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