Intro to Ethics - What Makes Right Acts Right (Ross)?

Why does Ross reject egoism? 

Egoism says an act is right if it produces the most pleasure for me. But much of duty is respecting the rights and furthering the interests of others, whatever the cost to ourselves. There’s also no reason I should bring about my own pleasure rather than a greater pleasure for someone else. 

What is the difference between maximizing the greatest good and maximizing the greatest pleasure? Which entails which? 

• Maximizing the greatest good means doing what produces the most good of any kind.

• Maximizing the greatest pleasure counts only pleasure, but pleasure is not the only good, since good character and understanding also matter.  

• Maximizing pleasure entails maximizing good (it assumes pleasure is the only good), but not the other way around. 

In what sense does the ordinary person keeping a promise look backward rather than forward? 

When an ordinary person keeps a promise, they aren’t thinking about the future consequences or the total good produced. They keep it because of something in the past: they promised. 

What is the 1,000 vs 1,001 promise case, and what is it supposed to show? How might a utilitarian try to explain the intuition away? 

• A kept promise yields 1,000 units of good and a broken one yields 1,001. A theory that says to maximize good must say to break it, but we still feel we should keep it, which suggests promise-keeping matters apart from results.  

• A utilitarian might explain the intuition away by pointing to lost trust or the long-run harm of promise-breaking. 

What is a prima facie duty? How does it differ from an actual duty, or duty proper?  

• A prima facie (conditional) duty is the feature an act has because it is of a certain kind, like keeping a promise.  

• It would be a duty proper if the act weren’t also of another morally significant kind. Actual duty depends on all the morally significant kinds the act belongs to. 

Name Ross’s prima facie duties. Be able to describe a case where two of them conflict. 

• They are: fidelity (promises), reparation, gratitude, justice, beneficence, self-improvement, and non-maleficence (not injuring others).  

• Example of a conflict: you promised to meet a friend for a trivial purpose, but on the way you can help victims of a serious accident. Fidelity conflicts with beneficence, and most of us think helping becomes the actual duty. 

How does Ross respond to the charge that his view is unsystematic? 

Ross says the list doesn’t claim to be final, and it comes from reflecting on what we actually think about morality. The rival theory’s list of goods is reached by the same method. He says loyalty to the facts matters more than a neat or simple theory, and further reflection might find a firmer basis. 

How do we discern our actual duty in a case of conflict? Why does Ross think this is a problem for every theory? 

• We study the situation as fully as we can until we form a considered opinion (never certainty) that one duty is more pressing.  

• Ross says this is a problem for every theory. Even the “greatest good” theory can only rely on an unproven opinion that one good (say knowledge) is greater than another (say pleasure), and predicting pleasure is also hard. 

What is compunction, and what does it show about outweighed prima facie duties? 

Compunction is the uneasy feeling we have when we must break a promise to do something more important. It’s not shame or repentance, but it shows we still recognize the promise-keeping duty, so an outweighed prima facie duty doesn’t disappear. We also feel we owe the promise some reparation. 

In what sense are the prima facie duties self-evident? Why are they not innate? What is the comparison with mathematics? 

• The prima facie duties are self-evident in that, once we’re mature and have thought about them, they are evident without proof.  

• They’re not innate, because we learn them by experience: we see that keeping this promise and that promise is right, then grasp that it’s true of promise-keeping in general.  

• This is like seeing that 2 + 2 = 4 by working with matches, and then recognizing it as a general truth. 

Why is the right act, in a concrete case, “a fortunate act”? Why aren’t judgements about particular cases self-evident? 

Judgments about particular cases are neither self-evident nor logical conclusions from self-evident principles. Any act has many effects we can’t foresee, so we can’t be certain our act is right, and we take a “moral risk.” But it’s not mere chance, because reflecting on the prima facie rightness and wrongness of our options makes us more likely to do our duty. 

Why does Ross think the moral convictions of thoughtful people are the data of ethics? 

In ethics we have no more direct access to moral truths than thinking about them. So the convictions of thoughtful people play the role that sense experience plays in science. Ross says they are the product of many generations of moral reflection, and we reject them only when they conflict with other convictions that hold up better under reflection.