His underlying assumption is that every reasonable and thoughtful adult will have at least a partial grasp of basic moral truths; and so wherever we find widespread agreement among a large number of such individuals, or among the most knowledgeable and experienced members of such a group, the more likely we are to discover moral perceptions and principles that are accurate and reliable b Such commonly held principles and basic perceptions represent the appropriate starting point for any higher ethical inquiry or theoretical investigation:.
We must. In addition, he looks upon principles and perceptions that have persisted for generations as having particular moral force and authority, and thus any theory that repeatedly contradicts those principles becomes immediately suspect. The existing body of moral convictions of the best people is the cumulative product of the moral reflection of many generations, which has developed an extremely delicate power of appreciation of moral distinctions; and this the theorist cannot afford to treat with anything other than the greatest respect.
The verdicts of the moral consciousness of the best people are the foundation on which he must build; though he must first compare them with one another and eliminate any contradictions they may contain.
According to adherents of virtue theory, doing the right thing ultimately has less to do with defining and upholding basic ethical rules and duties than with molding good character and cultivating good habits of behavior.
Ross, on the other hand, departs from virtue theory by insisting that there are certain fundamental rules or duties such as our duty to keep promises or our duty to assist people in need that are self-evident, duties that we know to be true and that we are obligated to uphold. That resurgence effectively started with the ground-breaking work of Elizabeth Anscombe and continued during the latter half of the century with the contributions of Philippa Foot and Alasdair MacIntyre.
Ross basically accepts this claim and agrees that it is not enough merely to do the right thing. For an act to be morally good, we must perform it because it is the right thing. For example, if I repay a loan simply to avoid a heavy fine or some form of legal penalty, I will have done the right thing but my action will have no genuine moral significance.
Only if I repay the loan out of a sincere sense of personal obligation and a willing adherence to principle will my right action also be morally good. For example, suppose that based on his experience in armed service and through contact and interviews with other war veterans a soldier abandons his earlier belief that active participation in warfare is virtuous and honorable and instead comes to a new understanding which now strikes him as self-evident and unassailably true that engaging in war is wrong and that he has a moral obligation to oppose it.
According to Ross, he would have the same duty to act in accordance with his newly formulated a posteriori moral conviction as he would an a priori moral principle. Ross, by the way, had to deal with several cases of exactly this type in his role on a British panel reviewing applications for conscientious objector status during WW II. Over the course of his commentary, Ross repeatedly demonstrates his adroit critical powers and relentless skill in semantic and logical debate. Again and again he takes Kant to task for drawing some dubious distinction, or for using a term or phrase in some vague, questionable, or inconsistent way.
Elsewhere he chides Kant for his tendency to divide things into formal and material components, inevitably honoring the former and disparaging the latter, as if matter itself and the things of earth, as in the view of Christian neo-Platonism, were defective or corrupt. For the acts we have to choose between, say the telling of the truth or the saying of what is untrue, in some particular circumstances, or the keeping or the breaking of a promise, are completely individual acts, and their rightness or their wrongness will spring from their whole nature, and no element in their nature can safely be abstracted from.
To abstract is to shut our eyes to the detail of the moral situation and to deprive ourselves of the data for a true judgment about it. For it is just as hard to see whether a similar act by someone else, with all its concrete particularity, would be right, as it is to see whether our own proposed act would be right KET , In the end, despite all his criticisms and reservations, Ross winds up with a ringing endorsement of both Kant the ethical theorist and Kant the man:.
It is his own moral sensitiveness, and his insistence on sensitiveness in others, that makes him, to my mind, the most truly moral of all moral philosophers. KET , But for beginning students it is hard to imagine a better introduction or starting point for deeper study.
At the time of his death in , Ross was as well known and as widely esteemed for his work as a classical scholar as for his contributions to moral philosophy. However, in the four decades since his death the general estimate of his achievement has altered, and while he is still revered for his accomplishments as a scholar and editor he is now more highly regarded for his vital and original contributions to ethical theory. There are several reasons for this critical revaluation.
Second, during the same time period, classical philology and the scholarly study of Latin and Greek have become contracting disciplines and no longer form a central or growing part of the university curriculum.
Meanwhile, the study of ethics has seen its role in higher education expand, and as a result ethical theory is now taught not just in philosophy departments in liberal arts colleges but in most business and professional schools as well. Furthermore, it was not long after the original publication of The Right and the Good that ethical intuitionism, of which Ross was a leading advocate, fell into general disfavor among moral philosophers. The intuitionist approach, its critics argued, smacked of metaphysics and even theology, and the doctrine was roundly criticized and even ridiculed, especially by ethical naturalists and logical positivists.
In the last twenty years, however, intuitionism has enjoyed a substantial rebirth and has gained new theoretical support and new adherents.
As noted above, it has certain affinities and features in common with the thought of Plato notably the Idea of the Good , Aristotle such as the view that ethics is an inexact science and inevitably involves some degree of individual judgment , and Kant for example, anti-consequentialism and the idea that good actions involve a sense of duty and a respect for moral law.
Ross himself acknowledged as the most significant and immediate influences on his ethical ideas two of the leading figures in early twentieth-century British moral philosophy: H. Prichard and G. Ethical Non-naturalism. Ethical Intuitionism. Ethical Pluralism. These are:. Moral statements are propositions and are either true or false independently of human opinion or belief. Moral propositions are true when they accurately describe or correspond to an actual state of affairs that is, when they reflect actual objective features of the real world and are false when they do not.
They are true if they correspond to actual, real-world states of affairs and false if they do not. Furthermore, since these statements purport to describe objective reality, they are essentially different from and cannot be reduced to statements that merely express personal emotions or describe states of mind.
It is a way of knowing an object by sensation and immediate perception rather than by an intervening process of reason, analysis, or logical consideration. An example here would be a direct and total immersion or thorough sensation of the city of Paris vs. According to Bergson, no matter how many incremental elements you add to the latter, you can never achieve the full and absolute knowledge provided by the former.
Michael Huemer, a modern-day rationalist intuitionist, uses intuition in a sense that seems close to the way that Ross uses and understands the term. But there is also a way things seem to us prior to reasoning; otherwise, reasoning could not get started. And although it is essentially different from deduction or induction or any other purely rational, logical procedure or mathematical process, the moral knowledge that it provides can nevertheless strike us with something like the full force of recognition and sense of certainty of a mathematical demonstration.
It is self-evident just as a mathematical axiom, or the validity of a form of inference, is evident. The moral order expressed in these propositions is just as much part of the fundamental nature of the universe and, we may add, of any possible universe in which there were moral agents at all as is the spatial or numerical structure expressed in axioms of geometry or arithmetic. In our confidence that these propositions are true, there is involved the same trust in our reason that is involved in our confidence in mathematics; and we should have no justification for trusting it in the latter sphere and distrusting it in the former.
In both cases we are dealing with propositions that cannot be proved, but that just as certainly need no proof. One is reminded of Dr. It is pluralist in the sense that, unlike Kantian ethics and utilitarianism monist systems based on a single, pre-eminent, all-encompassing rule or principle — namely the categorical imperative and the principle of utility, respectively , Ross recognizes several different fundamental rules or principles that he terms prima facie duties.
Moreover — and this is a key element and a distinctive feature of his theory — he acknowledges that these duties can, and invariably do, collide and come into conflict with one another.
The phrase prima facie, since it has the connotation of a mere initial appearance or first impression, is to a certain extent unfortunate and misleading. In fact Ross uses it somewhat apologetically. But he is careful to explain that a prima facie duty is by no means simply an apparent duty or an obligation that we might seem to have at first glance, but which later reflection or deeper analysis might very well invalidate. On the contrary, he stresses that a prima facie duty is entirely real and self-evident, though it is always contingent on circumstances and never absolute.
We should strive to keep promises and be honest and truthful. We should make amends when we have wronged someone else.
We should be grateful to others when they perform actions that benefit us and we should try to return the favor. Non-injury or non-maleficence. We should refrain from harming others either physically or psychologically. We should be kind to others and to try to improve their health, wisdom, security, happiness, and well-being.
We should strive to improve our own health, wisdom, security, happiness, and well-being. We should try to be fair and try to distribute benefits and burdens equably and evenly. In Foundations of Ethics , Ross suggests that the duties of beneficence, self-improvement, and justice could be subsumed under a single duty to promote intrinsic values that is, things that are intrinsically good. Doing this would reduce the number of prima facie duties from seven to five. However, the important thing here is not so much the exact number of duties that we recognize Robert Audi lists ten or the precise terminology that we use to identify or describe them, but to agree that the duties enumerated and described are all valid and certified.
For example, most people would probably agree that our duty of non-maleficence trumps our duty to be beneficent and that in most cases it would be wrong to steal something from one person in order to give it to someone else. On the other hand, there are classic cases like that of Jean Valjean and the loaf of bread.
Would you approve stealing from a wealthy aristocrat to feed a starving infant? Many people would. But they might also think there was something morally dubious about the action, or they might approve it in an abstract way but not feel wholly comfortable performing it themselves. What is one to do in such cases? In both The Right and the Good and in Foundations of Ethics , Ross offers his theory of prima facie duties as a major and in his view much-needed corrective to Kantian ethics and to the ideal utilitarianism of G.
This section provides a brief overview of his critique of ideal utilitarianism. Ideal utilitarianism, a form of consequentialism associated with Moore, can be defined as the view that right actions are those that in any given situation result in a maximum of overall good or what amounts to the same thing that produce the best possible outcome.
He simply says that it is counter-intuitive that is, contrary to common-sense ethics and incomplete. Ross claims that utilitarianism is simplistic and reductive.
He argues that it overlooks or conflates the complicated ways in which human beings stand in relation, and thus in moral obligation, to one another:. They do stand in this relation to me, and this relation is morally significant. But they may also stand to me in the relation of promisee to promiser, of creditor to debtor, of wife to husband, of child to parent, of friend to friend, of fellow countryman to fellow countryman, and the like; and each of these relationships is the foundation of a prima facie duty, which is more or less incumbent upon me according to the circumstances of the case.
Ross claims that utilitarianism is too general and abstract. If the only duty is to produce the maximum of good, the question of who is to have the good — whether it is myself, or my benefactor, or a person to whom I have made a promise to confer that good on him, or a mere fellow man to whom I stand in no such special relationship — should make no difference to my having a duty to produce that good.
But we are all in fact sure that it makes a vast difference. Ross claims that the fundamental principle of utilitarianism — that an act is right if it produces the most overall good — is at odds with common sense morality.
He uses a series of hypothetical examples to illustrate his point:. Should we really think it self-evident that it was our duty to do the second act and not the first? I think not. His first principle outlining a set of basic rights takes priority over his second principle outlining the correct distribution of social benefits and burdens.
Rawls does not think it is ever right to violate rights in order to produce just distributions. This gets him a theory that is as systematic as his classical average utilitarian rival and more systematic than Ross's theory, but Ross can argue that Rawls achieves system at the expense of absolutism, which many acknowledge to have counterintuitive results. But it is not clear that Ross has a lock on the best representation of common-sense morality.
It is relatively clear that most hedonistic utilitarians are reformers of common-sense morality e. These philosophers may not be moved at the level of moral foundations by claims that their view conflicts with common-sense morality. For their aim in part is to revise it.
Ross gives hedonism short shrift because he thinks it obvious that pleasure is not the only thing that is intrinsically valuable RG 17, 99; FE He often argues that ideal utilitarianism, like hedonistic utilitarianism, can be dismissed because it is at odds with common-sense morality RG 17—19, Yet, it is far from clear that ideal utilitarianism is reformist like hedonistic or classical utilitarianism.
The better way to represent the dispute between ideal utilitarians and Ross is over which view best represents common-sense moral thinking. It is certainly the case that the main proponents of ideal utilitarianism took themselves to be aiming to best represent common-sense morality e.
As Ross conducts it, the main dispute between the two revolves around the issue of whether ideal utilitarians can make sense of the obligation to keep one's promises. He employs the following example to illustrate his initial case RG 34— Suppose that by fulfilling a promise to Edward you will produce units of good for him but that by breaking the promise and doing something else that you have not promised to do you will produce units of good for James.
The ideal utilitarian view entails that it is wrong to fulfil the promise: we must benefit James. But this is not the verdict of common-sense morality. According to Ross, it takes a much greater disparity in value between the two to justify begging off on the promise RG 35; FE 77, In reply, the ideal utilitarian argues that the common-sense verdict may be captured by noting that breaking promises erodes mutual confidence and that keeping promises increases mutual confidence RG These goods and evils tip the balance in favour of keeping the promise.
But Ross thinks this a lame response. There will no doubt be cases where all the benefits of breaking the promise will outweigh though only very slightly all the costs associated with breaking it, and in this case the ideal utilitarian will have to admit that it is obligatory to break the promise RG Ross thinks that this is not the verdict of common-sense morality.
In a set of engaging essays, W. Pickard-Cambridge pressed Ross on the issue of whether ideal utilitarianism was actually as at odds with common-sense morality as Ross suggested Pickard-Cambridge a, b, c.
Pickard-Cambridge first argues that there are strong direct and indirect reasons for taking promises very seriously Pickard-Cambridge b — He further argues that ideal utilitarianism accounts better for our intuitions about the following kinds of cases:. Both Peter and Chuck assume that if by Peter is rendered unable ever to use his violin, then the promise is null and void.
But the ideal utilitarian may see a weakness here and urge that she can provide an interpretation and that her interpretation and its explanation fits more easily with common-sense morality. Peter and Chuck assume what they do because no good would otherwise come from insisting on the promise being fulfilled.
Therefore the promise is null and void. The difficulty with this reply is that to secure it Ross has to contend that the implied contract stipulates that we are to tell each other the whole truth or all of the truth, and it is not clear that this requirement is one to which the plain man subscribes. It is not obvious that when I sell you something I am required to tell you all the truths about the item for sale. The ideal utilitarian is in a better position to explain why in the case of the miser the implied contract to tell the truth requires that one not state that one is a beggar when one is not and why it does not require us to tell all of the truth in other cases.
The contract is specified this way because this produces good outcomes. This is not plausible. There is no reason to enrich an already rich person simply because of carelessness of this sort. But what drives this interpretation of the promise? The ideal utilitarian may argue that the reason we interpret the promise this way is that doing so promotes the good. Furthermore, the ideal utilitarian can argue that even without thinking of this interpretation of the promise we still believe that we have no or only very weak reasons to pay, and that they can offer the best explanation of this fact.
They can also explain why this is as Ross notes a difficult issue to decide: there are utilitarian reasons on either side. Pickard-Cambridge further argues that ideal utilitarianism gives the best explanation of the strength of a promise b — Ross agrees that some promises are more binding than others, e. He suggests that the former is stronger because of the value of what is being promised FE These responses seem to play right into the hands of the ideal utilitarian: the promise is more binding in the first case because of the greater value at stake and in the second case because the expectation and the disappointment are greater, all of which are goods of the sort that the ideal utilitarian claims we need to balance in deciding what we ought all things considered to do.
Ross has one final reply to Pickard-Cambridge, using the following example. A is dying. He entrusts his property to B , on the strength of B 's promise to give it to C. C does not know of A 's intentions or B 's promise.
B 's activities will not disappoint A or C , nor will his activities negatively effect the general mutual confidence. Suppose that D could make better use of the property than C. It follows on ideal utilitarianism that B ought to give the property to D. The version of ideal utilitarianism to which Pickard-Cambridge subscribes seems to entail that B has no reason to fulfil the promise to A.
This is a problem for the view. However, Ross's own view seems to imply revision in this case. This suggests that the rightness of the promise depends on it producing some pleasure or satisfaction for A. But since A is dead when B fulfils the promise no pleasure or satisfaction can be brought into existence for A , implying that B has no obligation by Ross's lights to fulfil the promise.
This seems to put him at odds with the plain man in other cases. Consider a death-bed promise with a different content, that A be buried with C , his wife. Suppose that this promise is not bonific. Ross will have to say that there is no reason to fulfil it. Hence, he'll have to advocate revision to common-sense morality.
Perhaps he can argue that his revision is more conservative than the revisions required by ideal utilitarianism. But this is a very thin difference, and may not be enough to give Ross the edge. Given these worries and the fact that ideal utilitarianism seems quite close to the plain man or common-sense morality in many of the other important cases, that it would entail that it is right to break the promise in the initial case above can hardly be considered a death blow.
The ideal utilitarian may not be satisfied with this outcome. Perhaps the more appropriate route for her is not to opt for revision to common-sense morality. Instead, perhaps the better strategy is to suggest that they can capture the importance of promise keeping to common-sense morality by holding that promise keeping is intrinsically valuable or at least that promise breaking is intrinsically evil Johnson , ; Ewing , ; Brennan ; Shaver The general strategy is to subsume all of Ross's non-utilitarian duties in this way.
This is a compelling response. To assess it, it is important to examine his theory of value. Virtue, knowledge and pleasure are states of mind, while justice is a relation between states of mind RG Ross holds that virtue is the most important and that some virtuous motives are more important than others e.
Knowledge is the next most important of the values. The least most valuable is pleasure RG It is not clear where to place justice in this hierarchy, since Ross says only that it is less valuable than virtue RG — It is not implausible to think that it should be placed between virtuous knowledge and pleasure, and therefore that the values are ranked as follows: virtue, virtuous knowledge, justice and pleasure. In FE, Ross defends a slightly different view. But in FE he revises this view.
The goodness of these things is not intrinsic to them; rather, it is a relational property, which depends on our rightly taking an interest or rightly finding some kind of satisfaction in them FE One's own pleasure is not an object of sympathetic satisfaction, since one cannot feel sympathy for oneself; instead, one's own pleasure is merely an inevitable object of satisfaction FE That in FE Ross holds that there are four goods is controversial.
It has been suggested that in FE Ross rejects the view that pleasure is intrinsically good Stratton-Lake a xli—xlii, b This is hard to accept. Finally, it really would be contrary to the plain man's view and to reflective thinking to deny that pleasure is a good and that pain is an evil.
In early writings, he claims that justice is a requirement of duty not a value OJ However, since he suggests quite clearly at one point that he thinks that justice is good in the same sense that the pleasure of others is good it is not unreasonable to think that he holds that justice is a good FE — He also suggests at one point that promise keeping is good in the same way that justice and pleasure are good FE But he more often rejects the claim that promise keeping is good FE , , suggesting that not all things that are objects worthy of satisfaction are valuable.
It is now possible to assess the second ideal utilitarian reply to Ross mentioned above. Some ideal utilitarians contend that his objections to the view may be overcome by arguing that promise keeping, reparation, and gratitude are non-instrumentally valuable.
The most plausible argument of this variety states that Ross must accept that promise keeping is valuable or at least that promise breaking is evil because he accepts that knowledge and justice are valuable and there is no real distinction between these values and the value of keeping promises or the disvalue of breaking promises Shaver The characterisation provided above of Ross's theory of value provides him with a defence.
He seems to insist on any occasions that only states of mind or relations between states of mind have value. Promise keeping, reparation, and gratitude are not merely states of mind or relations between states of mind. Therefore, they cannot be good. One worry is that knowledge is not merely a state of consciousness.
In RG, Ross insists that knowledge has intrinsic value. He sometimes suggests this in FE. However, his considered view is that it is not knowledge but intellectual and aesthetic activities that have value FE 19, 27, 73, , , , , , —, , , ; also OJ , , ; KT It is not unreasonable to think that Ross moved away from thinking that it is knowledge that has value and to thinking that it is intellectual and aesthetic activity that has value because only the latter is properly called a state of consciousness.
This might be problematic for Ross. If he rejects the idea that knowledge is intrinsically valuable while accepting that intellectual activities are intrinsically valuable, he cannot account for the fact that knowledge appears to be more important than justified opinion Shaver But Ross can argue that knowledge is more important because of its instrumental properties, e.
A fortiori the claim that it is intellectual activities that are intrinsically good explains why some instances of knowledge are more important than others. The value of the intellectual activities explains the value of the knowledge.
But what about the fact that justice is an intrinsic value? It is not a state of consciousness; it is a relation between states of mind RG If Ross is willing to accept this as a good, why not accept that promise keeping, and so on, are good?
It might be that he can still insist that justice is different from promise keeping, reparation, and gratitude because it is compounded from states of consciousness and that is why it and not these other things are good. However, perhaps the better reply is simply to drop justice from his list of values. He repeatedly contends that it is only states of mind that have value OJ ; RG , —, ; FE , ; KT 21 , and justice is not a state of mind.
He can insist on this view and block the ideal utilitarian response. He is open to characterising justice as a requirement of duty rather than a value FE , and he loses little by dropping it as a value.
Further, he might argue that understanding justice as a moral requirement is the best way to think of it if one wants to capture what we think. Ross relies quite heavily on the Moorean isolation method to defend his value theory Moore His value theory came under much less scrutiny than did his deontic theory, and therefore he did not see fit to consider monistic responses to it.
This may in part be due to the fact that there is agreement amongst his main rivals—Moore, Rashdall, Pickard-Cambridge, Ewing, and Johnson—that value pluralism is true. This may also be due in part to the fact that he considered the main monistic rival—that is, hedonism—a dead end RG 98; FE But hedonism lives on Feldman ; Mendola ; Crisp ; Bradley Therefore, it may be that Ross's value theory is in for a challenge that neither he nor his ideal utilitarian critics anticipated.
To get a taste of what this challenge may look like consider the following hedonistic reply to Ross's argument for the idea that virtue is intrinsically valuable.
Hedonists hold pace Ross that while it is obvious that virtue is instrumentally good and vice is instrumentally bad, it is far from clear that the former is intrinsically good and the latter is intrinsically bad.
In response, Ross asks us to imagine two worlds, W 1 and W 2. W 1 and W 2 include the same quantity of pleasure. Under this form of ethics you can't justify an action by showing that it produced good consequences, which is why it's sometimes called 'non-Consequentialist'. Duty-based ethics are usually what people are talking about when they refer to 'the principle of the thing'. Duty-based ethics teaches that some acts are right or wrong because of the sorts of things they are, and people have a duty to act accordingly, regardless of the good or bad consequences that may be produced.
Someone who follows Duty-based ethics should do the right thing, even if that produces more harm or less good than doing the wrong thing:. So, for example, the philosopher Kant thought that it would be wrong to tell a lie in order to save a friend from a murderer. If we compare Deontologists with Consequentialists we can see that Consequentialists begin by considering what things are good, and identify 'right' actions as the ones that produce the maximum of those good things.
Deontologists appear to do it the other way around; they first consider what actions are 'right' and proceed from there. Actually this is what they do in practice, but it isn't really the starting point of deontological thinking.
If people were to think about this seriously and in a philosophically rigorous manner, Kant taught, they would realise that there were some moral laws that all rational beings had to obey simply because they were rational beings, and this would apply to any rational beings in any universe that might ever exist:.
The supreme principle of morality would have an extremely wide scope: one that extended not only to all rational human beings but to any other rational beings who might exist - for example, God, angels, and intelligent extraterrestrials. Kant taught rather optimistically that every rational human being could work this out for themselves and so did not need to depend on God or their community or anything else to discover what was right and what was wrong.
Nor did they need to look at the consequences of an act, or who was doing the action. Although he expressed himself in a philosophical and quite difficult way, Kant believed that he was putting forward something that would help people deal with the moral dilemmas of everyday life, and provide all of us with a useful guide to acting rightly.
Although Kantian ethics are usually spoken of in terms of duty and doing the right thing, Kant himself thought that what was good was an essential part of ethics. Kant asked if there was anything that everybody could rationally agree was always good. The only thing that he thought satisfied this test was a good will:.
It is impossible to conceive anything in the world, or even out of it, which can be taken as good without limitation, save only a good will. It is not good in one context and bad in another.
It is not good as a means to one end and bad as a means to another. It is not good if somebody happens to want it and bad if he doesn't. Its goodness is not conditioned by its relation to a context or to an end or to a desire. Other things that we might think of as good are not always good, as it's possible to imagine a context in which they might seem to be morally undesirable.
Kant then pondered what this meant for human conduct. He concluded that only an action done for 'a good will' was a right action, regardless of the consequences.
But what sort of action would this be? Kant taught that an action could only count as the action of a good will if it satisfied the test of the Categorical Imperative. Kant's version of duty-based ethics was based on something that he called 'the categorical imperative' which he intended to be the basis of all other rules a 'categorical imperative' is a rule that is true in all circumstances.
The categorical imperative comes in two versions which each emphasise different aspects of the categorical imperative. Kant is clear that each of these versions is merely a different way of expressing the same rule; they are not different rules.
Always act in such a way that you can also will that the maxim of your action should become a universal law. Always act in such a way that you would be willing for it to become a general law that everyone else should do the same in the same situation.
So, for example, if I wonder whether I should break a promise, I can test whether this is right by asking myself whether I would want there to be a universal rule that says 'it's OK to break promises'.
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