Sir William David Ross , known as David Ross but usually cited as W. D. Ross, was a Scottish philosopher who is known for his work in ethics. His best-known work is The Right and the Good, and he is perhaps best known for developing a pluralist, deontological form of intuitionist ethics in response to G. E. Moore's consequentialist form of intuitionism. Ross also, in addition to writing on Greek philosophy. His accomplishments include his work with John Alexander Smith on a 12-volume translation of Aristotle.
His younger brother was Rev Donald George Ross. He married Edith Ogden in 1906 and they had four daughters, Margaret, Eleanor, Rosalind, and Katharine. Edith died in 1953. He was a cousin of Berriedale Keith.
Ross's ethical theory
W. D. Ross was a moral realist, a non-naturalist, and an intuitionist. He argued that there are moral truths. He wrote:
The moral order...is just as much part of the fundamental nature of the universe as is the spatial or numerical structure expressed in the axioms of geometry or arithmetic.
Thus, according to Ross, the claim that something is good is true if that thing really is good. Ross also agreed with G.E. Moore's claim that any attempt to define ethical statements solely in terms of statements about the natural world commits the naturalistic fallacy. Ross rejected Moore's consequentialist ethics. According to consequentialist theories, what people ought to do is determined only by whether their actions will bring about the most good. By contrast, Ross argues that maximising the good is only one of several prima facie duties which play a role in determining what a person ought to do in any given case. In The Right and the Good, Ross lists seven prima facie duties, without claiming his list to be all-inclusive: fidelity; reparation; gratitude; justice; beneficence; non-maleficence; and self-improvement. In any given situation, any number of these prima facie duties may apply. In the case of ethical dilemmas, they may even contradict one another. Someone could have a prima facie duty of reparation, say, a duty to help people who helped you move house, move house themselves, and a prima facie duty of fidelity, such as taking your children on a promised trip to the park, and these could conflict. Nonetheless, there can never be a true ethical dilemma, Ross would argue, because one of the prima facie duties in a given situation is always the weightiest, and over-rules all the others. This is thus the absolute obligation or absolute duty, the action that the person ought to perform. It is frequently argued, however, that Ross should have used the term "pro tanto" rather than "prima facie". Shelly Kagan, for example, wrote: Explaining the difference between pro tanto and prima facie, Kagan wrote: "A pro tanto reason has genuine weight, but nonetheless may be outweighed by other considerations. Thus, calling a reason a pro tanto reason is to be distinguished from calling it a prima facie reason, which I take to involve an epistemological qualification: a prima facie reason appears to be a reason, but may actually not be a reason at all". A frequent criticism of Ross's ethics is that it is unsystematic and often fails to provide clear-cut ethical answers. Another is that "moral intuitions" are not a reliable basis for ethics, because they are fallible, can vary widely from individual to individual, and are often rooted in our evolutionary past in ways that should make us suspicious of their capacity to track moral truth.
Selected works
1908: . Translated by W. D. Ross. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
1923:
1924:
1927: 'The Basis of Objective Judgments in Ethics'. International Journal of Ethics, 37:113–127.
