Prima Facie Obligation and Doing the Best One Can

I believe that one ought, morally, to do the best one can. This is, of course, controversial. I don't propose to debate the issue here, however, but wish rather to address a related one: how such a theory of absolute obligation — a "maximizing" theory — might accommodate prima facie obligation. My sense is that many believe that maximizing theories cannot accommodate prima facie obligation, and that this has led some maximizers to reject the concept of prima facie obligation while leading some of those who appeal to this concept to reject maximization. I shall suggest, on the contrary, that maximizing theories are well-equipped to accommodate prima facie obligation; I shall do this by proposing an analysis of absolute obligation in terms of certain concepts and then using some of these concepts to analyze prima facie obligation. My purpose is threefold: to enhance our understanding of prima facie obligation; to show that appeal to prima facie obligation is not a good reason for rejecting maximization; and to rehabilitate the concept of prima facie obligation in the eyes of maximizer

Cultural (Incompetence), Justice, and Expectations of Care: An Illustration

The health care industry seems prima facie obligated to respond to the demands and expectations of those multicultural communities that make up its stakeholder base. However, as prima facie, this obligation fails to justify “cultural competence” amongst health care professionals or the health care industry. Without some justification, one can only assume that cultural competence is a bilateral process requiring multicultural communities themselves to assume the responsibility for their own care. Relying on a Rawlsian conception of justice, I argue against the view that cultural competence is a bilateral process in this case, and that health care professionals in particular and the health care industry in general have an obligation to attain to cultural competence in order to satisfy a fundamental principle of justice, what Rawls calls the “difference principle.

Right-making characteristics and morally right acts.

An appealing ethical view is that there are a number of different characteristics that make acts obligatory and others that make acts wrong. Being an instance of promise-keeping makes an act obligatory, while being an instance of causing harm makes an act wrong. Another appealing view is that we can do what we are obligated to do. Accepting both of these views poses well-known problems. Imagine that a person makes two incompatible promises. Either the person is not obliged to keep each promise, or the person cannot satisfy both obligations. One of these appealing views must be rejected or modified. W. D. Ross offered a theory with a modification of the first view as its centerpiece. He introduced the term prima facie duty to describe the moral status of acts having a characteristic such as being an instance of promise keeping. He claimed that a person having mutually exclusive prima facie duties can be morally obligated to satisfy at most one of them, the other being overridden. Ross did not, however, make clear what is involved in one prima facie duty overriding others, or the relationship between prima facie duties and moral obligation. I am sympathetic to Ross\u27s approach, but realize that it needs closer examination. I begin by stating his view as carefully as possible and laying out the problems with it. Various attempts have been made to explicate the relationship between prima facie duties and moral obligation. These range from arguing that principles expressing prima facie duties are analogous to physical laws with ceteris paribus caveats to defining both concepts by use of a third normative concept such as requirement. I examine some of these attempts and find them flawed. I conclude that it is a mistake to suppose that there is some principle expressing the relationship between prima facie duties and moral obligation. I argue that the difficulties with Ross\u27s view can be traced to Aristotelian elements in it. These elements cause Ross\u27s theory to be an unfortunate mix of two approaches to ethics: an investigation of the ethical life and an investigation of ethical concepts

The Case for Intervention in Nature on Behalf of Animals: a Critical Review of the Main Arguments against Intervention

If we assume that all sentient animals deserve equal moral consideration and, therefore, that their interests are morally relevant, what should be our attitude regarding natural phenomena like predation or starvation which are harmful for many wild animals? Do we have the prima facie moral obligation to try to mitigate unnecessary, avoidable and unjustified animal suffering in nature? In this paper I assume two main theses: (1) Humans and (many) animals deserve equal moral consideration; this implies that (2) We have the prima facie moral obligation to try to mitigate unnecessary, avoidable and unjustified animal suffering. Based on these assumptions, I argue that we are morally obligated to aid animals in the wild whenever doing so would not originate as much or more suffering than it would prevent

Political and Constitutional Obligation

In his provocative, courageous, and original new book, Against Obligation: The Multiple Sources of Authority in a Liberal Democracy, Abner Greene argues that there is “no successful general case for a presumptive (or ‘prima facie’) moral duty to obey the law.” In my own book, On Constitutional Disobedience, I argue that there is no moral duty to obey our foundational law–the Constitution of the United States. This brief article, prepared for a symposium on the two books to be published by the Boston University Law Review, I address three issues related to these claims. First, I discuss what seem to me to be important ambiguities in and problems with Professor Greene’s argument. Second, I defend my own stance against criticisms advanced by Greene and others. Third, I explore the relationship between his claims and mine

Displacement and Gratitude: Accounting for the Political Obligation of Refugees

On what basis, and to what extent, are refugees obligated to obey the laws of their host countries? Consideration of the specific case of asylum-seekers generates, I think, two competing intuitions: (1) the refugee has a prima facie obligation to obey the laws of her host country and (2) none of the popularly canvassed substrates of political obligation*consent, tacit consent, fairness, or social role*is at all apt to explain the presence of this obligation. I contend that the unfashionable gratitude account of political obligation does the best job of accounting for the intuitions. As has been noticed by other commentators, obligations of gratitude are difficult to specify and subject to numerous cancelling conditions. I analyze these conditions in detail and conclude that if one accepts that gratitude is the basis of the political obligation of the refugee, then one must face up to just how frangible the obligation is. In particular, the obligation is conditional on the fair and generous treatment of refugees that is consistent with their dignity as human beings

Gratitude and Displacement: The Political Obligations of Refugees

On what basis, and to what extent, are refugees obligated to obey the laws of their host countries? Consideration of the specific case of asylum-seekers generates, I think, two competing intuitions: (1) the refugee has a prima facie obligation to obey the laws of her host country and (2) none of the popularly canvassed substrates of political obligation—consent, tacit consent, fairness, or social role—is at all apt to explain the presence of this obligation. I contend that the unfashionable gratitude account of political obligation does the best job of accounting for the intuitions. As has been noticed by other commentators, obligations of gratitude are difficult to specify and subject to numerous cancelling conditions. I analyze these conditions in detail and conclude that if one accepts that gratitude is the basis of the political obligation of the refugee, then one must face up to just how frangible the obligation is. In particular, the obligation is conditional on the fair and generous treatment of refugees that is consistent with their dignity as human beings