Ross - What Makes Right Acts Right?

Promising
Fulfilling promises is a part of a duty, however, there are times where breaking that promise or duty can yield to a greater duty. The example here is that you promise to meet someone for lunch, but you break that promise in order to save someone from an accident. Ross says that it is not for a greater good that you do this, but for what reason then?

When you have the option to do greater benevolent things in order to break a promise, that is the only time you can do so. Why are promises held in such a high regard?

Prima Facie Duty Explained
Prima Facie duty is "conditional duty" like something such as the relationship between child and parent, husband and wife, or citizen and citizen. Ross is saying that in any given situation you have to decide which relationship is of the most importance at the time.

1. Some duties rest on previous acts of a person. There are "implicit promises" which are things that are implied such as not telling lies. Also may be attributed to previous wrongful acts.

2. Previous acts of other men. Duties of gratitude. I guess this means doing good deeds.

3. Duties that act with the possibility are distribution pleasure or happiness. Ross calls this justice, but I don't see how that fits. Perhaps I am reading that wrong.

4. Duties that we can help others by being kind: duties of beneficence. I like that one, it makes sense to me. I seems to say that you can just be kind.

5. Duties of self-improvement - being that we can benefit ourselves from our actions.

6. We should not harm others. We should resist the inclination (want) to do so. I don't understand how that ties into (4.). Maybe it is suggesting that it is not justifiable to kill someone in order to help another. I think that means that we can't hurt some to help others. That doesn't seem all the just to me. Say someone was trying to kill your family and the only way to stop them would be to kill that perpetrator, this theory would state that you would have to let your family because killing the murderer would not be moral.

Ross's key objection to the utilitarian theory is that it is hard to determine who deserves the "most good" that we are striving for. This kind of relates to our class discussion on slavery. How can we determine who deserves to be slaves and who not.

Prima Facie vs. Actual Duty
There are certain universal goods or laws that we all learn when we reach a certain mental maturity - I'm guessing after childhood or even after infancy.

There is a conflict between Prima Facie and virtue. This being that we are not sure which is the right way to do things. Ross is suggesting that we can never truly know what will become of our actions, we may contribute to good or evil; it is a moral risk.

We don't have any justifiable means to consider something to be good or bad. I think that is his point here, but what about universal laws or goods?

Again, we never know which act will add us in the long-run. However, Ross suggests that if we action the Prima Facie rightness and wrongness, he says that we should be more content overall.

Our Moral Convictions as the Basis of Ethics
We have to test moral theory based on what we know and not what we think. We have to compare ourselves those who we see as the best in a moral sense. I don't really understand this passage.