A Standard of Judgement
Michael Smith
Princeton University
Lecture 1: From the human condition to
a standard of judgement
Lecture 2: From a standard of judgement
to moral rationalism
Lecture 3: The best form of moral
rationalism
Lecture 4: Moral reasons vs non-moral
reasons
Lecture 5: A normative
theory of blame
Lecture 6: Loose ends
Bonus discussion section: Defeat by
nature in “Force Majeure”
“Here is the beginning of philosophy: a recognition of the
conflicts between men, a search for their cause, a
condemnation of mere opinion...and the discovery of a
standard of judgement” Epictetus, Discourses III:11
The aim
To provide an account of the psychological state of blaming someone that
explains two things.
First, it explains why it is sometimes permissible to blame people, and
sometimes obligatory.
Second, it explains why blaming people has the blameworthiness of
those blamed as its correctness condition.
Since this is in part a normative task, we will draw freely on the
normative conclusions argued for in previous lectures.
What are we morally obliged, permitted, and forbidden to do?
We all have two moral reasons that can be weighed against each other.
The first is a reason not to interfere with anyone's exercise of their
capacity to know what the world is like, or realize their desires in that
world (on condition, of course, that the satisfaction of their desires do not
require them to interfere).
The second is a reason to do what we can to make sure that everyone
has the capacity to know what the world is like, and to realize their
desires in the world (again, on condition that the satisfaction of their
desires do not require them to interfere).
In a phrase, we have moral reasons to help and not interfere.
In addition to these two moral reasons, we also have non-moral reasons
to do whatever we want to do, and these non-moral reasons can be
weighed against our moral reasons.
More on what we are morally obliged, permitted, and forbidden to do
We are morally permitted to act in a certain way just in case these
reasons we have to help and not interfere do not outweigh the reasons
we have to act otherwise.
So, for example, the reasons to help and not interfere might count in favor
of so acting, and not be outweighed by any reasons whether moral or
non-moral to act otherwise. Or they might count against so acting, but not
decisively against doing so. Or they might be silent on so acting.
When are we morally permitted to blame?
The upshot is that it is morally permissible to blame people when either
our blaming them is supported by our reasons to help and not interfere
and these reasons aren’t outweighed by our reasons not to blame them,
or when our reasons to help and not interfere are silent on our blaming
them, or when our reasons to help and not interfere count against
blaming them, but not decisively against our doing so.
With this account of moral permissibility assumed in what follows,
let’s now turn to the task of explaining what it is to blame someone,
and why the blameworthiness of the person blamed is a condition on
the correctness of blaming them.
There are commonsense answers to some of these questions, and it
is these commonsense answers that I want to defend in what
follows. As we will see, with these commonsense answers in place,
together with the account of what’s forbidden, permissible, and
obligatory, it becomes relatively clear what we have to say about
what blame is and why blame has the blameworthiness of those
blamed as its correctness condition.
However these commonsense answers were called into question by
Gary Watson in his seminal paper “Skepticism about Weakness of
Will” (1977). We must therefore begin by focusing on Watson’s
misgivings about the commonsense answers.
A commonsense claim about the role of belief in action explanation
and when it is appropriate to blame
We ordinarily distinguish between two people who both have a false
belief about what they have reason to do, where one has that false belief
as a result of their having, but failing to exercise, the capacity to know
what they have reason to do, and the other has the false belief as a result
of their lacking the capacity to believe the truth in the first place. Whereas
the second is cut off from reality, the first is not. If the false belief leads
each of them to act in a way that harms someone else, then blame might
be appropriate in the first case, but not in the second.
A commonsense claim about the role of desire in action explanation
and when it is appropriate to blame
We ordinarily distinguish between two people who both know that they
have a reason to act in a certain way, but neither of whom desires to act in
that way, where one's lack of desire is the result of their having but failing
to exercise a capacity to desire in accordance with their knowledge, and
the other's lack of a desire is the result of their incapacity to desire
accordingly. Though they both lack self-control, the second has no selfcontrol to exercise, whereas the first does, but just fails to exercise it.
Again, assuming that both act on their desires, the first meets a condition
necessary for blame, but the second does not. If what they each desire to
do is something that harms someone else, then blame might be
appropriate in the first case, but not in the second.
Gary Watson’s objection to this commonsense idea
Watson focuses on cases of the second kind—these are cases of
weakness of will, hence the title of his seminal paper—and argues that in
this case there is no distinction between having a capacity but failing to
exercise it and lacking a capacity. His argument for this conclusion is that
the typical folk psychological explanations of an agent's failure to
exercise a capacity are either his incapacity, or the fact that he doesn't
believe that the exercise is called for. But neither of these is supposed to
explain what is going on in cases of weakness of will. Since we cannot
provide one of the usual folk psychological explanations of the failure to
exercise a capacity, Watson concludes that we should be skeptical about
the existence of cases of weakness of will.
First reply: The folk explanations Watson cites show that the failure to
exercise a capacity is rational in the circumstances. We should deny that
such folk psychological explanations are ever apt in the special case of
failing to exercise a rational capacity when its exercise is called for. In this
special case, explanations bottom out with the particular kind of
irrationality the agent suffers.
Second reply: We should understand the difference between an agent
who possesses but fails to exercise a capacity, and one who lacks the
capacity altogether, in the way in which we understand all modal claims:
that is, in terms of similarities between possible worlds. More specifically,
we should understand the difference in terms of the different degrees of
similarity between failure-worlds and success-worlds.
New puzzle: What is to blame someone and why is the presence of an
unexercised capacity for belief or desire formation, understood in the
modal terms suggested, a necessary condition for it?
Initial suggestion: What we blame people for is doing the wrong thing
when it is their fault; it is their fault when the explanation of their doing
the wrong thing is their having but failing to exercise the capacity to form
some relevant belief or desire; and our blaming them for so acting
consists in our believing this to be so.
Note that this would explain why blaming someone has the
blameworthiness of the person blamed as its correctness condition. The
explanation would be that this is an instance of the quite general fact that
beliefs having the truth of what’s believed as their correctness condition.
Why the initial suggestion is wrong:
(i) We can believe that someone did the wrong thing when it is their fault
without blaming them.
(ii) We can blame someone without believing that they did the wrong
thing and that it is their fault.
The general point to keep in mind in what follows:
Blaming someone is one of a number of psychological states with
correctness conditions where the psychological state in question is not
the state of believing that that correctness condition obtains. Other such
psychological states include desire, intention, admiration, fear, and trust.
Belief is the only case of a psychological state that has the correctness
condition where that psychological state is the state of believing that that
correctness condition obtains. This means that though belief is an all too
familiar example of a psychological state with a correctness condition, it
is not a typical example.
What is it to blame someone?
New suggestion: When we blame people we think of them as
having done the wrong thing when it is their fault: that is, we think
of them as having done the wrong thing where the explanation of
their doing the wrong thing is their having but failing to exercise the
capacity to form some relevant belief or desire.
Blame is like admiration, fear, desire, and intention. Each of these
states is best understood as some combination of dispositions to
think, act, and feel.
The hard task is to explain why blame has the blameworthiness of
the person blamed as its correctness condition given that it has the
dispositional nature that it has.
More on what is it to blame someone
Note that we do not get that explanation straight from the fact that
blame is, inter alia, a disposition to think that the person we blame
did the wrong thing and that it was their fault.
This is because there is nothing in general incorrect about thinking
that things are a way that they aren’t, any more than there is
something incorrect about imagining that things are a way that they
aren’t, or desiring that things are a way that they aren’t.
What more is required?
More positively on what is it to blame someone
In the typical case, blaming someone is a reaction to the modal fragility of
their acting wrongly—this is what the modal explanation of fault brings out.
The modal fragility of their acting wrongly makes salient the possibility of a
future in which they don’t act wrongly, but it also alerts us to the possibility
that this is the beginning of a pattern.
The reaction to the modal fragility of their acting wrongly has to do with
trust, where we trust someone when we are disposed to treat them as
though they will do what they have have reason to do when we interact
with them.
More precisely on what blame is
To blame someone is to think of them as having done wrong when it is their
fault, and it is also to add thoughts about their faulty wrongdoing to the stock
of thoughts that we have about them with a view to downgrading how much
we trust them, and perhaps even giving up on trusting them altogether, if a
pattern of faulty wrongdoing emerges.
Moreover, given the modal fragility of their acting wrongly even if a pattern of
faulty wrongdoing does emerge, to blame them is also to remain open to the
possibility that they will become trustworthy again, and that trust can
therefore be restored. In this way, blame co-travels with the possibility of
reconciliation.
Blaming someone is therefore a state that disposes the blamer to desire to
act in certain ways towards the person they blame on account of their
pattern of faulty wrongdoing. As we have already seen, these desires are
correct only if it is desirable to act in those ways towards the person blamed
on account of their pattern of faulty wrongdoing, and this in turn is so only if
the person blamed did engage in that pattern of faulty wrongdoing.
Here lies the explanation of why blame has blameworthiness as its
correctness condition.
More precisely on what blame is
To blame someone is to think of them as having done wrong when it is their
fault, and it is also to add thoughts about their faulty wrongdoing to the stock
of thoughts that we have about them with a view to downgrading how much
we trust them, and perhaps even giving up on trusting them altogether, if a
pattern of faulty wrongdoing emerges.
Moreover, given the modal fragility of their acting wrongly even if a pattern of
faulty wrongdoing does emerge, to blame them is also to remain open to the
possibility that they will become trustworthy again, and that trust can
therefore be restored. In this way, blame co-travels with the possibility of
reconciliation.
Blaming someone is therefore a state that disposes the blamer to desire to
act in certain ways towards the person they blame on account of their
pattern of faulty wrongdoing. As we have already seen, these desires are
correct only if it is desirable to act in those ways towards the person blamed
on account of their pattern of faulty wrongdoing, and this in turn is so only if
the person blamed did engage in that pattern of faulty wrongdoing.
Here lies the explanation of why blame has blameworthiness as its
correctness condition.
More precisely on what blame is
To blame someone is to think of them as having done wrong when it is their
fault, and it is also to add thoughts about their faulty wrongdoing to the stock
of thoughts that we have about them with a view to downgrading how much
we trust them, and perhaps even giving up on trusting them altogether, if a
pattern of faulty wrongdoing emerges.
Moreover, given the modal fragility of their acting wrongly even if a pattern of
faulty wrongdoing does emerge, to blame them is also to remain open to the
possibility that they will become trustworthy again, and that trust can
therefore be restored. In this way, blame co-travels with the possibility of
reconciliation.
Blaming someone is therefore a state that disposes the blamer to desire to
act in certain ways towards the person they blame on account of their
pattern of faulty wrongdoing. As we have already seen, these desires are
correct only if it is desirable to act in those ways towards the person blamed
on account of their pattern of faulty wrongdoing, and this in turn is so only if
the person blamed did engage in that pattern of faulty wrongdoing.
Here lies the explanation of why blame has blameworthiness as its
correctness condition.
More precisely on what blame is
To blame someone is to think of them as having done wrong when it is their
fault, and it is also to add thoughts about their faulty wrongdoing to the stock
of thoughts that we have about them with a view to downgrading how much
we trust them, and perhaps even giving up on trusting them altogether, if a
pattern of faulty wrongdoing emerges.
Moreover, given the modal fragility of their acting wrongly even if a pattern of
faulty wrongdoing does emerge, to blame them is also to remain open to the
possibility that they will become trustworthy again, and that trust can
therefore be restored. In this way, blame co-travels with the possibility of
reconciliation.
Blaming someone is therefore a state that disposes the blamer to desire to
act in certain ways towards the person they blame on account of their
pattern of faulty wrongdoing. As we have already seen, these desires are
correct only if it is desirable to act in those ways towards the person blamed
on account of their pattern of faulty wrongdoing, and this in turn is so only if
the person blamed did engage in that pattern of faulty wrongdoing.
Here lies the explanation of why blame has blameworthiness as its
correctness condition.
More precisely about when blame is appropriate
Blaming someone is maximally appropriate when we don’t just think that
they have done the wrong thing and that it is their fault, but when we
know this to be so; when we accurately keep track of their faulty
wrongdoing; when our disposition to downgrade our trust in them, or to
stop trusting them altogether, is reasonable in the light of their pattern of
faulty wrongdoing; and when our disposition to restore our trust in them is
suitably sensitive to their future pattern of faulty wrongdoing.
Why blaming is sometimes permissible and why the modal
condition is so important for blame
Blaming someone is sometimes permissible, and indeed obligatory,
because our reasons to help and not interfere sometimes count
decisively in favor of our accurately keeping track of people’s faulty
wrongdoing with a view to downgrading our trust in them and restoring
our trust in them in the light of their pattern of faulty wrongdoing.
The modal condition is important because it is the circumstance that
makes the downgrading and restoring of our trust in people reasonable.
The modal condition is what explains why trust comes and goes
depending on the trustworthiness of the one we blamed.
Unfortunately…
All parts of this view—the account of what we blame
people for, the account of what blame is, and the account
of when blame is appropriate—is at odds with the views of
many others.
Why should we accept this view rather than the views
proposed by these others?
Alternative views: Blame as a reactive attitude
Strawson holds that we blame someone when we have certain negative
reactive attitudes towards them. The negative reactive attitudes in
question—guilt, resentment, and indignation—form an interrelated trio.
The plausibility of this view turns on what it is to have the negative
reactive attitudes in question. One way would be to spell out the view in
the way I have suggested above. But this is not the way people have
tended to spell out the view. Consider one of the more usual way of
spelling it out.
What is it to feel guilty? To feel guilty is to suffer, to desire that one’s
suffering continues for some period, and to think that one’s continued
suffering for that period is deserved or warranted or fitting in the light
of a wrong that one did to someone because one had no justification
or excuse for the wrong that one did.
What is it to feel resentment? To feel resentment is to desire that
someone suffer for some period, and to think that their suffering for
that period is deserved or warranted or fitting in the light of the fact
that they did something wrong to one because they had no
justification or excuse for the wrong that they did.
What is it to feel indignation? …....
Reply to this version of the reactive attitude view
This version of the reactive attitude view of blame analyzes blame in
terms of a false normative view. Since suffering is never deserved or
warranted or fitting, it would never be appropriate to blame, on this version
of the view. Blame would never be permissible.
Note that it would not help to replace thoughts about deserved suffering
with thoughts about the existence of a moral principle telling us to impose
sanctions that are painful on people who do wrong. This has the same
flaw. It analyzes blame in terms of a false normative view. Imposing
sanctions that are painful will almost always be something that we have
reasons not to do, as it will interfere with people’s exercise of their
capacity to realize their desires.
.
Why the view on offer is better:
The positive account of blame and blameworthiness outlined earlier
also has a normative presupposition, but the normative presupposition
is relatively uncontroversial. The presupposition is that it is not
reasonable to continue to trust someone no matter what they do, and
that it is also not reasonable, having given up on trusting someone, to
continue not to trust them no matter what they do.
.
Alternative views: What we blame people for is the quality
of will that they express in their actions.
According to Nomy Arpaly, Huck Finn is praiseworthy for
allowing Jim to escape because his action has positive moral
worth, where this is a matter of Huck’s being motivated by a
recognition of Jim’s moral status, which is the very fact about
Jim that makes it right to help him escape slavery. Blameworthy
agents, by contrast, fail to be motivated by the moral reasons
that justify their actions, whether out of indifference to the moral
good or a desire for something morally bad. On this view, blame
is a reaction to the quality of will people express in their actions.
Reply to Arpaly
According to the view on offer here we blame people for doing the wrong
thing when it is their fault. This is different from blaming them for the quality
of will they express in their actions because someone can do the wrong
thing when it is their fault even when their will—that is, what they care
about intrinsically—is perfectly aligned with their moral reasons, and even
when that fact about them gets expressed in their actions.
Imagine someone who knows that their moral reasons to help and not
interfere count in favor of their acting in a certain way, and who has
corresponding intrinsic concerns, and yet who fails to act on these reasons
because they have, but fail to exercise, their capacity to be globally
instrumentally rational. Imagine that they regret what they do as soon as
they do it. If blaming this person can be appropriate, then it cannot be that
we blame people for the quality of will they express in their actions.
Reply to Arpaly
According to the view on offer here we blame people for doing the wrong
thing when it is their fault. This is different from blaming them for the quality
of will they express in their actions because someone can do the wrong
thing when it is their fault even when their will—that is, what they care
about intrinsically—is perfectly aligned with their moral reasons, and even
when that fact about them gets expressed in their actions.
Imagine someone who knows that their moral reasons to help and not
interfere count in favor of their acting in a certain way, and who has
corresponding intrinsic concerns, and yet who fails to act on these reasons
because they have, but fail to exercise, their capacity to be globally
instrumentally rational. Imagine that they regret what they do as soon as
they do it. If blaming this person can be appropriate, then it cannot be that
we blame people for the quality of will they express in their actions.
Where the quality of will view goes wrong
The problem with the quality of will view is that it ties praiseworthiness too
closely to virtue or purity of heart and blameworthiness too closely to
viciousness or hard-heartedness.
The problem with this is that there is a third alternative in between being
virtuous and being vicious. Many people who act wrongly when it is their
fault do so not because they are vicious or hard-hearted, but rather
because they are weak-willed. These people are blameworthy,
notwithstanding the fact that their heart is in the right place. Their problem
lies not with their heart but with their will.
There are also many people who succeed in acting permissibly not
because they are virtuous or pure of heart, but rather because they know
what they have decisive moral reasons to avoid doing and succeed in
exercising the self-control required to get themselves to do it
notwithstanding the significant temptation to act otherwise. Their success
lies not in their heart, but in their will.
Why the view on offer is better
Consider those who succeed in acting permissibly by being motivated by a
mixture of considerations, some virtuous and some more self-serving, or
by being motivated by considerations all of which are self-serving.
The actions of such people may express both their knowledge of the
bounds of permissible behavior and their self-control: that is, their capacity
to muster the motivational resources to act on their knowledge from the
meager and unattractive motivational resources available to them.
Moreover, and just as importantly, it is an empirical question which
techniques of self-control such people should employ to get themselves to
do what they have reason to do.
The view of blame sketched earlier allows that people who so act escape
blame. The point isn’t just that they act permissibly and without fault. The
point is that in acting permissibly and without fault they display their
trustworthiness. There is nothing to blame them for. They might even
deserve praise.
Alternative views: Blame and blameworthiness are
always relative to some relationship or relationships.
Tim Scanlon holds that what we blame people for is their doing
something that indicates intentions or attitudes that are faulty by the
standards of a relationship we have with them.
To blame people, in Scanlon’s view, is to judge them to be
blameworthy and, as a consequence, to alter or withhold intentions
and expectations that our relationships with them would normally
involve in the particular ways that the judgment of blameworthiness
makes appropriate.
Reply to Scanlon
Scanlon’s view may have some of the same problems as Arpaly’s. This
depends on what he means when he says that intentions can be faulty by
the standards of a relationship.
Scanlon’s view has additional problems as well.
(i) We have moral obligations to strangers on the other side of the world,
and to future generations. But is it true that we have a relationship with
these people? This objection connects with foundational questions about
the nature of reasons for action. Here I side with the likes of Korsgaard
against Scanlon.
(ii) Scanlon’s view is also silent on the modal condition, and this means
that he cannot explain why blame and reconciliation co-travel.
More problems for Scanlon
(iv) There is a more fundamental problem for Scanlon’s view. Even in those
cases in which we clearly do have relationships with people, it seems clear
that some of these relationships are the relationships they are in virtue of
the omnipresence of blame within them. If this is so, then to blame cannot
be to change one’s relationship.
Scene from “thirtysomething”: https://tinyurl.com/m3843ov
Why the view on offer is better
The view of blame sketched earlier allows that blame can be
omnipresent within a relationship. This is because omnipresent blame
can help maintain the trustworthiness of the parties to a relationship
when those parties need to exercise self-control in order to be
motivated to do what they are required to do by the standards of their
relationship.
Remember the aim
To provide an account of the psychological state of blaming someone that
explains two things.
First, note how the account offered here explains why it is sometimes
permissible to blame people, and sometimes obligatory.
Second, note how the account offered here explains why blaming people
has the blameworthiness of those blamed as its correctness condition.
A Standard of Judgement
Michael Smith
Princeton University
Lecture 1: From the human condition to
a standard of judgement
Lecture 2: From a standard of judgement
to moral rationalism
Lecture 3: The best form of moral
rationalism
Lecture 4: Moral reasons vs non-moral
reasons
Lecture 5: A normative theory of blame
Lecture 6: Loose ends
Bonus discussion section: Defeat by
nature in “Force Majeure”
“Here is the beginning of philosophy: a recognition of the
conflicts between men, a search for their cause, a
condemnation of mere opinion...and the discovery of a
standard of judgement” Epictetus, Discourses III:11
A Standard of Judgement
Michael Smith
Princeton University
Lecture 1: From the human condition to
a standard of judgement
Lecture 2: From a standard of judgement
to moral rationalism
Lecture 3: The best form of moral
rationalism
Lecture 4: Moral reasons vs non-moral
reasons
Lecture 5: A normative theory of blame
Lecture 6: Loose ends
Bonus discussion section:
Defeat by nature in “Force
Majeure”
“Here is the beginning of philosophy: a recognition of the
conflicts between men, a search for their cause, a
condemnation of mere opinion...and the discovery of a
standard of judgement” Epictetus, Discourses III:11