When Worlds (moral & causal) Collide

Toni Vogel Carey wrestles with conflicts of duty.

- Toni Vogel Carey

Conflict-of-duty remains one of the most intractable problems in moral philosophy. How to think about situations in which a person has two or more moral obligations, but can fulfill only one?

It was primarily to deal with this problem that W.D. Ross introduced the concept of prima facie duty in his signature essay ‘What Makes Right Acts Right?’, (chapter 2 of his 1930 book The Right and the Good) and . Prima facie means something like ‘on the face of it’ or ‘at first sight’. Philip Stratton-Lake claims that within twenty years of its appearance in 1930, Ross’s theory was old-hat and “rejected out of hand by most moral philosophers.” Nonetheless, his term ‘prima facie duty’ has remained part of the moral philosophical lingo. And if Ross’s theory is dated, apparently so is conflict of duty itself, as I found to my surprise when I Googled it and discovered that nearly all the references were to conflicts of interest.

In any case, conflicts of duty remain as vexatious as ever. Think of the infamous Trolley Problem introduced by Philippa Foot back in 1967. This hydra-headed monster keeps spawning new variations, and you can register your two-cents worth on some of these any time of the day or night, at moralsensetest.com. The Trolley Problem also features prominently in several episodes of the comedy series The Good Place.

Logical Maneuvers

It seems unfair to hold people accountable for doing what they are simply unable to do. Consequently, it is common practice to maintain that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’, so that if you cannot do both act a and act