William David Ross (1877-1971)
Career and major works:
• White’s Professor of Moral
Philosophy, Oxford, 1923-28.
• Provost of Oriel College
Oxford, 1929-47.
• Vice-Chancellor Oxford
University, 1941-1944.
• Member and President of the
British Academy.
• Translator of Aristotle’s
Nichomachean Ethics. (1908)
• The Right and the Good (1930)
• Foundations of Ethics (1939)
Photo from http://home.wlu.edu/~mahonj/FirstEditionsRoss.htm website of James Mahon
of Washington and Lee University.
Which very short summary captures
one of Ross’s main points?
• A. Extant contemporary theories of morality
make things too simple.
• B. Moral theory is easy to summarize
correctly.
• C. Moore’s version of consequentialism is not
an improvement on earlier forms of
consequentialism.
Which very short summary captures
one of Ross’s main points?
• A. Extant contemporary theories of morality
make things too simple.
• B. Moral theory is easy to summarize
correctly.
• C. Moore’s version of consequentialism is not
an improvement on earlier forms of
consequentialism.
Clicker Question:
Should one do the action which
involves keeping the promise or the
other one?
• A. Keep the promise.
• B. Do the other action.
• C. It doesn’t matter which you choose – either
can rightly be chosen.
Clicker Question: What should you do
in the car crash/lunch date scenario?
• A. Stop and try to stabilize the victim until an
ambulance arrives.
• B. Continue on so as to be at the promised
spot for your lunch appointment.
Clicker Question: Do we have any
reason to favor the happy torturer
scenario over the unhappy torturer
scenario?
• A. Yes.
• B. No.
Exam Grading Center of gravity at
86/87
• We should do X, Y and Z, in relation to resource shortages
and famines.
• Example NP: When people’s lives are at risk we have an
obligation to save as many as we can without seriously
harming others.
• Doing X, Y and Z will enable us to save as many lives as we
can without seriously harming others. We can see this if
we examine this circumstance where X and Y saved lives.
And in this other case Z helped as well. Furthermore we
have the resources to fund X, Y and Z without great cost
because . . .
• The normative principle in the second section makes sense
to adopt because . . .
Consequentialist Exam
• A. State thesis.
• B. State and explain normative principle.
• C. Present empirical facts to show that the
likely consequences of the action in question
are or are not better than the consequences
of the alternative.
• E. Defend your NP.
Nonconsequentialist Exam
• A. State thesis.
• B. State and explain your normative principle.
• C. Present empirical facts to show that policies
you advocate will meet the standards set by your
normative principle. (For example if your NP is
“Don’t Kill” people show that the policies you
advocate are necessary to avoid or minimizing
killings by the people who should adopt the
policy.)
• E. Defend your NP.
Default Grading
• A test which does each of the four things we
ask adequately will be roughly on the line
between a B and a B+. (86-87 points).
• Papers that don’t do some of these well will
lose points for that (though these can be
offset by gains from doing other things
especially well.
• Tests which do especially well at some of
these tasks will gain points.
Example of a perfectly OK thesis &
ways to make it better than OK
• Thesis says that we should promote and fund
immediate famine assistance, developmental
assistance and population control programs.
(with support for each of these in section 3). You
need not favor all 3 or any of these – this is just
an example.
• Ways to do better than this:
– Be more specific about what kind of developmental,
population and/or population programs you favor.
– Come up with something that you think will work that
goes beyond these suggestions and comes up with a
new kind of policy or program not discussed.
Ways to do better than OK on a NP
• Use an original NP of your own or a modified
version borrowed from someone not on the
reading list.
Way to make section 3 better than OK.
• Include lots of evidence that your suggestions will
do what your normative principle says we should
do.
• Show that you’ve done some work looking into
policies that may or may not work and explain
why they will or won’t.
• Generally if your thesis is more specific your facts
here will need to be more specific and this will
then require additional detail here that makes
your third section better as well.
Ways to do especially well at the
fourth task
• Present the reasons for adopting your NP in an
especially clear way.
• Have an original argument for your NP.
• Use especially clever and persuasive examples to
support your NP (like Singer does with the
drowning child but doing something like that
that’s original to you).
• Do a nice job explaining and developing some of
the ideas used by one of the moral theorists we
read to defend your normative principles.