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The emotion account of blame

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Abstract

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.

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Notes

  1. The emotion account of blame is inspired by Strawson's (1962) remarks on reactive attitudes that had and continue to have a major influence on the debate about blame and responsibility; see, e.g., Watson (1987, 1996), Wallace (1994, ch. 2–4), Fischer and Ravizza (1998), Darwall (2006, ch. 4) and Menges (forthcoming). Recent proponents of emotion accounts of blame are, e.g., Wallace (2011), Wolf (2011), Tognazzini (2013), Cogley (2013), Pickard (2013), Graham (2014), and Pereboom (2014, ch. 6).

  2. The most prominent alternatives to the emotion account of blame have been developed by Sher (2006, ch. 6), Arpaly (2006, ch. 1), Scanlon (2008, ch. 4; 2013), Kekes (2009), McKenna (2012, ch. 3; 2013) and Fricker (2016). See also the helpful overviews by Coates and Tognazzini (2012, 2013), Tognazzini and Coates (2014).

  3. See, e.g., Deonna and Teroni (2012, ch. 1) for the distinction between emotional episodes and what I call emotional stances. It is interesting to observe that most authors in the current debate on emotions focus on emotional episodes, but see Goldie (2000, ch. 2) and Solomon (2004) for exceptions.

  4. For the following see, e.g., Ekman (1999), Ben-Ze'ev (2001, ch. 3; 2010), Goldie (2000, ch. 2 and 3) and D'Arms (who characterizes “sentiments” in this way, 2013). Pettigrove (2012), Shoemaker (2013, 2015, ch. 3) and Nussbaum (2015) characterize anger by pointing to the three properties.

  5. See, e.g., D’Arms and Jacobson (2003), Prinz (2004, ch. 2), de Sousa (2010), Deigh (2010) and Deonna and Teroni (2012, ch. 5) for discussions of judgment theories of the emotions.

  6. See, e.g., D’Arms and Jacobson (2000) and Deigh (2010).

  7. See, e.g., de Sousa (1987), Döring (2003) and Prinz (2004).

  8. See, e.g., Goldie (2000, ch. 2) for a detailed account of what I call emotional stances.

  9. See, e.g., Pickard (2013).

  10. See, most prominently, Wallace (1994, ch. 2, 3 and 5).

  11. See, e.g., Cogley (2013) and Pereboom (2014, ch. 6).

  12. See, e.g., Owens (2012, ch. 1).

  13. Here is a similar case: sometimes people blame a partner who has died for having left them alone. But in most cases, the survivor also judges that it is not the partner's fault that he or she is now alone.

  14. The judgment theorist could also claim that Barbara in fact does make the relevant judgment. But this is problematic because now the judgment theorist uses the word “judgment” in what seems to be a non-standard way. I take it that those who judge that p endorse, accept, or affirm that p. However, Barbara does not endorse, accept, or affirm that Alice, say, lacks good will or acted wrongly.

  15. For “force”, see Hieronymi (2004); for “sting”, see McKenna (2013) and Pickard (2013); and for “weight”, see Scanlon (2008, ch. 4).

  16. This is how Pickard (2013) understands the too-light objection.

  17. See Pickard (2013, 619).

  18. Scanlon argues in an earlier book that moral criticism has this kind of normative weight: “Moral criticism claims that an agent has governed him- or herself in a manner that cannot be justified in the way morality requires, and it supports demands for acknowledgment of this fact, and for apology, or for justification or explanation” (1998, 272, my italics).

  19. To avoid misunderstandings here, I do not assume that justifying, explaining or excusing is only appropriate if the blamer makes a false blameworthy judgment. I only assume that, other things being equal, the blamer's making such a false judgment is a typical reason for the blamee to justify, explain, or excuse what she did.

  20. For different versions of this objection, see Sher (2006, ch. 5), Kekes (2009) and Fricker (2016).

  21. See, e.g., Nussbaum (2015) for such a view.

  22. See, e.g., Wallace (1994), Fischer and Ravizza (1998) and Pereboom (2014).

  23. Pereboom (2013, 2014, ch. 6), e.g., is critical of blame. See Wallace (2011) and Menges (2014) for further discussions.

  24. Similar considerations motivate McGeer's (2013) and McKenna's (2013) non-classical theories of blame.

  25. See McKenna (2012, ch. 3; 2013) for a similar approach to and account of blame.

  26. See Fricker (2016, 166–167).

  27. See, e.g., the overview about blame by Tognazzini and Coates (2014) and the overview about forgiveness by Hughes (2015).

  28. Moreover, Fricker's minimal definition (and what she calls Communicative Blame) belongs to the class of judgment theories of blame that say that blaming a person involves making a certain judgment. As such, Fricker's definition has problems making sense of recalcitrant blame and is therefore, at least prima facie, less attractive than accounts that do not have that problem.

  29. See, e.g., Goldie (2000, ch. 2 and 5), Döring (2003) and Scarantino and Nielsen (2015).

  30. See Sect. 4.

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Acknowledgments

For comments on earlier versions of this paper, I am grateful to Anne Burkard, Daniele Bruno, Claire Davis, Jan Gertken, Sukaina Hirji, Benjamin Kiesewetter, Felix Koch, Eduardo Rivera-López, Andreas Müller, Thomas Schmidt, and the participants of the colloquia for practical philosophy and ethics at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin 09/2012 and 01/2016 and of the 2nd Humboldt-Princeton Graduate Conference in Philosophy 08/2012. Special thanks go to Hannah Altehenger and Simon Gaus who commented on numerous versions of the paper. Finally, I thank an anonymous referee for comments that improved the paper significantly. Work on this paper has been supported by the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes.

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    Leonhard Menges

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Menges, L. The emotion account of blame. Philos Stud 174, 257–273 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-016-0680-9

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