W. D. Ross, The Right and the Good, 1930.1 I take the theory which, as I have tried to show, seems to be put forward in Ethics rather than the earlier and less plausible theory put forward in Principia Ethica. For the difference, cf. my pp. 8-11.
II
WHAT MAKES RIGHT ACTS RIGHT?Notes
2 These are not strictly speaking duties, but things that tend to be our duty, or prima facie duties. Cf. pp. 19-20.
3 Some will think it, apart from other considerations, a sufficient refutation of this view to point out that I also stand in that relation to myself, so that for this view the distinction of oneself from others is morally insignificant.
4 I should make it plain at this stage that I am assuming the correctness of some of our main convictions as to prima facie duties, or, more strictly, am claiming that we know them to be true. To me it seems as self-evident as anything could be, that to make a promise, for instance, is to create a moral claim on us in someone else. Many readers will perhaps say that they do nor know this to be true. If so, I certainly cannot prove it to them; I can only ask them to reflect again, in the hope that they will ultimately agree that they also know it to be true. The main moral conviction of the plain man seem to me to be, not opinions which it is for philosophy to prove or disprove, but knowledge from the start; and in my own case I seem to find little difficulty in distinguishing these essential convictions from other moral convictions which I also have, which are merely fallible opinions based on an imperfect study of the working for good or evil of certain institutions or types of action.
5 For a needed correction of this statement, cf. pp. 22-3.
7 But cf. the qualification in p. 33, n. 2.
10 To avoid complicating unduly the statement of the general view I am putting forwards I have here rather overstated it. Any act is the origination of a great variety of things many of which make no difference to its rightness or wrongness. But there are always many elements in its nature (i.e. in what it is the origination of) that make a difference to its rightness or wrongness, and no element in its nature can be dismissed without consideration as indifferent.
12 I am assuming that good is objectively quantitative (cf. pp. 142-4), but not that we can accurately assign an exact quantitative measure to it. Since it is of a definite amount, we can make the supposition that its amount is so-and-so, though we cannot with any confidence assert that it is.
14 'The decision rests with perception'. Arist. Nic. Eth. 1109 b 23, 1126 b 4.