Ralph Wedgwood

Ralph Wedgwood will spend his CASBS fellowship working on ethical theory. Specifically, he aims to work out what would be the most plausible and coherent systematic theory that has the following two features: first, the theory accepts that all reasons for action are grounded in values – that is, in ways actions can be better or worse than alternatives; but, second, it rejects the central “consequentialist” idea that all that matters is “making the world a better place” – in effect, the idea that the end always justifies means, so long as the end is a better world overall. He is interested both in abstract questions about the formal structure of values, and in more substantive questions about how to explain what is valuable in various ways, and how these values combine to determine what we have, all things considered, most reason to do.

Wedgwood is professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California. He has worked extensively on ethics (especially meta-ethics) and epistemology. He also has a subsidiary interest in the history of ethics (especially Plato and the Stoics, and the early modern British moral philosophers who sought to revive Platonic or Stoic ideas in their own time).