Ross’ moral theory, in essence, is an absolutist theory of morality. It consists of a list of (what he considers to be) self-evident truths which should be alluded to for moral deliberation. In claiming that there are specific morally significant values Ross implicitly rejects any other moral principles/rules that are not included in that list. How can it be then that several socially accepted moral standards are not included in Ross’ list of prima facie duties? Is this a problem?
Colloquial moral guidelines are passed out in society without regard to whether they are prima facie duties. The following statements are examples of universally accepted moral guidelines. This paper will only consider the following moral principles as it would be unreasonable to try and include every possible type of potential moral principle in this analysis.
- “You should treat your children better than you would treat the children of strangers”
- “You should normally leave other people alone to live their lives as they choose rather than trying to tell them how to live”
- “You should act toward others in the way you would like them to act toward you”
What would Ross say to anyone who suggested to include such a guideline to his list of prima facie duties. Would he want to do this, or would he be strictly against it? And why? In order to answer this question, I have to assume Ross’ position and evaluate that question the way he would as best as I can.
Ross probably thinks that these statements are reducible to his prima facie duties. I believe that he would try to do this because the moral statements are longer and more complicated guidelines than his prima facie rules. Based off of this observation it should be reasonable to expect the more complicated guidelines to be explainable in terms of the more fundamental ones. Here is an attempt to do so:
| Favor Child Rule | Silence Rule | Golden Rule | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fidelity | T | ||
| Reparation | |||
| Gratitude | |||
| Justice | T - [injustice] | T | |
| Benefice | T | T | |
| Self-Improvement | |||
| Nonmaleficence | (Maybe) | T |
In a sense, this is the act of reducing the moral statements to their most fundamental form. The Favor child rule can be explained in terms of the existing prima facie duties (Fidelity, Beneficence and Injustice). Therefore, there is no need to add rule (1) to Ross’ list. The Golden Rule can also be explained in terms of the existing prima facie duties (Justice, Beneficence and Nonmaleficence). Therefore, there is no need to add rule (3) to Ross’ list either. On the other hand, the Silence rule is hard to explain in terms of prima pacie duties. If it turns out that statement (2) isn’t a morally relevant statement, Ross can simply dismiss the issue by claiming (correctly) that it is not relevant to his theory. If it is morally relevant, Ross’ theory lacks descriptive power and might require revision.
If a universally accepted moral statement does not have moral content in the light of Ross’ theory, then his theory should be deemed incomplete. After all, it seem unreasonable to have claim on the morality of some issues but not others. So, the next step to take here is to see if there is another prima facie rule that hasn’t been included by Ross which nevertheless helps to explain the truth of statement (2). Unfortunately, there does not seem to be any other way to go about this other than guessing at what the right answer might be. This entails thinking of multiple potential new prima facie rules, testing them again statement (2) and if the prima facie rule enlightens the moral value of the statement, it should be a contender - and may well be an appropriate prima facie rule.
After lengthy inspection, it seems to me that ‘leaving people alone’/’not telling how to live’ and ‘letting people live as they choose’ are the morally relevant aspects of the silence rule. Here I would like to make the suggestion that these both refer to the act (or more appropriately, inaction) of not imposing your own ideas or actions on other people's lives. I will call this ‘non-imposition’. Non-Imposition seems to be between beneficence and nonmaleficence. It takes care of situations where we seem to be minding other people’s business - which for many people is an intuitively morally wrong thing to do - without actually acting. Therefore, by including non-imposition on the list, statement (2) no longer threatens the integrity of Ross’ theory.
I think Ross would reject this. He would say that there is no need to include ‘non-imposition’ on his list on the grounds that it is already on his list in the form of “non-maleficence”. As he coined this, it seems likely that he would argue for its definition to be broad enough to include the moral guidelines given at the start of this paper. After all, he states that “adequate” understanding of the prima facie duties is required to really understand their self evidence. So it seems likely that he would deny my “adequate” understanding of his prima facie rules to object to my proposed modification of his theory.
Furthermore, what strikes me as unusual, is that Rule (2) is the only rule with the word “normally” in it. This makes the moral message ambiguous because the word allows for selective application. If we exclude “normally”, statement (2) stops being intuitively true because saying that “you should leave other people alone to live their lives as they choose rather than trying to tell them how to live” has countless counterexamples (like not preventing a friend from killing himself). Therefore, he can state that the only applicable form of that statement is not an issue for his theory because it is not universally accepted as true.
All in all, it seems that Ross has at least some grounds on rationalizing the colloquial moral guidelines in terms of his prima facie duties. As a result, he is not forced to adjust his theory to the given examples. Showing that his fundamental duties do not clearly rationalize all moral heuristics is not enough to force him to adjust because of his ability to stipulate insufficient understanding on my part (or anyone’s part, for that matter). Furthermore, even if he concedes that a prima facie duty is lacking to describe rule (2), he can claim the guideline to be too ambiguous and prompt a more clear-cut version which ends up not being universally acceptable (as shown in the paragraph above). Therefore, in light of the three moral guidelines that were stated in the beginning of this paper, despite some difficulties, Ross’ theory still holds.
In my honest opinion his guidelines seem somewhat random. They appear to be fabricated from thin air based off of his manipulable definition of self-evident. Although the three rules explored in this paper do not invalidate his theory, I think that an inspection of multiple other potential guidelines would uncover why, at least to me, it seems inadequate as a moral philosophy.
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Prima Facie Duties - Ross
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