Ralph Wedgwood Research Articles

THE NATURE OF NORMATIVE MORAL JUDGMENTS

Moral judgements have been a crucial subject-matter of a discussion in the domain of normativity. Many thinkers argue moral judgments are necessarily action-guiding, which prescribe what one ought to do and what ought to be the case. The moral statement “killing is wrong” is prescriptive and locates in the purview of first-order ethical questions. Moral realists widely accept that moral judgments represent propositions, therefore they are subject to truth and false conditions. Thus, moral conclusions can be derived logically from valid premises. How to derive the conclusion “killing is wrong”? How to justify the statement? What does “wrong” mean in this context? This kind of philosophical issue has been labeled as the second-order questions, which is in the purview of metaethics. This article is devoted to the subject of normativity and the nature of moral judgments advocated by metaethicists David Copp and Ralph Wedgwood. The purpose of this article is to outline the current debate on the nature of normative moral judgments. In conclusion, I shall agree with both Copp and Wedgwoodon two points. One, normative moral judgment can be subject to cognition. Two, there are true and false beliefs about particular moral facts which constitute the significant part of the reality we live in.

STATE-RECOGNIZED MARRIAGE AND LIBERAL NEUTRALITY

Abstract While Ralph Wedgwood has recently argued that state recognition of marriage can be justified in a way consistent with the demands of political liberalism, Clare Chambers argues that such a policy violates the politically liberal state’s requirement of neutrality with respect to diverse reasonable conceptions of the good—and she thinks Wedgwood’s case to the contrary relies on a “lax” reading of the neutrality requirement, not the “strict” reading that preserves political liberalism’s distinctiveness. I argue that there is a way of reading Wedgwood that sees his defense of state-recognized marriage as attempting to meet the requirements of strict neutrality—a reading that sees state recognition of marriage as a “neutral facilitating policy,” that is, a policy that helps marriage-affirming reasonable doctrines overcome a disadvantage they would face (relative to other reasonable doctrines) absent policy intervention by the state. I conclude, however, that a state policy that refuses to recognize polyamorous marriages may not qualify as a neutral facilitating policy, and hence that Wedgwood’s argument may fail to support the policy regime he favors but might support a more permissive marital policy.

The Value of Rationality, written by Ralph Wedgwood

The Value of Rationality, written by Ralph Wedgwood

Lord, Errol. The Importance of Being Rational. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. 288. $60.00 (cloth).

Lord, Errol. <i>The Importance of Being Rational</i>. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. 288. $60.00 (cloth).

Ralph Wedgwood: The Value of Rationality

Ralph Wedgwood: The Value of Rationality

The Value of Rationality, by Ralph Wedgwood

The book is the first in a planned trilogy, with Rationality and Belief and Rationality and Choice to follow, titles which signal Wedgwood’s view that one concept of rationality applies across the practical and epistemic domains. The book’s chapters deal with a variety of disparate issues (for example, ‘ought implies can’, the nature of reasons, the meaning of ‘ought’, the structure of virtue, the virtue of rationality, and comparative values), each well worth studying for its own sake, and each explored with reference to the history of the subject, and to some of the main relevant discussions today. Yet, together they form a theory of rationality and its value. Wedgwood is developing a theory of the concept in order to understand the property it expresses. The concept is used primarily to evaluate mental states (beliefs, intentions) and events (decisions, judgements), evaluations that are based purely on the degree to which the mental states and events present in the thinker’s mind at, or shortly before, the relevant time (internalism) constitute a coherent pattern. Norms of rationality, that is, principles specifying what rationality requires, are constitutive of the mental state to which they apply. I assume that this means that what makes a mental state one of a particular kind is that certain requirements of rationality apply to it, namely, those that apply to the kind. Wedgwood underlines another aspect: each type of mental state and event that can be rational has an aim, and thinking rationally is a means of satisfying the aim. Beliefs aim at truth and choice aims at the practicable good. The means to the ends are rational mental states that are correct, that is, conform to norms of correctness that are themselves constitutive of the types of mental states, though they evaluate mental states by their relations to the external world. Both rationality and correctness come in degrees. The more irrational a person’s ways of thinking, the more incorrect his thinking is likely to be.

What is Reasoning?

Reasoning is a certain kind of attitude-revision. What kind? The aim of this paper is to introduce and defend a new answer to this question, based on the idea that reasoning is a goodness-fixing kind. Our central claim is that reasoning is a functional kind: it has a constitutive point or aim that fixes the standards for good reasoning. We claim, further, that this aim is to get fitting attitudes. We start by considering recent accounts of reasoning due to Ralph Wedgwood and John Broome, and argue that, while these accounts contain important insights, they are not satisfactory: Wedgwood’s rules out too much, and Broome’s too little. We then introduce and defend our alternative account, discuss some of its implications and attractions, and, finally, consider objections.

Aggregation, Complaints, and Risk

Philosophy & Public AffairsVolume 45, Issue 1 p. 54-81 Original Article Aggregation, Complaints, and Risk Joe Horton, Joe Horton orcid.org/0000-0002-3703-4947 Search for more papers by this author Joe Horton, Joe Horton orcid.org/0000-0002-3703-4947 Search for more papers by this author First published: 15 May 2017 https://doi.org/10.1111/papa.12084Citations: 13 For helpful comments and discussion, I am grateful to Renee Jorgensen Bolinger, David Boonin, Alexander Dietz, Nathan Robert Howard, Nicola Kemp, Nicholas Laskowski, Alexander Sarch, Thomas Sinclair, Anthony Taylor, Jonathan Wright, and the editors at Philosophy & Public Affairs. I am especially grateful to Abelard Podgorski, Jonathan Quong, Jacob Ross, Mark Schroeder, and Ralph Wedgwood. Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume45, Issue1Winter 2017Pages 54-81 RelatedInformation

ACCESSIBILISM DEFINED

ABSTRACTAccessibilism is a version of epistemic internalism on which justification is determined by what is accessible to the subject. I argue that misunderstandings of accessibilism have hinged on a failure to appreciate an ambiguity in the phrase ‘what is accessible to the subject’. I first show that this phrase may either refer to the very things accessible to the subject, or instead to the facts about which things are accessible to her. I then discuss Ralph Wedgwood's (2002: 350–2) argument that accessibilism absurdly implies that an infinite regress of facts, each more complex than the last, must be accessible to the subject. I show that this regress objection only threatens the ‘very things’ disambiguation of accessibilism, not the ‘facts about’ disambiguation. After this, I discuss the relationships between the motivations for accessibilism and these two disambiguations. We will see that these motivations appear to support each disambiguation. But I will argue this appearance depends on a mistake. Just as only the ‘facts about’ disambiguation escapes the regress objection, it is also the only disambiguation which enjoys genuine support from the motivations for accessibilism. For these reasons, I recommend that future discussions of accessibilism focus on the ‘facts about’ disambiguation.

A critique of benchmark theory

Benchmark theory (BT), introduced by Ralph Wedgwood, departs from decision theories of pure expectation maximization like evidential decision theory (EDT) and causal decision theory (CDT) and instead ranks actions according to the desirability of an outcome they produce in some state of affairs compared to a standard—a benchmark—for that state of affairs. Wedgwood motivates BT through what he terms Gandalf’s principle, that the merits of an action in a given state should be evaluated relative only to the performances of other actions in that state, and not to their performances in other states. Although BT succeeds in selecting intuitively rational actions in a number of cases—including some in which EDT or CDT seem to go wrong—it places constraints on rational decision-making that either lack motivation or are untenable. Specifically, I argue that as it stands BT is committed both to endorsing and rejecting the independence of irrelevant alternatives. Furthermore its requirement that weakly dominated actions be excluded from consideration of rational action lacks motivation and threatens to collide with traditional game theory. In the final section of the paper, I construct a counterexample to BT.

Supervenience arguments under relaxed assumptions

When it comes to evaluating reductive hypotheses in metaphysics, supervenience arguments are the tools of the trade. Jaegwon Kim and Frank Jackson have argued, respectively, that strong and global supervenience are sufficient for reduction, and others have argued that supervenience theses stand in need of the kind of explanation that reductive hypotheses are particularly suited to provide. Simon Blackburn’s arguments about what he claims are the specifically problematic features of the supervenience of the moral on the natural have also been influential. But most discussions of these arguments have proceeded under the strong and restrictive assumptions of the S5 modal logic. In this paper we aim to remedy that defect, by illustrating in an accessible way what happens to these arguments under relaxed assumptions and why. The occasion is recent work by Ralph Wedgwood, who seeks to defend non-reductive accounts of moral and mental properties together with strong supervenience, but to evade both the arguments of Kim and Jackson and the explanatory challenge by accepting only the weaker, B, modal logic. In addition to drawing general lessons about what happens to supervenience arguments under relaxed assumptions, our goal is therefore to shed some light on both the virtues and costs of Wedgwood’s proposal.

Thinking about Normativity: Ralph Wedgwood on 'Ought'

AbstractRalph Wedgwood's The Nature of Normativity provides a theory about the semantics, metaphysics, and epistemology of normative judgments, taken to be judgments of the form 'I ought to '. The theory is based on the principle of Normative Judgment Internalism, and the principle that 'the intentional is normative'. I argue, first, that by being merely about oughts, Wedgwood's account leaves out one essential constituent of normativity: value. Secondly, I argue that mainly because of this, the account faces a serious issue of relevance.

The Nature of Normativity, by Ralph Wedgwood.

The Nature of Normativity, by Ralph Wedgwood.

Decision-Theoretic Paradoxes as Voting Paradoxes

It is a platitude among decision theorists that agents should choose their actions so as to maximize expected value. But exactly how to define expected value is contentious. Evidential decision theory (henceforth EDT), causal decision theory (henceforth CDT), and a theory proposed by Ralph Wedgwood that this essay will call benchmark theory (BT) all advise agents to maximize different types of expected value. Consequently, their verdicts sometimes conflict. In certain famous cases of conflict—medical Newcomb problems—CDT and BT seem to get things right, while EDT seems to get things wrong. In other cases of conflict, including some recent examples suggested by Andy Egan, EDT and BT seem to get things right, while CDT seems to get things wrong. In still other cases, EDT and CDT seems to get things right, while BT gets things wrong.It's no accident, this essay claims, that all three decision theories are subject to counterexamples. Decision rules can be reinterpreted as voting rules, where the voters are the agent's possible future selves. The problematic examples have the structure of voting paradoxes. Just as voting paradoxes show that no voting rule can do everything we want, decision-theoretic paradoxes show that no decision rule can do everything we want. Luckily, the so-called “tickle defense” establishes that EDT, CDT, and BT will do everything we want in a wide range of situations. Most decision situations, this essay argues, are analogues of voting situations in which the voters unanimously adopt the same set of preferences. In such situations, all plausible voting rules and all plausible decision rules agree.

Why It Matters That Some Are Worse Off Than Others: An Argument against the Priority View

We are grateful to Arthur Applbaum, Alexander Barker, Ken Binmore, Johan Brannmark, Boudewijn de Bruin, Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, G. A. Cohen, Nir Eyal, Brian Feltham, Marc Fleurbaey, Alon Harel, Nils Holtug, Annabelle Lever, Kasper lippert-Rasmussen, Ve*ronique Munoz-Darde*, Erik Nord, Derek Parfit, Ingmar Persson, Wlodek Rabinowicz, Toni Ronnow-Rasmussen, Carlos Soto, Katie Steele, Peter Vallentyne, Ralph Wedgwood, Andrew Williams, Michael J. Zimmerman, and the Editors of Philosophy & Public Affairs for their comments. This article was presented to audiences at All Souls College, Erasmus University, the Free University of Amsterdam, Harvard University, LSE, Lund University, the University de Montreal, Rutgers University, UCL, and the Universities of Bristol, Edinburgh, Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Manchester, Pittsburgh, Warwick, and York. We are grateful to those present for their comments. Alex Voorhoeve's work was aided by a British Academy Small Research Grant for the project Rational Choice and Moral DecisionMaking, and Michael Otsuka's was supported by an AHRC Research Grant on the Ethics of Risk. 1. Unless we indicate otherwise, it should be assumed that the health states we refer to in this article will last from early adulthood until the end of the lives of individuals with equally long life spans, that people are equally well off in all respects other than those to which their differences in mobility give rise, that everyone who is in the same health state is at the same (interpersonally comparable) level of utility, and that it is through no choice or fault of any individual that she suffers from or is vulnerable to any impairment.

A Third Way in Metaethics

AbstractWhat does it take to count as competent with the meaning of a thin evaluative predicate like ‘is the right thing to do’? According to minimalists like Allan Gibbard and Ralph Wedgwood, competent speakers must simply use the predicate to express their own motivational states. According to analytic descriptivists like Frank Jackson, Philip Pettit and Christopher Peacocke, competent speakers must grasp a particular criterion for identifying the property picked out by the term. Both approaches face serious difficulties. We suggest that these difficulties derive from a shared background assumption that competence conditions must be explained in terms of a determinate conceptual role. We propose a new way of characterizing competence with evaluative terms: what's required for competence is participation in a shared epistemic practice with a term. Our approach, we argue, better explains the nature of evaluative inquiry and the extent of disagreement about evaluative questions.

Ralph Wedgwood, The Nature of Normativity

Ralph Wedgwood, The Nature of Normativity

MORAL KNOWLEDGE, EPISTEMIC EXTERNALISM, AND INTUITIONISM

This paper explores the generally overlooked relevance of an important contemporary debate in mainstream epistemology to philosophers working within ethics on questions concerning moral knowledge. It is argued that this debate, between internalists and externalists about the accessibility of epistemic justification, has the potential to be both significantly influenced by, and have a significant impact upon, the study of moral knowledge. The moral sphere provides a particular type of strong evidence in favour of externalism, and mainstream epistemologists might benefit from paying attention to this fact. At the same time, the terrain of moral epistemology (approached as a sub-field of metaethics) needs to be reshaped by the realisation that externalists can steal the thunder of intuitionists when it comes to knowledge constituted by seemingly self-evident beliefs.11 Thank you to Stephen Kearns, Ofra Magidor, Nico Silins, Roger Crisp, Ralph Wedgwood, Robert M. Adams, Brad Hooker, Krister Bykvist, and an anonymous referee for their helpful comments.

Ralph Wedgwood, The Nature of Normativity

Ralph Wedgwood, The Nature of Normativity

Christopher Peacocke’s The Realm of Reason*

Philosophy and Phenomenological ResearchVolume 74, Issue 3 p. 776-791 Christopher Peacocke’s The Realm of Reason* RALPH WEDGWOOD, RALPH WEDGWOOD Merton College, OxfordSearch for more papers by this author RALPH WEDGWOOD, RALPH WEDGWOOD Merton College, OxfordSearch for more papers by this author First published: 06 August 2007 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1933-1592.2007.00055.x * Christopher Peacocke, The Realm of Reason (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004). Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume74, Issue3May 2007Pages 776-791 RelatedInformation