Final answer:
The author credited with creating Prima Facie Duties is W.D. Ross, who proposed these duties to articulate the complexity of our moral experiences and recognized the need for balancing competing duties in ethical decision making.
Step-by-step explanation:
The author credited with creating Prima Facie Duties is W.D. Ross. Sir William David Ross, a significant moral philosopher, articulated a complex view of our moral duties that sought to respect the variety of our moral experiences and intuitions. He introduced the concept of prima facie duties as part of a broader moral theory that recognized many different morally significant factors. Ross argued that unlike the moral theories of Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill, which were monistic and either overly rigid or overly focused on outcomes, our moral life is full of competing duties that need to be balanced depending on the context.
Prima Facie Duties serve as our moral commitments that are recognized through maturity and experience and are not absolute but rather indicate which actions are generally right unless overruled by a stronger duty in a particular situation. Ross identified five prima facie duties, including the duty of fidelity, reparation, gratitude, to promote a maximum of aggregate good, and non-maleficence. In situations where multiple competing duties are present, Ross believed that judgment plays a critical role in determining which duty we ought to follow, effectively leaning towards a quasi-consequentialist approach for resolving moral dilemmas.