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155Killing and letting-die: Bare differences and clear differencesPhilosophical Studies 88 (3): 267-287. 1997.
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ControlIn R. Durrant (ed.), Essays in Honour of Gwen Taylor, University of Otago Press. pp. 190-210. 1981.
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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
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110Axiological 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
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Values educationIn Harvey Siegel (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Education, Oxford University Press. 2009.
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Truth, verification, confirmation, verisimilitudeIn Smelser Niel J. (ed.), International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, Elsevier. pp. 12857-64. 2001.
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180TruthlikenessStanford 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
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2Truth and TruthlikenessIn Glanzberg M. (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Truth, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.
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53Likeness 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.
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Experiences of valueIn Charles R. Pigden (ed.), Hume on Motivation and Virtue, Palgrave-macmillan. pp. 121. 2009.
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468What 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
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74What'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
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19The Unity of TheoriesIn Fred D'Agostino & I. C. Jarvie (eds.), Freedom and Rationality, Reidel. pp. 343--368. 1989.
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3The moral case for the legalization of voluntary euthanasiaVictoria University of Wellington Law Review 28 207-24. 1998.
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Reduction: varieties ofIn N. J. Smelser & B. Baltes (eds.), International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, . pp. 12. 2001.
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343Moral realism, moral relativism and moral rules (a compatibility argument)Synthese 117 (2): 251-274. 1998.
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Control, consequence and compatibilismIn T. Childers (ed.), Between Words and Worlds, Filosofia. pp. 143-56. 2000.
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266Conditionalization, cogency, and cognitive valueBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 48 (4): 533-541. 1997.Why should a Bayesian bother performing an experiment, one the result of which might well upset his own favored credence function? The Ramsey-Good theorem provides a decision theoretic answer. Provided you base your decision on expected utility, and the the experiment is cost-free, performing the experiment and then choosing has at least as much expected utility as choosing without further ado. Furthermore, doing the experiment is strictly preferable just in case at least one possible outcome …Read more
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38The core of the truthmaker research program is that true propositions are made true by appropriate parts of the actual world. This idea seems to give realists their best shot at capturing a robust account of the dependence of truth on the world. For a part of the world to be a truthmaker for a particular it must suffice for, or necessitate, the truth of the proposition. There are two extreme and unsatisfactory truthmaker theories. At one extreme any part of the world (up to and including the who…Read more
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2Truthlikeness and ValueIn Pihlstrom S. (ed.), Approaching Truth: Essays in Honour of Ilkka Niiniluoto, College Publications. pp. 225-40. 2008.
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12Is Science Progressive (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 38 (2): 272-276. 1987.
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141Harmony, purity, truthMind 103 (412): 451-472. 1994.David Lewis has argued against the thesis he calls "Desire as Belief", claiming it is incompatible with the fundamentals of evidential decision theory. I show that the argument is unsound, and demonstrate that a version of desire as belief is compatible with a version of causal decision theory.
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A decision theoretic argument against human embryo experimentationIn M. Fricke (ed.), Essays in honor of Bob Durrant, University of Otago Press. pp. 111-27. 1986.
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