Peter Albert Railton (born May 23, 1950) is an American philosopher who is Gregory S. Kavka Distinguished University Professor and John Stephenson Perrin Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he has taught since 1979.
[1] He earned his Ph.D. from Princeton in 1980, writing a dissertation under the supervision of David K. Lewis.
[3] A public lecture he gave concerning his own struggles with depression attracted widespread notice and praise in the academic community.
His main research since centers on contemporary metaethics and normative ethics (especially consequentialism).
He is the author of the book Facts, Values and Norms (Cambridge University Press, 2003), a collection of his major papers in ethics, and a co-editor (with Stephen Darwall and Allan Gibbard) of Moral Discourse and Practice: Some Philosophical Approaches (Oxford University Press, 1996).