Ralph Wedgwood

This essay gives an interpretation of the character of Thrasymachus in Plato’s _Republic_. Contrary to what recent commentators have claimed, Plato presents Thrasymachus as a horrifying figure, with a dark but coherent view of human life. According to this view, the principal good in life is domination over others: so in every significant interaction, one party is the winner, while the other is the loser. Justice is the vice of foolishly losing out to the more powerful, while injustice is the virtue of winning through one’s power and skill. Thrasymachus defends this account as revealing the deep phenomenon behind the law, and behind rulers’ declarations about justice and injustice. The _Republic_ as a whole is a response to Thrasymachus’ view of the intrinsic benefits of injustice and intrinsic disadvantages of justice. But Thrasymachus represents this view in its most horrifying form—foreshadowing the discussion of the tyrant in book 9.

Wedgwood focuses his discussion around two evaluative concepts: _correctness_ and _rationality_. Wedgwood proposes that these two concepts are related in the following way: one belief state is more rational than another if and only if the first has less expected inaccuracy than the former. He argues, however, that this view should not be understood as a form of consequentialism since it is not the _total_ consequences of a belief state that determine its rationality. The view is rather a version of _epistemic teleology_. Wedgwood deploys this view to illuminate the difference between synchronic and diachronic evaluation of belief states as well as to disarm objections that have been leveled against epistemic consequentialism.

Many philosophers argue that non-sceptical moral realists cannot adequately explain the sort of moral disagreement that exists. This chapter responds to this argument, focusing on what might seem a particularly hard case for non-sceptical moral realists to explain – moral disagreement among philosophers. First, this apparent problem for non-sceptical moral realism is explored. Then an account is offered of the distinctive methods of moral theory. This account allows for two sources of error in moral theories: (a) in our pre-theoretical intuitions, and (b) in the way in which we articulate and evaluate theories by pursuing reflective equilibrium. In conclusion, it is argued that moral theorists are not entitled to very high levels of confidence that they have correctly identified the ultimate first principles of morality, but this is entirely compatible with ordinary thinkers’ knowing a large number of moral truths.

This chapter proposes an inferentialist account of the a priori. First, an account is given of what it is for an inference to be justified a priori; then it is explained how a priori justified inferences can generate a priori justified beliefs. The account is based on a conception of inference that results from combining a generalization of the notion of degrees of conditional belief with the “natural deduction” approach. For an inference to be justified, the disposition that the thinker manifests in making the inference must be rational; and when the rationality of the disposition is explained purely by the thinker’s possession of certain basic cognitive capacities (such as the thinker’s possession of certain concepts or the like), the inference is justified a priori. This conception of the a priori has several advantages—notably, that it makes no appeal to any mysterious faculty of “intuition” or “rational insight.”

Most of us believe the following two theses: (i) we are all subject to non-trivial moral requirements; and (ii) whenever we are subject to a moral requirement, we have overriding or compelling reason for acting accordingly. But why exactly are these two theses true? This chapter explores how that question might be answered within the context of a value-based conception of reasons — according to which all reasons for action arise from the way in which the available acts count, in various ways, as good or bad things to do. It seems that only the moral reasons that ground moral requirements are overriding; supererogatory moral reasons are not overriding in the same way. It is argued here that the former moral reasons are overriding, not because they 'disable' or 'silence' all countervailing non-moral reasons, but simply because they outweigh them. It is suggested that these moral reasons outweigh those competing reasons because moral values are in a sense “big values”, liable to generate especially weighty reasons that outweigh the reasons that arise from other values.

This chapter offers an account of ‘instrumental rationality’, by clarifying (a) the nature of instrumental reasoning, and (b) what it is to do instrumental reasoning in a rational way. Joseph Raz was wrong to claim that instrumental rationality is a ‘myth’ (although some philosophers have been seduced by myths about instrumental rationality); the accounts of John Broome and Kieran Setiya cover only a small fraction of instrumental reasoning; and orthodox decision theory involves idealizing assumptions that prevent it from having anything to say about instrumental reasoning. In fact, instrumental reasoning exemplifies a more general phenomenon: because we make decisions in a piecemeal way, we have to integrate these decisions together. To do this rationally, one’s intentions must make it rational for one to have a certain sort of _expectation_ that one will carry out one’s intentions, and that this will result in one’s acting in a suitably valuable way.

The first part of the essay explores the relations between the will and practical reason or judgement. The second part takes up decision in the realm of belief, i.e. deciding that such and such is so. This phenomenon raises two questions. Since we decide _that_ as well as _to_, should we speak of a doxastic will? Secondly, should we regard ourselves as active in the formation of our judgements as in the formation of our intentions? The author's answer to these two further questions is ‘no’ and ‘yes’, respectively: the boundaries between the active and the passive are not marked by the will.

Many philosophers have claimed that the intentional is normative. (This claim is the analogue, within the philosophy of mind, of the claim that is often made within the philosophy of language, that meaning is normative.) But what exactly does this claim mean? And what reason is there for believing it? In this paper, I shall first try to clarify the content of the claim that the intentional is normative. Then I shall examine a number of the arguments that philosophers have advanced for this claim (and for the parallel claim that meaning is normative). As we shall see, many of these arguments are unsuccessful. However, I shall close by giving a sketch of what may be a successful argument for this claim.

How can moral theorists who reject consequentialism in all its forms explain what we should choose in the presence of uncertainty? A solution is proposed here: decision-theoretic virtue ethics (DTVE). DTVE provides an account of what makes acts subjectively permissible in cases where the agent is uncertain about the morally relevant facts, and also of what makes acts objectively permissible in cases where these facts are themselves indeterministic. More specifically, DTVE is act focused: it focuses on the virtue-properties—such as justice or prudence or beneficence—that are instantiated by the available acts themselves (not by the agents or consequences of those acts). These virtues come in degrees: some acts are more just, or more beneficent, than others. In this way, this kind of virtue ethics is an essentially scalar view: this is what allows it to be united with decision theory in a precise and coherent way.

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.

Normal agents in the actual world are limited: they cannot think about all the options that are available to them—or even about all options that are available to them according to their evidence. Moreover, agents cannot choose an option unless they have thought about that option. Such agents can be irrational in two ways: either by making their choice too quickly, without canvassing enough options, or by wasting time canvassing ever more options when they have already thought of enough options. This chapter proposes an account of this kind of rationality for limited agents. To be rational, such agents need a kind of background sensitivity to whether or not continuing to search for more options has greater expected value than deciding right away. According to this proposal, it is the unavoidable predicament of choice that all rational decision-making depends on the unconscious operation of mental dispositions.

Richard Price’s moral epistemology provides a distinctive account, not only of the sources of our moral knowledge, but also of its limits – that is, of the moral truths that we do not and even cannot know. According to this moral epistemology, the fundamental moral truths are necessary rather than contingent; if they are knowable at all, they are knowable a priori. In general, fundamental moral truths are akin to mathematical truths. Specifically, these necessary moral truths are grounded in the essences of act-types, which are knowable through ‘intuition’ if knowable at all. However, Price firmly rejects utilitarianism, recognizing several different ‘branches of virtue’, which can conflict with each other. As he argues, we cannot know the truth about act-types that exemplify such conflicting branches of virtue if the competing considerations are too finely balanced. This view of moral epistemology is compared with those of several other philosophers, including W. D. Ross. It is argued that Price has a more unified view than Ross: for Price, all moral knowledge flows from a priori intuition, but this is compatible with our being ignorant of many of the fine details of the fundamental truths of morality.

This is a discussion of Mark Schroeder’s book Reasons First. In this book, Schroeder defends the following thesis: for every believer and every time, it is the reasons that the believer has at that time that determine what it is rational for the believer to believe at that time. It is argued here that this thesis is false, since it conflicts with the plausible principle of “normative invariance”: what a believer ought to believe at a time cannot depend on what the believer actually believes at that time. Schroeder’s thesis conflicts with this principle because Schroeder accepts that what reasons a believer has at a time always depends, at least in part, on the beliefs that the believer has at the time. The conclusion to be drawn is that, if this principle of normative invariance is correct, the notions of “reasons” and “evidence” should be banished from fundamental epistemology.

It is widely assumed that our “evidence” is at least one source of the “justification” that we have for believing things—where this notion of “justification” seems to be a normative notion. More precisely, it seems to be an agential normative notion, evaluating the different possible attitudes that are available to an agent at a time, on the basis of facts that are just “given”—that is, facts that it is not available to the agent to change through the way in which she exercises her reasoning capacities at that time. However, given the meaning that the term “evidence” has in everyday English, what is in this sense “given” to you cannot be identified with your current “evidence”. First, some propositions count as part of the “evidence” that you now have precisely in virtue of the fact that you now believe those propositions; but these beliefs are not part of what is now “given” to you—they are themselves among the attitudes whose justification is in question. Secondly, what is now “given” to you arguably includes facts about what you believed in the past—but such facts cannot naturally be called part of your current “evidence” unless you now know or believe these facts. In fact, it seems, the concept “evidence” does not really belong to individualistic epistemology, but to social epistemology: the function of “evidence” is that it is what we can use to show that something is true to the contextually relevant audience.

The contemporary debate on the metaphysical side of metaethics is dominated by two paradigms—reductive naturalism and primitivist non- naturalism. It is argued here that these are both extreme views. In principle, it should be possible for there to be a host of intermediate views between these two extremes. In fact, most of the views that were taken on these metaphysical questions by philosophers of ancient and medieval times differed from both reductive naturalism and primitivist non-naturalism. However, the metaphysical views of these past philosophers cannot easily be endorsed today. This is because our conception of the natural world has changed from that of these premodern thinkers, because of the development of modern natural science. Nonetheless, it is still possible to make sense of intermediate positions, lying between the two extremes of reductive naturalism and primitivist non- naturalism. These intermediate positions are prima facie promising, and deserve careful consideration from contemporary metaethicists.

Hierocles, a Stoic of the second century CE, famously deployed an image of the ‘concentric circles’ that surround each of us. The image should not be read as advocating absolute impartiality (in the style of classical utilitarianism) or as illustrating the Stoic theory of oikeiōsis. Instead, it is designed to illustrate how it is ‘appropriate to act’ in certain cases. Like other Stoics, Hierocles bases his investigation of appropriate acts on what is ‘in accordance with nature’. According to his view, each of us has a duty of mutual aid towards every other human being—but a weightier duty towards those who are socially closer than those who are more distant. The fundamental principle is that each of us has the duty of being an ‘ally’ of every other human being in serving the natural purposes of all the circles to which we and that other human being both belong.

This book gives a general theory of rational belief. Although it can be read by itself, it is a sequel to the author’s previous book, The Value of Rationality (Oxford, 2017). It takes the general conception of rationality that was developed in that earlier book and combines it with an account of the varieties of belief, and of what it is for these beliefs to count as “correct”, to provide an account of what it is for beliefs to count as rational. According to this account, rationality comes in degrees: the degree to which a belief-system counts as rational is determined by its distance from a corresponding probability function—where this distance is measured by those beliefs’ “expected degree of incorrectness” according to the probability function; the account also explains what determines exactly which probability function plays this role in each case. In developing and defending this account, light is shed on several central epistemological issues. These issues include: the distinction between propositional and doxastic justification; the debates between internalism and externalism, and between foundationalism and coherentism; the relationship between credences, full belief, inference, and suspension of judgment; the kind of possibility that is presupposed by the relevant sort of probability; and whether rationality is “diachronic”—so that the beliefs that it is rational for us to have now depend, in part, on the beliefs that we held in the past.

This essay defends a version of the Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE) – the doctrine that there is normally a stronger reason against an act that has a bad state of affairs as one of its intended effects than against an otherwise similar act that has that bad state of affairs as an unintended effect. First, a precise account of this version of the DDE is given. Secondly, some suggestions are made about why we should believe the DDE, and about why it is true. Finally, a solution is developed to the so-called ‘closeness problem’ that any version of the DDE must face.