Richard Pettigrew
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wiglet1981.bsky.social
Richard Pettigrew
@wiglet1981.bsky.social
3.5K followers 1K following 1.1K posts
Philosopher at University of Bristol 🏳️‍🌈 he/him

https://richardpettigrew.com/

Books: Epistemic Risk and the Demands of Rationality | Choosing for Changing Selves | Dutch Book Arguments | Accuracy and the Laws of Credence | Who Are Universities For?
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wiglet1981.bsky.social
‘Accuracy is the sole fundamental source of epistemic value’ using the Zohran typeface
November 8, 2025 at 9:37 PM
wiglet1981.bsky.social
Getting the baking done for the Monday morning political philosophy meeting with @rebeccabuxton.bsky.social, @jonathanfloyd.bsky.social, and others…
Ten chocolate chip cookies just out the oven
November 3, 2025 at 7:16 AM
wiglet1981.bsky.social
Has Google managed to screw up their maps app thru AI as well? They’ve recently started showing random driveways as roads around my neighbourhood. I’d find this really confusing if I were counting off side roads before knowing where to turn. I wonder if it’s produced thru AI from satellite images.
Map of part of Bristol with many driveways shown as roads
October 30, 2025 at 12:16 PM
wiglet1981.bsky.social
Finally put some new drafts on PhilPapers:

Consent & the formation of preferences
philpapers.org/rec/PETEOA-7

What is purely epistemic normativity, and why? A study in Wolfian epistemology
philpapers.org/rec/PETWIP

Knowledge is not always more valuable than true belief
philpapers.org/rec/PETKIN-2
October 29, 2025 at 7:40 AM
wiglet1981.bsky.social
This paper with Catrin Campbell-Moore and Jason Konek is now out in Theory & Decision!

Choosing How to Choose

This is the link to the journal version: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

But Springer’s typesetting is so awful, I’d maybe recommend the preprint instead: philarchive.org/rec/PETOCH
The view down the Grand Canal from the Accademia bridge
October 23, 2025 at 3:10 PM
wiglet1981.bsky.social
insistent
Grey cat peers inquisitively at you. You have failed to respond adequately to their referee comments.
October 23, 2025 at 8:36 AM
wiglet1981.bsky.social
good afternoon
Grey cat sticks her head foolishly through the banisters Grey cat balances precariously on the banister
October 19, 2025 at 3:15 PM
wiglet1981.bsky.social
unclear why quince is imprisoned in their garden in the first place
Note on garden wall reading ‘free quince from our garden’
October 15, 2025 at 9:59 AM
wiglet1981.bsky.social
Corfu cat
Orange cat stares haughtily at the camera with a magnificent ringed tail wrapped about his feet. The sky is blue, the sun bright, and he has recently supped on some kibble from an indulgent shopkeeper.
October 11, 2025 at 11:37 AM
wiglet1981.bsky.social
Small? Yes. Fearsome? Also, yes.
Tiny kitten approaches Tiny kitten meows terrifyingly
October 9, 2025 at 4:42 AM
wiglet1981.bsky.social
Sarandë cat performs Fosse dance routine
Tabby cat with one paw forward in the middle of the Magic To Do routine from Pippin
October 8, 2025 at 3:32 PM
wiglet1981.bsky.social
I talk about this a bit in my review of Laurie’s book in Mind, where I’m a bit sceptical. But I don’t know of anyone who’s pursued it positively drive.google.com/file/d/1StGY...
October 8, 2025 at 9:27 AM
wiglet1981.bsky.social
Kotor promised cats, and Kotor delivered
Mysterious black cat sitting on a wall with old town roofs in the background, clearly enjoying the limelight as Halloween approaches Tabby cat hunched and sitting on a wall with old town roofs in the background. Half tabby half orange face with tail like a lemur’s curled in front of them. Looking expectantly but in vain at my pizza slice (out of shot) Orange and white cat poised to leap
October 5, 2025 at 8:46 AM
wiglet1981.bsky.social
A view into the Bjelasica mountains from the Belgrade-Bar night train. Officially, we weren’t supposed to see this, as the train was due to arrive ten minutes after sunrise, but it was five hours delayed, so we passed the whole Montenegrin section in daylight.
A mountainous scene with trees in the foreground and mist, and snow covered peaks in the background
October 5, 2025 at 8:41 AM
wiglet1981.bsky.social
There’s something very touching about people bringing potted plants and cut flowers to Alan Turing’s memorial in Manchester.
A bench in a park in Manchester’s Gay Village with a sculpture of Alan Turing. There is a bunch of carnations in his lap, and potted plants are placed around the base.
September 5, 2025 at 9:59 AM
wiglet1981.bsky.social
I’m in Manchester for a panel on Ethics in Academia at MANCEPT. Link to the talk in comments.

My hotel is in the old Free Trade Hall, the site of Dylan’s ‘Royal Albert Hall’ bootleg, which features ‘Judas!’. It’s called that because they thought it was recorded at the Albert Hall across the road.
The Albert Hall, Manchester. A Victorian sandstone building with a turret. The Free Trade Hall, Manchester. Also a Victorian sandstone building.
September 3, 2025 at 11:13 AM
wiglet1981.bsky.social
National beach day! Here’s the sea wall and beach in Blackpool from bank holiday weekend.
The sea wall below the promenade in Blackpool
August 30, 2025 at 6:07 PM
wiglet1981.bsky.social
Scruffles looking majestic against the detritus of human habitation
A black and white cat with whiskers like the antennae of a longhorned beetle approaches the camera with purpose, leaving behind him the recycling bags and bins of his local area
August 14, 2025 at 9:02 AM
wiglet1981.bsky.social
There are a couple of passages in Middlemarch that are nice instances of the phenomenon Iris Murdoch illustrates with the M and D example in The Idea of Perfection, where we change our evaluation of something or someone by bringing them under different evaluative concepts.
Most of those who saw Fred riding out of Middle-march in company with Bambridge and Horrock, on his way of course to Houndsley horse-fair, thought that young Vincy was pleasure-seeking as usual; and but for an unwonted consciousness of grave matters on hand, he himself would have had a sense of dissipation, and of doing what might be expected of a gay young fellow. Considering that Fred was not at all coarse, that he rather looked down on the manners and speech of young men who had not been to the university, and that he had written stanzas as pastoral and unvoluptuous as his fluteplaying, his attraction towards Bambridge and Hor-rock was an interesting fact which even the love of horse-flesh would not wholly account for without that mysterious influence of Naming which determinates so much of mortal choice. Under any other name than 'pleasure' the society of Messieurs Bambridge and Hor-rock must certainly have been regarded as monotonous; and to arrive with them at Houndsley on a drizzling afternoon, to get down at the Red Lion in a street shaded with coal-dust, and dine in a room furnished with a dirt-enamelled map of the county, a bad portrait of an anonymous horse in a stable, His Majesty George the Fourth with legs and cravat, and various leaden spit-toons, might have seemed a hard business, but for the sustaining power of nomenclature which determined that the pursuit of these things was 'gay.' He came again in the evening to speak with Mr. Viney, who, just returned from Stone Court, was feeling sure that it would not be long before he heard of Mr. Featherstone's demise. The felicitous word 'demise,' which had seasonably occurred to him, had raised his spirits even above their usual evening pitch. The right word is always a power, and communicates its definite-ness to our action. Considered as a demise, old Feather-stone's death assumed a merely legal aspect, so that Mr. Vincy could tap his snuff-box over it and be jovial, without even an intermittent affectation of solemnity; and Mr. Vincy hated both solemnity and affectation.
August 12, 2025 at 9:16 AM
wiglet1981.bsky.social
new neighbourhood kitten—strong on purrs, strong on attitude
Kitten with white legs and grey face struts down local alleyway Kitten continues her approach with intent Kitten extremely taken with smartphone camera Kitten poses, safe in the knowledge that Bluesky will find her adorable
August 11, 2025 at 8:16 AM
wiglet1981.bsky.social
The fearsome urban lion native to south west England takes a break from mauling any living creature who comes his way
August 10, 2025 at 2:32 PM
wiglet1981.bsky.social
This is like the scene in Legally Blonde where Vivian tells Elle it’s a costume party, but it isn’t
Eight hot air balloons pass over the rooftops of Bristol. One of them is a dinosaur.
August 9, 2025 at 5:39 AM
wiglet1981.bsky.social
same energy
Black and white cat stares fixedly towards the pavement, clearly gripped by the thought of the starry heavens above and the moral law within Immanuel Kant stares fixedly towards the bottom right of the frame, clearly trying to figure out why he possibly said the different formulations of the categorical imperative were equivalent
August 5, 2025 at 3:12 PM
wiglet1981.bsky.social
3 years ago, a sinkhole appeared in a square near me. Around the same time, I stopped seeing Worby, a favourite neighbourhood cat, & I worried he’d disappeared into the hole. Ever since, I’ve been walking past hoping to see him. Then last night I saw the sinkhole had been fixed up, & Worby was back!
A very fluffy and affectionate ginger and white cat sitting on my knee, as if he’d never been absent!
August 1, 2025 at 6:29 AM
wiglet1981.bsky.social
Susie as baguette and tin loaf
Grey cat stretches over maroon carpet Grey cat imprisons herself behind railing
July 28, 2025 at 9:21 AM