The Right and the Good

Ross defends a realist position about morality: the moral order expressed in prima facie duties is just as real as "the spatial or numerical structure expressed in the axioms of geometry or arithmetic".[3]^:29–30 Furthermore, the terms "right" and "good" are indefinable.[2] This means that various naturalistic theories trying to define "good" in terms of desire or "right" in terms of producing the most pleasure fail.[3]^:11–2 But this even extends to theories that characterize one of these terms through the other. Ross uses this line of thought to object to Moore's ideal utilitarianism, which defines "right" in terms of "good" by holding that an action is right if it produces the best possible outcome.[1][4]

Ross, like Immanuel Kant, is a deontologist: he holds that rightness depends on adherence to duties, not on consequences.[1] But against Kant's monism, which bases ethics in only one foundational principle, the categorical imperative, Ross contends that there is a plurality of prima facie duties determining what is right.[2][3]^:xii Some duties originate from our own previous actions, like the duty of fidelity (to keep promises and to tell the truth), and the duty of reparation (to make amends for wrongful acts). The duty of gratitude (to return kindnesses received) arises from the actions of others. Other duties include the duty of non-injury (not to hurt others), the duty of beneficence (to promote the maximum of aggregate good), the duty of self-improvement (to improve one's own condition) and the duty of justice (to distribute benefits and burdens equably).[3]^:21–5[1]

One problem the deontological pluralist has to face is that cases can arise where the demands of one duty violate another duty, so-called moral dilemmas.[5] For example, there are cases where it is necessary to break a promise in order to relieve someone's distress.[3]^:28 Ross makes use of the distinction between prima facie duties and absolute duty to solve this problem.[3]^:28 The duties listed above are prima facie duties; they are general principles whose validity is self-evident to morally mature persons. They are factors that do not take all considerations into account. Absolute duty, on the other hand, is particular to one specific situation, taking everything into account, and has to be judged on a case-by-case basis.[2][4] Various considerations are involved in such judgments, e.g. concerning which prima facie duties would be upheld or violated and how important they are in the given case.[1] Ross uses the comparison to physics, where various forces, e.g. due to gravitation or electromagnetism, affect the movement of bodies, but the overall movement is determined not by one single force component but by the total net force.[3]^:28–9 It is absolute duty that determines which acts are right or wrong. This way, the dilemmas posed by prima facie duties can be resolved.[3]^:21–2[2]

The term "good" is used in various senses in natural language.[4] Ross points out that it is important for philosophy to distinguish between the attributive and the predicative sense.[3]^:65 In the attributive sense, "good" means skillful or useful, as in "a good singer" or "a good knife". This sense of good is relative to a certain kind: being good as something, like a person may be good as a singer but not good as a cook.[3]^:65–7 The predicative sense of good, on the other hand, as in "pleasure is good" or "knowledge is good" is not relative in this sense. Of main interest to philosophy is a certain type of predicative goodness: so-called intrinsic goodness. An intrinsically good thing is good in itself: it would be good even if it existed all by itself, it is not just good as a means because of its consequences.[3]^:67–8[6]

According to Ross, self-evident intuition shows that there are four kinds of things that are intrinsically good: pleasure, knowledge, virtue and justice.[1][4] "Virtue" refers to actions or dispositions to act from the appropriate motives, for example, from the desire to do one's duty.[2] "Justice", on the other hand, is about happiness in proportion to merit. As such, pleasure, knowledge and virtue all concern states of mind, in contrast to justice, which concerns a relation between two states of mind.[2] These values come in degrees and are comparable with each other. Ross holds that virtue has the highest value while pleasure has the lowest value.[4][5] He goes so far as to suggest that "no amount of pleasure is equal to any amount of virtue, that in fact virtue belongs to a higher order of value".[3]^:150 Values can also be compared within each category, for example, well-grounded knowledge of general principle is more valuable than weakly grounded knowledge of isolated matters of fact.[3]^:146–7[2]

According to Ross's intuitionism, we can know moral truths through intuition, for example, that it is wrong to lie or that knowledge is intrinsically good.[2] Intuitions involve a direct apprehension that is not mediated by inferences or deductions: they are self-evident and therefore not in need of any additional proof.[1] This ability is not inborn but has to be developed on the way to reaching mental maturity.[3]^:29 But in its fully developed form, we can know moral truths just as well as we can know mathematical truths like the axioms of geometry or arithmetic.[3]^:30[7] This self-evident knowledge is limited to general principles: we can come to know the prima facie duties this way but not our absolute duty in a particular situation: what we should do all things considered.[3]^:19–20,30 All we can do is consult perception to determine which prima facie duty has the highest normative weight in this particular case, even though this usually does not amount to knowledge proper due to the complexity involved in most specific cases.[2]

Various arguments in The Right and the Good are directed against utilitarianism in general and Moore's version of it in particular. Ross acknowledges that there is a duty to promote the maximum of aggregate good, as utilitarianism demands. But, Ross contends, this is just one besides various other duties, which are ignored by the overly simplistic and reductive utilitarian outlook.[3]^:19[1] Another fault of utilitarianism is that it disregards the personal character of duties, for example, due to fidelity and gratitude.[3]^:22 Ross argues that his deontological pluralism does a better job at capturing common-sense morality since it avoids these problems.[2]

Ross objects to Kant's view that the rightness of actions depends on their motive. Such a view leads to a circular or even contradictory account of duty since "[t]hose who hold that our duty is to act from a certain motive usually ... hold that the motive from which we ought to act is the sense of duty".[3]^:5 So "it is my duty to do act A from the sense that it is my duty to do act A".[3]^:5 To avoid this problem, Ross suggests that moral goodness should be distinguished from moral rightness or moral obligation.[3]^:5 The moral value of an action depends on the motive but the motive is not relevant for whether the act is right or wrong.[4]