Ralph Wedgwood has accepted our invitation to become the Guest Professor at the seventh Summer School in 2012. This year, the Summer School will take place immediately after the summer semester, from July 16 to July 20.

Since spring of this year, Prof. Wedgwood is at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, which is one of the most renowned universities of the United States. Before that, he taught at Merton College at the University of Oxford. Wedgwood obtained his PhD at Cornell University in Ithaca (USA) with a dissertation on moral epistemology, before teaching at the MIT in Boston for a couple of years.

His main research areas are in epistemology and metaethics, where his publications have gained worldwide recognition. He is among the most prominent young philosophers working at the interface of these two normative core disciplines of philosophy. Wedgwood advocates internalist accounts in both epistemology and the philosophy of language, i.e. he argues that a person’s environment is not essentially involved in determining either the epistemic justification of her beliefs or the content of her concepts and thoughts. In his book The Nature of Normativity (Oxford University Press, 2007), Wedgwood developed a comprehensive realist theory of normativity. In his view, normative facts about what we should do or believe are as much an objective part of reality as, for instance, physical facts. He addresses the explanatory problems raised by such a view in a most original way, by combining his normative realism with the thesis that intentional mental states (such as beliefs, desires, and decisions) are essentially normative states. Wedgwood has a variety of further research interests, for example in the debate on the role of disagreement in philosophy, in applied ethics, early modern philosophy, and the philosophy of Plato.

Beyond that, he frequently contributes to the public debate in his home country England on matters of ethics and educational policy. He is in high demand as a dedicated speaker, teacher, and discussion partner on a global scale. What distinguishes Wedgwood from the previous Guest Professors of the Summer School is that he, having obtained a Bachelor in (among others) German Studies as a young man at Oxford University, is still fluent in German and has even given a number of talks in German. In particular the informal exchange with students and colleagues in Cologne will certainly benefit from this fact.

In accordance with Wedgwood’s main research areas, the Summer School in 2012 will deal with epistemic normativity and its relations with metaethics, internalism, probabilistic principles in epistemology and with the possibility of a priori knowledge.

About the Cologne Summer School in Philosophy

The goal of the Cologne Summer School is to provide an opportunity for highly motivated students and researchers to exchange their ideas about fundamental philosophical issues in close contact with an internationally renowned philosopher. Philosophical work across borders and disciplines is welcomed. This is reflected by the participation of students from all over the world and from different fields of research. In past years the Kölner Gymnasial- und Stiftungsfonds has generously supported the Summer School which has repeatedly received positive responses from the media.