Ralph Wedgwood

There are three well-known models of how to account for perceptual belief within a probabilistic framework: (a) a Cartesian model; (b) a model advocated by Timothy Williamson; and (c) a model advocated by Richard Jeffrey. Each of these models faces a problem—in effect, the problem of accounting for the defeasibility of perceptual justification and perceptual knowledge. It is argued here that the best way of responding to this the best way of responding to this problem effectively vindicates the Cartesian model. Finally, it is argued that, given the best interpretation of the probabilistic framework, that the Cartesian model is not vulnerable to the main criticisms that have been raised against it.

As a young Anglican clergyman, Joseph Butler published the first edition of his Fifteen Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel in 1721; a revised edition appeared in 1729. Almost immediately, it was widely understood that these sermons present a strikingly subtle and careful form of a relatively traditional conception of ethics, in contrast to the more radical views of other philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes. Only a few years later, David Hume was much concerned to assimilate Butler's insights, while himself arguing for more radical views; and those who sought to respond to Hume, such as Richard Price and Thomas Reid, drew deeply on Butler's thought.Such early utilitarians as Jeremy Bentham and J. S....

This essay examines the epistemology of evaluative, and especially moral, thinking, and attempts an analysis of value-concepts. It proposes an account according to which sentiment plays a central role in all rational evaluative thinking. But this account diverges sharply from traditional emotivism: it insists that rational evaluative thinking must be principled; it defends the pursuit of systematic moral theory through seeking reflective equilibrium; and, though committed to holding that value-judgments can be straightforwardly true, it is compatible with many metaphysical positions about the nature of evaluative truth, ranging from subjectivism to non-reductive realism about values. ;First, a general conception of epistemology and conceptual analysis is articulated. A philosophical study of a concept should offer a non-circular account of what it is to grasp the concept; and grasp of a concept involves mastery of the basic rules for forming rational beliefs involving the concept. ;Value-concepts, it is proposed, are essentially practical. This implies internalism: value-judgments are essentially connected to an actual or imagined motivation to act accordingly. To avoid circularity, such an internalist account must assign an evidential role in evaluative thinking to emotions or sentiments. ;As guides to evaluative truth, sentiments are highly fallible. But one can counteract this fallibility only by constructing a set of general principles, through seeking reflective equilibrium on the basis of one's sentiments, and thereby simultaneously refining both one's sentiments and one's value-judgments. ;According to this account, rational evaluative thinking is principled reliance on sentiment A discussion of the emotions shows that this account of value-concepts is not circular; and it is indicated how the metaphysical questions, about what it is for value-judgments to be true, could be resolved. ;Moral judgments differ from other value-judgments in demanding, not just theoretical agreement about what is true, but practical agreement about what is to be done; and moral sentiments stem from a capacity to respond emotionally to facts about people's interests regardless of how exactly one is related to those interests oneself. Finally, various sceptical challenges to our moral capacities are considered

Here is a definition of knowledge: for you to know a proposition p is for you to have an outright belief in p that is correct precisely because it manifests the virtue of rationality. This definition resembles Ernest Sosa’s “virtue theory”, except that on this definition, the only virtue that must be manifested in all instances of knowledge is rationality, and no reductive account of rationality is attempted—rationality is assumed to be an irreducibly normative notion. This definition is compatible with “internalism” about rationality, and with a form of “pragmatic encroachment” on the conditions of rational outright belief. An interpretation is given of this definition, and especially of the sense of ’because’ that it involves. On this interpretation, this definition entails that both safety and adherence are necessary conditions on knowledge; it supports a kind of contextualism about terms like ‘knowledge’; and it provides resources to defend safety, adherence, and contextualism, against some recent objections.

In his Sermons, Joseph Butler argued for a series of extraordinarily subtle and perceptive claims about the relations between virtue and self-interest. Unfortunately, there has been a great deal of controversy among Butler's interpreters about what exactly these claims amount to, and about what role these claims play in the overall project of his Sermons. Commentators generally agree that the first method is the rationalist method, which Butler almost certainly associated with the work of Samuel Clarke and William Wollaston. The characteristic feature of this rationalist method is that it seeks to discover necessary truths by means of a priori reflection. By contrast, the second method starts out from contingent facts that are known on the basis of empirical observation. So Butler is claiming that the arguments of his Sermons are largely based on the contingent facts of empirical observation. One good way to understand what Butler means is to look at the earlier works of moral philosophy that are clearly influencing him.

Nonreductive physicalism faces a serious objection: physicalism entails the existence of an enormous number of modal facts--specifically, facts about exactly which physical properties necessitate each mental property; and, it seems, if mental properties are irreducible, these modal facts cannot all be satisfactorily explained. The only answer to this objection is to claim that the explanations of these modal facts are themselves contingent. This claim requires rejecting "S5" as the appropriate logic for metaphysical modality. Finally, it is argued that rejecting "S5" is not too high a price to pay for nonreductive physicalism: "S5" should probably be rejected anyway.

Many philosophres have attempted to argue from the "Humean Theory of Motivation" (HTM) and the "Internalism Requirement" (IR) to the "Humean Theory of Practical Reason" (HTPR). This argument is familiar, but it has rarely been stated with sufficient precision. In this paper, I shall give a precise statement of this argument. I shall then rely on this statement to show two things. First, the HTPR is false: it is incompatible with some extremely plausible assumptions about weakness of will or akrasia. Second, this argument for the HTPR is invalid: even if the HTM and the IR are true, they do not provide any support whatsoever to the HTPR.

In this book, Christopher Peacocke proposes a general theory about what it is for a thinker to be entitled to form a given belief. This theory is distinctively rationalist: that is, it gives a large role to the a priori, while insisting that the propositions or contents that can be known a priori are not in any way “true in virtue of meaning” (and without in any other way denigrating these propositions as “trivial”, or as propositions that “tell us nothing about the world”, or the like). Peacocke then applies this theory to several classical problems in epistemology — to the problem of how our sensory experiences can entitle us to form beliefs about the external world, to the problem of induction, and to the problem of what entitles us to form moral beliefs.

The fundamental principle of practical reasoning (if there is such a thing) must be a rule which we ought to follow in all our practical reasoning, and which cannot lead to irrational decisions. It must be a rule that it is possible for us to follow directly - that is, without having to follow any other rule of practical reasoning in order to do so. And it must be a basic principle, in the sense that the explanation of why we rationally ought to follow this rule lies purely in the structure of our rational capacities themselves (and not, for example, in empirical evidence that we merely happen to have). This fundamental principle, it is argued, requires that you decide to do something only if the basis of your decision is such that (i) it is rational for you to believe that you have given the matter enough thought, and (ii) your actual deliberation does not warrant the conclusion that the chosen option is definitely worse than some other option that you have considered. A decision formed through reasoning is rational if and only if the agent followed this rule in making the decision. The claim that this is the fundamental principle of practical reasoning conflicts with Hobbesian approaches because it implies that practical reasoning aims not only at satisfying desires, but at forming beliefs about which options are better than others. It conflicts with Kantian approaches because it implies that to think of something as a good thing to do is not just to think of it as a rational thing to choose. This account also shows how to solve some famous controversies surrounding practical reason: the key is to understand how the rationality of concluding that one option is better than another is affected by our desires, our estimates of probabilities, and our moral judgments.

This paper outlines a new approach to the task of giving an account of the meaning of moral statements: a sort of "conceptual role semantics", according to which the meaning of moral terms is given by their role in practical reasoning. This role is sufficient both to distinguish the meaning of any moral term from that of other terms, and to determine the property or relation (if any) that the term stands for. The paper ends by suggesting reasons for regarding this "conceptual role semantics" approach as preferable to noncognitivism, the causal theory of reference, and noncircular conceptual analysis.

According to John Broome, akrasia consists in a failure to intend to do something that one believes one ought to do, and such akrasia is necessarily irrational. In fact, however, failing to intend something that one believes one ought to do is only guaranteed to be irrational if one is certain of a maximally detailed proposition about what one ought to do; if one is uncertain about any part of the full story about what one ought to do, it could be perfectly rational not to intend to do something that one believes one ought to do. This paper seeks to remedy this problem, by proposing an anti-akrasia principle that covers cases of uncertainty (as well as cases of such complete certainty). It is argued that this principle is in effect the fundamental principle of practical rationality.

A concept that can be expressed by the term ‘rationality’ plays a central role in both epistemology and ethics -- and especially in formal epistemology and decision theory. It is argued here that when the term is used in this way, the concept of “rationality” is the concept of a kind of virtue, with all the central features that are ascribed to the virtues by Plato and Aristotle, among others. Interpreting rationality as a kind of virtue helps to solve several problems, such as the relations between “rationality” and “rational requirements” and between “propositional” and “doxastic justification”, and to answer objections to the thesis that “rationality” is a normative concept that are based on the principle that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’.

This is a book about normativity -- where the central normative terms are words like 'ought' and 'should' and their equivalents in other languages. It has three parts: The first part is about the semantics of normative discourse: what it means to talk about what ought to be the case. The second part is about the metaphysics of normative properties and relations: what is the nature of those properties and relations whose pattern of instantiation makes propositions about what ought to be the case true. The third part is about the epistemology of normative beliefs: how we could ever know, or even have rational or justified belief in, propositions about what ought to be the case

This paper provides a new argument for a position of Crispin Wright's: given that ethical statements can be embedded within all sorts of sentential operators and are subject to definite standards of warrantedness, they must have truth conditions. Allan Gibbard's normative logic' is the only noncognitivist logic that stands a chance of avoiding Geach's Fregean objection. But what, according to Gibbard, is the point of avoiding inconsistency in one's ethical statements? He must say that it is to ensure that one's ethical statements have a property that has certain features. But the only property that has those features is truth

Moral disagreement has long been thought to create serious problems for certain views in metaethics. More specifically, moral disagreement has been thought to pose problems for any metaethical view that rejects relativism—that is, for any view that implies that whenever two thinkers disagree about a moral question, at least one of those thinkers’ beliefs about the question is not correct. In this essay, I shall outline a solution to one of these problems. As I shall argue, it turns out in the end that this problem is not really a special problem about moral disagreement at all: it is a general problem about disagreement as such. For this reason, in the later sections of this essay, I shall turn to some general questions in epistemology, about the epistemic significance of disagreement.

According to epistemological internalism, the rationality of a belief supervenes purely on "internal facts" about the thinker's mind. But what are "internal facts"? Why does the rationality of a belief supervene on them? The standard answers are unacceptable. This paper proposes new answers. "Internal facts" are facts about the thinker's nonfactive mental states. The rationality of a belief supervenes on such internal facts because we need rules of belief revision that we can follow directly, not by means of following any other rules, and the proximate explanation of any belief revision always consists of such internal facts.

This article proposes a new theory of rational decision, distinct from both causal decision theory (CDT) and evidential decision theory (EDT). First, some intuitive counterexamples to CDT and EDT are presented. Then the motivation for the new theory is given: the correct theory of rational decision will resemble CDT in that it will not be sensitive to any comparisons of absolute levels of value across different states of nature, but only to comparisons of the differences in value between the available options within states of nature; however, the correct theory will also resemble EDT in that it will rely on conditional probabilities (not unconditional probabilities). The new theory gives a prominent role to the notion of a “benchmark” for each state of nature, by comparison with which the value of the available options in that state of nature are measured, and so it has been called the Benchmark Theory (BT). It is argued that BT gives the right verdict on the cases that seem to be counterexamples to CDT and EDT. Finally, some objections to BT are considered and answered.