What Prima Facie Duties Are There?

This chapter interprets and defend Ross’s rejection of consequentialism and his endorsement of a moderate deontological position. It focuses particularly on what he says about promises, the special obligations he discusses most fully. It is argued that Ross treats promises as agent-relative intensifiers of reasons to promote goods; that there are other important kinds of agent-relative intensifiers recognized by Sidgwick but not by Ross; and that, unlike deontological constraints, agent-relative intensifiers are not puzzling or problematic. It is then argued, contra Robert Audi, that Ross should be interpreted as a classical deontologist rather than as a value-based intuitionist. And it is argued finally that Ross’s limited pluralism should be preferred to Jonathan Dancy’s particularism.

What Are Prima Facie Duties?

This chapter focuses on Ross’s most important conceptual innovation: the idea of prima facie duty. Four main claims are defended: first, contra some of his harsher critics, that though much of what Ross says in introducing and explaining the concept of prima facie duty is problematic or misleading, he nonetheless has a clear and coherent theoretical picture; second, contra Hurka, that Ross lacks the contemporary concept of a normative reason, but that his views should be reframed in ways that do employ that concept; third, that Ross is not and should not be a scalar deontologist; and fourth that he was wrong in the Foundations to follow Prichard in favoring subjective over objective rightness.

Introduction

This chapter introduces the project of Rossian Ethics. The book has two connected aims. The first is to interpret and evaluate W. D. Ross’s ethics, focusing on the key elements of his moral theory: his introduction of the concept of prima facie duty, his limited pluralism about the right, and his limited pluralism about the good. The second is to articulate a distinctive view intermediate between consequentialism and absolutist deontology, “classical deontology.” The introductory chapter includes brief accounts of the kind of project of philosophical interpretation that the book undertakes, and of Ross’s place in the Sidgwick-to-Ewing school recently discussed by Hurka.

What Things Are Good?

This chapter focuses on Ross’s moderate pluralism about the good. Though it is less original than his moderate pluralism about the right, it is argued that there is much to be said for his version: his list of basic intrinsic goods—happiness, virtue, knowledge—is a plausible starting list. And much of what he says about virtue and about the value of knowledge is also plausible. There is, however, another aspect of Ross’s treatment which it is argued is wholly mistaken: a persistent impulse to downgrade happiness relative to virtue. This radical antihedonism takes different forms in The Right and the Good and the Foundations; but both forms are misconceived.

The Metaethical and Epistemological Framework

This chapter focuses on the metaethical and epistemological framework within which Ross develops his moral theory. It is argued that the most important distinctive feature of Ross’s nonnaturalist metaethics is his emphasis on the distinction between essence theories and grounds theories, which is the product of his introduction of the concept of prima facie duty; that Ross does a better job of arguing for nonnaturalism than Moore does in Principia Ethica; and that Ross also does well in recognizing and taking on two new alternative positions in metaethics: noncognitivism (against which he raises a version of the Frege-Geach problem decades before Geach) and error theory. It is then argued that his moral epistemology is less satisfactory. He inherits from Prichard a distinctive form of knowledge-first epistemology that (unlike Sidgwick’s fallibilist intuitionism) leads to dogmatism. And his claims about the special epistemic status of principles of prima facie duty are problematic.