(Oddie, Graham - 2009) -- BFA Award for Excellence in Research, Scholarly and Creative Work
Overview
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The main focus of Professor Oddie’s research for more than 20 years has been metaphysical realism, value realism, and scientific realism. He has authored, co-authored, or edited four other books, has written numerous articles, and has many works in progress. While remaining an active scholar, he served as chair of the philosophy department for several years and is currently serving as associate dean for the humanities and the arts in the College of Arts and Sciences. Professor Oddie’s book, Value, Reality, and Desire, received extraordinary attention from philosophers worldwide and is considered an important contemporary contribution to the idea of value realism. In the book, Oddie defended the idea of value realism, which conceives of the existence of objective values that exist independently of the mind and are not reducible to more basic properties. In other words, values actually exist and are not the expression of human fears and desires and do not vary from society to society. His peers from around the world expressed glowing admiration for his work. One key philosopher found it, “One of the two or three most interesting contributions to philosophy I have read over the last dozen years.” Another wrote, “I consider it to be the best defense of value realism ever to have been published,” arguing that it “. . . clearly belongs with the very best of contemporary work on the nature of value, and is in fact one of the most original and creative books I’ve read in any field of philosophy.”
