[This is the last most-underrated until September.]
I welcome private and public nominations for my weekly, most-underrated philosopher of the week post! Here are the rules: 1. no dead people; 2. no people currently or about to be employed in a Leiter top 50 (or equivalent) department (even thought these are also filled with underrated folk); 3. no former dissertation advisors, or other teachers from graduate school; 4. no former students; 5. No tenure-track or junior folk; 6a: Excellence in more than one AOS, or 6b: noticeable public impact. (That is I want to recognize interesting philosophers, not just hyperspecialized ones!)
This week's most-underrated philosopher of the week, Jay Odenbaugh, teaches at Lewis & Clark (in the same department as an earlier winner, Becko Copenhaver). Jay is a world-class philosopher of biology, who works on the ontology of mathematical models, the nature of ecology, the nature of complexity, the relationship between science and values (and politics), especially environmental ethics, and (like many other splendid philosophers of philosophy) on the history of biology and its philosophy. Jay's first (I think?) major publication exhibits many of his academic virtues--he takes on a technical issue in philosophy of science (with mathematical and conceptual challenges) that has significant public policy ramifications; he works through the issues in order to reach a reasoned (and surprisingly hopeful) conclusion.
One aspect that I admire about Jay's work is that he is not afraid to practice what one might call normative philosophy of science. He not merely clarifies what science is up to, but is also willing to articulate what -- given their immanent commitments -- sciences should be willing to do (check out this paper, which blew me away when I first read it). It should come as no surprise that Jay has entered the climate science battle (here) [he has more faith in 'consensus' science than I do, although I agree with his policy conclusions].
My favorite piece is a classic article on evidential arguments and constraints on theoryin the context of attempts to model very complex systems. It is rich on detail on scientific practice without losing sight of a central (even old-fashioned) question in the philosophy of science--the nature of testing. It engages with a host of philosophical challenges, while illuminating the nature of evidential arguments. Along the way, it vindicates attempts to think of ecology as, in part, a lab science (I found this very surprising).
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