Ralph Wedgwood

I'm interested in the philosophical study of normative questions -- questions about how we should live, how we should make choices, and what beliefs we should have. This area of investigation straddles both ethics and epistemology. I believe that making progress in this area requires integrating our ethical and epistemological theories with insights from other parts of philosophy -- especially with metaphysics and the philosophy of mind and language; it also requires not only traditional discursive philosophical arguments, but also the use of formal techniques, such as those of decision theory and formal epistemology. In trying to work out new theories in this area, I often seek inspiration in the history of ethics: I am particularly interested in Plato and the Stoics, and in those early modern philosophers who sought in their own time to revive some of the ideas of the Stoics (esp. Joseph Butler) or of Plato (esp. Richard Price).