Rate My Professor Matt Tedesco

Matthew Tedesco is Professor of Philosophy at Beloit College, a position he has held since 2004, coinciding with the year he received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Colorado at Boulder. He earned his M.A. in Philosophy from the same university in 2001 and his B.A. from Hofstra University in 1997. In addition to his primary role in the Philosophy Department, Tedesco serves as an affiliated faculty member in Environmental Studies, Health & Society, and Law & Justice. He also acts as the faculty director of the Advanced Mentoring Program, where he helps shape meaningful experiences for first-year students and supports them in discovering and pursuing their desired futures. His teaching encompasses a broad spectrum of courses designed to enhance critical thinking, including Biomedical Ethics, Environmental Ethics, Theories of Law and Justice, Ethical Theory, and Logic.

Tedesco's research focuses on ethical theory, with particular attention to consequentialism and the demands of morality, as well as practical ethics related to moral status and personhood, including questions about when personhood is acquired or ends and who possesses it. He has made contributions to philosophical literature through peer-reviewed publications, including "Intuitions and the Demands of Consequentialism" in Utilitas (2011), "Indirect consequentialism, suboptimality, and friendship" in Pacific Philosophical Quarterly (2006), "Dutch Protocols for Deliberately Ending the Life of Newborns: A Defence" in Journal of Bioethical Inquiry (2017), "Thomson’s Samaritanism Constraint" in Philosophy in the Contemporary World (2007), and "Theism, Naturalistic Evolution and the Probability of Reliable Cognitive Faculties" in Philo (2002). These works explore key issues in normative and applied ethics. Tedesco is recognized as an expert on a wide range of ethical questions, particularly in biomedical and environmental contexts, and his efforts extend to fostering clear and careful thinking about the world and individuals' roles within it.