QuestionsWhat makes something right?Several prima facie duties, and judgement to decide
What makes something right?Duty

Several prima facie duties, and judgement to decide

Prima facie duties

W. D. Ross 1877 · 1971We have several 'prima facie' duties; when they conflict, we must judge which prevails.
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What it claims

Morality does not have one single principle, but several prima facie duties; when they clash, our actual duty is settled by careful judgement of the case, not by a formula.

Why

We have several distinct duties, none absolute or reducible to one principle: when they clash, we must judge the situation.

The same idea through history
H. A. Prichard1912In "Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?" (Mind, 1912), he argues that an obligation is not proved from the good it produces: it is grasped directly. Ross says he owes him the main lines of his theory.
W. D. Ross1930The Right and the Good, chapter II: seven kinds of prima facie duties (fidelity, reparation, gratitude, justice, beneficence, self-improvement, non-maleficence), against Moore's utilitarianism and against Kant's exceptionless rules.
Robert Audi2004The Good in the Right: he takes up Ross's list and seeks to tie it together with a Kantian idea, respect for persons as ends, without going back to exceptionless rules.
In short

"Several prima facie duties, and judgement to decide" is an argument by W. D. Ross (The Right and the Good, 1930, ch. II, 1930) on the question "What makes something right?" (answer: duty). Its claim: Morality does not have one single principle, but several prima facie duties; when they clash, our actual duty is settled by careful judgement of the case, not by a formula. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P4). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 3 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

The Right and the Good, 1930, ch. II
Valid with an implicit premise

You promised a friend to help them move house on Saturday. On Saturday morning, your neighbour has a fall and needs to be taken to hospital. What should you do? For the utilitarian, you just calculate what produces the most good. For Kant, some rules (keep your promises, do not lie) allow no exception. The English philosopher W. D. Ross, in 1930, finds both theories too simple. We have several different duties, each binding "at first sight" (prima facie, in Latin): keeping promises, making up for our wrongs, gratitude, justice, doing good, improving ourselves, not harming. None reduces to the others, none always wins. When they conflict, no formula decides for us: we must look closely at the situation and judge which is the most pressing.

P1We have several prima facie duties, each grounded in a different feature of the situation: a promise made (fidelity), a wrong done (reparation), a service received (gratitude), an unjust distribution (justice), the good we can do to others (beneficence) or to ourselves (self-improvement), the harm we can do them (non-maleficence).
P2These duties do not all reduce to "producing the most good": if keeping my promise to A produces 1,000 units of good, and doing something else produces 1,001 for B, I should not therefore break my promise. So utilitarianism is false.
P3None of these duties is absolute: it is sometimes right to break a promise to relieve distress. So Kant's rules without any exception are false too.
P4 · implicit premiseTo reduce all duties to a single principle that ranks them in advance, there are only two serious candidates: producing the most good (utilitarianism) or exceptionless rules (Kant).
P5If there are several duties and no single principle to rank them, then, when they conflict, we must judge in the situation itself which is the most pressing. This judgement can be wrong, but it is the only guide we have.
So morality does not have one single principle, but several prima facie duties; when they clash, our actual duty is settled by careful judgement of the case, not by a formula.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P4, the computer finds a world where utilitarianism and Kant are false, but where some third single principle still ranks all duties (for example respect for persons, or a list of priorities fixed in advance): then there is no longer any need to judge case by case. That is what Rawls (priority rules) and Audi (a Kantian basis) look for.
Valid with P4. P2 and P3 rule out utilitarianism and Kant's absolute rules; the hidden premise P4 says there was no other candidate for a single principle; what remains is several duties with no principle to rank them, and P5 concludes that we must judge case by case. The debate is about P5 (is this judgement not arbitrary? Rawls), P1 and P4 (is the list not a heap without a principle? Mill) and P2 (does the 1,001 units example prove anything? Moore, Hare).
Analogy. A doctor must at once relieve pain, not damage the liver, tell the patient the truth and respect their choices. There is no formula that says in advance which of these duties wins: a good doctor weighs the case in front of them. They can be wrong, but a single formula would be wrong more often.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

John Rawls (no rule to decide) 1971 · attacks premise 5

A theory like Ross's, which Rawls calls "intuitionism", has several first principles that can conflict, and no method, no priority rule to decide between them. All that is left is to "weigh" by intuition. But two honest people will weigh differently, and the theory cannot say which is right. A good moral theory should try to reduce this reliance on intuition, for example by ranking principles in an order of priority.

Ross replies
W. D. Ross 1930 · Ross's anticipated reply (1930)
Ross foresees the objection: his theory gives no principle for finding our actual duty. He first replies that utilitarianism is no better placed: to choose between two different goods, such as knowledge and pleasure, it too must fall back on an opinion with no logical basis. Next, no general rule can fix in advance the strength of each duty, except that keeping promises, repairing wrongs and returning services received weigh very heavily. For the rest, "the decision rests with perception", as Aristotle said: a judgement that can be wrong, but the only guide we have.
The debate goes on (our summary) The debate continues. Rawls grants that we probably cannot do without intuition altogether, but he wants to reduce it: for justice, he proposes ranking its principles in a strict order. Ross's defenders reply that judging is not drawing lots: it is the work of an attentive and informed person, like that of a good judge or a good doctor. Critics reply that a judgement one cannot explain cannot convince someone who judges otherwise.
John Stuart Mill (a heap of principles with no common ground) 1861 · attacks premise 1

Long before Ross, Mill blames the "intuitive" school for laying down several moral principles without reducing them to a first principle. For such a morality to hold, there would have to be either one fundamental principle at the root of all the others, or, if there are several, a fixed order of priority among them. Without that, the list is a mere inventory: why these seven duties, and not six or twelve? And nothing guarantees that it is complete.

Ross replies
W. D. Ross 1930 · Ross's reply (1930)
Ross grants that his list is not systematic and may not be complete: he does not claim it is final. It is a classification drawn from reflection on our moral convictions, correct as far as it goes. The utilitarians' list of goods is reached by the same method. And nothing allows us to assume in advance that all our duties come from a single reason: if a promise and a wrong to repair are two different reasons, we must admit it. If one day a logical basis for the list is found, so much the better.
The debate goes on (our summary) The search for a common ground has gone on. Ross himself, just after his reply, tries to group his duties more systematically. Robert Audi (2004) keeps Ross's duties, with their prima facie character, but proposes to tie them together with the Kantian idea of treating persons as ends: this would be the ground Mill asked for, without being utilitarianism. Stricter defenders of Ross reply that such a ground adds little: we know that keeping a promise counts before knowing why.
G. E. Moore (ideal utilitarianism) 1912 · attacks premise 2

It is self-evident that knowingly doing an action that makes the world, on the whole, worse than it would have been had we acted otherwise is always wrong. So no rule, neither promising nor justice, can hold whatever the consequences: what is right is what produces the best result.

Ross replies
W. D. Ross 1930 · Ross's reply: the 1,001 units
Ross answers Moore with a simple case. Keeping my promise to A brings him 1,000 units of good; another act would bring 1,001 to B, to whom I promised nothing. Is it self-evident that I must choose B? No: only a much greater difference in results would justify failing my promise. A promise is a promise. So there is no self-evident link between "right" and "what produces the best result".
R
R. M. Hare 1981 · Hare: the two levels of moral thinking
Hare, a utilitarian, grants Ross that these duties are very good rules for everyday life: we should learn them and stick to them, even against a small calculation. But that is precisely because following them generally gives the best results. When we think calmly, with all the facts, only the good of all counts. Invented cases like the 1,001 units prove nothing: our intuitions are made for ordinary cases, not for manufactured examples.
The debate goes on (our summary) The debate remains open. Ross's supporters reply to Hare that the intuition about promises does not disappear when one thinks about it calmly: it seems true in itself, not merely useful. Hare replies that this is exactly what one would expect of a well-learned rule. Note: Moore and Ross agree on method (some moral truths are self-evident); they disagree on what is self-evident.