On the defeasibility of duties

✍ Scribed by T. R. Girill

• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 1978
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 794 KB
• Volume: 12
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0022-5363
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00149767

✦ Synopsis

One of the characteristic properties of prima facie duties or prima facie moral requirements is their defeasibility: a major (and sometimes subsequent) duty or requirement often appears to "defeat," "override," or "neutralize" the force of a minor (or earlier) one. Since complex ethical problems often involve the need to reconcile such competing prima facie duties, an examination of the logical structure of deontic defeasibility promises to facilitate constructive decision-making.

On the following pages, therefore, I attempt to precisely articulate the process (or, as it turns out, the three related processes) by which the "defeat" of a moral requirement takes place. Examples provided by J. Raz and R.

Chisholm will be re-interpreted and supplemented as part of the analysis.

And, in the course of this investigation, I hope to show how alternative accounts of the defeasibility process -by W. D. Ross, T. V. Carey, and R. K. Shope -while suggestive, have foundered on inappropriate terminology or hasty generalization. If successful, both the vocabulary and the mechanism of defeasibility will be clarified as a result.