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245Foundations for Moral RelativismOpenBook 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
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231Practical reflectionPhilosophical 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
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530How We Get AlongCambridge 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
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1899What 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
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152DyingThink 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
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89Replies To Discussion On The Possibility of Practical ReasonPhilosophical Studies 121 (3): 277-298. 2004.
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1264On the aim of beliefIn 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
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1065Against the Right to DieJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 17 (6): 665-681. 1992.How a "right to die" may become a "coercive option".
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2132The voice of conscienceProceedings 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
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1153Color as a secondary qualityMind 98 (January): 81-103. 1989.Should a principle of charity be applied to the interpretation of the colour concepts exercised in visual experience? We think not. We shall argue, for one thing, that the grounds for applying a principle of charity are lacking in the case of colour concepts. More importantly, we shall argue that attempts at giving the experience of colour a charitable interpretation either fail to respect obvious features of that experience or fail to interpret it charitably, after all. Charity to visual experi…Read more
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197Self to SelfPhilosophical Review 105 (1): 39-76. 1996.Images of myself being Napoleon can scarcely merely be images of the physical figure of Napoleon.... They will rather be images of, for instance, the desolation at Austerlitz as viewed by me vaguely aware of my short stature and my cockaded hat, my hand in my tunic.
Princeton
Department Of Philosophy
Alumnus
Areas of Specialization
Moral Psychology |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Action |
Meta-Ethics |