Philosophy Papers Online: Author Display

J. David Velleman	Against the Right to Die
	Ethics	None
	How a "right to die" may become a "coercive option". Show Abstract
J. David Velleman	Bodies, Selves
	Philosophy of Action	Philosophy of Mind
	I argue that participants in a virtual world such as "Second Life" exercise genuine agency via their avatars. Indeed, their avatars are fictional bodies with which they act in the virtual world, just as they act in the real world with their physical bodies. Hence their physical bodies can be regarded as their default avatars. I also discuss recent research into "believable" software agents, which are designed on principles borrowed from the character-based arts, especially cinematic animation as practiced by the artists at Disney and Warner Brothers Studios. I claim that these agents exemplify a kind of autonomy that should be of greater interest to philosophers than that exemplified by the generic agent modeled in current philosophical theory. The latter agent is autonomous by virtue of being governed by itself; but a believable agent appears to be governed by a self, which is the anima by which it appears to be animated. Putting these two discussions together, I suggest that philosophers of action should focus their attention on how we animate our bodies. Show Abstract
J. David Velleman	Deciding How to Decide
	Philosophy of Action	None
	By “deciding how to decide,” I mean using practical reasoning to regulate one's principles of practical reasoning. David Gauthier has suggested that deciding how to decide is something that every rational agent does. According to Gauthier, we assess rival principles of practical reasoning, which tell us how to choose among actions; and assessing how to choose among actions certainly sounds like deciding how to decide. One of my goals in this essay is to argue, in opposition to Gauthier, that assessing rival principles of practical reasoning is a job for theoretical rather than practical reasoning. How to decide is something that we discover rather than decide. The idea that our principles of practical reasoning can be regulated by practical reasoning is essential to Gauthier's defence of his own, somewhat unorthodox conception of those principles. And although I do not endorse the specifics of Gauthier's conception, I do endorse its spirit. There is a flaw in the orthodox conception of practical reasoning, and Gauthier has put his finger on it. Unfortunately, Gauthier's account of why it is a flaw, and how it should be fixed, ultimately rests on practical considerations, whose relevance is open to question if, as I believe, practical reasoning cannot regulate itself. This essay therefore has a second goal, which complicates matters considerably. Although I want to reject Gauthier's notion that we decide how to decide, I also want to preserve what rests upon that notion, in Gauthier's view: I want to resettle Gauthier's critique of the orthodoxy on a new foundation. Show Abstract
J. David Velleman	Epistemic Freedom
	Philosophy of Action	Epistemology
	Epistemic freedom is the freedom to affirm any one of several incompatible propositions without risk of being wrong. We sometimes have this freedom, strange as it seems, and our having it sheds some light on the topic of free will and determinism. Show Abstract
J. David Velleman	Family History
	Ethics	None
	On the ethics of donor conception. Show Abstract
J. David Velleman, Thomas Hofweber	How to Endure
	Metaphysics	None
	No abstract
J. David Velleman	How to Share an Intention
	Philosophy of Action	None
	An explanation of how intentions can be literally shared. Show Abstract
J. David Velleman	How We Get Along
	Meta-ethics	Philosophy of Action
	This is the manuscript of a book on meta-ethics. From the Introduction: Maybe the grounding of morality lies closer to the social surface than philosophers like to think, neither in the structure of practical reason nor in a telos of human nature but rather in our mundane ways of muddling through together — that is, in how we get along. Our ways of getting along must themselves rest on the bedrock of practical reason and human nature, but they may form, as it were, a layer of topsoil without which morality could never take root. If so, then asking how moral norms can sprout straight out of our rationality or humanity may be futile. Show Abstract
J. David Velleman	On the Aim of Belief
	Philosophy of Mind	Philosophy of Action
	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. Show Abstract
J. David Velleman	So It Goes
	Metaphysics	None
	Derek Parfit finally meets the Buddha -- on Tralfamadore! This paper is also archived at SSRN. Show Abstract
J. David Velleman	The Gift of Life
	Ethics	None
	This is the first of three papers on questions of identity, existence, and nonexistence. (The other two are "Love and Nonexistence" and "The Identity Problem".) In this paper I draw on Seana Shiffrin's work on wrongful life to argue that human life is not a gift but a predicament, and that a biological parent's obligation to help offspring cope with that predicament cannot be contracted out to others at will. Show Abstract
J. David Velleman	The Guise of the Good
	Philosophy of Action	None
	The agent portrayed in much philosophy of action is, let's face it, a square. He does nothing intentionally unless he regards it or its consequences as desirable. The reason is that he acts intentionally only when he acts out of a desire for some anticipated outcome; and in desiring that outcome, he must regard it as having some value. All of his intentional actions are therefore directed at outcomes regarded sub specie boni: under the guise of the good. This agent is conceived as being capable of intentional action—and hence as being an agent—only by virtue of being a pursuer of value. I want to question whether this conception of agency can be correct. Surely, so general a capacity as agency cannot entail so narrow a cast of mind. Our moral psychology has characterized, not the generic agent, but a particular species of agent, and a particularly bland species of agent, at that. It has characterized the earnest agent while ignoring those agents who are disaffected, refractory, silly, satanic, or punk. I hope for a moral psychology that has room for the whole motley crew. I shall begin by examining why some philosophers have thought that the attitudes motivating intentional actions involve judgments of value. I shall then argue that their conception of these attitudes is incorrect. Finally, I shall argue that practical reason should not be conceived as a faculty for pursuing value. Show Abstract
J. David Velleman	The Possibility of Practical Reason
	Philosophy of Action	Ethics
	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 problem with the resulting conception, as we have seen, is that it entails the normative judgment that one ought to be inclined to care about the specified features, on pain of irrationality, and this normative judgment requires justification. The advantage of internalism is that it avoids these normative commitments. It says that things count as reasons for someone only if he is inclined to care about them, and so it leaves the normative question of whether to care about them entirely open. Yet if we try to leave this question open, by defining things as reasons only for those inclined to care about them, we'll end up with a definition that's relativized to the inclinations of particular agents—won't we? Not necessarily. For suppose that all reasons for acting are features of a single kind, whose influence depends on a single inclination. And suppose that the inclination on which the influence of reasons depends is, not an inclination that distinguishes some agents from others, but rather an inclination that distinguishes agents from nonagents. In that case, to say that these features count as reasons only for those who are inclined to care about them will be to say that they count as reasons only for agents—which will be to say no less than that they are reasons for acting, period, since applying only to agents is already part of the concept of reasons for acting. The restriction on the application of reasons will drop away from our definition, since it restricts their application, not to some proper subset of agents, but rather to the set of all agents, which is simply the universe of application for reasons to act. Show Abstract
J. David Velleman	The Story of Rational Action
	Decison Theory	Ethics
	Decision theory comprises, first, a mathematical formalization of the relations among value, belief, and preference; and second, a set of prescriptions for rational preference. Both aspects of the theory are embodied in a single mathematical proof. The problem in the foundations of decision theory is to explain how elements of one and the same proof can serve both functions. I hope to solve this problem in a way that anchors the decision-theoretic norms of rational preference in fundamental intuitions about rationality in general. I will thus depart from the tradition of anchoring those norms in intui-tions about gambling strategies or preference structures of the sort that are the special concern of the theory itself. Although my interpretation is meant to capture what is right about the decision-theoretic conception of rational preference, it will lead me to argue that there is also something fundamentally wrong about that conception. In my view, decision theory tells us how to be rational in our preferences because it tells us how to have preferences that make sense; but there are ways of making sense that outrun, and may in fact conflict with, the prescriptions of decision theory. Show Abstract
J. David Velleman	What Happens When Someone Acts?
	Philosophy of Action	None
	How agent causation can be accommodated in a world of event-causation. Show Abstract

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