W. D. Ross

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Sir (William) David Ross KBE (15 April 1877 – 5 May 1971) was a Scottish philosopher, known for work in ethics. His best known work is The Right and The Good (1930). His ethics is a form of deontology which sprang from a response to G.E. Moore.

William David Ross was born in Thurso, Caithness in the north of Scotland. He spent most of his first six years as a child in southern India. He was educated at the Royal High School, Edinburgh and the University of Edinburgh. In 1895, he gained a first class MA degree in classics. He completed his studies at Balliol College, Oxford and gained a lectureship at Oriel College in 1900, followed by a fellowship in 1902.

The relationship of Ross's ideas with Moore's stems from Ross's agreement with Moore that any attempt to define ethical predicates wholly in terms of natural predicates commits the naturalistic fallacy. But, Ross argues, Moore's consequentialist ethics actually commits its own fallacy in positing good-maximisation as the only content of the moral ought.

Instead, Ross argues, the maximisation of good is only one of several prima facie (ostensive) obligations which play a role in determining the content of the moral ought in any given case. Ross gives a list of other such obligations, which he does not claim is all-inclusive. In any given situation, any number of prima facie obligations may apply, and in the case of ethical dilemmas, they may even contradict one another. Nonetheless, there can never be a true ethical dilemma, Ross would argue, because one of the prima facie obligations in a given situation is always the weightiest, and overrules all the others. This is thus the absolute obligation.

Ross was Provost of Oriel College, Oxford (1929–1947), Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford from 1941 to 1944 and Pro-Vice-Chancellor (1944–1947). He was president of the Aristotelian Society from 1939 to 1940. He was knighted in 1928.

He married Edith Ogden in 1906 and they had four daughters (Margaret, Rosalind, Eleanor, Katharine). Edith died in 1953 and he died in Oxford in 1971.