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2136The 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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1066Against 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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199Self 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.
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1148Color 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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3406What Happens When Someone Acts?Mind 101 (403): 461-481. 1992.What happens when someone acts? A familiar answer goes like this. There is something that the agent wants, and there is an action that he believes conducive to its attainment. His desire for the end, and his belief in the action as a means, justify taking the action, and they jointly cause an intention to take it, which in turn causes the corresponding movements of the agent's body. I think that the standard story is flawed in several respects. The flaw that will concern me in this paper is that…Read more
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320Deciding how to decideIn Garrett Cullity & Berys Nigel Gaut (eds.), Ethics and practical reason, Oxford University Press. pp. 29--52. 1997.
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290The Possibility of Practical ReasonOxford University Press. 2000.Suppose that we want to frame a conception of reasons that isn't relativized to the inclinations of particular agents. That is, we want to identify particular things that count as reasons for acting simpliciter and not merely as reasons for some agents rather than others, depending on their inclinations. One way to frame such a conception is to name some features that an action can have and to say that they count as reasons for someone whether or not he is inclined to care about them. The proble…Read more
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39Book Review:Practical Reasoning about Final Ends Henry S. Richardson (review)Ethics 107 (1): 143-. 1996.
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1060Sociality and solitudePhilosophical Explorations 16 (3): 324-335. 2013.“How can I, who am thinking about the entire, centerless universe, be anything so specific as this: this measly creature existing in a tiny morsel of space and time?” This metaphysically self-deprecating question, posed by Thomas Nagel, holds an insight into the nature of personhood and the ordinary ways we value it, in others and in ourselves. I articulate that insight and apply it to the phenomena of friendship, companionship, sexuality, solitude, and love. Although love comes in many forms, I…Read more
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34How to Share an IntentionPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 57 (1): 29-50. 1997.Existing accounts of shared intention (by Bratman, Searle, and others) do not claim that a single token of intention can be jointly framed and executed by multiple agents; rather, they claim that multiple agents can frame distinct, individual intentions in such a way as to qualify as jointly intending something. In this respect, the existing accounts do not show that intentions can be shared in any literal sense. This article argues that, in failing to show how intentions can be literally shared…Read more
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415The Way of the WantonIn Kim Atkins & Catriona Mackenzie (eds.), Practical Identity and Narrative Agency, Routledge. 2007.Harry Frankfurt's philosophy of action as a prolegomenon to the Zhuangzi.
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51Self to Self: Selected EssaysCambridge University Press. 2005.Self to Self brings together essays on personal identity, autonomy, and moral emotions by the distinguished philosopher J. David Velleman. Although each of the essays was written as an independent piece, they are unified by an overarching thesis, that there is no single entity denoted by 'the self', as well as by themes from Kantian ethics, psychoanalytic theory, social psychology, and Velleman's work in the philosophy of action. Two of the essays were selected by the editors of Philosophers' An…Read more
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1187Physicalist theories of colorPhilosophical Review 100 (January): 67-106. 1991.The dispute between realists about color and anti-realists is actually a dispute about the nature of color properties. The disputants do not disagree over what material objects are like. Rather, they disagree over whether any of the uncontroversial facts about material objects--their powers to cause visual experiences, their dispositions to reflect incident light, their atomic makeup, and so on--amount to their having colors. The disagreement is thus about which properties colors are and, in par…Read more
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35Review: Replies to Discussion on "The Possibility of Practical Reason" (review)Philosophical Studies 121 (3). 2004.
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3091Narrative explanationPhilosophical 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
Princeton
Department Of Philosophy
Alumnus
Areas of Specialization
Moral Psychology |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Action |
Meta-Ethics |