Questions: Duties and Moral Obligations

Question 1

You promised a friend you would help them move on Saturday. A better social opportunity comes up. Your friend says you 'owe it' to them to show up anyway. Which statement best captures the moral situation as described here?

• A. You have a strong reason to help, but reasons can always be weighed against other reasons — the better opportunity may simply outweigh the obligation
• B. The promise created a genuine moral obligation — a claim your friend holds against you — which your personal preference does not extinguish
• C. The obligation holds only because helping them produces a good outcome; if they could manage without you, the duty dissolves
• D. Your friend's claim is valid, but only if keeping the promise benefits them more than the social event benefits you

Answer: (B)

A moral obligation is binding independent of your desires and preferences. The key insight is that the promise created a claim your friend holds against you — not merely a reason to act, but a normative bond that constrains what you may permissibly do. The strength of your preference for the alternative does not extinguish that claim. This is what makes obligations different from strong reasons.

Question 2

What distinguishes a prima facie duty from an actual duty in W.D. Ross's framework?

• A. Prima facie duties are universal moral rules; actual duties apply only within specific cultures or relationships
• B. Prima facie duties are optional suggestions; actual duties are the genuinely binding obligations
• C. A prima facie duty is a real obligation that can be overridden by a competing stronger duty in a specific situation; the actual duty is what remains after all competing considerations are weighed
• D. Prima facie duties govern perfect obligations like honesty; actual duties arise only from voluntary agreements like promises

Answer: (C)

Prima facie duties are genuine obligations — not mere suggestions — but they are defeasible: a competing duty can override them in a specific situation. For example, you have a prima facie duty to keep a promise, but if keeping it would cause serious harm to a third party, your actual duty may be to break it. The prima facie duty doesn't disappear; it is outweighed. This is different from saying the duty 'wasn't really' a duty.

Question 3

A moral duty to be honest is contingent on your desire to be honest — if you genuinely prefer to lie in a given situation, the duty no longer applies to you.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: False

The defining feature of moral duties is precisely that they are independent of your desires and preferences. A duty binds you even when — especially when — you would prefer not to fulfill it. If duties dissolved whenever they conflicted with preference, they would carry no moral weight. The duty to be honest doesn't evaporate because lying would be convenient; it remains binding regardless.

Question 4

Violating a moral duty wrongs a specific person who held a claim against you, not just the moral order in general.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: True

This is the relational structure of obligations. An obligation typically runs to someone — your friend, your child, a stranger — who holds a claim against you. When you break a duty, you wrong the person to whom it was owed, not merely fail an abstract rule. This is why they can legitimately hold you accountable and feel wronged, not just disappointed. The person is the injured party, not just a bystander to your moral failing.

Question 5

Why can't a moral duty be reduced to 'a very strong reason to act,' and what is the crucial structural difference between them?

Model answer: A reason to act is one consideration among many, always in principle weighable against competing considerations. A moral duty creates a claim on the part of another person that is not simply tradeable off against personal preference. The duty-holder can legitimately hold you accountable for violating it — they are wronged by your failure in a way that goes beyond you merely choosing poorly. The accountability structure, not just the weight, is what distinguishes a duty from a strong reason.

You may have very strong reasons to help strangers in need, but you are not typically obligated to help every stranger. When you make a promise, the moral landscape changes: a specific person gains a claim against you, and failing them is a wrong against them. This is the difference between 'it would have been good if you had helped' and 'you owed it to them to help.' The latter admits of blame, accountability, and the language of rights in a way the former does not.