W. D. Ross

William David (W.D.) Ross
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

Sir (William) David Ross KBE (15 April 1877 – 5 May 1971) was a Scottish philosopher, known for work in ethics. His best known work is The Right and the Good (1930), and he is perhaps best known for developing a pluralist, deontological form of intuitionist ethics in response to G.E. Moore's intuitionism. However, Ross also translated a number of Aristotle's works, and wrote on Greek philosophy.

Life

William David Ross was born in Thurso, Caithness in the north of Scotland. 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 for this work. In 1938 he was knighted.

Ross was White's Professor of Moral Philosophy (1923–1928), Provost of Oriel College, Oxford (1929–1947), Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford from 1941 to 1944 and Pro-Vice-Chancellor (1944–1947). He was president of the Aristotelian Society from 1939 to 1940.

He married Edith Ogden in 1906 and they had four daughters, Margaret, Rosalind, Eleanor and Katharine. Edith died in 1953 and he died in Oxford in 1971.

Ross's ethical theory

W.D. Ross was a moral realist, a non-naturalist, and an intuitionist. He argued that there are moral truths. He wrote:

The moral order...is just as much part of the fundamental nature of the universe (and...of any possible universe in which there are moral agents at all) as is the spatial or numerical structure expressed in the axioms of geometry or arithmetic

Thus, according to Ross, the claim that something is good is true if that thing really is good. Ross also agreed with G.E. Moore's claim that any attempt to define ethical statements solely in terms of statements about the natural world commits the naturalistic fallacy.

Ross rejected Moore's consequentialist ethics. According to consequentialist theories, what people ought to do is determined only by whether their actions will bring about the most good. By contrast, Ross argues that maximising the good is only one of several prima facie obligations which play a role in determining what a person ought to do in any given case.

Ross gives a list of seven prima facie obligations, which he does not claim is all-inclusive: fidelity; reparation; gratitude; non-maleficence; justice; beneficence; and self-improvement. In any given situation, any number of these prima facie obligations may apply. In the case of ethical dilemmas, they may even contradict one another. Someone could have a prima facie obligation of reparation, say, an obligation to help people who helped you shift house, shift house themselves, and a prima facie obligation of fidelity, say, taking your children on a promised trip to the park, and these could conflict. Nonetheless, there can never be a true ethical dilemma, Ross would argue, because one of the prima facie obligations in a given situation is always the weightiest, and overrules all the others. This is thus the absolute obligation, the action that the person ought to perform.

It is frequently argued, however, that Ross should have used the term "pro tanto" rather than "prima facie". Shelly Kagan, for example, wrote:

"It may be helpful to note explicitly that in distinguishing between pro tanto and prima facie reasons I depart from the unfortunate terminology proposed by Ross, which has invited confusion and misunderstanding. I take it that – despite his misleading label – it is actually pro tanto reasons that Ross has in mind in his discussion of what he calls prima facie duties." Kagan, The Limits of Morality, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989) p. 17n.

Explaining the difference between pro tanto and prima facie, Kagan wrote: "A pro tanto reason has genuine weight, but nonetheless may be outweighed by other considerations. Thus, calling a reason a pro tanto reason is to be distinguished from calling it a prima facie reason, which I take to involve an epistemological qualification: a prima facie reason appears to be a reason, but may actually not be a reason at all". Kagan, The Limits of Morality, p. 17.

Selected works

• 1908: Aristotle. Nichomachean Ethics. Translated by W.D. Ross. Oxford: Clarendon Press. [1]
• 1923: Aristotle
• 1924: Aristotle's Metaphysics
• 1927: 'The Basis of Objective Judgments in Ethics'. International Journal of Ethics, 37: 113-127.
• 1930: The Right and the Good
• 1936: Aristotle's Physics
• 1939: Foundations of Ethics
• 1951: Plato's Theory of Ideas
• 1954: Kant's Ethical Theory

See also

• List of Vice-Chancellors of the University of Oxford

References

• Cooley, Ken. Sir David Ross's Pluralistic Theory of Duty (The Beginnings) (includes biographical details).
• Stout, A. K. 1967. 'Ross, William David'. In P. Edwards (ed.), The Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. New York: Macmillan: 216-217.
• Stratton-Lake, Philip. 2002. 'Introduction'. In Ross, W.D. 1930. The Right and the Good. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Timmons, Mark. 2003. 'Moral Writings and The Right and the Good'. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.