Levels of Generality in Moral Thinking

Before returning to more detailed questions about the relationship of Ross' views to those of Kant it is worth pausing to think about a basic reason why there is emerging a tendency amongst some to invoke Ross as a kind of corrective to Kant. This seems to rest on a claim about the nature of generality in moral thinking. Basically, the suspicion seems to be of the following order. Kant sets out for us a claim for universal principles and this claim poses a general point about the need for generalization for there to be moral principles. However, work on the examples Kant gives in the Groundwork tends to produce frustration on a number of grounds, one of which concerns the alleged "formality" of Kant's treatment in echo of the famous complaint made by Hegel.


In response to this there then tends to emerge a concern with thinking about how to relate formal universal principles to maxims that specifically are such as to be action-guiding. The result of that inquiry tends to be that there is a felt need for something like what Richard Hare once described as "rules of thumb". These rules are meant to play some kind of role (as happens in versions of rule-utilitarianism) that gives us a safeguard way of protecting the principles of "common sense morality" whilst admitting a base of reference to universal principles when trouble arises. This kind of solution produces dissatisfaction of a different sort if the "rules" in question are not thought specific enough and from there we can easily move to invocation of Ross' prima facie duties. The problem, however, with that mode of reconciliation between Ross and Kant is precisely the difficulty that Ross' prima facie duties are not, strictly considered, really duties at all (as demonstrated in previous postings). Then it turns out that perhaps what was "missing" in the response to Kant might turn out to be something more basic than the first response suggested, namely, a comprehension of practical reason. That indicates the rationale for a position like that of Stratton-Lake. 

Suitability and Prima Facie Duties

As I mentioned in the previous posting on W.D. Ross, the suggestion that the relationship between prima facie duties and actual duties might reside in a sense that there was something "suitable" in the situation that called for the performance of the duty has been questioned by one of the foremost contemporary scholars of Ross, Philip Stratton-Lake. Stratton-Lake's suggestion is that this picture of the relationship between prima facie duties and actual duties is "too aesthetic" and, indeed, Ross does refer to an aesthetic sense of harmony when he mentions this view of the relationship between prima facie duties and actual duties. 


However, this reference to an aesthetic sense is far from being sufficient as a discussion of Ross' reference to "suitability" as a basis for connecting prima facie duties and actual duties in the argument of The Foundations of Ethics. Stratton-Lake's account only refers to the first place Ross discusses "suitability" in the third chapter of The Foundations of Ethics but Ross later returns to the topic in the seventh chapter of this book where he simply states that a "right action" means in general "one that is morally suitable to the situation". In returning to the topic here Ross differentiates between various senses of suitability referring to objective and subjective elements. The objective elements of the situation are the elements of it that suggest an action as suitable to the results we think it would produce whilst the subjective elements, by contrast, refer only to our thoughts concerning the probable results of alternative actions.


But this is not the only distinction Ross introduces since he goes on to include the difference between performing an action from a certain motive as involving suitability in a situation in a sense in which a mere action, regardless of motive, does not. This leads to the following apparent clarification:

Both the view that it is our duty to produce certain results, and the view that it is our duty to act from certain motives, are natural enough perversions of what seems to be the true view, that it is our duty to set ourselves to produce certain results. It is sometimes said that it is neither results nor motives but intentions that make actions right or wrong, and this is almost true. There is a certain danger in laying the stress on intention, since intentions may remain idle; but it would be true to say that the nature of what is intended in an act is what makes the act right or wrong. (pp. 159-60.)

Here Ross' prose almost catches one out as in the first sentence it takes a very attentive ear to note the difference between having a duty to produce certain results on the one hand and having the duty "to set ourselves" to produce results on the other. However the difference is nicely caught when Ross arrives at the notion that it is intention "in the act" that is at issue. This is a clear attempt to bring together the focus on the action alone (viewed as productive of result) on the one hand or the motive alone (viewed in some sense purely) on the other. And it is a further feature of consequence-sensitivity that some such attempt is needed. So perhaps Stratton-Lake is being far too hasty in suggesting that attention to the situation is too aesthetic an account of the connection between prima facie duties and actual duties. And, perhaps more needs to be filled in on the notion of "intention". 

Prima Facie Duties and Moral Reasons

The discussion of W.D. Ross' notion of prima facie duties has clearly brought out that there is quite a bit that is odd in the description of them as "prima facie duties". The oddness at first seems to attach to the description of them as being prima facie when Ross is clear that these duties are not ones that only "appear" to be duties but are, rather, ones that have a real claim upon us even in situations where we find we cannot follow them. That this claim exists appears to be understood by Ross in a rather realist way as part of the account of what exists in the situation. Shortly after writing The Right and the Good Ross returned to the topic of prima facie duty in his next work The Foundations of Ethics. 


In this later work Ross responds in part to C. D. Broad's view that there is attached to the notions of "right" and "wrong" some sense of "appropriate" and "inappropriate" or, in the language he takes from Samuel Clarke, that there is something of "fitness" attached to what it is that is right. On these grounds Ross describes rightness as involving "the greatest amount of suitability possible in the circumstances". However he still wishes this to be distinguished from anything like a utilitarian notion and rather conceives of moral suitability by an analogy with aesthetic suitability (perhaps with echoes of G.E. Moore in his thoughts). As Ross puts this:

There seems to be something not altogether different from the way in which a situation calls for a certain act, and the way in which one part of a beautiful whole calls for the other parts. Here, as in the case of a right act, there is no question of subserving an extraneous purpose; there is a direct harmony between the parts of the composition, as there is between a moral situation and the act which completes it. (54)

This conception of "harmony" is one that Ross has related to a sense of the whole situation just as the account of prima facie duty in The Right and the Good required. As with the earlier account this still leaves room for a commitment to pluralism:

Our common use of the word 'right' is so fluid that, although what it naturally conveys is simply the notion of fitness or correctness, without implying either that there is only one act or emotion that fits the situation, or that it is in the agent's power to produce the act or emotion in question, yet by usage 'right' is very often treated as equivalent to 'obligatory'. (55)

Some fine questions emerge for Ross concerning the sense of "obligatory" in the sentences that follow but, leaving this aside here, the notion of "right" understood in this way becomes one that leaves open the question of whether there is, as Ross has here said, "only one act or emotion that fits". So what is right (in this new sense of "fitting") may well not be only one act or emotion and what would be right might not even be something we could do but it is still what would, in some way, make the situation harmonious.

Intriguingly, Philip Stratton-Lake , a foremost expert on Ross, is somewhat disturbed by this account of prima facie duties in terms of fittingness which he describes as too aesthetic a notion to account for the relation between prima facie and actual rightness. In making this point Stratton-Lake indicates a wish to find in Ross an account of practical reason as becomes clear when he discusses prima facie duties as "principles of moral salience" that describe which types of consideration are salient in determining whether something should be done or ought not to be done. In understanding  
prima facie duties in this way Stratton-Lake suggests that the real problem with Ross' expression "prima facie duties" rests not, ultimately with the stress on prima facie but instead with the stress on duty. Ross does indicate that the word duty is indeed wrong here when he first introduces the notion of prima facie duty in The Right and the Good stating there such a "duty":

is not in fact a duty, but something related in a special way to duty. (20)

This "special way" is now suggested by Stratton-Lake to be that the principles of prima facie duties provide "normative moral reasons, rather than principles of duty".

This suggests two questions to close this posting on that I will pursue in future ones. Firstly, is Stratton-Lake right to think that the notion of "suitability" or "fittingness" is "too aesthetic" a relation between prima facie duty and actual duty? Secondly, if the principles of prima facie duty are really principles of practical reason rather than principles of duty then how do such principles relate to the Kantian sense of "duty"? This latter question is the one with real bite since it will enable me in future postings to trace out the manner in which Stratton-Lake (and others) postulate a connection between Ross and Kant in contemporary moral theory. 

W.D. Ross and prima facie duties

In his account of what makes right acts right Ross arrives at the notion of prima facie duty and, as we shall see in subsequent postings, this account is one that has been taken by some recent authors to be worth building in to a revised description of some aspects of Kant's moral theory. Because it has been so adapted it is worth exploring in this posting exactly the motivations for Ross' introduction of it and giving a careful characterisation of the view of such duties that he explicitly presents.


The discussion of these duties occurs early in the second chapter of The Right and the Good. Ross has been expressing dissatisfaction with utilitarianism and its commitment to viewing production of amounts of good as the basis for what makes right acts right (which has been rendered in recent treatments as making the good prior to the right). In opposing this position Ross refers to a "plain man" making a promise because he thinks he ought to do so, a situation that in this case is one that Ross takes to involve no thought of consequences. However, whilst this seems like a simple and direct opposition to the utilitarian position Ross in fact concedes a point to the utilitarian enquiry because he admits that circumstances can so conspire that fulfilling a promise is something that can have very adverse consequences such that we judge it right not to do this. Hence, whilst fulfilment of the promise might well be performed for reasons that have no reference to consequences the action of non-fulfilment of the promise is one that arises in an account in which consequences are taken account of.


Now, examples follow this statement that help to clarify it such as the point that the promise might concern something relatively trivial and non-fulfilment of it might be due to attending to victims of an accident. However, the example is clearly not the real point since its salient characteristic has already been described by including references to consequences so Ross' account appears to have become consequence-sensitive. This doesn't entail for him, though, that the reason for such sensitivity is due to a commitment to bringing about more good in the world. If this is not the reason then there can be a basis for consequence-sensitivity that does not lead one to embrace consequentialism.


It is when considering this point that Ross first introduces the notion of prima facie duties. In the example cited we can balance the duty of fulfilling a promise against a duty of relieving distress but, and here comes the specific mention, this latter notion does not strictly speaking involve thought of a duty but instead of "things that tend to be our duty, or prima facie duties" (18n). This is defined by the notion that there can be circumstances in which something that tends to be a duty can be set against something similar and one or the other of them will, "in the circumstances", tend to be more of a duty.


So the notion of prima facie is introduced as a way of speaking about consequence-sensitivity with the conception being that such sensitivity arises when there would be a conflict between two candidates for a duty to be performed which cannot both be adopted in the circumstances. Ross terms them, not unreasonably, "cases of conscience". This view is summarised neatly in the following statement:

I suggest 'prima facie duty' or 'conditional duty' as a brief way of referring to the characteristic (quite distinct from that of being a duty proper) which an act has, in virtue of being of a certain kind (e.g. the keeping of a promise), of being an act which would be a duty proper if it were not at the same time of another kind which is morally significant. (19)

So the prima facie duties are ones that we would, were it not for other intervening factors (involving consequence-sensitivity) simply accept as being duties proper. Since the latter elements have to be taken account of, Ross also describes such prima facie duties as "conditional" duties. Ross' terminology here is awkward as he freely admits since the prima facie duty is, considered simply as a prima facie duty, not yet a duty at all. Further the expression "prima facie" suggests that it may only be a deceptive feature that leads us to think of the "duty" in question as being such whereas this is not Ross' view since he rather takes it that such "duties" include in them factors that render them quite clearly such as to involve a claim upon us (although he also has problems with the word "claim" since this refers mainly to others rather than to ourselves).  The fundamental point about them is that they "rest on a definite circumstance which cannot seriously be held to be without moral significance" (20).


Turning next to the description of what falls under the heading of such "prima facie duties" Ross gives six classes of them. The first group involves duties that arise from previous acts I have committed and this first group is divisible into two classes, basically duties of fidelity and reparation. The second group rest on previous acts of others and are duties of gratitude. With regard to both these first two groups Ross subsequently corrects the way he has described them as they seem to involve motives and he does not wish to suggest we have duties to have certain motives so the disposition to fulfil a promise does not require we adopt a motive to so fulfil it but only that we fulfil it because the promise has been made (and so created an "objective situation" regardless of our motives). Similarly "gratitude" is something that refers to certain acts of ours not the adoption of an emotion of gratitude.


The third class refers to duties of justice with reference here to distribution of pleasure or happiness with regard to merit. The fourth group of duties is duties of beneficence where we attempt to make other peoples situation better. The fifth group is duties of self-improvement and the sixth is non-maleficence towards others.


So what the theory of prima facie duties involves Ross in a commitment to is a pluralism about the right. These different potential grounds of a duty are not equivalent to each other for him or reducible to some other ground that is taken to be more basic (though he does later indicate that he thinks the grounds of beneficence and self-improvement are the same). In moral experience we find the situation to be even more complicated since these prima facie duties are there compounded. This ensures that Ross' account is certainly not tidy:

Every act therefore, viewed in some aspects, will be prima facie right, and viewed in others, prima facie wrong, and right acts can be distinguished from wrong acts only as being those which, of all those possible for the agent in the circumstances, have the greatest balance of prima facie rightness, in those respects in which they are prima facie right, over their prima facie wrongness, in those respects in which they are prima facie wrong...For the estimation of the comparative stringency of these prima facie obligations no general rules can, so far as I can see, be laid down. (41)

 Immediately after making this claim, one that seems to lead towards a strict form of particularism, Ross qualifies it by indicating that duties of "perfect obligation" have a greater stringency and he describes those as the duties of fidelity, reparation and gratitude adding that with the rest the decision "rests with perception". In subsequent postings I want to look at how some contemporary theorists have treated Ross' view of prima facie duties as a means of modifying the Kantian approach to ethics.