W D Ross

Jun 2 | By Mick Elliott

LPGA detractors have an easy time criticizing the start-and-stop schedule that so far this year has provided five events on U.S. soil, but there's nothing wrong with the serious stretch of homegrown summer competition that gets started with this week's ShopRite LPGA Classic.

Beginning with Friday's opening round at Seaview Golf Club in Galloway, N.J., the women will be in action for three straight weeks, including the season's second major. After ShopRite's winner is crowned Sunday night, next week brings the State Farm Classic in Springfield, Ill., followed by the Wegmans LPGA Championship in Pittsford, N.Y.

ShopRite's field will feature 96 of the top 100 players on the LPGA money list, including all but one of the top 33. Five winners of 2011 tournaments will be playing, including Karrie Webb (two victories), Kraft Nabisco champion Stacy Lewis and world No. 1 Yani Tseng.

Cristie Kerr, who at No. 4 is the top American in the world rankings, and fellow 2010 major champion Paula Creamer also are on hand, along with defending tournament champ Ai Miyazato, long-driving Michelle Wie and South Florida's 16-year-old phenom, Alexis Thompson.

The only missing star is world No. 2 Suzann Pettersen, who withdrew Wednesday because of illness.

Home cooking

The 54-hole ShopRite event, with a $1.5 million purse, is one of just 13 LPGA events to be played in the United States this year out of 25 on the schedule. It is also one of just eight U.S. "full-field" events of 150 players. It is the tour's first full-field event since the Avnet LPGA Classic April 28-May 1 in Mobile, Ala.

Tournament talk

A longtime popular LPGA stop, ShopRite returned to the schedule last year after a three-year hiatus. Played since 1986, it was canceled after 2006 because of a dispute over dates with then-LPGA commissioner Carolyn Bivens, but returned under new boss Mike Whan.

The golf course

Seaview, designed by Donald Ross, has a rich tournament history in addition to the LPGA's annual visit. The course hosted the 1942 PGA Championship when the tournament was still match play. Sam Snead defeated Jim Turnesa to win his first major, closing out the match by holing a 60-foot chip shot for birdie on the 35th hole.

The Seaview Dolce Resort, which has 36 holes, will use its Bay Course, playing as a 6,150-yard par 71.

"I love this golf course because I enjoyed it so much every time that I'm playing over here," Miyazato said. "It's because it doesn't just favor the long hitters. But this is a course that favors the long hitters and short hitters, and course management comes into play a lot.

W. D. Ross's Intuitionism, a Moral Theory « Ethical Realism

Was not meant to be fully comprehensive and determine right and wrong in every situation, but he doesn’t think it is ever going to be possible to do so. He denies that there is one single overarching moral principle or rule. Instead, he thinks we can make moral progress one step at a time by learning more and more about our moral duties, and do our best at balancing conflicting obligations and values.

Ross proposes that (a) we have self-evident prima facie moral duties, and (b) some things have intrinsic value.

Prima facie duties

We have various prima facie duties, such as the duty of non-injury (the duty to not harm people) and the duty of beneficence (to help people). These duties are “prima facie” because they can be overriden. Duties can determine what we ought to do “nothing else considered” but they don’t determine what we ought to do all things considered. Whatever we ought to do all things considered will override any other conflicting duties. For example, the promise to kill someone would give us a prima facie duty to fulfill our promise, but it would be overridden by our duty not to injure others.

Ross argues that we have (at the very least) the following duties:

Duty of fidelity – The duty to keep our promises. Duty of reparation – The duty to try to pay for the harm we do to others. Duty of gratitude – The duty to return favors and services given to us by others. Duty of beneficence – The duty to maximize the good (things of intrinsic value). Duty of noninjury – The duty to refuse to harm others.

Is this list complete? That is not obvious. We might have a duty to respect people beyond these duties, and we might have a duty to justice, equality, and/or fairness to praise, blame, reward, punish, and distribute goods according to merit. For example, it’s unfair to blame innocent people because they don’t merit blame—they weren’t responsible for the immoral act.

Self-evidence and intuition

Ross thinks we can know moral facts through intuition. What does it mean for these duties to be self-evident they are true based on that contemplation—but only if we contemplate them in the right way. Ross compares moral self-evidence to the self-evidence of mathematical axioms. A mathematical axiom that seems to fit the bill is the law of non-contradiction—We know that something can’t be true and false at the same time.