Graham Oddie

Graham Oddie (PhD, London, 1979) began studying philosophy at the University of Otago (New Zealand). While Oddie was an undergraduate at Otago, Sir Karl Popper came for a year as a Visiting Professor. The Otago faculty were all instructed by the Chair to discuss Popper's ideas in the weekly colloquium. When it came to his turn, Pavel Tichý proved that Popper's theory of truthlikeness had the following devastating consequence: that no false proposition could be closer to the truth than any other. This was a disaster for Popper's account of scientific progress but for Oddie it came as a pleasant revelation: that in philosophy you could actually prove interesting stuff. This made a life in philosophy seem attractive. Not long after that, he began working with Tichý on a new idea for truthlikeness, and wrote a PhD on the topic at the London School of Economics, which morphed into the first book-length treatment of the topic: Likeness to Truth (Reidel, 1986). Oddie returned to Otago as a Lecturer, moving a few years later to be Professor and Chair of Philosophy at Massey University, and thence to CU Boulder in 1994. He served as Chair of the Philosophy Department for several years, and then as Associate Dean for Humanities and the Arts for several more. These days he is happy being a full-time philosopher again.

Areas of Interest: Metaphysics, Value Theory, Metaethics, Formal epistemology, Philosophical Logic, Aesthetics.

Current Research: current research is focused on metaphysics (in particular, a general role ontology), value theory (realism, additivity, epistemology), desire, preference, and cognitive value.

For more information, see Professor Oddie's personal website, entry on the PhilPapers website, and CV.