prima facie duty and discussion and William David roses moral philosophy as a moral realist William David Ross argues that there are objective moral truths that is objective moral truths exist in reality however Ross claims that something is good only if that thing is really good hands to the concept of right and good play an important role in Ross's moral philosophy and as a matter of fact for Ross rightness and goodness are the only two moral properties it is important to note that for Ross rightness and goodness are indefinable that is they are irreducible objective qualities thus as they are in themselves rightness and goodness cannot be defined however as Ross would have us believe we can make sense of what rightness and goodness are through their physical manifestation consider this example I have a good dinner here we understand the word good only in reference to its physical manifestation that is the dinner is satisfying but as it is in itself Ross argues that we cannot tell what really is goodness what this contention implies is that for us there is no such thing as absolute goodness goodness therefore depends on a specific situation for example when we say divorce is good then this good cannot to be absolute in other words divorce might be good to some people but bad to others now Ross contends that rightness belongs to an act while goodness belongs to a motive thus rightness is not identical with the act per se just as goodness is not identical with motive but how do we know the rightness of an act and the goodness of its motive well according to Ross in order for us to know the rightness of an act and the goodness of its motive we need to determine the non moral properties or circumstances that surround the act itself let us consider for example a physician administering a medicine to a patient before we can know that the physicians act of administering a medicine to a patient is good or not we need to know what the medicine is and why the physician is administering the medicine if the physician is administering the right medicine in order to cure the patient and she is doing it out of duty then we can say that the physicians act of administering the medicine is right and that her motive is good as a non-consequentialist Ross rejected GE Moore's consequentialist ethics and argues instead that maximizing the good is only one of the several prima facia duties which guide the individual in determining what she ought to do in a given situation and as we can see Ross's moral philosophy hinges also on the concept of prima facie duty and actual duty and in Ross's moral philosophy prima-facie duty refers to a conditional duty while actual Duty refers to an unconditional Duty and according to Ross an actual duty is one's duty proper and as our duty proper an actual duty is what we have been referring to as our moral obligation the actual duty indeed is the most stringent duty now how do we resolve when conflict of duties arise while according to Ross when conflict of duties arises then we ought to do that which is more of a duty in other words Ross is telling that when conflict of duties arises we ought to act in accordance with a prima facie duty which has a greater balance of rightness over wrongness let us consider this example Gloria promised her son to be home early from work so they could have dinner together however when Gloria is about to go home her boss had a heart attack and since nobody is around except herself Gloria felt obligated to bring her boss to the hospital as we can see in this situation Gloria is faced with two conflicting duties namely her duty to fulfill her promise to her son to be home early so they can have dinner together and her duty to bring her boss to the hospital so which one of the duties is glorius actual Judy that is the most stringent duty and which is glorious moral obligation as we can see there our two prima facie duties here namely prima facie duty number one glorious duty to fulfill her promise to her son to be home early so they could have dinner together and prima facie duty number two glorious duty to bring her boss to the hospital now which is more of a duty from the two prima facia duties mentioned obviously as Ross would have us believe prima facie duty number two is the most stringent duty hence glorious moral obligation therefore the actual Duty is to bring her boss to the hospital and so how do we know then that the one is more of a duty than the other or how do we know that such Duty has a greater balance of rightness / wrongness well first Ross believes that one and only one of the two prima facia duties is our actual duty and of course we cannot do both and this is self-evident now second according to Ross we can absolutely have the right opinion about which is more of a duty because it is always self-evident as in the case of the example of course Gloria's son may get disappointed because her mom breaks her promise but Ross would have us believe that anybody who is in her sound mind will choose prima facia number two / prima facia number one and so as we can see we can apprehend the actual duty from the two conflicting prima facia duties using our intuition and this explains why Ross was considered as an intuitionist Hansen Ross's moral philosophy the actual Duty appear to be self-evident just as the actions in mathematics at the end of it all what Ross suggests is that whenever one needs to make a moral decision in which more than one prima facia duties is involved one needs to study the situation as fully and extensive as she can until she arrives at the sound opinion about which of the conflicting prima facia duties is more of a duty the prima facie duty that is judged to be more of a duty that is the most stringent Duty appears to be ones actual duty and according to Ross there are rules of thumb that will guide us in determining which of the conflicting duties is more of a duty for example non-maleficence is more stringent than beneficence now in his famous work titled the right and the good ross listed seven basic types of prima facie duties like a list of commandments that will guide us in making moral decisions as is well known the correct moral principles in roses moral philosophy are expressed in these seven basic prima facie two T's because there is no ranking among them Ross argues that they must be judged separately and so the seven basic prima facia duties according to Ross are as follows duty and fidelity duty of reparation duty of gratitude duty of justice duty of beneficence duty of self-improvement and duty of non-maleficence duty of fidelity according to Ross is our duty to be faithful or loyal to a worthy cause now the duty of reparation this is our duty to right the wrongs we have done to others and obviously the duty of gratitude is our duty to appreciate and recognize the services others have done to us now the duty of justice is our duty to be fair with everyone and the duty of beneficence is our duty to do good towards others or our duty to help others now the duty of self-improvement this is our duty to improve oneself with respect to virtue intelligence and happiness and lastly the duty of non-maleficence is our duty not to inflict evil injury or harm to oneself and others for now thanks for watching another episode of our whiteboard edition here at feelin oats full transcript of this video is available at vielen oats calm feel free to subscribe to our newsletter to keep you posted of our newest content and if you haven't subscribed to our channel yet simply click here and tap the bell for notifications thanks keep learning