 As Ross conducts it, the main dispute between the two revolves around the issue of whether ideal utilitarians can make sense of the obligation to keep one’s promises. Ross’s view is ‘[t]o make a promise is not merely to adapt an ingenious device for promoting the general well-being; it is to put oneself in a new relation to one person in particular, a relation which creates a specifically new prima facie duty to him, not reducible to the duty of promoting the general well-being of society’ (RG 38). (To clarify that Ross’s target is ideal utilitarianism here we have to substitute good for well-being as Ross does elsewhere (RG 34–36). Ideal utilitarians can agree with Ross’s point as stated. It might be true that promises are not a device for promoting well-being but false they are not a device for promoting the good, which is the point ideal utilitarians wish to make.)