Reappreciating W. D. Ross: Naturalizing Prima Facie Duties and a Proposed Method

Abstract

The goal of this article is to try to resolve two key problems in the duty-based approach of W. D. Ross: the source of principles and a process for moving from prima facie to actual duty. I use a naturalistic explanation for the former and a nine-step method for making concrete ethical decisions as they could be applied to journalism. Consistent with Ross's position, the process is complicated, particularly in tougher problems, and it cannot guarantee correct choices. Again consistent with Ross, such complexity and uncertainty speak in the method's favor, given the difficulty—factual, motivational, and organizational—of ethics problems and decision making.

Notes

1. Robert Audi suggests another approach—that despite their self-evident nature, prima facie duties can in fact be derived from another more basic principle, like the categorical imperative (Audi, 2004). Even assuming such logic works, Audi's approach just shifts the problem to why one should (also intuitively) accept the categorical imperative as given.

2. Ross is ambiguous on the meaning of justice, sometimes attaching it to merit (i.e., backward-looking and deontological), sometimes to beneficial distribution (i.e., forward-looking and consequentialist. I will separate out these distinct senses.

3. See also 31–32, in which he discusses the relationship between “good fortune” and the right act.

4. See R. M. Hare for a similar view (Hare, 1981, 28ff).

5. Compare with Kant, for whom the right and the good are co-extensive (acting from the good will alone, thereby incorporating both motive and the only thing that is good without qualification) and with Mill, for whom the good (successful promotion of the aggregate greater pleasure) is the only concern of ethical relevance, rightness (motive) being a question only of character.

6. “There is nothing arbitrary about these prima facie duties. Each rests on a definite circumstance which cannot seriously be held to be without moral significance … [and] we see the prima facie rightness of an act which would be the fulfillment of a particular promise, and of another which would be the fulfillment of another promise, and when we have reached sufficient maturity to think in general terms, we apprehend prima facie rightness to belong to the nature of any fulfillment of promise” (Ross, 1988, pp. 20, 33).

7. See, for example, Haidt, 2001.

8. Hauser compares the structures to those which create language capacity (Hauser, 2006, pp. 37–38).

9. See for example, Haidt and Joseph: “We will present a … view that we believe fully respects the depth and importance of cultural variant in morality … by focusing attention on … the link between intuitions, especially a subset of intuitions that we argue are innate in important respects, and virtues, which by and large are social constructions” (Haidt & Joseph, 2004, p. 56).

10. See Gert (1988) for a similar view.

11. Some of what follows is taken from and builds upon Meyers (2007). It is written with the consulting ethicist in mind, working among a group of people struggling to resolve difficult ethical dilemmas.