ROSS ETHICS

WILLIAM DAVID ROSS 1877-1971

William David Ross was born in Thurso,
Caithness in the north of Scotland. He was a
cousin of Berriedale Keith. He spent most of his
first six years as a child in southern India. He was
educated at the Royal High School, Edinburgh
and the University of Edinburgh. In 1895, he
gained a first class MA degree in classics. He
completed his studies at Balliol College, Oxford
and gained a lectureship at Oriel College in 1900,
followed by a fellowship in 1902.
Ross joined the army in 1915. During
World War I, he worked in the Ministry of
Munitions and was a major on the special list. He
received the Order of the British Empire in 1918
in recognition of his service during the war, and was knighted in 1938.
Ross was White's Professor of Moral Philosophy (19231928), Provost of Oriel College,
Oxford (19291947), Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford from 1941 to 1944 and Pro-
Vice-Chancellor (19441947). He was president of the Aristotelian Society from 1939 to 1940.
He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy and was its President 1940-1944. Of the many
governmental committees on which he served was as chair of the Civil Service Tribunal, on
which one of his two colleagues was Leonard Woolf, who thought that the whole system of
fixing governmental remuneration should be done on the same basis as the US model (of
dividing the civil service into a relatively small number of pay grades). Ross did not agree with
this radical proposal. In 1947 he was appointed chairman of the first Royal Commission on the
Press, United Kingdom.
He married Edith Ogden in 1906 and they had four daughters, Margaret (who married
Robin Harrison), Eleanor, Rosalind (who married John Miller Martin), and Katharine. Edith died
in 1953 and he died in Oxford in 1971.

Prima Facie Duties
Ross (pp. 19-20):
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. Whether an
act is a duty proper or actual duty depends on all the morally significant kinds it is an instance
of.
- An act is a prima facie duty when there is a moral reason in favor of doing the act, but one
that can be outweighed by other moral reasons.
- An act is a prima facie duty when it has at least one right-making feature.

- An act is a prima facie wrong when there is a moral reason against doing the act, but one that
can be outweighed by other moral reasons.
- An act is a prima facie wrong when it has at least one wrong-making feature.
*** Dont confuse prima facie rightness and wrongness with actual rightness and wrongness, or
what we sometimes call all-things-considered rightness and wrongness.





Born
15 April 1877
Thurso, Scotland
Died
5 May 1971 (aged 94)
Oxford, England
Era 20th-century philosophy
Region Western philosophy
School Analytic philosophy
Main interests Ethics, Greek philosophy
Notable ideas
'Pluralist' or 'generalist' deontology;
prima facie moral duties
Influenced by
Immanuel Kant, G. E. Moore, H. A. Prichard


Ross List of Prima Facie Duties and Example
(a) Fidelity
: If you make a promise, you have a prima facie obligation to keep it.
(b) Reparations
: If you have wronged someone, you have a prima facie obligation to
repair it.
(c) Gratitude
: If someone has benefitted you, you have a prima facie obligation to
express your gratitude.
(d) Justice
: See to it that goods are distributed fairly.
(e) Beneficence
: Help a brother or sister out.
(f) Self-Improvement
: Make yourself a better person.
(g) Non-Maleficence
: Dont f--- a brother or sister up.

Ross Theory
It is worthwhile to try to state more definitely the nature of the acts that are right. ... It is
obvious that any of the acts that we do has countless effects, directly or indirectly, on countless
people, and the probability is that any act, however right it be, will have adverse effects ... on
some innocent people. Similarly, any wrong act will probably have beneficial effects on some
deserving people. 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 ... over their prima facie wrongness ... . - Ross (p. 41)












REFERENCES:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._D._Ross
http://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/phil1100/lec14_ross.pdf