What's the Point of Blame? A Paradigm Based Explanation (original) (raw)

Blame and Fault: Toward a New Conative Theory of Blame

Bernáth, László, Blame and Fault: Toward a Conative Theory of Blame. Disputatio: International Journal of Philosophy, 12 (59). pp. 371-94. , 2020

This paper outlines a new conative theory of blame. I argue that the best-known conative approaches to blame (Scanlon 1998, 2008, Sher 2006a) misrepresent the cognitive and dispositional components of blame. Section 1 argues, against Scanlon and Sher, that blaming involves the judgment that an act or state is the fault of the blamed. I also propose an alternative dispositional condition on which blaming only occurs if it matters to the blamer whether the blamed gets the punishment that she deserves. In Section 2, I discuss objections to judgment-based accounts of blame (that they cannot tell the difference between blaming and judging to be blameworthy, that they cannot explain why blame is often accompanied by emotion, and that they cannot make sense of irrational blame), and I argue that my proposal can handle all of them.

The Nature and Ethics of Blame

Philosophy Compass, Vol. 7, No. 3, 2012

Blame is usually discussed in the context of the free will problem, but recently moral philosophers have begun to examine it on its own terms. If, as many suppose, free will is to be understood as the control relevant to moral responsibility, and moral responsibility is to be understood in terms of whether blame is appropriate, then an independent inquiry into the nature and ethics of blame will be essential to solving (and, perhaps, even fully understanding) the free will problem. In this article we first survey and categorize recent accounts of the nature of blame – is it action, belief, emotion, desire, or something else? – and then we look at several proposed requirements on appropriate blame that look beyond the transgressor himself, considerations that will form part of a full account of the ethics of blame.

The self-effacing functionality of blame

Philosophical Studies

This paper puts forward an account of blame combining two ideas that are usually set up against each other: that blame performs an important function, and that blame is justified by the moral reasons making people blameworthy rather than by its functionality. The paper argues that blame could not have developed in a purely instrumental form, and that its functionality itself demands that its functionality be effaced in favour of non-instrumental reasons for blame—its functionality is self-effacing. This notion is sharpened and it is shown how it offers an alternative to instrumentalist or consequentialist accounts of blame which preserves their animating insight while avoiding their weaknesses by recasting that insight in an explanatory role. This not only allows one to do better justice to the authority and autonomy of non-instrumental reasons for blame, but also reveals that autonomy to be a precondition of blame’s functionality. Unlike rival accounts, it also avoids the “alienati...

The Self-Effacing Functionality of Blame (in: Phil. Stud.)

Philosophical Studies, 2021

This paper puts forward an account of blame combining two ideas that are usually set up against each other: that blame performs an important function, and that blame is justified by the moral reasons making people blameworthy rather than by its functionality. The paper argues that blame could not have developed in a purely instrumental form, and that its functionality itself demands that its functionality be effaced in favour of non-instrumental reasons for blame – its functionality is self-effacing. This notion is sharpened and it is shown how it offers an alternative to instrumentalist or consequentialist accounts of blame which preserves their animating insight while avoiding their weaknesses by recasting that insight in an explanatory role. This not only allows one to do better justice to the authority and autonomy of non-instrumental reasons for blame, but also reveals that autonomy to be a precondition of blame's functionality. Unlike rival accounts, it also avoids the "alienation effect" that renders blame unstable under reflection by undercutting the authority of the moral reasons which enable it to perform its function in the first place. It instead yields a vindicatory explanation that strengthens our confidence in those moral reasons.

A Comprehensive Account of Blame: Self-Blame, Non-Moral Blame, and Blame for the Non-Voluntary

Blame is multifarious. It can be passionate or dispassionate. It can be expressed or kept private. We blame both the living and the dead. And we blame ourselves as well as others. What’s more, we blame ourselves, not only for our moral failings, but also for our non-moral failings: for our aesthetic bad taste, gustatory self-indulgence, or poor athletic performance. And we blame ourselves both for things over which we exerted agential control (e.g., our voluntary acts) and for things over which we lacked such control (e.g., our desires, beliefs, and intentions). I argue that, despite this manifest diversity in our blaming practices, it’s possible to provide comprehensive account of blame. Indeed, I propose a set of necessary and sufficient conditions that aims to specify blame’s extension in terms of its constitution as opposed to its function. And I argue that this proposal has a number of advantages beyond accounting for blame in all its disparate forms. For one, it can account for the fact that one’s having had control over whether one was to φ is a necessary condition for one’s being fittingly blamed for having φ-ed. For another, it can account for why, unlike fitting shame, fitting blame is always deserved, which in turn explains why there is something morally problematic about ridding oneself of one’s fitting self-blame (e.g., one’s fitting guilt).

Blame and the Metaphysics of Practical Reasons

2002

The degree to which moral theories or theoretical accounts of moral concepts cohere with various aspects of common sense moral thinking is typically regarded as an important criterion in assessing the adequacy of such accounts. First-order or normative ethical theories which implied that the

A theory of blame (2014)

A theory of blame, 2014

We introduce a theory of blame in five parts. Part I addresses what blame is: a unique moral judgment that is both cognitive and social, regulates social behavior, fundamentally relies on social cognition, and requires warrant. Using these properties, we distinguish blame from such phenomena as anger, event evaluation, and wrongness judgments. Part II offers the heart of the theory: the Path Model of Blame, which identifies the conceptual structure in which blame judgments are embedded and the information processing that generates such judgments. After reviewing evidence for the Path Model, we contrast it with alternative models of blame and moral judgment (Part III) and use it to account for a number of challenging findings in the literature (Part IV). Part V moves from blame as a cognitive judgment to blame as a social act. We situate social blame in the larger family of moral criticism, highlight its communicative nature, and discuss the darker sides of moral criticism. Finally, we show how the Path Model of Blame can bring order to numerous tools of blame management, including denial, justification, and excuse.