Draft of 3-6- 13 PHIL 202: Core Ethics; Winter 2013 Core Sequence in the History of Ethics, 2011-2013 IV: 19 th and 20 th Century Moral Philosophy David O. Brink Handout #9: W.D. Ross Like other members of the British school, W.D. Ross (1877-1971) was a rational intuitionist. In addition to important work he did in classical philosophy, especially on Aristotle, he wrote two main ethical books, The Right and the Good (1930) and The Foundations of Ethics (1939). After identifying some of Ross s more general commitments, I will focus on a central chapter in the former, which discusses what makes right acts right. INTUITIONISM Ross is an intuitionist, claiming that moral knowledge must rest on self- evident foundations. But he is a dogmatic intuitionist (in Sidgwick s sense), rather than a perceptual or philosophical intuitionist, locating non- derivatively justified beliefs at the level of a plurality of discrete principles, including both right- making and good- making factors (33). He does not think that there are a smaller number of more fundamental principles, and he thinks that judgments about particular cases must be justified by appeal to these mid- level principles (30). He seems to associate self- evidence with certainty (147). Self- evidence is not innate; we need proper training to appreciate whether a proposition is self- evident. Moreover, self- evident beliefs are fallible (29, 42). But they are the basis on which we construct moral knowledge, and they exercise a powerful constraint. For while our moral convictions are defeasible, we should in general prefer ethical principles that require less extensive revisions to our antecedent moral beliefs to principles that are simple or elegant but highly revisionary (19, 23, 39-41). Here, he seems to have in mind reasons to resist utilitarianism, even if it claims virtues of simplicity or definiteness. Ross s attitude toward Moore s OQA is not entirely clear. On the one hand, he sometimes seems to endorse Moore s use of it and even claims that Moore s own assertion that consequentialism is analytically true succumbs to the OQA (7-9), a claim Moore later accepted. He claims that all ethical principles are synthetic (9). However, he thinks that the indefinability of moral and natural terms is not a bar to them picking out one and the same property, which seems hard to square with the OQA, since it was designed to show that naturalist property identity claims were fallacious. Moreover, Ross seems to think that meaning should not always be transparent to competent speakers, with the result that informative truths about meaning should be possible (92-3). THE RIGHT, THE GOOD, AND VIRTUE Ross thought that there were three main moral concepts: the right, the good, and the morally good (R&G 1). Though he recognizes three fundamental ethical concepts, he apparently recognizes only two - - the good and the right - - as nonderivative. About each of these, he is a pluralist, recognizing plural good- making and right- making factors. Moral goodness he seems to identify with virtue. Virtue is a secondary ethical concept to be analyzed as consisting in the agent s bearing the right attitude or orientation toward the primary facts about the right and the good. As such, virtue is a derivative concept.
2 THE GOOD Ross understands traditional utilitarians to be hedonists and thinks that their theory of the good is defective, understood as a complete theory of the good (17). Like Moore, Ross is a pluralist about the good, recognizing several objective goods, but not beauty, as Moore did in Principia. Ross recognizes four intrinsic goods (27, 102, 140). 1. Pleasure 2. Knowledge 3. Virtue 4. The apportionment of happiness or pleasure to virtue. Ross says the first three are simple or primary, whereas the fourth is complex or derivative (27). While one can see how (4) might be derivative in relation to (1) and (3), (3) itself seems to be derivative in the sense that it is sometimes understood as a secondary concept in relation to genuinely simple goods or right actions. Indeed, if virtue is a secondary concept derivative from the right and happiness is supposed to be proportionate to duty or virtue, then there is a sense in which the good is derivative after all. At least, two of the four intrinsic goods would be derivative. Ross goes further in this direction insofar he seems to think that only deserved or innocent pleasure is intrinsically valuable (138). This further erodes the autonomy of the good. Knowledge seems the strongest candidate to be a non- derivative good and seems to be the only thing standing in the way of Ross treating the right as underivative and the good as derivative. One might try to expand the autonomy of the good by recognizing other non- derivative goods, such as friendship or achievement. Provided these goods are not also moralized, they could help secure the autonomy of the good. He doesn t say of these goods that they are prima facie goods, as he does say that there are seven irreducible prima facie duties. But it s not clear why he shouldn t. As we will see, in his discussion of prima facie duties, he denies that there are any simple priority rules for resolving conflicts among prima facie duties - - no one kind of duty always trumps another, regardless of the details of the conflict - - even if there is always or usually a correct resolution of the conflict (19). This makes Ross s account of duty intuitionist in Rawls s sense (TJ 34). While Ross s discussion of degrees of goodness and conflicts of goodness might be intuitionist in this Rawlsian sense in some respects, he does claim virtue is categorically superior to all other goods (149-54). Is this puzzling if virtue it itself a secondary moral concept? Perhaps not if virtue is restricted to being a secondary concept in relation to the right, and the right is superior to the good. Ross also accepts Moore s claim about complex wholes whose goodness forms an organic unity in which the value of the whole exceeds the sum of the values of its (non- relational) parts (72). However, Ross is skeptical about Moore s illustration of the principle of organic unities with the example of appreciation and enjoyment of beauty, both because Ross doubts that beauty is an intrinsic good and because he thinks that beauty s appreciation may account for the value of the whole (71-72). Ross thinks a better example of an organic unity is the value of happiness apportioned to merit or virtue (72). It s not obvious to me why the value of this complex should exceed the sum of the values of
3 happiness and virtue, but Ross evidently thinks that there is a new kind of value that emerges from linking the two goods. THE RIGHT Whereas moral goodness seems to involve or at least include conforming to duty from the motive of duty (for duty s sake), duty itself, Ross thinks, enjoins only actions, not motives (4-6). Ross thinks that this follows from the Kantian claim that <ought> implies <can> together with the denial that motives are up to us in the relevant sense (5). This seems to rule out some substantive doctrines, such as the doctrine of double effect, which claims that, all else being equal, it is less permissible to intend harm than merely to foresee it. Ross is concerned to defend the independent and non- derivative character of the right. This requires him to argue against those who would derive the right from the good. Ross is quite dismissive of Sidgwick s two main methods - - egoism and utilitarianism - - on account of their hedonist assumptions (17-19). But as Ross s chief initial complaint about them is their hedonist conception of value, this does not vindicate the autonomy of the right, just the autonomy of the right from one particular conception of the good. Ross takes Moore s ideal utilitarianism or consequentialism to be much superior to Sidgwick s methods (17). Ross s ultimate complaint about utilitarianism, ideal or otherwise, is that it cannot recognize duties of a personal nature that the agent owes to others whose strength or urgency is out of proportion to their impartial value (18, 22). Duties of fidelity and gratitude seem to be paradigmatic cases of such duties. If A can keep his promise to B, thereby producing 1000 units of value, or he can benefit C, to whom he stands in no special relationship, thereby producing 1001 units of value, Ross thinks it clear that A should keep his promise to B even though it would be marginally better for him to break the promise and assist C. These are what we would now call agent- relative obligations. Ross is a moderate deontologist - - agent- relative obligations are not absolute; there is some amount of good to be provided or bad to be avoided that would justify breaking promises. However, he does insist that the strength of these obligations is out of proportion to the impartial good they achieve. PRIMA FACIE DUTIES AND DUTIES SANS PHRASE Ross thinks it is fundamental to distinguish between two kinds of duties: prima facie or conditional duties and duties proper or sans phrase (19-20, 28-29). Duties sans phrase are final verdicts about what one ought to do on- balance or all- things- considered in a situation. By contrast, prima facie duties are something like reasons one ought to do something that may not carry the day about what you ought to do on- balance. He says prima facie duties are conditional duties in the sense that they would be your duty sans phrase unless you are under some other conflicting and stronger prima facie duty (19). Ross warns that we should not think of prima facie duties as merely apparent duties that might turn out to be morally irrelevant or illusory (20). Instead, we might think of prima facie duties as pro tanto reasons to behave in a particular way. These pro tanto reasons arise from the operation of right- making factors that make an invariant contribution to the moral status of an action. These moral factors are such that they determine your moral duties sans phrase unless there is interference from other moral factors in the situation. Prima facie duties seem to involve at least three claims.
4 1. Prima facie duties state right- making factors. 2. Right- making factors represent an action as one s duty (san phrase) insofar as it possesses a right- making factor. 3. All else being equal, it is one s duty (sans phrase) to comply with one s prima facie duties. But when a situation instantiates multiple moral factors that point in different directions, it will not be possible to comply with all of the right- making factors. In such cases, one must act on strongest or most important moral factor. In this way, we might analogize moral reasoning, with some necessary qualifications, to moral vector addition (cf. 28-29). Before complicating this picture further, we might note the seven distinct prima facie duties that Ross recognizes (21). 1. Fidelity 2. Reparation 3. Gratitude 4. Justice and Desert 5. Beneficence 6. Self- improvement 7. Non- maleficence Should we really recognize all and only seven irreducibly distinct right- making factors? Ross himself raises the question whether these seven principles are really irreducibly distinct, suggesting that self- improvement and beneficence may be united under a more general principle of beneficence (26), which would make the total six, rather than seven. One might think that (7) could also be folded into (5), but Ross seems to think that doing harm is worse than allowing harm. By treating (7) as a distinct principle, he can then say that all else being equal doing harm is worse than allowing it because two prima facie duties speak against doing harm whereas only one speaks against allowing it. These are issues about whether we should recognize fewer prima facie duties. We might also wonder whether we should recognize more prima facie duties. We might want to break (4) into separate principles of distributive justice and merit or desert. And why not recognize prima facie duties to tell the truth? They seem distinct from duties of fidelity, but equally compelling. Moreover, since doubts about utilitarianism are often based on doubts about the adequacy of utilitarian justifications of special obligations, perhaps we should recognize prima facie duties toward lovers, friends, and associates. Ross claims that these prima facie duties can conflict. There may always be a uniquely correct resolution of the conflict if only because in cases of ties or incommensurability of prima facie moral claims, it seems that the duty sans phrase would be disjunctive - - respond to one or the other of the undefeated prima facie obligations, rather than doing something else. 1 But whereas he allows that some goods are categorically superior to others, Ross denies that there are any priority rules among prima facie duties that imply that one kind of prima facie duty always outweighs another (19). 1 See David O. Brink, Moral Conflict and Its Structure Philosophical Review 103 (1994): 215-247.
5 There may be token commensurability, but there is no type commensurability. As we noted, this is the claim that Rawls calls intuitionism. We might remember Hurka s claim that Ross s distinction between prima facie and sans phrase duties provides the dogmatic intuitionist with a reply to Sidgwick s attack on commonsense morality. Remember that Sidgwick complains that the deontological precepts of commonsense morality cannot serve as fundamental moral principles because they conflict and, as a result, admit of exceptions (ME 342, 360-61). They offer only ceteris paribus generalizations, which Sidgwick treats as uninformative and unscientific. That might be a reasonable complaint if the precepts of commonsense morality were supposed to state duties sans phrase. But Ross shows how we can understand them instead to state prima facie duties that describe non- derivative moral forces that operate in conjunction so as to determine duty sans phrase by performing moral factor addition. Ross doesn t make this point explicitly [check Foundations], but his conception of prima facie duties provides the resources for this defense of commonsense morality. Ross explicitly mentions the parallel between morality and mechanics and, in particular, between prima facie duties and forces (28-29). One disanalogy he notes is that physical forces are causal, whereas moral forces are contributory or compositional (29). Another disanalogy is that the outcome of vector addition is continuous, whereas the outcome of moral factor addition is usually binary. If an object is subject to both northerly and westerly forces of equal magnitude, its course will be northwest. By contrast, when there is a conflict between fidelity (e.g. keeping my appointment with a student) and beneficence (e.g. stopping to assist someone in medical need), the stronger obligation wins. One doesn t usually split the difference between prima facie duties (perhaps one should in special cases), though one might make apologies to the disappointed student and reschedule the appointment. TWO CONCEPTIONS OF THE DISTINCTION Hurka claims that Ross displays two different conceptions about the relation between prima facie and sans phrase duty, one which treats the former as primary and one which treats the latter as primary (Hurka, Ch. 3). According to Hurka, the account in The Right and the Good, which we have reconstructed, treats duty as the primary notion and defines prima facie duty in terms of contributing to duty sans phrase. By contrast, Hurka claims, Ross s later discussion in The Foundations of Ethics treats the notion of a prima facie duty as prior. It treats right- making features of actions as fitting (FE 81) and treats the notion of duty sans phrase as just the combination of various prima facie duties duly weighted. Hurka says that this is to contrast duty sans phrase and duty all- things- considered. I m somewhat confused by Hurka s contrast. I would have thought that Ross s treatment in The Right and the Good treats the two concepts as equally basic. It says that prima facie duties make contributions to the rightness simpliciter of actions but that the rightness simpliciter of an action depends on the comparative contributions of the various prima facie duties. It s not clear to me this account doesn t represent duty as derivative, in at least one way, from prima facie duty, and it s not clear to me that this picture is all that different from the one that one finds in The Foundations of Ethics.