Graham Oddie

overview

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.

selected papers

• "Propositional and credal accuracy in an indeterministic world", Synthese 199 (3-4) 2021: 9391-9410.
• "What Accuracy Could Not Be", British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 70  (2) 2019:551-580.
• “Value perception, properties and the primary bearers of value” in Anna Bergqvist and Robert Cowan (eds.) Evaluative Perception, (Oxford University Press, 2018), 239-258.
• “Truth and Truthlikeness”, in Glanzberg, M. (ed.)  Oxford Handbook of Truth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 625-648.
• "Non-naturalism, autonomy and entanglement" Topoi (2017): DOI: 10.1007/s11245-017-9454-z, pp. 1-14.
• “Desire and the good: finding the right fit”, in Deonna, J. and Lauria, F. The Nature of Desire (Oxford University Press, 2017), 29-56.
• “What do we see in museums?” in Harrison, V.S., Bergqvist, A. and Kemp, G., (eds.) Philosophy and Museums: Ethics, Aesthetics and Ontology.  Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, 79, (2016), pp. 217-240: 10.1017/S1358246116000047.
• “Fitting attitudes, finkish goods, and value appearances” Russ Schafer-Landau (ed.) Oxford Studies in Metaethics, (Oxford University Press, 2016), 74-101.
• “Value and desires” in Olson, J. and Hirose, I. (eds.) Oxford Handbook of Value  (Oxford University Press, 2015),  60-79.
• “Thinking Globally, Acting Locally: Partiality, Preferences and Perspective”, Les Ateliers De L’Éthique (La Revue de Créum) Special Issue on: Attitudes, Values, Environment Volume 9, numéro 2, été 2014,  57-81.
• “Content, consequence and likeness: on three approaches to verisimilitude and their compatibility” Synthese 190 (9):1647-1687 Jun 2013. http://www.springerlink.com/content/r53548780g7273g5/
• 56   “The fictionalist’s attitude problem”, (with Dan Demetriou) in Ethical Theory and Moral Practice. (2007), 10: 485-98.  (Primary author)
• “A refutation of Peircian idealism”, in Colin Cheyne (ed.) Rationality and Reality (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2006), 255-62.
• “Recombinant values”, Philosophical Studies 106 (2001), 259-92.
• “Scrumptious functions”, Grazer Philosophische Studien 62 (2001), 137-56.
• “Hume, the bad paradox and value realism”, Philo 4 (2001), 109-22.
• “Axiological atomism”, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 79 (2001), 313-32.
• “Permanent possibilities of sensation”, Philosophical Studies 98 (2000), 345-59.
• “Moral realism, moral relativism and moral rules (a compatibility argument)”, Synthese 117 (1999), 251-74.
• “Conditionalization, cogency and cognitive value”, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 48 (1997), 533-41.
• “Killing and letting-die: from bare differences to clear differences”, Philosophical Studies 88 (1997), 267-87.
• “Harmony, Purity, Truth”, Mind 103 (1994), 452-72.