Ralph Wedgwood
@ralphwedgwood.bsky.social
Philosopher, cyclist, lover of classical music, occasional hiker, based mostly in Southern California
Philosophy
42%
Psychology
16%
Ralph Wedgwood
@ralphwedgwood.bsky.social
· May 12
So, I think I could basically incorporate your view into the kind of framework that I prefer.
Ralph Wedgwood
@ralphwedgwood.bsky.social
· May 12
But I do think it is better - in a certain distinctive respect - for the social practice of appreciating artworks (like Hokusai prints) to be extended over more people and over longer periods of time, and for this social practice to involve the appreciation of a greater diversity of artworks.
Ralph Wedgwood
@ralphwedgwood.bsky.social
· May 12
This sounds very interesting! I think I reject the very idea of the "amount" of a value: this idea makes the value into a kind of stuff (like e.g. gasoline), where its "amount" is an extensive quantity (like the total mass or volume of this stuff in the universe as a whole).
Ralph Wedgwood
@ralphwedgwood.bsky.social
· Apr 13
This view is defended in my 2023 book, "Rationality and Belief", especially Sections 2.3, 2.5, 11.2 and 11.3. It still seems to me more plausible than the common view that such higher-order evidence can defeat propositional justification...
Ralph Wedgwood
@ralphwedgwood.bsky.social
· Apr 13
In my view, higher-order evidence - like evidence that one is likely to be thinking irrationally about p - does not defeat one's propositional justification for believing p. But it may well make it impossible for one to believe p in a doxastically justified manner.
Even if I might, in the end, demur and prefer a different formulation, isn't there something incredibly compelling in what the Stoics say about this...?
This kind of perception, I believe, is what motivated the ancient Greek and Roman Stoics to say that all of us who have a human mind are "children of God" (e.g. Epictetus, Discourses, 1.3).
The human mind is the most astounding phenomenon that we're aware of, in the whole of the natural world. But everyone reading this actually *has* a human mind! What an amazing privilege is that?!
Ralph Wedgwood
@ralphwedgwood.bsky.social
· Jan 24
Do I really want to wade into this debate? Do I have the competence to say anything about this that could be valuable for an audience of more than a few of my fellow philosophers? Perhaps I should try, anyway. It seems daunting, but I believe that I have insights into these questions.
Ralph Wedgwood
@ralphwedgwood.bsky.social
· Jan 24
I am coming to think that I need to write something (perhaps even a book?), arguing against all of the revealed religions -Judaism, Christianity, and Islam... - on both philosophical and historical grounds. and advocating a different approach towards understanding the basic problems of human life.
Ralph Wedgwood
@ralphwedgwood.bsky.social
· Jan 24
Later, 5 years ago, I acquired an interest in later Stoicism (of the 1st two centuries CE). So, I have been thinking intensely about that historical period. I'm convinced that the historical evidence about that period makes it probable that some of the most central claims of Christianity are false.
Ralph Wedgwood
@ralphwedgwood.bsky.social
· Jan 24
Almost 20 years ago, in summer 2025, I decided that, in the last 2 pages of my book "The Nature of Normativity" (as a surprise reward for any readers who made it that far into the book…), I'd argue that my kind of realism about normativity undercuts many motivations for theism and religious belief.
Ralph Wedgwood
@ralphwedgwood.bsky.social
· Jan 16
The short answer is: (1) We need to recognize "local" as well as "global" value-bearers (even though all value-bearers are states of affairs); (2) We need to embrace a thoroughgoing pluralism about values; (3) We need to reject "part-whole aggregation", recognizing only "multiple-value aggregation".
Ralph Wedgwood
@ralphwedgwood.bsky.social
· Jan 16
My talk at this workshop is going to explore the following question: If our ethical theory is to be (a) in a strong sense grounded in values, but (b) not even in a weak sense consequentialist, how should we think of these values?
Ralph Wedgwood
@ralphwedgwood.bsky.social
· Jan 16
Workshop in Normative Ethics | Tucson, AZ
The Arizona Workshop in Normative Ethics (WiNE) will be held at the Westward Look Resort in Tucson, AZ, Jan 16-18, 2025.
www.ethics-arizona.com
Looking forward to taking part in this year's Arizona Workshop in Normative Ethics: www.ethics-arizona.com
Ralph Wedgwood
@ralphwedgwood.bsky.social
· Jan 13
Of course, within Jeffrey's framework, there is no "redescription" of "the outcome". For Jeffrey, outcomes are propositions, which are individuated by the worlds at which they are true. It's just obviously a different outcome!
Ralph Wedgwood
@ralphwedgwood.bsky.social
· Jan 13
Great - thank you so much, Richard! I'm familiar with Buchak's book; but, so far as I can see, she doesn't discuss Jeffrey's decision theory in this connection at all. (There's no index entry for Jeffrey, and he is not mentioned in the Chapter on "Redescription").
Ralph Wedgwood
@ralphwedgwood.bsky.social
· Jan 13
From my perspective, Kant's monistic thesis, that all "absolute" goodness is explicable in terms of the purely "formal" goodness of the "good will", has absolutely no advantages over the blinkered utilitarian view that Price criticizes here. Price was so much more perceptive than Kant or Bentham...
Ralph Wedgwood
@ralphwedgwood.bsky.social
· Jan 13
"I deny not but that, in the human mind, as well as in the natural world, the most wonderful simplicity takes place; but we ought to learn to wait, till we can, by careful observation and enquiry, find out wherein it consists; and not suffer ourselves rashly to determine anything concerning it..."
Ralph Wedgwood
@ralphwedgwood.bsky.social
· Jan 13
"What mistakes and extravagances in natural philosophy have been produced, by the desire of discovering one principle which shall account for all effects?
Ralph Wedgwood
@ralphwedgwood.bsky.social
· Jan 13
His criticism of Hutcheson's utilitarian reduction of all virtue to benevolence is poignant:
"How unreasonable is that love of uniformity and simplicity which inclines men thus to seek them where it is so difficult to find them? It is this that, on other subjects, has often led men astray....
"How unreasonable is that love of uniformity and simplicity which inclines men thus to seek them where it is so difficult to find them? It is this that, on other subjects, has often led men astray....
Ralph Wedgwood
@ralphwedgwood.bsky.social
· Jan 13
The overwhelming majority of ethicists in the history of Western philosophy have advocated excessively monistic unified theories. This is what makes Richard Price's pluralism about the "branches of virtue" all the more remarkable (see Chap. VII of his "Review of the Principal Questions in Morals").
Ralph Wedgwood
@ralphwedgwood.bsky.social
· Jan 12
In this way, Jeffrey–Bolker decision theory guarantees that the outcomes of different lotteries never count as strictly “the same outcome”. I remain somewhat puzzled about why the fact that this decision theory is immune to the Allais paradox is not more prominent in the decision theory literature.
Ralph Wedgwood
@ralphwedgwood.bsky.social
· Jan 12
However, the Allais preferences are consistent with this principle. The first Allais preference concerns propositions A1 and B1 that are true in worlds where one has entered Lottery 1; the second preference concerns propositions A2 and B2 that are true in worlds where one has entered Lottery 2.
Ralph Wedgwood
@ralphwedgwood.bsky.social
· Jan 12
Admittedly, something similar to the STP holds in this theory: If A and B are equally probable, C and D are equally probable, and A, B, C, and D are all pairwise incompatible with each other, then, if you prefer ‘A or C’ over ‘B or C’, you must also prefer ‘A or D’ over ‘B or D’.
Ralph Wedgwood
@ralphwedgwood.bsky.social
· Jan 12
Savage’s “Sure Thing Principle” (STP) is not an axiom of Jeffrey–Bolker’s version of decision theory. So, Jeffrey–Bolker’s theory is not threatened by the Allais paradox. Why is this point not discussed in the literature on the paradox?
If we tried to state the STP in Jeffrey's theory, it would be this: If you prefer the prospect "A or C" over the prospect "B or C", you must also prefer "A or D" over "B or D". But this is obviously not in general true in Jeffrey's theory.
As an octogenarian, Philippa Foot tried to revive something like the Aristotelian link between ethics and natural teleology in "Natural Goodness" (2001). But I have to say, this seems a wild anachronism to me - like an attempt to revive Empedocles' theory of the 4 elements in the modern age.
I guess we find a *kind* of eudaimonism revived in the work of 19th-century Hegelians like T. H. Green - but by then it has lost its grounding in any kind of natural teleology.
A particularly interesting question, in my opinion, is why this sort of view came to seem implausible in the early modern period - even among those (like Butler, Reid, and Kant) who were not yet ready to reject natural teleology outright ....