-
569Thinking Globally, Acting Locally: Partiality, Preferences and PerspectiveLes ateliers de l'éthique/The Ethics Forum 9 (2): 57-81. 2014.A rather promising value theory for environmental philosophers combines the well-known fitting attitude (FA) account of value with the rather less well-known account of value as richness. If the value of an entity is proportional to its degree of richness (which has been cashed out in terms of unified complexity and organic unity), then since natural entities, such as species or ecosystems, exhibit varying degrees of richness quite independently of what we happen to feel about them, they also po…Read more
-
Partial Interpretation, Meaning Variance, and IncommensurabilityIn Kostas Gavroglu, Yourgos Goudaroulis & P. Nicolacopolous (eds.), Imre Lakatos and Theories of Scientific Change, Reidel. pp. 305-22. 1989.
-
155Killing and letting-die: Bare differences and clear differencesPhilosophical Studies 88 (3): 267-287. 1997.
-
ControlIn R. Durrant (ed.), Essays in Honour of Gwen Taylor, University of Otago Press. pp. 190-210. 1981.
-
141Backwards causation and the permanence of the pastSynthese 85 (1). 1990.Can a present or future event bring about a past event? An answer to this question is demanded by many other interesting questions. Can anybody, even a god, do anything about what has already occurred? Should we plan for the past, as well as for the future? Can anybody precognise the future in a way quite different from normal prediction? Do the causal laws and the past jointly preclude free action? Does current physical theory entail a consistent version of backwards causation? Recent articles …Read more
-
111Axiological atomismAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 79 (3). 2001.Value is either additive or else it is subject to organic unity. In general we have organic unity where a complex whole is not simply the sum of its parts. Value exhibits organic unity if the value of a complex, whether a complex state or complex quality, is greater or less than the sum of the values of its components or parts. Whether or not value is additive might be thought to be of purely metaphysical interest, but it is also connected with important aspects of evaluative reasoning. Additivi…Read more
-
Values educationIn Harvey Siegel (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Education, Oxford University Press. 2009.
-
Truth, verification, confirmation, verisimilitudeIn Smelser Niel J. (ed.), International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, Elsevier. pp. 12857-64. 2001.
-
181TruthlikenessStanford Encyclopedia. 2014.Truth is the aim of inquiry. Nevertheless, some falsehoods seem to realize this aim better than others. Some truths better realize the aim than other truths. And perhaps even some falsehoods realize the aim better than some truths do. The dichotomy of the class of propositions into truths and falsehoods should thus be supplemented with a more fine-grained ordering — one which classifies propositions according to their closeness to the truth, their degree of truthlikeness or verisimilitude. The l…Read more
-
2Truth and TruthlikenessIn Glanzberg M. (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Truth, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.
-
54Likeness to TruthReidel. 1986.What does it take for one proposition to be closer to the truth than another. In this, the first published monograph on the topic, Oddie develops a comprehensive theory that takes the likeness in truthlikeness seriously.
-
Experiences of valueIn Charles R. Pigden (ed.), Hume on Motivation and Virtue, Palgrave-macmillan. pp. 121. 2009.
-
480What Do we See in Museums?Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 79 217-240. 2016.I address two related questions. First: what value is there in visiting a museum and becoming acquainted with the objects on display? For art museums the answer seems obvious: we go to experience valuable works of art, and experiencing valuable works of art is itself valuable. In this paper I focus on non-art museums, and while these may house aesthetically valuable objects, that is not their primary purpose, and at least some of the objects they house might not be particularly aesthetically val…Read more
-
78What's wrong?: applied ethicists and their critics (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2004.What's Wrong?: Applied Ethicists and Their Critics is a thorough and engaging introduction to applied ethics that covers virtually all of the issues in the field. Featuring more than ninety-five articles, it addresses standard topics--such as abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, world hunger, and animal rights--and also delves into cutting-edge areas like cloning, racial profiling, same-sex marriage, prostitution, and slave reparations. The volume includes seminal essays by prominent philos…Read more
-
19The Unity of TheoriesIn Fred D'Agostino & I. C. Jarvie (eds.), Freedom and Rationality, Reidel. pp. 343--368. 1989.
-
3The moral case for the legalization of voluntary euthanasiaVictoria University of Wellington Law Review 28 207-24. 1998.
-
Reduction: varieties ofIn N. J. Smelser & B. Baltes (eds.), International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, . pp. 12. 2001.
-
344Moral realism, moral relativism and moral rules (a compatibility argument)Synthese 117 (2): 251-274. 1998.
Boulder, Colorado, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
Value Theory |
Philosophy of Probability |
Meta-Ethics |
Areas of Interest
1 more
Epistemology |
Metaphysics |
Aesthetics |
Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Philosophy of Probability |