 2012) Ross offers two principles to solve
the conflict of duties. One of it is to act according to the stronger prima facie
duty. For most cases, non-injury is the most important and overrides all other
duties. Besides that, fidelity usually has more priority than beneficence. Ross
contends four things that bring good into life, which are justice, knowledge,
virtue and pleasure. Virtue, knowledge and pleasure are just state of minds,
while justice is a relation between states of mind. Of course, not all the values
have the same importance. Ross states that virtue is the most important than
all the other values. Knowledge is the next important while pleasure lies last.
Justice is ranked in between pleasure and knowledge. Life is not filled with
pleasure all the time, so there are times where duties like beneficence, non-
injury, harm-prevention and self-improvement has higher priority as it brings
long term positive development to qualities like knowledge and virtue.
On another note, (Skelton, 2012) Ross defends with a slightly different view.
With the same four intrinsic values are somehow ‘objects worthy of
admiration’. The values of justice and pleasure are ‘objects worthy of
satisfaction’. This point of view allows Ross to explain why pleasure are not
deserved to be achieved in the midst of other’s misfortune, or through cruelty
or lust. The only reason that innocent pleasure is valuable is that only it is
worthy of satisfaction, and the pleasure of others is valuable is that only it is
an object of ‘sympathetic satisfaction’. One’s own pleasure is not an object of
sympathetic satisfaction, since one cannot feel sympathy for oneself; instead,
one’s own pleasure is just counted as inevitable object of satisfaction.
Second way to solve prima facie duty conflicts is to act in a way where there
is more prima facie rightness than wrongness. This might be the best and less
complicated way to solve duty conflicts, but there will be many contradictions
as different people have different ways of seeing how the action, that it may
have more prima facie rightness or wrongness.
This simple theory still can be said as incomplete, as the main problem still
stands on how to solve conflicts of duties. For example, the topic of abortion
which have two choices, to abort, or not to abort have big conflicts of duties
where either choice will certainly cause some duties to be overridden. With
different people having different views, like the different degrees of value
placed upon fetal life and adult freedom, different people will have different
view on the issue. A similar case is people becoming vegetarians out of
respect for animal rights. It is something that everyone will have different
views and opinions on.
There are many criticisms on Ross’s theories other than those from various
sources. From some ideal utilitarian’s point of view, fidelity, reparation and
gratitude are non-instrumentally valuable. The main reason for this argument
is that Ross naming knowledge and justice being valuable but none of these
duties are having relation with keeping knowledge and justice. Breaking a
promise will not decrease a person’s knowledge, neither is not being grateful.
W. A. Pickard-Cambridge, an ideal utilitarian too pressed Ross on the issue of
whether ideal utilitarianism was actually as at odds with common-sense
morality. He argues that ideal utilitarianism accounts better for our intuitions.
For example, Chuck has promised Peter that he will replace a string on this
violin by 4:00 tomorrow, but just before Chuck intends to fulfill the promise,
Peter contracts an illness that makes him impossible to play the violin forever.
Now, there seems to be no responsibility on Chuck to fulfill the promise
anymore. (Pickard-Cambridge, 1932). Ross argues that we must insist on
some common sense when it comes to applying prima facie duties. For
example, Joe promises that John will have his property when he dies, but
then later found out that if he leaves his property to Kevin, Kevin has more
chance of making more money out of it. An ideal utilitarian will act by breaking
the promise and leaves it to Kevin as it provides a better consequence
thought that action. This can be said as morally wrong as promises hold value
in human life too and breaking it can be said that it is morally wrong. Breaking
the promise will erode mutual confidence between Joe and John, though
creating more wealth for Kevin. Through common sense, the main verdict will
be keeping the promise, as making more money out of the property or not will
not make a big difference in Joe’s life.
Pickard-Cambridge argues further that ideal utilitarianism gives the best
explanation of the strength of a promise. (Pickard-Cambridge, 1932) Ross
agrees that some promises can be seen more important than some, like
getting a car fix and playing ball with a friend. This argument proves that the
prima facie duties are not only duties as duties but has to consider some
consequences as well, which has some elements of utilitarianism.
Conclusion
How can we acquire moral and axiological knowledge? (Skelton, 2012)Ross
maintains the acquire moral and axiological in mathematics and in ethics. We
can clearly intuition from how we build up all about the numbers and the
nature of duty. They are no reason how we know about the moral and
axiological knowledge because these are self-evident or knowable on the
basis of an understanding alone from experience from daily life. For example,
keeping our promises is a responsibility of self-evident so that other people
can trust on us. We acquire moral by a process of reflection on this
proposition that we come ahead. (Skelton, 2012) Ross thinks we can trust our
moral apprehensions, and since apprehension is a matter of knowledge, and
knowledge implies certainty, he is certain that we have the above
responsibilities and that certain things are intrinsically valuable.
(Skelton, 2012) Ross maintains that a responsibility is self-evident ‘not in the
sense that it is evident from the beginning of our lives, or as soon as we
attend to the proposition for the first time, but in the sense that when we have
reached sufficient mental maturity and have given sufficient attention to the
proposition it is evident without any need of proof, or of evidence beyond
itself. This means that when we are getting matured in time we will get to
know our responsibility throughout our life. We apprehend that it is prima
facie right to keep promises by apprehending that it is prima facie right to fulfill
this or that particular promise. ‘What comes first in time is the apprehension of
the self-evident prima facie rightness of an individual act of a particular type.
From this we come by reflection to apprehend the self-evident general
principle of prima facie duty’-W.D.Ross.
(Skelton, 2012) Based on W.D Ross our self-evident responsibilities are not
principles by the immediate application of which our duty in particular
circumstances can be deduced. Rather, one determines what one ought to do
all things considered, that is, one's actual duty or one's duty proper, by
reference to [the act] is an instance of. What one has most responsibility to do
or what is most suitable all things considered belongs to an act in virtue of its
whole nature and of nothing less than this.
We never know what we ought to do all things considered. (Skelton, 2012)
Ross says that in this case we have to balance the two responsibilities. He
thinks that it is more stringent that the requirement to keep one's promises
than the requirement to benefit other people. Therefore, what you ought to do
is that thing of all those possible for the agent in the circumstances, that has
the greatest balance of prima facie rightness, in those respects in which they
are prima facie right, over their prima facie wrongness, in those respects in
which they are prima facie wrong. (Skelton, 2012) The act which is one's
actual duty or duty proper is the one for which one is most responsible or to
which the weightier of one's responsibilities attach. In the end, the decision
regarding what to do base on how we feel on it. It is important to note and
know that all of the responsibilities have the valence, good and bad side, and
this valence persists even when a responsibility is cancel out by weightier
responsibilities.
(Skelton, 2012) Rose state that there are many differences that cannot be
explained away in the new era, however the differences as to the comparative
worth of different goods and as to the stringency of the responsibilities Ross
endorses. Ross think that we shouldn’t underestimate ours confidence in the
ways of moral value. He says that despite changes in scientific theories there
is a sense that science progresses toward the truth. The same is true in ethics
as there is no reason to doubt that man progresses fairly steadily towards
moral truth as he does towards scientific. The difficulty with this response is
that whereas in scientific matters there is an independent way of establishing
progress, there is no such independent or seemingly independent way of
establishing this in ethics.
(Skelton, 2012) Ross state that if ‘right’ and ‘being productive of the greatest
good in the circumstances’ mean the same thing, then it is not the case that it
is intelligible that the proposition ‘the “right act” just is “the act productive of
the greatest good in the circumstances”. It is intelligible that these
propositions should have been denied and maintained with so much fervour.
Therefore, it is not the case that ‘right’ and ‘productive of the greatest good in
the circumstances’ mean the same thing. This argument can be generalised
to reject the usual suspects in example ‘right’ means ‘approved of by me’ or
‘right’ means ‘approved of by the majority of society’, and so on. But it is not
the best argument, since we may well fight over analytic propositions,
especially when they are opaque or unobvious. Therefore, we often judge that
an act is right even when we know that we are alone in holding this view.
Reference
JW Gray,(2011),Ethical Realism – W.D.Ross Intuitionism, a moral theory. Available from: http://ethicalrealism.wordpress.com/2011/05/18/w-d-rosss-moral-theory-the-right-and-the-good/
Christina Lee,(n.d) Seven Prima Duties. Available from: http://www.ehow.com/info_8112361_seven-prima-facie-duties.html
Skelton, Anthony(2012) William David Ross, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Available from: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/william-david-ross/#DatEth
Dr.Jan Garrett (11/08/2004) A Simple and Usable (Although Incomplete)Ethical Theory Based on the Ethics of W. D. Ross- The prima facie duties or moral guidelines. Available from : http://people.wku.edu/jan.garrett/ethics/rossethc.htm
ebeni European Business Ethics Network Ireland(2003)- Framework Ross’s prima facie duties framework. Available from: http://ebeni.wordpress.com/decisions/frameworks/ross%E2%80%99s-prima-facie-duties-framework/
JOSEPH P. DeMARCO,(n.d) Moral Theory: A Primer- W.D.Ross and prima facie duties Available from: http://www.lawandbioethics.com/demo/Main/EthicsResources/prima_facie_duties.htm
Davis Ross (1877) The Right and the Good. Available from: http://books.google.com.my/books?id=goT27vEOeeAC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
Mark Timmons (1951) Moral Theory : An Introduction- Page 247(Ross prima facie duties). Available from: http://books.google.com.my/books?id=qWGp1iK9IlAC&pg=PA249&lpg=PA249&dq=ross%E2%80%99s+prima+facie+duties+assignment&source=bl&ots=lpiiMq7mii&sig=XcijGpAEBSEI5JodVYAUxmY_gnk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=DwE-Uc6zNo2yrAfI94HACw&ved=0CFAQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q&f=false
Cambridge-Pickard(1932) “Two Problems About Duty (II.),”. Available from: http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2250009?uid=3738672&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21101974409097
Appendix