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This second chapter continues the inquiry into right started in the first, asking what makes right acts right. Historical attempts to state a single characteristic of all right actions that is the foundation of their rightness have been based on egoism and (hedonistic) utilitarianism; these are not discussed except in so far as they are contrasted with the other theory put forward, which is G. E. Moore's theory suggesting that what makes actions right is that they are productive of good. The main aspect of this addressed is that of duty (prima facie duty), and the consideration leads to a rejection of the definition of right as just productive of the best possible consequences (or optimific). The connection between the attributes of right and optimific is discussed, and the nature of acts that are right (including individual right acts) is explored in more detail. Two appendices follow Chapter II: the first discusses rights (as opposed to right); the second discusses punishment (in connection with the preceding discussion on rights).

In this chapter the notion of a derivative prima facie duty is considered. An eliminatitivist understanding of derivative prima facie is defended, according to which basic duties do not ground distinct derivative duties, but replace (eliminate) them. On the eliminativist view, discovering that a prima facie duty is derivative is discovering that it is not genuine. The only genuine ones are the basic ones. It is then argued that eliminativism makes it harder to ground Ross's supposedly basic prima facie duties in some single duty.

If lying and not lying will have exactly the same consequences, then, according to act-utilitarianism, it doesn't matter whether or not one lies. Ross claims that lying is prima facie wrong, or wrong other things being equal. He holds that this is “self-evident.” Ross also thinks that it is obvious that it is wrong to lie when lying produces only slightly better consequences than not lying. In contrast with Ross, Moore claims that it is self-evident that we should always do whatever has the best consequences. Ross's criticisms of act-utilitarianism are inconclusive because they appeal to disputed moral intuitions and because he doesn't do enough to justify his own moral intuitions. Brad Hooker's argument in favor of his well-known version of rule-consequentialism is inconclusive for similar reasons — it rests on an appeal to disputed considered moral judgments that he doesn't adequately justify.

Building on the severity and inequity of public-health risks and the way polluters sometimes undercut rights to know and consent to these risks, by manipulating media or science, this chapter sketches an ethical response — the responsibility argument. It shows that because most citizens receive undeserved financial or medical benefits when minorities and poor people bear higher levels of pollution, citizens have prima facie ethical duties to help stop these harmful inequities.

This chapter focuses on Ross’s most important conceptual innovation: the idea of prima facie duty. Four main claims are defended: first, contra some of his harsher critics, that though much of what Ross says in introducing and explaining the concept of prima facie duty is problematic or misleading, he nonetheless has a clear and coherent theoretical picture; second, contra Hurka, that Ross lacks the contemporary concept of a normative reason, but that his views should be reframed in ways that do employ that concept; third, that Ross is not and should not be a scalar deontologist; and fourth that he was wrong in the Foundations to follow Prichard in favoring subjective over objective rightness.

The basic concepts have different forms, the most important of which are discussed here. First is intrinsic goodness, which Moore took to depend only on a thing’s intrinsic properties; this view is contrasted with others’ and related to his doctrine of organic unities. Next is Ross’s crucial concept of prima facie duty, which he understood in one way in The Right and the Good and in another in Foundations of Ethics; the chapter defends his earlier view, which defines prima facie duty in terms of duty proper. Last is objective vs. subjective duty, the first depending on the facts of your situation and the second on your beliefs about them. Whereas Prichard and Ross thought one of these must be the true duty-concept, the chapter prefers Ewing’s view that they are different concepts appropriate to different evaluative contexts.

Some critics argue that while Kant’s view has trouble making sense of the notion of a moral reason, W. D. Ross’s view does not. In “The Importance of Moral Rules and Principles,” Tom Hill argues that for Kantians, particular facts are reasons because they are especially salient features that figure in a fuller possible rationale for or against an action. However, unless more is said about what makes some fact an especially salient feature of one’s circumstances, one will lose the distinction between roles played by reasons and roles played by other aspects of the “fuller rationale.” This chapter argues that even if more can be said about this matter, Ross’s theory remains inferior to standard readings of Kant. After explaining the troubles for Ross’s view, which concern his account of the relation between prima facie duties and duty proper, the chapter proceeds to consider how one might improve upon Ross.

This chapter argues that Audi's attempt to ground Ross's prima facie duties in Kant's categorical imperative does not succeed. Audi has attempted to give a Kantian basis for Rossian pluralism that can explain the comparative strength of duties, offer an epistemic guide for such comparisons, unify the duties, and provide the duties a deeper rationale. This chapter objects that Audi's Kantian explanations tend to assume what should be explained and that Kantian notions such as dignity might not have enough independent content to help matters. Moreover, any Kantian attempt to explain limits on the duty of beneficence faces problems stemming from the fact that the value Kant locates in persons is agent‐neutral and independent of states of affairs. This chapter closes by suggesting that a Thomist account can do some of the unifying work Audi wants, but without partaking of the “grandiose” ambition of Kant's project.

This paper argues that Ross, despite the importance and innovativity of his conception of a prima facie duty, fails entirely to make sense of the relation between prima facie duty, as he understands it, and duty proper. He thus fails to make any sense of what it is to be a moral reason for action, and of right-making and wrong-making properties. Basing my approach on some suggestions of Prichard’s, I suggest that the only way to do this is to abandon any distinct conception of duty proper, restricting ourselves to the idea of what we have most duty to do – what we most ought to do. This retains, but reframes, Ross’s focus on something that is a matter of degree.

If acts can be supererogatory, presumably some can be more supererogatory than others, or further beyond the call of duty. This paper explains how this is possible within a general account of supererogation that sees it arising when a prima facie duty, for example to promote other people’s good, is outweighed by a prima facie permission to promote one’s own good. An act is then more supererogatory when the permission outweighs the duty by more, or when the gap between its strength and that of the duty’s is larger. The paper contrasts its permission-based account of supererogation with a more common one typified by Parfit in On What Matters, which rests it on a conflict between two ‘reasons’ that, despite their differing contents, are of the same deontic type and have the same favouring force. Alongside several other weaknesses, Parfit’s account doesn’t allow differing degrees of supererogation but must treat all supererogatory acts as on a par.

The school’s members defended specific versions of consequentialism and deontology. This chapter first discusses Sidgwick’s and Moore’s combination of act- and indirect consequentialism, where the latter says we should mostly abandon act-consequentialist reasoning in everyday life and follow those simpler rules whose adoption will have the best consequences. It then looks in detail at Ross’s version of pluralist deontology, discussing the points where it overlaps with consequentialism, for example by leaving no room for supererogation; its account of conflicts of prima facie duties; and some ways in which it needs elaboration, either to specify some duties more fully or to give them a further rationale. The chapter ends by noting some important moral ideas omitted from Ross’s theory but compatible with his general framework, for example about agent-relative permissions, the duty to respect free choice, and the evil of racial injustice.

This chapter compares two conceptions of morality, one championed by Aristotle, Ross, and Kant, the other championed by Hobbes and Mill. In The Good in the Right, Audi develops a version of the first tradition by using Kant as a foundation for Ross, and presents ten midlevel axioms that are intended as modifications of Ross's prima facie duties. In addition to being self‐evident, Audi claims that these middle axioms are supported by various versions of Kant's categorical imperative. This chapter compares these ten midlevel axioms with the ten moral rules that it claims are the universally known rules of common morality. The point of this comparison is to show the great difference between the two conceptions of morality mentioned above. Gert defends the Hobbes‐Mill conception.

A goal of machine morality is not just to raise many questions but to provide a resource for further development of artificial moral agents. Chapter 9 surveys software that is currently under development for moral decision making by (ro)bots. These experiments utilize a variety of strategies including case‐based reasoning or casuistry, deontic logic, connectionism (particularism), and the prima facie duties of W. D. Ross (also related to the principles of biomedical ethics). In addition to agent approaches that focus on the reasoning of one agent, researchers are working with multi‐agent environments and with multibots. This discussion serves as a comprehensive summary of research to date directed at making (ro)bots explicit moral reasoners. These experiments range from ethical advisors in health care to strategies for ensuring that (ro)bot soldiers won't violate international conventions.

This chapter argues that the bare possibility of moral knowledge in particular cases is already enough to ensure the availability of a certain sort of ‘hedged’ moral principle called a ‘default principle’. Default principles are consistent with holism about reasons because they claim that a given action has a given moral property only if no further feature of the situation explains why it does not. One obvious worry about this proposal is that default principles are vacuous (trivially true). This worry bears interesting parallels to worries about ceteris paribus laws in science. It is argued that once default principles are properly understood, this worry is easily met. The key point is to distinguish there being an explanation for a moral property’s absence from its absence being explained by some feature of the situation.

This chapter focuses on The Methods of Ethics, Book III, Chapter XIII. Its topic is philosophical intuitionism, Sidgwick’s articulation of axioms which he takes to satisfy the four conditions—unlike the supposed axioms of the common-sense moralist discussed in Chapter 6. The first section discusses the twin dangers facing the attempt to articulate genuinely self-evident axioms. The second section discusses Sidgwick’s axiom of justice. The third section discusses his axiom of prudence noting that, armed with W. D. Ross’s distinction between prima facie duty and duty proper, we can distinguish three possible interpretations. The fourth section discusses his maxim of benevolence, noting parallel ambiguities. The fifth section discusses the maxim of benevolence and the argument for utilitarianism. The final section explores the contrast between Sidgwick’s view and Ross’s view as to what principles are genuinely self-evident.

This paper is about the relation of resultance, signalled by the ‘because’ in ‘that was wrong because it was dishonest’. It distinguishes resultance from supervenience and uses that distinction to criticize R. M. Hare’s account of the logic of moral judgement in terms of his notion of universalizability. It considers the strengths and weaknesses of Ross’s novel notion of a prima facie duty and the distinction between prima facie duty and duty proper. And it argues that where one action’s rightness results from its having certain properties, it does not follow that all actions with those properties will be right, because other cases may have further properties acting as ‘defeaters’.

This paper follows a path that takes us from utilitarianism to particularism. Utilitarianism is the leading one-principle theory; its falsehood is here simply asserted. W. D. Ross’s theory of prima facie duty is offered as the strongest many-principle theory. Ross’s two accounts of his notion of a prima facie duty are considered and criticized. But the real criticism of his view is that being a prima facie duty is a context-sensitive notion, since a feature that is a prima facie duty-making feature in one case may be prevented from playing that role in another. Since the strongest many-principle theory is therefore false, the only conclusion is a no-principle theory: a theory that allows moral reasons but does not suppose that they behave in the regular way required for there to be moral principles—namely, moral particularism.

Because people cannot and should not be expected to devote themselves entirely to the good of the world, it would be desirable to draw a distinction between what is morally required, and what is morally good but not required. The concept of duty is useful for this purpose, but it is impossible to draw a line between what is required, and what is good but not required, that is perfectly clear and determinate. Some people think of one’s duty as given by a set of rules (or by a set of rules, understood as prima facie duties, together with a decision procedure that tells us what to do when the rules conflict). But however the content of duty is substantively formulated, this chapter argues that it is a mistake to think of duties as specifying a minimal standard of moral decency.

This chapter focuses on The Methods of Ethics, Book III, Chapters I through XI. Its topic is Sidgwick’s critique of the theory he calls “common-sense morality” or “dogmatic intuitionism.” The first section introduces this theory, noting problems with both Sidgwick’s names for it. The second section discusses the project of Chapters I through XI, making the principles of common-sense morality clear and precise. The third section introduces the four conditions Sidgwick uses to test putative axioms. The fourth section outlines his argument that none of the principles of common-sense morality satisfy the four conditions, focusing on the example of promissory obligation. The fifth section considers two responses: defending absolutist deontology, and moving to moderate deontology by introducing, as W. D. Ross does, the concept of prima facie duty. The final section raises questions about the fairness of Sidgwick’s critique.