I find many philosophical discussions on the topic of moral obligation to be misleading and mispointed. A good deal of mental, and no doubt physical, energy is expended in a manner that does not show positive returns. Moral philosophers, it seems to me, are inclined to straight-jacket our moral conceβ’ts in a simNe-minded and artificial way: as a consequence they miss the real complexity to be found in our moral notions and moral talk, and the point in this complexity. The task of the moral philosopher, as they see it, is to explicate what an obligation really is; that is, to present the correct definition or description of an obligation as it would appear in any obligation context. Once they have the correct definition in hand, they can. of course, expose any false pretenders to the status of obligation. For example, some philosophers who describe obligation according to the model of contracts, draw the conclusion that obligations: to oneself are not really obligations at all. 1
Now, my position can be stated as follows: I do not believe that obligation statements are all of one sort, serve only one function, and refer to some unique notion of obligation that can be captured in a simple definition or description. We do not conceive of obligations in only one way, as many philosophers would lead us to believe. It is a mistake to imagine that there exists some unique mapping of the relation between obligation and other concepts like capability and blameworthiness, for these concepts are not related to one another in only one way. It depends on the context (despite, for example, any religious beliefs about "Ought implies Can"). The attempt to give a definition of obligation, usually based on an extrapolation from only one kind of obligation context, will, I truly believe, only lead us astray, and will obscure rather than illuminate our understanding of the role of moral obligation in our moral life.
In this paper, I will present a critique of this "search for a definition and simple map" approach. I have singled out W. D. Ross to stand as representative of all those whom I believe to be misled and misleading. Ross is an important figure in the area of moral obligation, and he is an extremely thoughtful and careful writer. With him as my example, I hope to elucidate how a good philosopher, with the wrong approach, can be set askew, and how eventually he can succeed in mapping the relation between