Self-blame is an integral part of our lives. We often blame ourselves for our failings and experience familiar unpleasant emotions such as guilt, shame, regret, or remorse. Self-blame is also what we often aim for when we blame others: we want the people we blame to recognize their wrongdoing and blame themselves for it. Moreover, self-blame is typically considered a necessary condition for forgiveness. However, until now, self-blame has (...) not been an integral part of the theoretical debate on moral responsibility. This volume presents twelve new essays by leading moral philosophers, who set out bold new theories of the nature and ethics of self-blame, and the interconnection between self-blame and moral responsibility. The essays cast new light on traditional problems in the debate on moral responsibility and open new, exciting avenues for research in moral philosophy, moral psychology and the philosophy of punishment. (shrink)

As part of a larger study, predictors of self-blame were investigated in a sample of 149 undergraduate sexual assault survivors. Each participant completed questionnaires regarding their preassault, peritraumatic, and post assault experiences and participated in an individual interview. Results confirmed the central hypothesis that, although several established correlates independently relate to self-blame, only cognitive content and process variables—negative self-cognitions and counterfactual-preventability cognitions—uniquely predict self-blame in a multivariate model.

This investigation focused on relationships among sexual assault, self-blame, and sexual revictimization. Among a female undergraduate sample of adolescent sexual assault victims, those endorsing greater self-blame following sexual assault were at increased risk for sexual revictimization during a 4.2-month follow-up period. Moreover, to the extent that sexual assault victims perceived nonconsensual sex is permitted by law, they were more likely to blame themselves for their own assaults. Discussion focuses on situating victim-based risk factors within sociocultural (...) context. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that there is what has been called a non-hypocrisy norm on the appropriateness of moral blame; roughly, one has standing to blame only if one is not guilty of the very offence one seeks to criticize. Our acceptance of this norm is embodied in the common retort to criticism, “Who are you to blame me?”. But there is a paradox lurking behind this commonplace norm. If it is always inappropriate for x to (...) class='Hi'>blame y for a wrong that x has committed, then all cases in which x blames x (i.e. cases of self-blame) are rendered inappropriate. But it seems to be ethical common-sense that we are often, sadly, in position (indeed, excellent, privileged position) to blame ourselves for our own moral failings. And thus we have a paradox: a conflict between the inappropriateness of hypocritical blame, and the appropriateness of self-blame. We consider several ways of resolving the paradox, and contend none is as defensible as a position that simply accepts it: we should never blame ourselves. In defending this startling position, we defend a crucial distinction between self-blame and guilt. (shrink)

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). (shrink)

There are better and worse ways to blame others. Likewise, there are better and worse ways to blame yourself. And though there is an ever-expanding literature on the norms that govern our blaming practices, relatively little attention has been paid to the norms that govern expressions of self-blame. In this essay, I argue that when we blame ourselves, we ought not do so privately. Rather, we should, ceteris paribus, express our self-blame to those (...) we have wronged. I then explore how this norm can contribute to our understanding of the ethics of self-blame as well as the nature of blameworthiness itself. (shrink)

In a 2020 article in Analysis, Lippert-Rasmussen argues that the moral equality account of the hypocrite’s lack of standing to blame fails. To object to this account, Lippert-Rasmussen considers the contrary of hypocrisy: hypercrisy. In this article, I show that if hypercrisy is a problem for the moral equality account, it is also a problem for Lippert-Rasmussen’s own account of why hypocrites lack standing to blame. I then reflect on the hypocrite’s and hypercrite’s standing to self-blame, (...) which reveals that the challenge hypercrisy poses for accounts of standing is different from the challenge Lippert-Rasmussen articulates. (shrink)

Self-blaming expressions are common. For example, “I blame myself for missing the deadline;” “I’m the only one to blame for my alcoholism;” “I can’t stop blaming myself for what he did to me;” “Bless me Father, for I have sinned;” “My bad, I’ll pay for it;” “I’m so ashamed of having done that;” and, “Damn me, I’ve done it again!”Self-blame occupies a sizable chunk of what is published in academic psychology, but there is not that (...) much on the topic in philosophy. My intent is to offer some thoughts and explorations about self-blaming in the context of a wider view of negative responsibility ascriptions that are not uttered at the time of the untoward action, and to use a distinction drawn in a piece from the psychological literature to suggest a link between a certain kind of self-blame, repentance, and acts of atonement.PreliminariesSelf-blaming is a form of holding oneself responsible, a way of expressing a negative self-reactive attitude subsequent to the performance of an action. .. (shrink)

Traditionally, those writing on blame have been concerned with blaming others, including when one has the standing to blame others. Yet some alleged problems for such accounts of standing arise when we focus on self-blame. First, if hypocrites lack the standing to blame others, it might seem that they also lack the standing to blame themselves. But this would lead to a bootstrapping problem, wherein hypocrites can only regain standing by doing that which they (...) lack the standing to do. Second, in addition to hypocrites, there may be hypercrites, who blame themselves more severely than others. Leading accounts for why hypocrites lack standing to blame others would also seem to imply that hypercrites lack the standing to blame others, but some may find this counterintuitive. We argue that neither of these problems from self-blame poses a unique threat to leading accounts of standing. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe current scales for self-blame are not suitable for school bullying scenarios and most lack validity. This study used a self-developed scale to measure bullied victims’ tendency to self-...

THE SOCRATIC ELENCHUS has the potentiality of occasioning a fundamental reorientation in an individual's values which, using Callicles' image, might even be likened to a moral conversion. In this connection the question arises, what does the individual who would remake himself morally do regarding his past? Should he, for instance, condemn his prior life? Excuse it? Ignore it? It appears that self-blame would be a very natural response on the part of the morally serious person toward the life (...) he led previous to the radical reorientation in his values. I claim that self-blame constitutes an unnoticed problem in the Socratic project of inducing men to pursue virtue. In what follows I sketch out this problem and investigate whether the doctrines commonly associated with Socrates afford him the resources for meeting it. My thesis is that to understand the Socratic treatment of the problem of self-blame we must add to the moral theory traditionally counted as Socratic. But like many would-be innovations, this one turns out to have been before our eyes all along, for it is possible to show that one of the formulations of the Socratic Paradox maps quite satisfactorily onto the terms of the problem of self-blame. Thus, the addition I propose we make to Socratic moral theory is not a new doctrine but a new interpretation of an old doctrine, one which renders a paradox perhaps a little less paradoxical. (shrink)

Traditionally, those writing on blame have been concerned with blaming others, including when one has the standing to blame others. Yet some alleged problems for such accounts of standing arise when we focus on self-blame. First, if hypocrites lack the standing to blame others, it might seem that they also lack the standing to blame themselves. But this would lead to a bootstrapping problem, wherein hypocrites can only regain standing by doing that which they (...) lack the standing to do. Second, in addition to hypocrites, there may be hypercrites, who blame themselves more severely than others. Leading accounts for why hypocrites lack standing to blame others would also seem to imply that hypercrites lack the standing to blame others, but some may find this counterintuitive. We argue that neither of these problems from self-blame poses a unique threat to leading accounts of standing. (shrink)

After describing some key features of life in an underground railroad and the nature of gray agency, Concepción illustrates how survivors of relationship slavery can stop levying misplaced blame on themselves without giving up the valuable practice of blaming. Concepción concludes that by choosing a relatively non-oppressive account of self-blame, some amount of internalized oppression can be overcome and the double bind of agency-denial and self-loathing associated with being an oppressively grafted agent can be reduced.

Recently, an article by Toshiko Tanaka, Takao Yamamoto, and Masahiko Haruno garnered a fair bit of media attention; in “Brain response patterns to economic inequity predict present and future depression indices”, they reported research that purported to show that “pro-social” individuals were more upset by unequal outcomes that didn’t directly disadvantage them than were “individualists.” Further, being pro-social was associated with a higher chance of developing depression. They linked this research with research showing that economic inequality is associated with poor (...) health outcomes, including higher rates of depression. (They cite the epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett’s 2006 work... (shrink)

In a critique of my work on ‘taking the blame’ as a response to medical errors, my position on the potential goods of individual responsibility and blame is challenged. It is suggested that medicine is a ‘team sport’ and several rich examples are provided to support the possible harms of practitioner self-blame. Yet, it appears that my critics have misunderstood my demands and to whom they are directed. With this response, I offer several clarifications of my (...) account, as well as a reiteration on the role of self-blame after medical error. (shrink)

Increased interest in positive changes in the aftermath of traumatic events led researchers to examine assumptions about the process of posttraumatic growth. However, existing studies often use samples from mixed trauma survivors and investigate separate factors and their associations with growth. Therefore, the purpose of the current study was to examine the path from centrality of event to PTG involving intrusive and deliberate rumination and self-blame as a coping strategy in women survivors of intimate partner violence. The study (...) sample consisted of 200 women with a history of IPV. Results of the path analysis indicated that higher centrality of event was related to higher levels of intrusive rumination which was positively related to self-blame and deliberate rumination eventually leading to PTG. Indirect effects from centrality of event to PTG through intrusive and deliberate rumination, and from intrusive to deliberate rumination through self-blame were examined. This study gave support to some theoretical assumptions of the process of PTG and pointed out problematic areas of investigation of coping strategies in this process. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

What is that makes an act subject to either praise or blame? The question has often been taken to depend entirely on the free will debate for an answer, since it is widely agreed that an agent’s act is subject to praise or blame only if it was freely willed, but moral theory, action theory, and moral psychology are at least equally relevant to it. In the last quarter-century, following the lead of Harry Frankfurt’s (1971) seminal article “Freedom (...) of the Will and the Concept of a Person,” the interdisciplinary nature of the question has been emphasized by various authors. Going beyond the boundaries of the traditional free will debate, they have attempted to describe the requirements for agent accountability by appeal to theories of personality, rational agency, and ethical choice. The approach has been a breath of fresh air in the often-stagnant free will debate, bringing new considerations to bear and provoking new lines of argument, and it is an approach that we will adopt in this paper. In the following pages, we hope to show that an under-noticed phenomenon of moral psychology, inverse akrasia, exemplified by Huckleberry Finn, has something to contribute to the understanding of agency and accountability. After presenting the phenomenon in section I, we will move in section II to a quick survey of a family of Frankfurt-inspired views and a critique of them based on the phenomenon in sections III and IV. A new theory will be offered in section V, and potential objections addressed in the final section of the paper. (shrink)

Does self-deception constitute a threat to the distinguishing kind of rationality human beings enjoy? I propose a compromise between the deflationary solutions to the alleged puzzles selfdeception has long been taken to give rise to and some virtues of the competing account -namely, the intentionalist view. In order to fulfil the task, I argue as to precisely what is left to blame in self-deception once we have made sense of why intentionalism fails to capture the nature of (...) the phenomenon. (shrink)

Inspired by theories of prosocial behavior, we tested the effect of relationship status and incentives on intended voluntary blame-taking in two experiments. Participants imagined a close family member, a close friend, or an acquaintance and read a scenario that described this person committing a minor traffic offense. The person offered either a monetary, social, or no incentive for taking the blame. Participants indicated their willingness to take the blame and reasons for and against blame-taking. Overall, a (...) sizable proportion of participants indicated to be willing to take the blame. Blame-taking rates were higher for family members than close friends or acquaintances in both experiments, as expected. Unexpectedly, there was no difference between a close friend and an acquaintance in Experiment 2. Social incentives did not have an effect on voluntary blame-taking in either experiment. Neither did we find an interaction between relationship status and incentives. The results highlight the importance of kin relationships in the context of voluntary blame-taking. (shrink)

Those who advocate a “historicist” outlook on moral responsibility often hold that people who unwillingly acquire corrupt dispositions are not blameworthy for the wrong actions that issue from these dispositions; this contention is frequently supported by thought experiments involving instances of forced psychological manipulation that seem to call responsibility into question. I argue against this historicist perspective and in favor of the conclusion that the process by which a person acquires values and dispositions is largely irrelevant to moral responsibility. While (...) the thought experiments introduced by historicists raise perplexing questions about personal identity and involve clear instances of moral wrongs done to the manipulated subjects, neither of these considerations bear on the question of moral responsibility. Rather, questions about moral responsibility in manipulation cases should be answered, I argue, by considering whether a manipulated agent is capable of expressing through her actions the objectionable attitudes that make blame appropriate in normal cases of wrongdoing. (shrink)

This article has three parts. The first argues that excuses such as "I didn't know" and "I couldn't help myself" are not, as we are frequently led to believe, vehicles for discovering whether or not an individual's will was free. Instead, they are self-narratives that we produce for the purpose of avoiding blame. The second part explores the particular notion of non-responsibility that governs these self-narratives. The third articulates the role that our judgments of fairness play in (...) decisions to accept or reject pleas of ignorance and mental incompetence in particular cases. (shrink)

This paper shows how moral concepts are definable in terms of reasons for the blame sentiment. It then shows how, given that definition, the categoricity of moral obligation follows from some plausible principles about reasons for blame. The nature of moral agency is further considered in this light. In particular, in what sense is it self-governing agency? Self-governing actors must be at least self-determining: that is, they must be able to think about what reasons they (...) have, in order in order to assess what they have sufficient reason to believe, feel, or do. Thus any moral assessment implies that the person assessed is capable of self-governance in that sense. Furthermore, this notion of self-governance implies that an agent's moral obligations are relative to the agent's warranted beliefs. However it does not entail that moral agents must be autonomous, in the strong sense intended by Kant. Some consequences for modern conceptions of morality are considered. (shrink)

“I didn’t know what I was doing”. “I was totally out of control.” Since we accept and reject such excuses all the time in practice—and frequently do so with great confidence—we might be expected to have grasped what it means for a volitional excuse to be valid in general and to have developed a well thought out set of criteria for judging the validity of such excuses in practice. But, as it turns out, we have not done either of these (...) things. Hence, we are not now able to argue openly about the validity of particular pleas of ignorance and mental incompetence in practice. I set out to remedy this situation below by articulating the nature of volitional excuses in general and by underscoring the role that our moral expectations play in the validation process.I begin in Part One by exploring the nature of volitional excuses themselves. I argue that volitional excuses are not, as we sometimes assume, heuristic devices for discovering that an individual freely willed her bad actions in some. (shrink)

Central cases of moral blame suggest that blame presupposes that its target deserves to feel guilty, and that if one is blameworthy to some degree, one deserves to feel guilt to a corresponding degree. This, some think, is what explains why being blameworthy for something presupposes having had a strong kind of control over it: only given such control is the suffering involved in feeling guilt deserved. This chapter argues that all this is wrong. As evidenced by a (...) wider range of cases, blame doesn’t presuppose that the target deserves to feel guilt and doesn’t necessarily aim at the target’s suffering in recognition of what they have done. On the constructive side, the chapter offers an explanation of why, in many cases of moral blameworthiness, the agent nevertheless does deserve to feel guilt. The explanation leans on a general account of moral and non-moral blame and blameworthiness and a version of the popular idea that moral blame targets agents’ objectionable quality of will. Given the latter idea, the morally blameworthy have harmed the standing of some person or value, giving rise to obligations to give correspondingly less relative weight to their own standing, and so, sometimes, to their own suffering. (shrink)

How does character information inform judgments of blame? Some argue that character information is indirectly relevant to blame because it enriches judgments about the mental states of a wrongdoer. Others argue that character information is directly relevant to blame, even when character traits are causally irrelevant to the wrongdoing. We propose an empirical synthesis of these views: a Two Channel Model of blame. The model predicts that character information directly affects blame when this information is (...) relevant to the wrongdoing that elicits blame. Further, the effect of character information on blame depends on judgments about the true self that are independent of judgments of intentionality. Across three pre-registered studies (N = 662), we found support for all three predictions of the Two Channel Model. We propose that this reflects two distinct functions of blame: a social regulatory function that encourages norm compliance and a pedagogical function that encourages personal improvement. (shrink)

Why do we find agents less blameworthy when they face mitigating circumstances, and what does this show about philosophical theories of moral responsibility? We present novel evidence that the tendency to mitigate the blameworthiness of agents is driven both by the perception that they are less normatively competent—in particular, less able to know that what they are doing is wrong—and by the perception that their behavior is less attributable to their deep selves. Consequently, we argue that philosophers cannot rely on (...) the case strategy to support the Normative Competence theory of moral responsibility over the Deep Self theory. However, we also outline ways in which further empirical and philosophical work would shift the debate, by showing that there is a significant departure between ordinary concepts and corresponding philosophical concepts, or by focusing on a different type of coherence with ordinary judgments. (shrink)

For a long time the dominant view on the nature of blame was that to blame someone is to have an emotion toward her, such as anger, resentment or indignation in the case of blaming someone else and guilt in the case of self-blame. Even though this view is still widely held, it has recently come under heavy attack. The aim of this paper is to elaborate the idea that to blame is to have an (...) emotion and to defend the resulting emotion account of blame. (shrink)

This chapter argues that adequately facing and responding to medical error requires making space for blame. In vindicating blame as a response to medical error, this essay does not advocate a return to a “bad apple” blame culture in which unlucky practitioners are unfairly scapegoated. It does, however, defend the targeted feeling and expression of angry, and even resentful, blaming attitudes toward health-care providers who make at least certain kinds of mistakes. The chapter makes the case that (...) the angry and resentful feelings associated with blame reflect a conception of oneself as a person worthy of consideration, and that expressing these feelings allows victims and families to fight for their dignity and self-respect. Along the way, it distinguishes between shaming and blaming, explaining that blaming, unlike shaming, characteristically aims to draw offenders into a moral dialogue. As a result, a good blaming practice can provide a logic within which providers who make costly errors may seek forgiveness, reconciliation, and healing. (shrink)

Some philosophers – notably Bernard Williams, Martha Nussbaum and Ruth Barcan Marcus – argue that agents in moral dilemmas are blameworthy whatever they do. I begin by uncovering the connection these philosophers are presupposing between the agent’s judgement of wrongdoing and her tendency to self-blame. Next, I argue that while dilemmatic choosers cannot help but see themselves as wrongdoers, they both can and should divorce this judgement from an ascription of self-blame. As I argue, dilemmatic choosers (...) are morally sui generis in that their actions result in a diminishment of their personal integrity with no corresponding failure of character. It is this that makes them non-blameworthy wrongdoers. This way of seeing the problem should provide dilemmatic choosers with a novel conception of their own moral psychology, one that allows them to view their actions in a manner that is given neither to moral insensitivity nor to pathological self-accusation. (shrink)

Blame and also punishment do not reach many agents in the sense that many agents are not motivated to ethically self‐correct, and in fact, may be worsened by these practices. The main reasons agents may not be reached by them are that the agent's second nature may make inaccessible to him a sound appreciation of ethical considerations, and the fixity of mature character may make ethical self‐correction practically impossible. Still, when they are ethically rationalized, blame and (...) punishment seem to be requirements. Even the most plausible secular or naturalistic ethics involves an important kind of incompleteness and unclarity concerning this issue. The Jewish and Christian traditions involve conceptions of the accessibility of ethical considerations and also the possibility of character change in ways that enable us to overcome the perplexity about blame and punishment. They are not ‘good for nothing’ even when they fail to improve agents. The religious traditions' conceptions of moral agency and the possibility of perfection enable us to see why there are reasons not to ethically ‘write off’ even persistently vicious agents. Moreover, we can see that the fulfilling of ethical requirements is an enabling condition for perfection that is not merely ethical. To highlight the contrast between the naturalistic view and the theistic view, Aristotle's moral psychology and moral epistemology are contrasted with those of Maimonides and Aquinas, both of whom borrow heavily from Aristotle, but fundamentally transform what they borrow. (shrink)

Blame and also punishment do not reach many agents in the sense that many agents are not motivated to ethically self‐correct, and in fact, may be worsened by these practices. The main reasons agents may not be reached by them are that the agent's second nature may make inaccessible to him a sound appreciation of ethical considerations, and the fixity of mature character may make ethical self‐correction practically impossible. Still, when they are ethically rationalized, blame and (...) punishment seem to be requirements. Even the most plausible secular or naturalistic ethics involves an important kind of incompleteness and unclarity concerning this issue. The Jewish and Christian traditions involve conceptions of the accessibility of ethical considerations and also the possibility of character change in ways that enable us to overcome the perplexity about blame and punishment. They are not ‘good for nothing’ even when they fail to improve agents. The religious traditions' conceptions of moral agency and the possibility of perfection enable us to see why there are reasons not to ethically ‘write off’ even persistently vicious agents. Moreover, we can see that the fulfilling of ethical requirements is an enabling condition for perfection that is not merely ethical. To highlight the contrast between the naturalistic view and the theistic view, Aristotle's moral psychology and moral epistemology are contrasted with those of Maimonides and Aquinas, both of whom borrow heavily from Aristotle, but fundamentally transform what they borrow. (shrink)

Constitutivists about moral norms are often suspected of providing an overly “self-centered” account of morality which does not take seriously enough morality’s interpersonal nature. This worry see...

Medical errors are all too common. Ever since a report issued by the Institute of Medicine raised awareness of this unfortunate reality, an emerging theme has gained prominence in the literature on medical error. Fears of blame and punishment, it is often claimed, allow errors to remain undisclosed. Accordingly, modern healthcare must shift away from blame towards a culture of safety in order to effectively reduce the occurrence of error. Against this shift, I argue that it would serve (...) the medical community well to retain notions of individual responsibility and blame in healthcare settings. In particular, expressions of moral emotions—such as guilt, regret and remorse—appear to play an important role in the process of disclosing harmful errors to patients and families. While such self-blaming responses can have negative psychological effects on the individual practitioner, those who take the blame are in the best position to offer apologies and show that mistakes are being taken seriously, thereby allowing harmed patients and families to move forward in the wake of medical error. (shrink)

When soldiers come home from war, some experience lingering emotional effects from the choices they were forced to make, and the outcomes of these choices. In this article, we consider the gap between objective assessments of blame and subjective assessments of self-blame, guilt, and shame after war, and we suggest a way of understanding how soldiers can understand their moral responsibility from both of these vantage points. We examine arguments from just war theory regarding the objective moral (...) responsibility of combatants and consider the role moral luck plays in our assessment of moral responsibility. We then use P.F. Strawson’s account of the reactive attitudes to demonstrate the limitations of focusing excessively on the objective stance to determine the blameworthiness of soldiers. We argue that we should think about blame alongside moral emotions like guilt and shame, which will allow us to better understand subjective blame and the experiences of soldiers who blame themselves after war. We claim that objective determinations of heroism or responsibility do not adequately capture the complexity of moral emotions for soldiers returning home after war. As part of a shared moral community, civilians owe veterans more than automated responses based on the civilian experience. (shrink)

The topic of standing to blame has recently received a lot of attention. Until now, however, it has focused mainly on the blamer's perspective, investigating what it means to say of blamers that they lose standing to blame and why it is that they lose this standing under specified conditions. The present paper focuses on the perspective of the blamees and tries to explain why they are allowed to disregard standingless, more specifically hypocritical, blame. According to the (...) solution proposed by the paper, while hypocritical blamers present themselves as caring about justice or about the moral or material good of the blamees—and they themselves half‐believe this presentation—their real motivation in blaming is less respectable. It is this problematic motivation that explains why blamees are permitted to disregard hypocritical blame. Ill‐motivated blame is often unreliable, and readiness to even consider it often involves a compromise on the self‐respect of the blamees. (shrink)

Though widely derided by popular psychologists and self-help writers as an emotionally toxic and destructive response, blame has many defenders among contemporary moral philosophers. Blaming wrongdoers has been thought to express deep commitment to moral values and norms, to be intimately bound up with practices of holding others responsible, and to be an important exercise of moral agency. In this paper I push against the grain of such defenses of blame just enough to articulate what seems right (...) in the more popular lines of critique. I distinguish between blame as a reactive attitude and blaming as a speech act, and argue that some disagreement over the value of blame can be explained by the fact that blaming, as a speech act, takes several distinct forms. Critiques of blame, I suggest, properly target what we might call judgmental or strongly verdictive blaming, the sort of blaming that passes judgment on the wrongdoer him- or herself, and treats him or her as deserving of the blamer’s hostile or “punishing” reactions. This kind of blaming, I argue, tends to foreclose engagement in further moral dialogue with wrongdoers, an effect that is particularly destructive in therapeutic contexts. In such contexts, it is often more appropriate—and more constructive—to hold others answerable without blaming them in the strongly verdictive sense. I argue, moreover, that strongly verdictive blame may be similarly destructive outside of straightforwardly therapeutic contexts, and I challenge the idea that there is in any case a sharp or clear dividing line between therapeutic and non-therapeutic responses to wrongdoers. Holding answerable in a non-judgmental mode is a response that may have a therapeutic dimension, but it nonetheless engages a wrongdoer as a moral peer and partner in moral dialogue. This account of non-judgmental answerability, I suggest, captures much of what moral philosophers have taken to be valuable about blame, while accommodating the insights of those who criticize its more toxic forms. (shrink)

Many contemporary discussions of forgiveness assume forgiveness is fundamentally admirable. Examining Aristotle’s account, however, demonstrates that there is a tension between desert and forgiveness that is often overlooked in contemporary discussions. Through examining the neglected concept of sungnōmē, which forestalls blame, I conclude that Aristotelian blame is justified only on grounds of fairness. This conclusion is evidence that Aristotelian blame is not merely an instrumental or descriptive tool, but rather a way of holding agents morally accountable. Through (...) examining the emphasis Aristotle places on the role of blame and its role in maintaining honor, I show that forgiveness is incompatible with Aristotle’s account because when the victim decides to forgive, she lets go of blame on grounds other than desert. For Aristotle, when she does so, she accepts less than she is worth, and so forgiving a wrongdoer undermines the victim’s honor. As a result, Aristotle rejects forgiveness as positively vicious. Aristotle’s response to the tension is to reject forgiveness as positively vicious since it involves accepting less than what one deserves. -/- In my dissertation, I resolve this impasse by both defending the value of forgiveness and seeking to resolve the tension by explaining why we can choose to forgive without undermining our own honor. Contra Aristotle, I argue that cultivating the disposition to be forgiving is part of flourishing individual and communal life. The choice to let go what of one deserves, however, need not mean that honor is relinquished. Instead, I defend an alternative account of honor in which honor lies not in demanding what is deserved but instead in committing to the consistent pursuit of the good. On this account, honor is related to the ongoing commitment to a coherent and compelling identity rooted in seeing ethical values as central to the conception of one’s self, rather than outwardly-mediated Aristotelian honor. Honor is thus bound up in commitment to the good life generally, and does not rely on getting what one deserves. My account thus reconciles Aristotelian blame with forgiveness, demonstrates what is valuable about honor, and why it is still worth pursuing in our modern world. (shrink)

Judgments of blame for others are typically sensitive to what an agent knows and desires. However, when people act negligently, they do not know what they are doing and do not desire the outcomes of their negligence. How, then, do people attribute blame for negligent wrongdoing? We propose that people attribute blame for negligent wrongdoing based on perceived mental control, or the degree to which an agent guides their thoughts and attention over time. To acquire information about (...) others’ mental control, people self-project their own perceived mental control to anchor third-personal judgments about mental control and concomitant responsibility for negligent wrongdoing. In four experiments (N = 841), we tested whether perceptions of mental control drive third-personal judgments of blame for negligent wrongdoing. Study 1 showed that the ease with which people can counterfactually imagine an individual being non-negligent mediated the relationship between judgments of control and blame. Studies 2a and 2b indicated that perceived mental control has a strong effect on judgments of blame for negligent wrongdoing and that first-personal judgments of mental control are moderately correlated with third-personal judgments of blame for negligent wrongdoing. Finally, we used an autobiographical memory manipulation in Study 3 to make personal episodes of forgetfulness salient. Participants for whom past personal episodes of forgetfulness were made salient judged negligent wrongdoers less harshly compared to a control group for whom past episodes of negligence were not salient. Collectively, these findings suggest that first-personal judgments of mental control drive third-personal judgments of blame for negligent wrongdoing and indicate a novel role for counterfactual thinking in the attribution of responsibility. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

Children are less blameworthy for their beliefs and actions because they are young. But the relationship between development and responsibility is complex. What exactly grounds the excuses we rightly give to young agents? This article presents three distinct arguments for children's diminished responsibility. Drawing on significant resources from developmental psychology, it rejects views which base the normative adult/child distinction on children's inability to participate in certain kinds of moral communication or to form principled self-conceptions which guide their actions. The (...) article then argues that children's responsibility ought to be diminished because (and to the degree that) they are less competent at using features of their moral agency to meet social demands. This ‘normative competence’ view is philosophically defensible, supported by research in developmental psychology, and provides us with a method to evaluate whether things like peer pressure are relevant to responsibility. (shrink)

My first experience as a clinician was in a Therapeutic Community for service users with personality disorder. As well as having personality disorder, many of the Community members also suffered from related conditions, such as addiction and eating disorders. Broadly speaking, these conditions are what we might call ‘disorders of agency’. Core diagnostic symptoms or maintaining factors of disorders of agency are actions and omissions: patterns of behaviour central to the nature or maintenance of the condition. For instance, borderline personality (...) disorder is diagnosed in part via deliberate self-harm and attempted suicide, reckless and impulsive behaviour, substance use, violence, and outbursts of anger; addiction is diagnosed via maladaptive patterns of drug consumption; eating disorders involve eating too much or too little. If a service user is to improve let alone recover from these disorders, they must change the diagnostic or maintaining pattern of behaviour (cf. Pearce and Pickard, 2010). For instance, service users with borderline personality disorder must stop self-harming; addicts need to quit using drugs or alcohol; anorexics must eat. (shrink)