Prima Facie Duties W.d. Ross

An ethic of prima facie duties In the first third of the 20th century, it was the intuitionists, especially W.D. Ross, who provided the major alternative to Utilitarianism. Because of this situation, the position described below is sometimes called intuitionism, but it seems less likely to cause confusion if we reserve that label for the quite distinct metaethical position held by Ross—and incidentally by Sidgwick as well—and refer to the normative position by the more descriptive label, an “ethic of prima facie duties.” Ross's normative ethic consists of a list of duties, each of which is to be given independent weight: fidelity, reparation, gratitude, beneficence, non-maleficence, and self-improvement. If an act falls under one and only one of these duties, it ought to be carried out. Often, of course, an act will fall under two or more duties: I may owe a debt of gratitude to someone who once helped me, but beneficence will be better served if I help others in greater need. This is why the duties are, Ross says, prima facie rather than absolute; each duty can be overridden if it conflicts with a more stringent duty. An ethic structured in this manner may match our ordinary moral judgments more closely than a consequentialist ethic, but it suffers from two serious drawbacks. First, how can we be sure that just those duties listed by Ross are independent sources of moral obligation? Ross could only respond that if we examine them closely we will find that these, and these alone, are self-evident. But others, even other intuitionists, have found that what was self-evident to Ross was not self-evident to them. Second, if we grant Ross his list of independent prima facie moral duties, we still need to know how to decide, in a particular situation, when a less stringent duty is overridden by a more stringent one. Here, too, Ross had no better answer than an unsatisfactory appeal to intuition.