Aspects of Blame : In which the nature of blame, blameworthiness, standing to blame and proportional blame are discussed

Abstract: This thesis discusses what blame is, what it is for an agent to be blameworthy for having performed a certain act or omission, what makes an agent blameworthy for having performed a certain act or omission, whether the idea of standing to blame generalises to blame understood as something privately held, and what it is for blame to be proportionate. It provides original answers to these questions that move the current discussion of blame forward. I argue for the novel claim that blame is a type of sentiment. When we blame someone, we are prone to experience various emotions, desires and thoughts in different circumstances with respect to her. Adoption of the blame sentiment does not involve interacting with anyone: it is “private”. When an agent acts on the desires etc. that her blame prompts, the blame is “overt”. I develop and test a buck-passing account of blameworthiness. According to it, what it is for an agent to be blameworthy for having performed a certain act or omission is for there to be sufficient reason for anyone to blame her for having done that. I argue that what makes it the case that anyone has sufficient reason to blame her for having performed a certain act or omission is that she freely performed the act or omission despite being aware of the reasons which, taken together, made her act or omission one that it was wrong of her to perform or omit. In addition, I argue that we should understand “blame” in the analysis as refering to just private blame. Many blame scholars believe that the idea of standing to blame applies to both private and overt blame. I argue against this claim by showing that common features included in the idea of the standing to blame do not apply to private blame in a way that would justify the claim that there are norms of standing for such blame. Similarly, I argue that because private and overt blame have a different characteristics, they are associated with different proportionality principles.