Ross: The Right and the Good

1. Ross: The Right and the Good

2. Utilitarianism and Kantian ethics are both flawed • Kantian ethics is flawed because of the belief in absolute duties. • Utilitarianism is flawed because it tries to reduce all our duties to the duties of beneficence and non-maleficence.

3. An argument against Utilitarianism • When you make a promise, you think you are obliged to keep it because you made the promise, not because you believe keeping the promise will lead to the best outcome. • Some of our duties are “backward looking” rather than “forward looking”

4. Suppose you make a promise, and you have the option of doing something else that results in slightly better consequences. What should you do? Ross thinks it obvious you should keep your promise

5. Desert Island example • Suppose you are on a desert island with a dying woman. She tells you to promise to take her money and give it to a certain charity. You promise to do so, and she dies. • You get rescued, and are about to give her money to charity A, but learn that charity B is actually slightly better. • What should you do? Keep your promise or do what creates the greatest net good?

6. Prima facie vs. absolute duties • Some kinds of actions are duties when considered in isolation. If I am in a situation in which the only relevant fact is that I made a promise, I ought to keep my promise • But life is not like that. We are always in situations that involve all sorts of duties and sometimes they conflict

7. Utilitarianism: determine what you should by weighing the consequences. • Ross: what you really should do, your actual duty, can only be discovered by carefully considering your situation. • We can know what sorts of actions are prima facie duties. We cannot be so sure about our absolute duties

8. How do you know prima facie duties • Ross thinks these duties are self evident. Once you consider “keeping your promise” you will realize that this sort of action is one that obliges. Just like simple truths of mathematics or logic. “There cannot be a round square” is known from considering the meaning of the statement, the nature of “round” and “square”

9. Ross and the Plain Man • Ross appeals to what we would ordinary think in everyday life. He thinks this ordinary way of thinking about morality is the sort of data that moral theory has to correspond to, at least roughly.