Blame and Fault: Toward a New Conative Theory of Blame (original) (raw)

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.

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.

Moral, cognitive, and social: The nature of blame (2012)

Blame is a moral judgment that has a cognitive and a social nature. In this paper we first focus on the cognitive side and introduce a new theoretical model of blame that integrates insights and evidence from extant research. Within this model, we demonstrate the critical role of such concepts as agent, intentionality, and obligation—all of which are grounded in people’s theory of mind. We then contrast two views on the ordering of blame and theory of mind based inferences: blame-late models, which claim that blame follows mental state inferences; and blame-early models, which claim that the opposite order holds. After integrating these two views within our model, we turn to two eminently social questions on moral judgment: blaming as a social act; and blaming of group agents. We suggest that our model of blame provides a fruitful framework for both of these questions, thus highlighting the intimate connection between blame as a cognitive phenomenon and blame as a social phenomenon.

What's the Point of Blame? A Paradigm Based Explanation

When we hope to explain and perhaps vindicate a practice that is internally diverse, philosophy faces a methodological challenge. Such subject matters are likely to have explanatorily basic features that are not necessary conditions. This prompts a move away from analysis to some other kind of philosophical explanation. This paper proposes a paradigm based explanation of one such subject matter: blame. First, a paradigm form of blame is identified— 'Communicative Blame'—where this is understood as a candidate for an explanatorily basic form of blame. Second, its point and purpose in our lives is investigated and found to reside in its power to increase the alignment of the blamer and the wrongdoer's moral understandings. Third, the hypothesis that Communicative Blame is an explanatorily basic form of blame is tested out by seeing how far other kinds of blame can reasonably be understood as derivative, especially in respect of blame's point and purpose. Finally, a new and quasi-political worry about blame is raised.

Moral, cognitive, and social: The nature of blame

2012

For one thing, blame is grounded in the capacity to have a “theory of mind” 1—a system of concepts and processes that aid a human social perceiver in inferring mental states from behavior. To blame an agent people must know a set of norms, observe an agent's normviolating behavior, and infer a manifold of mental states that underlie the behavior. Without the latter, an organism may still be able to punish; but the organism would not be able to blame. A second unique feature of blame is that it has not only a cognitive side— ...

Blameworthiness and the Affective Account of Blame

Philosophia, Vol. 41, No. 4, 2013

One of the most influential accounts of blame—the affective account—takes its cue from P.F. Strawson’s discussion of the reactive attitudes. To blame someone, on this account, is to target her with resentment, indignation, or (in the case of self-blame) guilt. Given the connection between these emotions and the demand for regard that is arguably central to morality, the affective account is quite plausible. Recently, however, George Sher has argued that the affective account of blame, as understood both by Strawson himself and by contemporary Strawsonians, is inadequate because it cannot make sense of blameworthiness. In this paper I defend the affective account of blame against several of Sher’s arguments for this conclusion. In the process, I clarify the Strawsonian account of moral responsibility, and I discuss how the affective account of blame ought to be understood and articulated.