What follows is a melding of two essays, both published in Journal of Mass
Media Ethics: Exploring Questions of Media Morality. Here are the citations
for both:
#1
Appreciating W. D. Ross: On Duties and Consequences
Christopher Meyers
To cite this article: Christopher Meyers (2003): Appreciating W. D. Ross: On Duties and
Consequences, Journal of Mass Media Ethics: Exploring Questions of Media Morality,
18:2, 81-97
#2
Re-Appreciating W. D. Ross: Naturalizing Prima Facie
Duties and a Proposed Method
Christopher Meyers
To cite this article: Christopher Meyers (2011): Re-Appreciating W. D. Ross:
Naturalizing Prima Facie Duties and a Proposed Method, Journal of Mass Media Ethics,
26:4, 316-331
These articles may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any
substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,
systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.
Persons should keep their promises. This seemingly obvious claim is one for
which providing theoretical justification should be easy. Yet the many and various
attempts to do so, including most notably those by Kant and Mill, are widely seen
to have come up short. Although they have produced vital insight into the nature
of morality, none has fully succeeded in providing final theoretical justifications
for even the most apparent of moral assertions. Indeed, following G. E. Moore’s
(1903, 1912) arguments at the turn of the 20th century regarding the failure of
traditional approaches to moral theory, most subsequent thinkers went one of
two anti-objectivist routes: Either moral claims make no reference to real facts
about the world but instead reflect only agents’ emotions, desires, or attitudes, or
moral claims are simply a reflection of cultural indoctrination and thus should be
studied as empirical data by sociologists.
For many non-philosophers these disputes border on the silly. Of course one
should keep one’s promises; if philosophers are unable to prove this, so much
the worse for philosophy. In an important sense, W. D. Ross’s (1930, 1939,
1988) position is of this sort. Deeply influenced by Moore, he too rejected Kant’s
and Mill’s theories, but he also found the anti-objectivist alternatives absurd (1).
For Ross certain moral duties, such as promise-keeping, have objective moral
force. One can know one should keep one’s promises, even if one cannot
rationally deduce this. Rather, he said, such objective moral truths are intuitively
known, self-evident facts about the world.
Most of Ross’s contemporaries and close successors, though, rejected the
appeal to intuitive and thus immediate but unsubstantiated knowledge. The
problems with such appeals are just too daunting. For example, what is the
source of intuitive knowledge? Where does it come from? How does one
distinguish it from cultural indoctrination or emotional attachment? What is to be
said about persons who apparently do not have it? Thus for decades his work
was treated as an interesting but ultimately unimportant contribution to moral
theory.
But then a funny thing happened. Philosophers doing so-called applied ethics
began to worry far more about how ethical principles could be used to guide right
conduct than about how to ground or justify those principles. Hence we get Tom
Beauchamp and James Childress’s (2001) seminal Principles of Biomedical
Ethics, in which, particularly in early editions, the authors made almost no
attempt to justify their principles—autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence, and
justice—but instead more or less assumed their validity and showed how they
can be used to make sense of the moral quandaries prevalent in health care. In
later editions, after receiving sometimes harsh criticism (2), Beauchamp and
Childress greatly expanded the justification section. But even here a Rossian
sensibility prevails; there remains a strong sense of “Oh, come on; we should
obviously respect and promote these principles. We hope theorists can work out
their justifications, but for now we have real people facing real moral problems.”
Is this a legitimate move? Many, probably most, moral philosophers still think not,
maintaining that intuition is too amorphous to serve as the foundation of moral
theory and decision making. I too was once sympathetic to the insistence on
justification. Over the years, though, I have seen my Rossian side emerge as I
increasingly work outside the ivory tower, helping physicians, patients,
journalists, and government bureaucrats attempt to manage tough moral
dilemmas. In such real-world contexts, I have come to rely on what I now see as
the knowledge that persons should keep promises, avoid causing harm, help
others, and so forth. That is, I have come to the conclusion that the job of ethics
theory is to explain why such moral principles are true, not to argue that they are.
Getting at the why of moral principles is, I am still convinced, a vital philosophical
endeavor [see the first part of the follow-up publication, largely deleted in what
follows, in which I attempt to explain that ‘why’ via a form of naturalism]. But that
this endeavor is incomplete does not speak against relying on the principles as a
valid method for doing practical ethics. Ross’s work is focused on the latter point
and on the subsequent ramifications for real-world decision making. It does much
to clarify the nature and meaning of the principles and to provide helpful tools for
their use. In this article I would thus like to show how his theory could be used for
practical ethics. The outline of the article is as follows: First, I give a brief
description of the theoretical underpinnings of Ross’s approach. Second, I stress
what I take to be his greatest strengths. And, third, I provide a suggested model
for ethics decision making.
Linking Deontology and Consequentialism
Although he is firmly rooted in the deontological camp, Ross is often, and I think
rightly, described as providing a bridge between it and consequentialism. The
first, deontological, designation is obvious. Much of the book is devoted to
establishing that moral duties have inherent value and that agent motive is
crucial to determinations of accountability as well as to critiquing especially G. E.
Moore’s version of consequentialism.
That latter critique can be distilled to a simple argument: Surely, he said, making
a promise adds to the moral facts of a case. To elaborate on one of his examples
(Ross, 1988, p. 39), imagine being stranded on a deserted island with no hope of
recovery or even eventual discovery. Your sole island mate requests that should
he die first, would you promise to bury him so scavengers won’t eat his body.
You think it over and promise to do so. Sure enough, he keels over not too long
after. But it is a hot day, you are tired, and you do not have a shovel. And,
besides, what difference will it make? Your friend is dead and no one will ever
know.
On a strict consequentialist account the decision is straightforward: If only harm
(hard work and physical discomfort) and no benefit will accrue, you are under no
moral obligation to fulfill your promise (3). But this cannot be right, Ross said.
Although there could be sufficiently weighty consequences that would override
your promise-engendered duty, the burden of proof, he argued, clearly falls
there; that is, unless there are sufficiently strong moral reasons otherwise, one is
obligated to fulfill promises, even if no benefit results. Making a promise is a
powerfully relevant added moral fact, independent of outcomes. And thus, Ross
concluded, strict consequentialism must be false.
Add to this his claims that agents’ motives are the grounding for accountability
(Ross, 1988, pp. 1–5) and that duties are grounded in human relations (pp. 19,
22, 38) (4), and Ross’s deontological pedigree is apparent. Where, then, is the
consequentialist link? It is present in two key components of his theory. First, he
prominently included non-maleficence and beneficence in his list of prima facie
duties (5). Persons have a prima facie obligation to avoid harm and to produce
benefit, that is, to bring about desirable outcomes. These result-oriented duties
are manifest in the earlier comment that there could be sufficiently weighty
consequences that would justify violating a promise. Most of the other prima facie
duties (i.e., promise keeping, fidelity, gratitude, and reparation) are clearly
backward looking; they get their moral weight from previous acts. By contrast,
beneficence and non-maleficence satisfy the primary condition of
consequentialist theories: They are forward-looking, getting their moral weight
from (potential) outcomes (6).
The second, and subtler, link to consequentialism is also, I think, one of Ross’s
more interesting and important arguments. As the book title suggests,
Ross distinguished between the right and the good. The latter term refers to an
objective if indefinable quality present in acts. It is something seen, not done.
Right, on the other hand, refers to actions. Aright action is something undertaken
by persons motivated by correct reasons and on careful reflection. Not all right
actions, however, will be productive of the good. Rather, Ross (1988) said, even
the most careful, reflective actions necessarily involve,
moral risk. We come,…after consideration to think one duty more pressing
than the other, but we do not feel certain that it is so.…For, to go no
further in the analysis, it is enough to point out that any particular act will in
all probability in the course of time contribute to the bringing about of good
or evil for many human beings, and thus have a prima facie rightness or
wrongness of which we know nothing. (pp. 30–31)
In other words, because persons are not “omniscient” (1988, p. 32), we cannot
know all possible outcomes, and thus, unfortunately, not all right actions will
result in good acts. This was a striking move on Ross’s part: Whether a person’s
action is morally justifiable is a deontological question rooted in motives and
reasoning; whether the act is good is, given our epistemological fallibility,
ultimately a consequentialist question rooted in (often unforeseeable) outcomes.
Ross clearly, and I think rightly, placed greatest emphasis on the deontological
concern, but much of the power and originality of his theory emerged in this
recognition of the need also to account for relevant consequences.
Duties: Prima Facie and Actual
The distinction between prima facie and actual duties is probably the single
aspect of his theory for which Ross is best known (7). Simply put, duties in their
prima facie state are self-evident, intuitively known, and general; for example,
persons should keep their promises. Actual duties are those that emerge in
specific circumstances, when one evaluates the competing duties at stake and
determines which, in the case, should be acted on. Prima facie duties are known
with certainty and are true for all persons, whereas actual ones are closer to
estimations. They are assuredly well considered and carefully and rationally
reflected on, but they are nonetheless devoid of the intuitive certainty attached to
duties in their prima facie state. Prima facie duties are broad and abstract; actual
duties are specific and contextual.
Thus, despite how he is sometimes read (8), Ross is not an intuitionist when it
comes to determining actual duty, or as he sometimes calls it, “duty sans phrase”
(1988, p. 18); that determination comes only after extensive rational analysis, as I
will show next. Intuition plays a role only when duties are in their prima facie
state.
And, in fact, there is considerable ambiguity in the text over just how the prima
facie duties are intuitively grasped. On the one hand, Ross talked about them as
“general principles that are recognized as self-evident” (1988, p. 31), comparing
them to the kind of knowledge persons have of mathematical axioms (1988, pp.
30, 32–33). He also, though, argued they are discerned only through experience
of multiple cases that have inherent in them moral duty. When we encounter, for
example, circumstances that include one or more parties having made a
promise, we discern within those circumstances moral obligation. In our youth
and immaturity, we may not fully understand the nature of that obligation. But
over time and with additional experience, we learn to draw distinctions, to
categorize the relevant duties (9). As Ross (1988) put it,
There is nothing arbitrary about these prima facie duties. Each rests on a
definite circumstance which cannot seriously be held to be without moral
significance… [and] …we see the prima facie rightness of an act which
would be the fulfillment of a particular promise, and of another which
would be the fulfillment of another promise, and when we have reached
sufficient maturity to think in general terms, we apprehend prima facie
rightness to belong to the nature of any fulfillment of promise. (pp. 20, 33).
There is a kind of Aristotelian logic at work here, a moving from the specific,
particular acts with moral factors present within, to the general, abstract moral
duties applicable to a wide range of cases. But, critically, the abstract duties are
not learned; rather, they are recognized. Again, they are self-evident and thus
their validity is not derived from experience (as empiricists would claim). Rather,
experience is necessary to produce enough cases for persons to achieve the
“mental maturity” (p. 29) that provides access to the self-evident truth of the duty.
Ross’s theory thus represents an odd mix of necessary experience combined
with intuitive knowledge: The experience does not produce the knowledge, but
rather creates the conditions that make the knowledge possible.
Out of all this emerges an unusual pluralistic objectivism. Unlike Kant’s and Mill’s
single primary objective principles—the categorical imperative and utility,
respectively—Ross, again showing his debt to Moore, is a pluralist with multiple
objective prima facie duties (10). Indeed, that these duties often conflict (again,
contra Kant and Mill) is the very source and explanation of moral dilemmas.
[This comes from the second essay (pp. 317-319), after a lead-in about needing
to ‘resolve’ some key problems in Ross.]
Why bother? Why strive so hard to rework Ross’s theory? Because despite these
problems, Ross had keen insights into the nature of morality, particularly as a
genuinely practical enterprise. Ross was by no means alone in these insights; his
great contribution comes in how clearly he explains them and in his ability to
merge them into a coherent whole that resonates with the experience of real
persons struggling with real ethical problems. Among those insights are:
1. The difference, both conceptually and in application, between prima facie and
actual duties, with their corresponding mix of abstract-universal and contextspecific qualities. The former have, I will argue, surfaced as a hardwired and
evolutionarily advantageous set of rules that any morally mature human can
access. The latter are the specific moral demands dictated by circumstantial
details, determined through a process of careful moral reasoning (the “process”
discussed below).
2. The power of intuition, of humans’ innate ability to have immediate affective
moral judgments.
3. Relationships matter. Many, if not most, of our moral duties emerge, he says,
from relationships—contractual, emotional and familial. This separates Ross from
Kantian impartiality and aligns him, on this point at least, with later feminist
thinkers.
4. Consequences matter. Although Ross is clearly a deontologist, at least three
of his duties are distinctly forward-looking, directed toward the achievement of
good ends: non-maleficence, beneficence and distributive justice (11).
5. Character matters. Ross’s appreciation for Aristotle comes clearly through in
his inclusion of self-improvement as one of the prima facie duties, by which he
meant the duty to enhance one’s character intellectually, morally, and physically;
that is, to strive to be, in Aristotle’s sense, an excellent person. Character also
gives one both the discernment to better determine actual duty and the
motivation to act accordingly (Beauchamp, 1995, p. 195).
6. Moral decision making is a complex and uncertain business. Given nearly
guaranteed informational limitations, moral choices regularly entail uncertainty
and (educated) guesswork. Ross calls this “moral risk” and says:
Where a possible act is seen to have two characteristics, in virtue of one
of which it is prima facie right, and in virtue of the other prima facie wrong,
we are … well aware that we are not certain whether we ought or ought
not to do it; that whether we do it or not we are taking a moral risk. We
come in the long run, after consideration, to think one duty more pressing
than the other, but we do not feel certain that it is so … (Ross, 1988, pp.
30–31) (12).
The acknowledgement of moral uncertainty aligns with the phenomenology of insetting ethics consulting, where all but the simplest moral dilemmas frequently
produce an “I-just-hope-I-got-that-right” kind of trepidation. As I will argue below,
however, moral uncertainty need not equate with moral relativism; Ross was an
absolutist on both the characterization of prima facie duties and on the possibility
of correct determinations of actual duties.
7. While only partly developed, Ross’ theory includes an acceptance of moral
remainder; that is, in any true moral dilemma, acting rightly necessarily involves
overriding one or more prima facie duties—duties that would otherwise have
moral force—and some of that force remains:
When we think ourselves justified in breaking, and indeed morally obliged
to break, a promise in order to relieve some one’s distress, we do not for a
moment cease to recognize a prima facie duty to keep our promise, and
this leads us to feel, not indeed shame or repentance, but certainly
compunction, for behaving as we do; we recognize, further, that it is our
duty to make up somehow to the promisee for the breaking of the promise.
(Ross, 1988, p. 28)
Put another way, even right choices produce moral harm, a position that again
resonates with the experience of making difficult moral choices, experience that
often brings emotions like regret, even when one is reasonably confident one has
made the right choice (13).
8. Moral reasoning in the real world necessitates distinguishing between the right
and the good. A person, Ross says, can be legitimately held responsible only for
making the right choice, for sincerely attempting to understand the relevant facts,
and acting upon what one concludes is thus the actual duty. Were one
omniscient (and motivated by duty alone), there would be no gap between the
right and the good, since such a being would always have the full knowledge
necessary to recognize and to bring about the good. Given, though, humans’
epistemological limitations, even the most morally committed persons will make
mistakes, but it would unjust to hold them blameworthy for such choices (14).
Applying the Theory [What follows is mostly from the second essay (pp.
321-329), with a brief lead-in taken from the first.]
It would appear Ross’s theory should be easy to apply. He provided relatively
straightforward, intuitively evident, prima facie duties. Why cannot one simply
determine which are present in any given case and then act on those most
compelling, especially if Ross’s duties are intuitive, hard-wired (as I argue in the
middle part of the second essay, not included here). It turns out such intuitive
appeals are inadequate.
Intuition’s Limitations
That there is a common affective judgment and that those judgments are
plausibly connected to abstract prima facie duties does not mean, as some have
suggested, that the immediate intuitive judgment is morally decisive. Intuitive
judgments over specific cases vary too much and are too closely connected to
social factors such as education and economic status to be reliable moral guides.
Rather, immediate affective judgments in specific instances serve both as an
important attention-getter—a way of motivating the agent to recognize moral
considerations at work—and as a link to the abstract principle. But moral
reasoning, valid moral judgment, requires we move beyond the affective to
determine just what, cognitively, the response was about.
As noted above and despite how he is sometimes read (Donagan, 1996, pp. 18–
19), Ross similarly rejects intuition as a guide for determining actual duty:
A statement is certain, i.e. is an expression of knowledge, only in one or
other of two cases: when it is either self-evident, or a valid conclusion from
self-evident premises. And our judgments about our particular duties have
neither of these characters. (1) They are not self-evident … [and] (2) our
judgments about our particular duties are not logical conclusions from selfevident premises. (Ross, 1988, p. 30)
While prima facie duties, in their abstract state, are, he says, certain, self-evident,
intuitively knowable and general, actual duties emerge in specific circumstances
only when one rationally evaluates the competing duties at stake and determines
which should be acted upon. Ross stresses this determination will always be
contextual:
I would contend that in principle there is no reason to anticipate that every
act that is our duty is so for one and the same reason. Why should two
sets of circumstances, or one set of circumstances, not possess different
characteristics, any one of which makes a certain act our prima facie
duty? When I ask what it is that makes me in certain cases sure that I
have a prima facie duty to do so and so, I find that it lies in the fact that I
have made a promise; when I ask the same question in another case, I
find the answer lies in the fact that I have done a wrong. (Ross, 1988, p.
24)
There is, however, no a priori way of weighting competing moral duties and, as
noted, he gives little guidance about how to evaluate within the “different
circumstances.”
In short, he assuredly does not equate the intuitive status—either in level of
certainty or in means of access—of duties in their prima facie and actual states.
One must, rather, move beyond the affective response and use a plausible
method to determine the best, or at least better, choice in that circumstance.
That caveat alone—that there are always better choices in ethics decision
making—also addresses one source of resistance to naturalist accounts: that it
necessarily results in relativism (a conclusion, in fact, many of the naturalists
happily embrace [15]). Because affective moral judgments or their associated
principles are not rooted in the sort of absolutism to which philosophers have
traditionally appealed (i.e., the absolutism of reason or divine command), a
naturalist approach would appear incompatible with those that insist, as Ross did
and I do, that correct moral judgments are universal. But that there are “better” or
“worse” choices implies genuine moral standards, ones not reducible to arbitrary
cultural parameters. Ross stressed repeatedly that his list of prima facie duties,
or one very similar to it, was self-evidently certain and accessible to all persons,
or at least to all those who had reached sufficient maturity, that is, had enough
morally imbued experiences. He also said that the correct determination of an
actual duty, the sort of determination an omniscient being would achieve, would
be the correct choice for all moral agents similarly situated (Ross, 1988, p. 32).
Since a naturalistic account has no grounds for appeal to omniscient absolutism,
is there nonetheless some way to avoid relativism? In answering “yes,” I rely on a
distinction between universalism and absolutism. Universalism holds that there is
one correct moral choice for any human person—given our current evolutionary
status—within any contextualized situation, and that there is a correct list of
abstract moral principles, again for any and all human persons currently
structured. Absolutism, by contrast, holds there is no possible world in which the
answer or the list could be different; it is true by appeal to some transcendent
standard, either, traditionally, a theological one or one revealed by a conception
of reason that is not reducible to humans’ natural, biological position. Neither
general view, however, necessarily takes a position on whether decision-makers
could know what the (universally or absolutely) correct answer is, given
epistemological, religious, or reasoning insufficiencies.
Given that my starting point is evolutionary naturalism, one can certainly imagine
primates, or other morally sentient beings, evolving in a way that produced
different brains and thus a different moral structure, in which case the universally
correct answer would correspondingly differ. Within that frame, one can also
imagine the different creatures being similar to current humans but with minor
variances in their moral grounding, in which case their universally correct answer
would be the same or similar to ours. It would also seem, however, that with a
radically different outcome, in which Homo sapiens evolved such that they
perceived moral relations in radically different ways, it would be unlikely we
would recognize them as sufficiently like us; we might not even think of them as
human persons.
On this account, if part of what it means to be (a morally mature) human is to
recognize more or less the same basic moral duties, then (human) morality is
universal, by definition. It would also mean that Ross was right in his claim that
any moral dilemma has a correct actual duty: Were we to have access to all
morally relevant information in a given case and also choose rightly, then it would
be the universally correct choice for all human persons similarly situated.
Given, however, that there is considerable guesswork, moral risk, involved in any
but the simplest moral dilemma, it is routinely the case that we do not get the
facts or evaluation right; doing so is beyond our informational and psychological
capacity. That does not mean in such cases we are doomed to do evil, for unless
we completely botch the evaluation, we should be able to determine a quite
narrow range of correct answers and we can certainly judge some answers to be
wrong. For example, we may not be sure whether it is appropriate to reveal a
source name to a criminal investigator who needs it to get a warrant to search
the premises of a nasty gangbanger, but it certainly would be beyond the moral
pale to give that gangbanger a call and tell him, “Hey, did you know your buddy
Joe is a snitch?” Again, so long as the informational or evaluative errors are not
the result of clear negligence or mal-intent, the agent cannot be justly held
accountable for even those choices that produce evil; responsibility is attached to
acting rightly or wrongly, not to good or bad.
That there may be a universal set of moral principles as well as, at least
potentially, universally correct moral answers in any given problem, obviously
does not mean that individuals, even whole groups, won’t regularly perceive their
moral duty differently—just take a glance at any daily newspaper. Such variations
in cultural norms are hardly irrelevant; rather, they are among the facts that must
be addressed in moral reasoning; in some cultures, some facts will have greater
moral import than in others. Such cultural differences, however, do not entail
differences in morality; any reasoned analysis of a case must work through the
same, universal, moral principles and must adhere to consistent and nonfallacious reasoning. Realizing the principles are sometimes instantiated
differently reveals only that groups interpret and weight facts differently, not that
the principles differ (16).
Further, treating as factually relevant other cultures’ moral norms does not entail
always honoring or even always respecting them. That a culture believes a given
action is harmful does not make it so. The facts of a situation, impartially
reasoned, may well force others, even others from quite distinct cultures, to
justifiably conclude that the first culture is simply mistaken, sometimes even
mistaken enough as to warrant outside intervention. Obvious examples include
those in which members of a culture mistakenly believe that other groups of
persons (Jews, blacks, infidels, Muslims, Catholics … unfortunately the list
seems limitless) are not persons and cannot be harmed in the same way or don’t
need to be treated with moral respect. Such examples reveal cultural facts to be
relevant but not decisive; they are not decisive because all facts must be morally
evaluated via a reasoned analysis inclusive of universal judgments and
principles.
In summary, it may be possible to resolve one of the two biggest problems for
Ross—the source of prima facie duties—through appeal to the explanatory
power of evolutionary naturalism. If the arguments above hold, the resolution can
occur while still retaining his key insights, in particular the distinction between
right and good; the conclusion that such naturalism does not preclude an
insistence that moral reasoning entails morally correct answers, universally
correct, if not absolutely so; and the realization that such reasoning is messy
business. That messiness, thus, demands a model for moving from prima facie to
actual duty.
Suggested Ethics Decision Making Process (17)
As discussed above, the affective judgment is important as an “attention-getter”
and link to the abstract principles, but it alone cannot get us to a justified
determination of actual duty. We need a rational process, one that respects the
“yuck” factor, but that builds off it and similar affective or well-considered
judgments (Rawls, 1999, p. 18), in part by analyzing their impact within a
factually rich context. The process, described below, builds off three meta-rules:
1. All participants to the conversation must be committed to an impartial
review of what and who are at stake;
2. All participants must be committed to rational coherence among beliefs
and norms, to continuing to reason through a problem until there are no apparent
inconsistencies or logical fallacies; and
3. The sequence of steps is prima facie only; each case dictates its own
approach, rarely following a neat linear line.
Step One. Approach the situation with an open mind, striving for an unbiased
appraisal of the facts, in particular of what facts affect the normative
considerations in the case. One means for better insuring neutrality is through a
publicity requirement; that is, the requirement that all those committing to the
principles or actions do so while fully informed (Rawls, 1999, pp. 48–49). Another
is through acquisition of multiple points of view, seeking input from all relevantly
affected parties. Both help overcome the perspectival frame each person brings
to the conversation. More importantly, though, a commitment to impartiality does
not, as per above, entail a requirement to incorporate or even respect all beliefs,
but rather only those that can sustain through reasoned analysis.
Step Two. Seek the facts, all the facts. This may sound so obvious as to be trite,
but in my experience, this is typically where ethical problems reside and where
analyses fail: participants in a difficult deliberation stop short of gathering all the
facts that are substantively relevant to the case. These include [using journalism
as an example]:
1. Journalistic facts—the who, what, where, when, how, and why that
make up any good story. Decision makers must focus in particular on who the
relevant stakeholders are and how they will likely be impacted by various options.
Not all stakeholders, of course, carry equal moral status and this is part of good
ethics—figuring out who is the most ethically connected to the problem and
weighting moral status accordingly. While different reporters (and ethicists) will
legitimately disagree over which of these facts are the most relevant, the range
should be quite narrow; that is, conscientious persons should be able to agree on
the core empirical elements of a case. If not, additional research must be
conducted before ethical evaluation can occur.
2. Legal facts, including relevant statutes or case law as these impact the
journalistic practices.
3. Social/political facts. How are those being reported on impacting
society? How will the report itself impact society? What historical facts are
needed to provide sufficient context to the story? Do the reporters have agendas
in revealing information and how does that impact its credibility/accuracy?
4. Where obtainable, the personal history and current circumstances of
key participants in the case, with particular emphasis on their life plan and lived
values, including spiritual values. These are relevant to determining whether, for
example, reporting on someone’s actions would significantly undermine their
ability for a flourishing life—and thereby represent a profound violation of nonmaleficence—as opposed to just being an annoying nuisance.
5. Organizational or craft considerations, including personal or political
tensions, distinctive practice standards, and institutional norms. The
organizational ethos—the prevailing moral and practice norms within an
institution or group—while rarely included in most ethics case-studies, can
significantly impact which elements of a case are considered important, how they
will be addressed, and what lessons will be learned. To take an obvious
example, the cultural norms at the New York Times are different than those at
TMZ.
6. Even less frequently included in ethics case scenarios are macro-level
political and ideological influences—the social context in which the problem
resides. Such context produces structural norms that affect how problems are
understood and addressed, norms that are akin to the foundational concepts and
grammar that dictate both how to participate in language in a meaningful way
and what counts as normal, acceptable usage.
More often than not, when step two has been properly completed, the conflict
disappears. That is, the clear majority of ethics conflicts are really about
confused facts—including the impact of the organizational ethos—or about
different stakeholders believing different facts. When these are corrected,
agreement routinely follows over the value questions, and the problem resolves.
Step Three. When the problem persists, and when decision makers are
reasonably confident all or enough of the relevant facts have been obtained, test
your own and other participants’ gut feelings: Is there a consistent affective moral
judgment warranting participants’ attention and can they rationally articulate what
it is? The latter request serves two functions: It sometimes results in initial
affective judgments being amended or abandoned and it nearly always serves as
a segue to the reasoning process needed to justifiably feel confident one has
correctly determined the actual duty.
Step Four. Determine which of the prima facie duties are at stake and, to the
degree possible, to what extent. I adopt the traditional distinction between strictly
binding and strongly urged, between “perfect” and “imperfect” duties, but only
prima face. One needs very little imagination to come up with cases in which an
imperfect duty of beneficence outweighs a perfect non-maleficent one. For
instance (slightly altering Singer’s well-know example), one is surely obligated to
save a child drowning in a shallow puddle (imperfect beneficence), even if in
doing so one must shove aside a bystander in the way (perfect non-maleficence).
Similarly, the duties also get instantiated within professional or other role-based
contexts in ways that demand greater weight: for example, a reporter has a strict
duty of honesty to a long-time trusted source, just as a physician has a perfect
duty to act beneficently toward her patient, as does a parent to his child.
Perfect duties include:
1. Respect for persons, including oneself: Treat all persons as free
beings whose moral autonomy must be honored. Since true autonomy depends
on adequate information, this principle provides the moral grounding for
journalism’s right (and duty) to seek and disseminate vital information. It also
places constraints on reporters not to use others—sources and subjects— as
mere tools for personal gain, for example, via unwarranted invasions of privacy.
The key qualifier is “mere,” as we regularly use one another for mutual benefit,
with the distinguishing standard being consent; did she genuinely agree to the
activity? More importantly, the principle of respect entails holding persons—
including oneself—accountable for free choices.
2. Non-maleficence: Avoid causing harm to others, including physical,
reputational, psychological, emotional, and economic harm.
3. Fidelity: Keep promises, whether explicit, or when any reasonable
person would interpret one’s actions and circumstances as implying such a vow.
4. Reparation: Effect repair for harms caused to others, whether directly
(e.g., fixing, or paying to have fixed, the damage) or indirectly (e.g., providing
cash restitution). The duty of reparation must also be divided between those
harms caused intentionally or through gross negligence and those resulting from
stupidity or carelessness. The former produce a strict duty, the latter only an
imperfect one.
5. Formal justice: Give to persons what they have legitimately earned
and apply corresponding social structures (laws, civil rights) in an unbiased
manner, that is, in a manner that takes into account only relevant factors, not
arbitrary ones. The obvious application of this principle is via justice systems, but
it also carries across to social benefits, like those attached to recognized
marriage covenants. Hence treating an arbitrary factor, like one’s sexual
orientation, as relevant to receipt of such benefits would be a violation of the
perfect duty of justice.
Imperfect duties include:
1. Beneficence: Do what you reasonably can to improve the situation of
others. Included under beneficence is the journalistic (role-based) duty to take
positive measures to try, via good reporting, to prevent harms caused by others
or by natural events.
2. Gratitude: Show appreciation for others’ actions that benefit you.
Appreciation can range from mere expressions of thankfulness to gifting in a
manner comparable to the good provided.
3. Distributive justice: Distribute social goods in a manner that both
protects liberty and provides the greatest benefit to the least advantaged.
4. Honesty: Maintain a commitment not to knowingly and intentionally
communicate in a way that results in others believing information you consider to
be false. As per Sissela Bok (1999, pp. 13–16), deceptive communication can fall
along the continuum of overt and malicious, to covert and done with the goal of
aiding or preventing harm to others, to self-deception. I list honesty as an
imperfect duty, contra Kant, both because of “so as to prevent harm” cases and
because one may wield honesty like a club, using it as an excuse to be cruel.
5. Self-improvement: Strive to improve oneself, morally, intellectually and
physically. In other words, we have a duty to develop our character in a manner
that would facilitate moral discernment and steadfastness, while striving for
healthy, well-functioning bodies.
Step Five. In addition to determining which duties are at stake and how, one
must evaluate what type of conflict it is. An ethical dilemma occurs when there
are competing duties, none of which is obviously the most telling in the case,
such that any choice represents a moral harm; ethical distress is when most
everyone agrees on the ethically best choice, but institutional structures, power
asymmetries or legal constraints prevent one from acting accordingly. Knowing
the type of dilemma is important to determining the means for resolution; for
example, ethical distress typically entails finding a way to equalize power so as to
effect the better solution, whereas resolution of ethical dilemmas typically
involves attempts to mitigate harm.
Step Six. Rationally work through the various views and arguments, striving to
avoid inconsistencies or other fallacies. While this step can be described in a
single sentence, carrying it out is often extraordinarily difficult, given our natural
propensity toward bias and self-interest.
Step Seven. When there are multiple people involved in trying to determine the
best ethical approach, for example, in a news-budget meeting, one should strive
for consensus on the solution, but only if it is genuine, that is, not in fact driven by
the most powerful voices in the room and only when it is consistent with results
produced via the other steps. A favored approach of many practical ethics
models (Core Competencies, 1998), seeking consensus assumes it is possible to
overcome established role-based and historical hierarchies. The reality is those
who hold power, especially power historically established within a hierarchical
institution such as journalism, characteristically dominate conversations. They
control the tone, they control the content and they usually control the outcomes.
Thus, again, the value of consensus resides only when it is authentically
achieved.
Step Eight. Once the best choice is determined, pay attention to any associated
harms and strive to mitigate them. The solution to any moral dilemma entails
overriding one or more competing duties, i.e., it entails a moral harm. For
example, an ethically justified report on a criminal suspect (ethically justified via
the principles of respect for persons, beneficence and justice) will also almost
certainly entail an invasion of that suspect’s privacy. The ethical reporter, thus,
strives to reduce or repair such harms by, in the first instance, giving great care
to present the story in the most nuanced and context-based manner (e.g., not
just acting as a conduit for the law enforcement agency’s public information
officer) and, in the second instance, giving equal play to an exoneration story.
Step Nine. Seek to alter institutional or craft structures that result in similar
ethical problems emerging time and again. For example, as economic forces
place ever tighter constraints on newsrooms, it is increasingly difficult for
reporters to retain independence (Wasserman, 2010).Where possible and
appropriate, the ethical journalist thus strives to reinforce newsroom policies that
resist such pressures and, again where possible and appropriate, works to
develop economic models that enhance journalistic independence.
CONCLUSION
My goal with this article has been to make a case for how to resolve the two key
problems in Ross: using evolutionary naturalism to plausibly explain the source
of “intuitively” known prima facie duties and recommending a process that offers
a method for determining one’s actual duty in any given case. Consistent with
Ross’s position, the process is complicated, particularly in tougher problems, and
it cannot guarantee correct choices or production of the good. Again consistent
with Ross, and contrary to the view of some naturalists (e.g., Newton & Williams,
2010), such complexity and uncertainty speak in the method’s favor, given the
complexity—factual, motivational, and organizational—of ethics problems and
decision-making. If persons are to be justly held accountable for doing right—
carefully and sincerely striving to judge best choices—they need a method that
better achieves this, and thereby also makes it more likely they will do good.
Acknowledgments
I thank Paul Newberry and Joshua Glasgow for their helpful corrections to earlier
drafts of the first article and to Bernard Gert, Jay Black, Stephen Ward, and
Steven Gamboa for their comments on earlier drafts of this article.
Notes
1. This is a bit misleading because although Ross does explicitly address the
sociological approach (pp. 12ff), most of the subjectivists and emotivists wrote
after Ross. The general argument, however, of The Right and the Good (1930)
effectively anticipates many of their claims. (In addition to a number of works on
Aristotle, Ross also wrote one other ethics text, The Foundations of Ethics, 1939,
devoted primarily to clarifying issues raised in The Right and the Good. In this
article, unless otherwise noted, all page references are to the Hackett edition of
The Right and the Good, 1988)
2. See Gert (1984). See also Gert and Clouser (1990), Green (1990), and
Lustig’s (1992) reply, and Green, Gert, and Clouser (1993).
3. Consequentialists sometimes argue, in these kinds of scenarios, that the
breakdown of social trust, or the impact on the agent’s future actions, provides
the necessary consequential justification. I think those arguments are compelling,
but this case is intentionally constructed to make them not relevant.
4. Much of recent feminist moral theory works off the argument that traditional
theory rejects the importance of human relations in moral analysis. To whatever
extent that argument is valid against Kant and Mill, it is not against Ross, a point I
will elaborate on.
5. In the next section, I explain in detail Ross’s distinction between prima facie
and actual duties.
6. [See note 11, below.]
7. Contemporary parlance uses principles rather than duties. Because there
appears to be no substantive difference in the terminology, I stick with Ross’s
language here.
8. Compare Donagan (1996). For an interpretation closer to mine, see
McNaughton (1996).
9. Again, as we do with mathematics, where sufficient experience is necessary to
move from concrete examples to a recognition of abstract necessary truth (pp.
32–33).
10. Kant’s discussion of the duties that emerge from the categorical imperative,
along with his inclusion of imperfect duties, and Mill’s inductive general rules
might be seen as suggesting that their theories are pluralist as well. In Kant’s
case, however, the emerging duties are derivative only while the imperfect ones
are not strictly binding. For example, one is encouraged to promote the
happiness of others but not obligated to do so. And Mill’s rules, for example, his
rules of justice, are derived directly from his monistic principle, utility, and are
thus no more than nonobjective, broad recommendations; that is, if they promote
utility, they should be followed, otherwise not.
11. Ross is ambiguous on the meaning of justice, sometimes attaching it to merit
(i.e., backward-looking and deontological), sometimes to beneficial distribution
(i.e., forward-looking and consequentialist. I will separate out these distinct
senses.
12. See also 31-32, in which he discusses the relationship between “good
fortune” and the right act.
13. See R. M. Hare for a similar view (Hare, 1981, 28ff).
14. Compare with Kant, for whom the right and the good are co-extensive (acting
from the good will alone, thereby incorporating both motive and the only thing
that is good without qualification) and with Mill, for whom the good (successful
promotion of the aggregate greater pleasure) is the only concern of ethical
relevance, rightness (motive) being a question only of character.
15. See for example, Haidt and Joseph: “We will present a … view that we
believe fully respects the depth and importance of cultural variant in morality …
by focusing attention on … the link between intuitions, especially a subset of
intuitions that we argue are innate in important respects, and virtues, which by
and large are social constructions” (Haidt & Joseph, 2004, p. 56).
16. See Gert (1988) for a similar view.
17. Some of what follows is taken from and builds upon Meyers (2007). It is
written with the consulting ethicist in mind, working among a group of people
struggling to resolve difficult ethical dilemmas.
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