•  62
    Reply to Catriona MacKenzie
    Philosophical Explorations 10 (3). 2007.
    In her excellent critique of my book Self to Self (2006), Catriona Mackenzie highlights three gaps in my view of the self. First, my effort to distinguish among different applications of the concept 'self' is not matched by any attempt to explain the interactions among the selves so distinguished. Second, in analyzing practical reasoning as aimed at self-understanding, I speak sometimes of causal-psychological understanding (e.g. in the paper titled 'The Centered Self') and sometimes of narrativ…Read more
  •  69
    Narrative Explanation
    Philosophical Review 112 (1): 1-25. 2003.
    A story does more than recount events; it recounts events in a way that renders them intelligible, thus conveying not just information but also understanding. We might therefore be tempted to describe narrative as a genre of explanation. When the police invite a suspect to “tell his story,” they are asking him to explain the blood on his shirt or his absence from home on the night of the murder; and whether he is judged to have a “good story” will depend on its adequacy as an explanation. Can we…Read more
  •  87
    XIV. Don't Worry, Feel Guilty
    Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 52 235-248. 2003.
    One can feel guilty without thinking that one actually is guilty of moral wrongdoing. For example, one can feel guilty about eating an ice cream or skipping aerobics, even if one doesn't take a moralistic view of self-indulgence. And one can feel guilty about things that aren't one's doing at all, as in the case of survivor's guilt about being spared some catastrophe suffered by others. Guilt without perceived wrongdoing may of course be irrational, but I think it is sometimes rational, and I wa…Read more
  •  1123
    From Self Psychology to Moral Philosophy
    Philosophical Perspectives 14 349-377. 2000.
    I have therefore decided to venture out of the philosophical armchair in order to examine the empirical evidence, as gathered by psychologists aiming to prove or disprove motivational conjectures like mine. By and large, this evidence is indirect in relation to my account of agency, since it is drawn from cases in which the relevant motive has been forced into the open by the manipulations of an experimenter. The resulting evidence doesn’t tend to show the mechanism of agency humming along in ac…Read more
  •  993
    The self as narrator
    In John Christman & Joel Anderson (eds.), Autonomy and the Challenges to Liberalism: New Essays, Cambridge University Press. 2005.
  •  245
    Foundations for Moral Relativism
    OpenBook Publishers. 2013.
    In Foundations for Moral Relativism, J. David Velleman shows that different communities can indeed be subject to incompatible moralities, because their local mores are rationally binding. At the same time, he explains why the mores of different communities, even when incompatible, are still variations on the same moral themes. The book thus maps out a universe of many moral worlds without, as Velleman puts it, "moral black holes”. The five self-standing chapters discuss such diverse topics as on…Read more
  •  952
    Self to self
    Philosophical Review 105 (1): 39-76. 1996.
  •  231
    Practical reflection
    Philosophical Review 94 (1): 33-61. 1985.
    “What do you see when you look at your face in the mirror?” asks J. David Velleman in introducing his philosophical theory of action. He takes this simple act of self-scrutiny as a model for the reflective reasoning of rational agents: our efforts to understand our existence and conduct are aided by our efforts to make it intelligible. Reflective reasoning, Velleman argues, constitutes practical reasoning. By applying this conception, _Practical Reflection_ develops philosophical accounts of int…Read more
  •  378
    How We Get Along
    Cambridge University Press. 2009.
    In How We Get Along, philosopher David Velleman compares our social interactions to the interactions among improvisational actors on stage. He argues that we play ourselves - not artificially but authentically, by doing what would make sense coming from us as we really are. And, like improvisational actors, we deal with one another in dual capacities: both as characters within the social drama and as players contributing to the shared performance. In this conception of social intercourse, Vellem…Read more
  •  1903
    What good is a will?
    In Anton Leist (ed.), Action in Context, De Gruyter. 2007.
    As a philosopher of action, I might be expected to believe that the will is a good thing. Actually, I believe that the will is a great thing - awesome, in fact. But I'm not thereby committed to its being something good. When I say that the will is awesome, I mean literally that it is a proper object of awe, a response that restrains us from abusing the will and moves us rather to use it respectfully, in a way that does it justice. To say that the will is a good thing, however, would imply that h…Read more
  •  152
    Dying
    Think 11 (32): 29-32. 2012.
    Some people hope to die in their sleep. Not me. I don't regret having been oblivious at my birth, but I don't want death to catch me napping
  •  218
    The Genesis of Shame
    Philosophy and Public Affairs 30 (1): 27-52. 2001.
    Peer Reviewed.
  •  310
    of (from Philosophy Papers Online)
  •  35
  •  1266
    On the aim of belief
    In J. David Velleman (ed.), The Possibility of Practical Reason, Monograph Collection (matt - Pseudo). pp. 244--81. 1996.
    This paper explores the sense in which belief "aims at the truth". In this course of this exploration, it discusses the difference between belief and make-believe, the nature of psychoanalytic explanation, the supposed "normativity of meaning", and related topics
  •  22
  •  2136
    The voice of conscience
    Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 99 (1). 1999.
    I reconstruct Kant's derivation of the Categorical Imperative (CI) as an argument that deduces what the voice of conscience must say from how it must sound - that is, from the authority that is metaphorically attributed to conscience in the form of a resounding voice. The idea of imagining the CI as the voice of conscience comes from Freud; and the present reconstruction is part of a larger project that aims to reconcile Kant's moral psychology with Freud's theory of moral development. As I reco…Read more
  •  1066
    Against the Right to Die
    Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 17 (6): 665-681. 1992.
    How a "right to die" may become a "coercive option".