This paper argues that ross's theory is an unsatisfactory compromise between moore's ideal utilitarianism and prichard's intuitionism. by including an 'optimific' principle, ross is exposed like moore to such difficulties as having to grant that we never know our duty and that logically we have a duty to pursue our own pleasure. in addition, this paper attributes to moore's influence ross's very inadequate treatment of justice; difficulties in his basic distinction of prima facie versus actual duties; and (...) his unsatisfactory treatments of the deontological/teleological issue. (shrink)

This essay challenges a "meta-theory" in just war analysis that purports to bridge the divide between just war and pacifism. According to the meta-theory, just war and pacifism share a common presumption against killing that can be overridden only under conditions stipulated by the just war criteria. Proponents of this meta-theory purport that their interpretation leads to ecumenical consensus between "just warriors" and pacifists, and makes the just war theory more effective in reducing recourse to war. Engagement with the new (...) meta-theory reveals, however, that these purported advantages are illusory, made possible only by ignoring fundamental questions about the nature and function of political authority that are crucial to all moral reflection on the problem of war. (shrink)

It is argued that a little-Discussed notion of prima facie good (and a related notion of a "basic value experience") can throw light on some of the most vexing problems of value theory, About the meaning of 'good', The naturalistic fallacy, The objectivity of value, The fact-Value distinction and intrinsic value. The notion of prima facie good is formally analogous to w d ross's notion of prima facie duty, But is more general (applying to (...) value generally) and (it is argued) is more useful and less problematic. Views of spinoza, Ross, Moore, Perry and recent value theorists are discussed. (shrink)

THE PROJECT OF THIS PAPER IS TO GIVE AN EXPLICIT DEFINITION OF 'PRIMA FACIE' DUTY EMPLOYING THE NOTION OF DUTY (SIMPLICITER) AS THE ONLY MORAL NOTION. THIS DEFINITION AVOIDS THE CIRCULARITY OF SOME DEFINITIONS WHILE ALSO BEING SUFFICIENTLY GENERAL SO AS NOT TO DEPEND ON THE ADOPTION OF ANY PARTICULAR MORAL VIEWPOINT. THIS PAPER ATTACKS THE VIEW THAT A MORAL PHILOSOPHER (OR AN ANTHROPOLOGIST DESCRIBING A MORAL CODE) CAN ALWAYS IN PRINCIPLE AVOID EMPLOYING THE NOTION OF A ' (...) class='Hi'>PRIMA FACIE' DUTY SIMPLY BY GIVING A CAREFUL STATEMENT OF EACH RULE MAKING EXPLICIT ITS EXCEPTIONS. (shrink)

Benatar’s central argument for antinatalism develops an asymmetry between the pain and pleasure in a potential life. I am going to present an alternative route to the antinatalist conclusion. I argue that duties require victims and that as a result there is no duty to create the pleasures contained within a prospective life but a duty not to create any of its sufferings. My argument can supplement Benatar’s, but it also enjoys some advantages: it achieves a better fit with (...) our intuitions; it does not require us to acknowledge that life is a harm, or that a world devoid of life is a good thing; and it is easy to see why it does not have any pro-mortalist implications. (shrink)

In The Right and the Good, W. D. Ross commits himself to the view that, in addition to being distinct and defeasible, some prima facie duties are more binding than others. David McNaughton has argued that there appears to be no way of making sense of this claim that is both coherent and consistent with Ross's overall picture. I offer an alternative way of understanding Ross's remarks about the comparative stringency of prima facie duties, (...) which, in addition to being compatible with his view as presented in the text, provides us with a coherent, and indeed plausible, account of what it means for some duties to be more binding than others. (shrink)

Some conservation biologists invoke the concept of ‘genetic integrity,’ which they generally assume is a good worth preserving without explicit justification. We examine the question of whether or not there is a prima facie duty to preserve genetic integrity in conservation biology. We examine several possible justifications for the potential duty found in the conservation biology literature. We argue, contra a dominant trend of thought in conservation biology, that there is no prima facie duty to preserve (...) genetic integrity and that any moral obligation to preserve genetic integrity in specific cases is merely derivative of other possible duties. (shrink)

Ross divides prima facie duties into derivative and foundational ones, but seems to understand the notion of a derivative prima facie duty in two very different ways. Sometimes he understands them in a non-eliminativist way. According to this understanding, basic prima facie duties ground distinct derivative ones. According to the eliminativist understanding, basic duties do not ground distinct derivative duties, but replace them. On the eliminativist view, discovering that a (...) class='Hi'>prima facie duty is derivative is discovering that it is not genuine. The genuine one is the basic one. I argue that Ross is best understood as an eliminativist. (shrink)

The concept of prima facie duty is deemed important by ross and the author. The author thinks ross and others have not elucidated the concept and the relation between prima facie and 'absolute' duty. He concludes that "we must explain the obligatoriness of absolute duties in terms of prima facie duties, As being derived from them, And not vice versa, As ross attempted." (staff).

Standardly, the usual approach to rationality is based on the notion of ‘being a reason for’. Honouring the traditional distinction between practical and theoretical philosophy, reasons are classified as justificative and explicative. In both cases, a reason-statement has the form ‘’. For reasons of type , ‘A’ is a factual statement and ‘B’ is a statement which describes an action of the agent. The reason-statement has a prescriptive sense because ‘A is a reason for doing B’ means ‘A is a (...) reason an agent ought to do B’. So, it is advisable to schematize that kind of statements as ‘’, where ‘OB’ is a deontic statement prescribing the duty to do B. Reasons of type have a descriptive sense and do not require the above-mentioned constraint. But ‘being a reason for’ has different senses according to context, even when the distinction between justificative and explicative reasons is drawn. Accordingly, it is important to distinguish two basic types of reasons: sufficient and necessary, and two subordinate types of reasons: contributing and substitutive . A lot of attention has been paid, lately, to a sense of contributive reasons: prima facie reasons . The paper will deal with that kind of reasons. Its main thesis are: 1) prima facie reason-statements are defeasible conditionals ‘’ pointing out that A is a contributing condition of B, 2) a defeasible conditional has the properties of ‘’, where ‘ =>’ is a strict implication and ‘f’’ a revision-operator satisfying the conditions set up by the theory AGM on the rational change of theories. (shrink)

Sir David Ross introduced and discussed his notion of prima facie duties in chapter 2 of The Right and the Good , and it is to this chapter that I shall devote most attention. I wish to show that the distinction between prima facie and “actual” duties, as expounded by Ross, entails that there are no “actual” duties; and I wish to show that this unfortunate consequence of the distinction arises from Ross's explicit (...) epist-emological views. Writers such as Ewing, Baier and Frankena, who have quoted Ross's distinction with some degree of approval, force one to ask how, precisely, they interpreted it. In the first part of this paper I set out Ross's exposition in detail, since failure to do this has blinded adherents to its difficulties; in the second part I summarise my findings and indicate the problems Ross rightly poses for us; in the third part I suggest possible sources for Ross's views. Two points should be noted at the outset. Firstly, the distinction applies to acts, not actions; “act” refers to “the thing done, the initiation of change, and ‘action’ the doing of it, the initiating of change, from a certain motive” . Secondly, the term “right” is used throughout as synonymous with “what is my duty”. (shrink)

In this essay, I call into question Yasha Rohwer and Emma Marris’s attack on what they see as a dominant view in conservation biology: namely, that there is a prima facie moral duty to preserve gen...

Selective conscientious objection, a refusal to participate in a specific war due to reasons of conscience, has recently gained attention. A combatant confronted with such a decision needs guidance to help decide whether and how to object. Furthermore, those judging a combatant’s objection or failure to object need guidance. After introducing the prima facie duty override criteria, I will apply the criteria to the case of selective conscientious objection. Ultimately, I argue that the jus ad bellum criteria rebranded (...) as the prima facie duty override criteria can help provide guidance regarding selective conscientious objection. (shrink)

In both The Right and the Good and The Foundations of Ethics, W. D. Ross maintains that any amount of the non-instrumental value of virtue outweighs any amount of the non-instrumental value of pleasure or avoidance of pain. The chapter raises two challenges to the status that Ross accords the value of virtue relative to the value of pleasure (pain). First, it argues that Ross fails to provide a good argument for thinking that virtue is always better than pleasure and (...) that it is in any case implausible to think that any amount of virtue (or avoidance of vice) is better than the avoidance of any amount of pain or suffering. Second, it argues that the inflexibility of Ross’s value theory exhibited in his claim about the relative value of virtue produces tension with and mars the attractive heterarchical structure of his theory of rightness or prima facie duties. (shrink)

Sir David Ross introduced prima facie duties, or acts with a tendency to be duties proper. He also spoke of general prima facie principles, wwhich attribute to acts having some feature the tendency to be a duty proper. Like Utilitarians from Mill to Hare, he saw a role for such principles in the epistemology of duty: in the process by means of which, in any given situation, a moral code can help us to find (...) out what we ought to do.After formalizing general prima facie principles as universally quantified conditionals I will show how seeming duties can be detached from them. There will be examples involving lies, burnt offerings and the question of whether to have a napkin on your lap while eating asparagus. They will illustrate the defeasibility of this detachment, how it can lead into dilemmas, and how general prima facie principles are overridden by more specific ones. (shrink)

The goal of this article is to try to resolve two key problems in the duty-based approach of W. D. Ross: the source of principles and a process for moving from prima facie to actual duty. I use a naturalistic explanation for the former and a nine-step method for making concrete ethical decisions as they could be applied to journalism. Consistent with Ross's position, the process is complicated, particularly in tougher problems, and it cannot guarantee correct choices. Again (...) consistent with Ross, such complexity and uncertainty speak in the method's favor, given the difficulty—factual, motivational, and organizational—of ethics problems and decision making. (shrink)

Perception is said to have assertoric force: It inclines the perceiver to believe its content. In contrast, perceptual imagination is commonly taken to be non-assertoric: Imagining winning a piano contest does not incline the imaginer to believe they actually won. However, abundant evidence from clinical and experimental psychology shows that imagination influences attitudes and behavior in ways similar to perceptual experiences. To account for these phenomena, I propose that perceptual imaginings have implicit assertoric force and put forth a theory—the (...) class='Hi'>Prima Facie View—as a unified explanation for the empirical findings reviewed. According to this view, mental images are treated as percepts in operations involving associative memory. Finally, I address alternative explanations that could account for the reviewed empirical evidence—such as a Spinozian model of belief formation or Gendler’s notion of alief—as well as potential objections to the Prima Facie View. (shrink)

The purpose of this chapter is to offer an ethical investigation into whether researchers have a duty to share pre-published bio-medical data with the scientific community. The central questions of the chapter are the following: do researchers have a prima facie duty to share pre-published data? And if so, what stakes and aspects of a concrete situation need to be taken into consideration in order to assess whether and to what extent researchers’ prima facie duty to (...) share data applies? We will argue that based upon their basic duties to benefit society and to promote scientific knowledge, researchers have a prima facie duty to share data. We will also argue that in order to determine whether the prima facie duty applies in practice it is indispensable to take into account the stakes of the persons concerned as well as context dependent aspects. The chapter’s overall goal is to build an analytical and ethical framework that helps to assess with regard to concrete situations whether researchers’ duty to share data applies. To this end we analyse the concept of data sharing and clarify what data sharing might imply in practice. To offer an overview of the different stakeholders’ concerns we will analyse the normative-informational environment in which data producing researchers (to whom the prima facie duty to share data applies) are usually situated. In the last step we focus on the ethically relevant context dependent aspects and illustrate how they affect researchers’ prima facie duty to share data and stakeholders’ potentially conflicting stakes. (shrink)

In "moral philosophy" richard garner and bernard rosen give a counter-Example against w d ross. We have no prima facie duty to tell a neighbor our love life, Although he might gain knowledge and pleasure. I argue that for ross we could have such a prima facie, Though not an actual, Duty. The lover-Acquaintance relation makes unlikely such an action becoming an actual duty. Also we can conceive of cases in which it might be an actual (...) duty; viz. A case in which the divulger is a psychologist who needs to gain the neighbor's confidence in a group therapy situation. (shrink)

Responding to my paper Bribery Tom Carson argues that bribe takers violate promisory obligations in a wider range of cases than I acknowledge and insists that bribe taking is prima facie wrong in all contexts. I argue that he is wrong on both counts.

No matter how it is viewed, as a plausible version of anti-utilitarianism or of non-consequentialist, or even as a plausible version of deontology, the theory of prima facie duties certainly makes W. D. Ross one of the most important moral philosopher of the twentieth-century. By outlining his pluralistic deontology, this paper attempts to argue for a positive answer to the question of whether Ross’s theory can offer a solution to the issue of conflicting duties. If such (...) a solution is convincing, as I believe it is, it would indicate the possibility to justify within the deontological framework, i.e., without committing to the principle of good-maximizing, those “hard cases” where people should break a promise or other (prima facie) duty in order to prevent a disastrous outcome. The theory of prima facie duties might then suggest that deontology and utilitarianism would likely be reconcilable. (shrink)

In this article I criticize a theory of political obligation recently put forward by Christopher Wellman. Wellman's “samaritan theory” grounds both state legitimacy and political obligation in a natural duty to help people in need when this can be done at no unreasonable cost. I argue that this view is not able to account for some important features of the relation between state and citizens that Wellman himself seems to value. My conclusion is that the samaritan theory can only be (...) accepted if we are ready to give up either the traditional notion of political obligation as a prima facie duty valid for every citizen, or the current view of the relationships that should exist between states, citizens and foreigners (the view according to which states should have special concerns for their own citizens). (shrink)

A review article: In his recent book The Good in the Right Robert Audi presents one of the most complete contemporary arguments for moral intuitionism. By clearing-out of unnecessary and out-of-date posits and commitments of traditional intuitionist accounts he manages to establish a moderate (and in a sense also minimal) version of intuitionism that can be further developed metaethically (e.g. Kantian intuitionism, value-based intuitionism) as well as normatively (e.g. by varying the list of prima facie duties). Central (...) posits of his study of moral intuitionism are various epistemological commitments, as, for instance, the nature of self-evident moral judgments, intuition and moral knowledge. He usefully distinguishes between two uses/notions of intuitionism in moral philosophy, the epistemological one and the overall one. Epistemological intuitionism is a position claiming that the basic moral beliefs and principles could be known non-inferentially and are justified through their understanding or intuitions. Overall moral intuitionism is built upon three basic features: (a) moral pluralism: there is an irreducible plurality of basic moral commitments (principles, prima facie duties); (b) each of the principles aims to a different kind of ground for action that underlies e.g. the prima facie duty in question and is epistemically accessible to ordinary moral agents; and (c) each moral principle is in some sense intuitively known by those who adequately understand it. (Audi 2004, 21) W. D. Ross's ethics is a paradigm case of the latter position, while other prominent representatives of either epistemological or overall intuitionism are H. Sidgwick, G. E. Moore, H. A. Prichard, C. D. Broad, and A. C. Ewing. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Prima Facie Duty to Obey: A Brief History Implications of Catechistic Metaethics for the Duty of Obedience Implications of Commonalist Metaethics for the Duty of Obedience Conclusion References.

The prevailing opinion in our culture is that bribery is in principle wrong. I challenge that view and offer an analysis that suggests that bribery is a morally neutral concept. The analysis closely parallels the legal notions, suggesting that this analysis may have a firm grounding in our own tradition in spite of the prevailing views. To bribe someone is to offer something of value to another with the intent of inducing an action that is contrary to the positional (...) class='Hi'>duties of the office or role of that other person. Whether offering or accepting a bribe is morally correct or incorrect, then, depends entirely upon whether the relevant positional duties have moral backing, all things considered. One virtue of the analysis is that it provides a definition that allows for a cross-cultural comparison that does not impose the standards of one society on those of another but allows for moral judgment. To determine whether a Japanese official has accepted a bribe, for example, one must determine the positional duties of the official as defined in that culture. The analysis also reveals why most believe bribery to be prima facie wrong. This is explained historically by the fact that the concept originally applied exclusively to positional duties in the judicial system, where all believed it to be morally unjustified to transgress duties of impartiality, etc. Finally, the analysis suggests that beliefs about the immorality of commercial bribery rest on the assumption that the positional duties of corporate managers and agents are to abide by the fictitious free-market rules and that the rules of the free market are morally justified. (shrink)

This paper presents a nonmonotonic deontic logic based on commonsense entailment. It establishes criteria a successful account of obligation should satisfy, and develops a theory that satisfies them. The theory includes two conditional notions of prima facie obligation. One is constitutive; the other is epistemic, and follows nonmonotonically from the constitutive notion. The paper defines unconditional notions of prima facie obligation in terms of the conditional notions.

Este artículo examina algunos de los problemas que presenta el tratamiento lógico de las obligaciones prima facie en la obra de Carlos Alchourrón. Por una parte, señalaremos que su sistema para los condicionales derrotables DFT no formaliza adecuadamente la noción intuitiva de condición contribuyente que Alchourrón utiliza para elucidar la de condicional derrotable. Por otra parte, argumentaremos que la noción de deber prima facie de David Ross no queda adecuadamente formalizada en el sistema AD de lógica (...) deóntica que Alchourrón construye como una extensión de DFT. This paper deals with some problems concerning the logical treatment of prima facie obligations in the work of Carlos Alchourrón. On the one hand, we will argue that his DFT system for defeasible conditionals does not adequately formalize the intuitive notion of contributory condition used by Alchourrón to elucidate the notion of defeasible conditional. On the other hand, we will argue that David Ross' notion of prima facie duty is not adequately formalized in Alchourrón' s deontic system AD, an extension of his DFT logic. (shrink)

In modern German ‘Anschauung’ is translated as intuition. But in Kant’s technical philosophical context, it means an intuition derived from previous visualizations of physical processes in the world of perceptions. The nineteenth century chemists’ predilection for Kantian Anschauung led them to develop an intuitive representation of what exists beyond the bounds of the senses. Molecular structure is one of the illuminating outcomes. (Ochiai 2021, pp. 1–51) This mental habit seems to be dominant among chemists even in the twentieth century, as (...) is illustrated by the electronic theory of organic chemistry and the frontier orbital theory as well. The former assumes that (1) bonds are paired electrons shared by bonded atoms—in fact, electrons in molecules are not localized in bonds; (2) the difference of electronegativities between bonded atoms causes electron drifts—expressed by the curly arrow—that result in bond formation or bond cleavage. The latter focuses on the orbitals that make the greatest contribution to the energy of a system undergoing electron delocalization, while the LCAO method says, as is suggested by the word Linear Combination of Atomic Orbitals, molecular orbitals should be constructed from all of the atomic orbitals that have the appropriate symmetry. In other words, every molecular orbital contributes to some extent to the electronic state of a molecule. The curly arrow in the electronic theory and the orbital lobe in the frontier orbital theory illustrate an intuitive character of these theories. Although both theories rely on such simple and qualitative models rather than mathematically rigid quantum mechanical calculations, they are successful in explaining, predicting, and designing chemical reactions. What makes these prima facie intuitive theories so successful? In this study we address this problem from a historical and philosophical as well as scientific point of view. The key to solve this problem is that they are concerned with only bond formation or bond cleavage, in which the localized-bond principle holds. (shrink)

Philosophy, despite its typical attitude of detachment and abstraction, has for most of its long history been engaged with the practical and mundane-seeming question of whether there is a duty to obey the law. As Matthew Kramer has recently summarized: “For centuries, political and legal theorists have pondered whether each person is under a general obligation of obedience to the legal norms of the society wherein he or she lives. The obligation at issue in those theorists' discussions is usually taken (...) to be prima-facie, comprehensively applicable, universally borne, and content-independent.” This essay is a commentary on the current state of discussion of this perennial philosophical topic. (shrink)

The tendency towards analysis and criticism, realism and pluralism, which has been evident in general philosophy during the present century has had important effects on recent ethical discussion. Its influence is to be seen in the two theories which on account of their prominence and the number of their disciples may be said to be most characteristic of the period—Ideal Utilitarianism and the New Intuitionism—theories which no less an authority than Sir David Ross described as the rival (...) class='Hi'>theories. However different these theories are in many respects they have a tendency towards ethical pluralism, if not atomism—a tendency not only to emphasize distinctions but even to harden the distinguishable elements into independent, if not even unrelated, entities. The one leaves us with a series of independent goods and the other with a series of prima facie duties, with the result that neither gives us any unitary principle to help us in one of the principal tasks of the moral life, the attempt to discover what in particular circumstances we ought to do. (shrink)

The paper argues that the idea of prima facie rights implies insurmountable difficulties in connection with the function such rights are said to have in a scheme of justice. G vlastos's version of prima facie rights theories is scrutinized as typical and more advanced than others. The paper shows that natural rights are contextually absolute; they cannot (morally) be overruled in a context of normal political circumstances but may have to be disregarded whenever politics is (...) impossible. Vlastos's insight is preserved without sacrificing the integrity of a scheme of justice based on natural rights. (shrink)

In _The Ethics of Whistleblowing_ (2019), Boot engages with the current literature on unauthorized disclosure of information, critically examines some positions, and defends others. One early step of the book’s main argument is to claim that whistleblowing is _pro tanto_ wrong. This claim which many parties of the debate accept affects the narrative of the discussion and also plays a role against attempts to justify whistleblowing based on moral rights. In opposition to such a claim, I argue that one can (...) similarly ascribe _pro tanto_ rightness to whistleblowing. However, this would also be a mistake. In principle, such claims are inaccurate concerning how _pro tanto_ reasons work. Considering the motivations for taking up Ross’s idea of _prima facie_ duties, and having in mind the theoretical role they are supposed to play, I suggest that only simple type-acts (as contrasted with complex act-types) may be called _pro tanto_ right or wrong. Therefore, although widely appealed to, such claims about whistleblowing are neither helpful nor successful in the debate. (shrink)

Normative ethics asks: What makes right acts right? W. D. Ross attempted to answer this question inThe Right and the Good(1930). Most theorists have agreed that Ross provided no systematic explanatory answers. Ross's intuitionism lacks any decision procedure, and, as McNaughton (2002: 91) states, it ‘turns out after all to have nothing general to say about the relative stringency of our basic duties’. Here I will show that my own Rossian intuitionism does have a systematic way of explaining what (...) makes right acts right. Deontological theories have struggled to say what internal to acts could make them right. From Price to Ross, the striking but uninformative answer has beenthe natureof the act. In this paper I will provide a Rossian theory of the moral natures of acts. It contains a set of self-evident principles of moral stringency and other considerations that can assist agents in deciding what prima facie duty overrides what. (shrink)

Learning to address moral dilemmas is important for participants on courses in business ethics and corporate social responsibility (CSR). While modern, rule-based ethical theory often provides the normative input here, this has faced criticism in its application. In response, post-modern and Aristotelian perspectives have found favour. This paper follows a similar line, presenting an approach based initially on a critical interpretation of Ross's theory of prima facie duties, which emphasises moral judgement in actual situations. However, the retention (...) of a modern element is suggested, with an invitation to hypothetically universalise detailed proposals for action, following Hare. This further step may reassure students/managers who seek additional closure in their decision-making. Some pedagogical implications are also briefly raised regarding the use of case material and the need to recognise questions of social interaction and personal character as features of dilemma resolution in actual organisational contexts. (shrink)

Learning to address moral dilemmas is important for participants on courses in business ethics and corporate social responsibility (CSR). While modern, rule‐based ethical theory often provides the normative input here, this has faced criticism in its application. In response, post‐modern and Aristotelian perspectives have found favour. This paper follows a similar line, presenting an approach based initially on a critical interpretation of Ross's theory of prima facie duties, which emphasises moral judgement in actual situations. However, the retention (...) of a modern element is suggested, with an invitation to hypothetically universalise detailed proposals for action, following Hare. This further step may reassure students/managers who seek additional closure in their decision‐making. Some pedagogical implications are also briefly raised regarding the use of case material and the need to recognise questions of social interaction and personal character as features of dilemma resolution in actual organisational contexts. (shrink)

This paper presents a non-consequentialist defense of Rawls’s general conception of justice requiring that primary social goods be distributed so that the least share is as great as possible. It suggests that a defense of this idea can be offered within a Rossian framework of prima facie duties. The prima facie duty not to harm constrains people from supporting social institutions which do not leave their fellows with goods and resources above a certain threshold. The (...) paper argues that societies in accord with the Rawlsian general conception come closest to meeting this requirement. This way of arguing for the conception enables the defenders of the theory to elude standard objections offered by utilitarians, libertarians, and even other egalitarians. (shrink)

As its title suggests, Robert Audi’s The Good in the Right1 defends an intuitionist moral view like W.D. Ross’s in The Right and the Good. Ross was an intuitionist, first, in metaethics, where he held that there are self-evident moral truths that can be known by intuition. But he was also an intuitionist in the different sense used in normative ethics, since he held that there are irreducibly many such truths. Some concern the intrinsic goods, which are in turn plural, (...) so there are prima facie duties to promote pleasure, knowledge, virtue, and just distributions. But others are deontological, requiring one apart from any consequences to keep promises, not lie, make reparations, express gratitude, and not injure others. Audi embraces both these intuitionist views, but in each case with an important addition. Ross sometimes said that if a proposition does not need proof, it is incapable of proof, or cannot be justified inferentially. Audi argues persuasively that this is not so. A proposition that is selfevident, in the sense that understanding it justifies one in believing it, can also be derivable from other self-evident propositions in a way that increases its justification. And he exploits this possibility in his normative ethics. Whereas Ross held that his prima facie duties are underivative, Audi suggests that, while self-evident, they can also be grounded in a more abstract principle. More specifically, he argues in Chapter 4 of his book that they can be grounded in Kant’s categorical imperative, which he applies primarily in its second, or formula of humanity, version. The result is to transform what Audi calls Rossian intuitionism into Kantian 1 intuitionism, where specific duties about promoting pleasure and keeping promises derive from a more fundamental requirement to respect rational personhood. I will not challenge Audi’s version of metaethical intuitionism, which I think is the most subtle and persuasive yet given. Nor will I question his normative starting-point in Ross’s theory of prima facie duties, which I find unimpeachable.. (shrink)

This is a unique volume by a unique scientist, which combines conceptual, formal, and engineering approaches in a way that is rarely seen. Its core is the relation between ways of learning and knowing on the one hand and different modes of time on the other. Partial Boolean logic and the associated notion of complementarity are used to express this relation, and mathematical tools of fundamental physics are used to formalize it. Along the way many central philosophical problems are touched (...) and addressed, above all the mind-body problem. Completed only shortly before the death of the author, the text has been edited and annotated by the author's close collaborator Harald Atmanspacher. (shrink)

'Moral Particularism' is a view that questions the role of principles in ethics. Jonathan Dancy, the most eminent particularist, argues that principles which claim that it is right or wrong to do a certain thing in all situations cannot adequately account for the role context plays in moral deliberation. The aim of this dissertation is to critically evaluate the theory of Moral Particularism. The first section discusses various positions opposed to particularism. It considers the emergence of particularism as a response (...) to Hare's Theory of Universalizability and Ross's Theory of Prima Facie Duty. The dissertation then moves on to examine the view that context-sensitivity does not support particularism. The second part of this dissertation analyses Dancy's theory in closer detail. It begins with a clarification of Dancy's conception of principles and is followed by a consideration of the evolution of particularism over time. The plausibility of the various versions of this theory are then compared. The third part of the dissertation looks at criticism of particularism by others apart from Dancy. It argues that context-sensitivity can only ground particularism as an epistemic, and not as a metaphysical theory. Furthermore, it discusses whether thick ethical concepts can ground principles. The dissertation concludes by asserting that whilst the claims of particularism are true, they are no serious threat to traditional moral theories. (shrink)

The procurement of fetal tissue for transplantation may promise great benefit to those suffering from various pathologies, e.g., neural disorders, diabetes, renal problems, and radiation sickness. However, debates about the use of fetal tissue have proceeded without much attention to ethical theory and application. Two broad moral questions are addressed here, the first formal, the second substantive: Is there a framework from other moral paradigms to assist in ethical debates about the transplantation of fetal tissue? Does the use of fetal (...) tissue entail cooperation in abortion? To answer these questions I develop a theoretical framework by combining the paradigm of just-war reasoning with canons governing the use of cadaverous tissue. The kinds of safeguards provided by this paradigm allow fetal tissue to be procured without the taint of association with abortion. Central to solving the problem of cooperation is the distinction between intending and foreseeing a moral misdeed. Fetal researchers may foresee fetal death in elective abortions without intending such deaths to occur. Thus, even those who object unequivocally to elective abortion may condone the procurement of fetal tissue, if sufficient reason exists. Keywords: fetal tissue, casuistry, prima facie duties, just-war tenets, complicity CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

This paper addresses the phenomenon of judicial greatness by developing a general concept of greatness and applying it to law. Under the view offered in the paper, greatness is connected to theoretical or methodological diversification. When applied to adjudication, this means that great judges are revered because they successfully make a prima facie case for their novel adjudicative methods. This is not a judicial duty but rather a voluntary project. However, once a judge succeeds in making such a (...) prima facie case, he is exempt from other judicial duties. This thesis challenges many theories of judicial duty, which do not allow normative room for supererogatory actions in law. The paper demonstrates these claims by discussing two paradigmatic great judges – Chief Justice Marshall and Justice Holmes. (shrink)

The first phase of the recent intuitionist revival left untouched Ross’s claim that fundamental moral truths are self-evident. In a recent article, Robert Cowan attempts to explain, in a plausible way, how we know moral truths. The result is that, while the broad framework of Ross’s theory appears to remain in place, the self-evidence of moral truths is thrown into doubt. In this paper, I examine Cowan’s Conceptual Intuitionism. I use his own proposal to show how he arrives at a (...) skeptical position on self-evidence. First, he completely ignores the kind of epistemic appraisal intuitionism has always rested on; second, he is committed to the Reasons View of prima facie duty, rather than to Ross’s Properties View; third, he holds that a commitment to self-evidence often comes with a commitment to metaphysically extravagant entities, which he calls Perceptualism; fourth, he scrutinizes only a part of the contemporary theory of self-evidence, overlooking the strengths of the theory when considered as a whole. Revealing these several points supports the conclusion that Cowan has not provided a viable variety of Rossian Intuitionism. (shrink)

Jonathan Dancy, who defends a version of moral particularism, is committed to the view that any feature or reason for action might, in logical terms, have a positive moral valence in one context, a negative moral valence in a different context, and no moral valence at all in yet another context. In my paper, I attempt to demonstrate that, despite the denial by Dancy that proposed grounding properties with invariant moral valences may play a foundational role in morality, his own (...) approach toward moral reasoning unknowingly assumes such foundational grounding properties. I argue that Dancy's moral particularism is unknowingly directed toward moral absolutism, and, in making that argument, uncover reasons, admittedly inconclusive, to favor an absolutist ethic. (shrink)