Abstract
In this paper I argue that it is inappropriate for us to blame others if it is not reasonable for us to believe that they are morally responsible for their actions. The argument for this claim relies on two controversial claims: first, that assertion is governed by the epistemic norm of reasonable belief, and second, that the epistemic norm of implicatures is relevantly similar to the norm of assertion. I defend these claims, and I conclude by briefly suggesting how this putative norm of blame can serve as the basis for general norms of interpersonal generosity.
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Notes
By discussing an “ethics of blame,” I do not mean to suggest that all of these considerations are unique to the norms of blaming. For example, it might be that just as our lack of a standing relationship precludes me from being warranted in blaming you (at least in some cases), so too that lack of a standing relationship would preclude me from being in asking a serious favor of you as well. Thus, a full ethics of blame takes into account all of the norms that might govern blame, even if in many cases, such norms are not internal to the activity of blame itself.
This claim will come as no surprise to those who think that action itself is governed by an epistemic norm, since although we sometimes blame others in virtue of our attitude (s) towards them, expressions of blame are typically actions (e.g., rolling one’s eyes, telling another off, aggressively honking the car’s horn, etc.). The classic statement of this view is due to John Hawthorne and Jason Stanley (2008). As you’ll no doubt notice, however, I accept a more permissive epistemic norm than the one defended by Hawthorne and Stanley.
In saying that A blame is inappropriate if it is not reasonable for her to believe that B is morally responsible, I mean to pick out a notion of “reasonability” that is closely allied with epistemic justification. So “not reasonable” could be filled out as “unreasonable,” “unjustified,” or “unwarranted.” Following Jennifer Lackey (2007), I prefer framing this norm in terms of what it would be reasonable for A to believe, but I have no principled reason for thinking that ENB couldn’t be framed in terms of other epistemic goods.
I want to make clear here that ENB is meant to be compatible with multiple theories of which properties a belief must instantiate in order to be epistemically reasonable. I have noted three candidates here (evidence, reliability, and proper functioning), but there are no doubt others. For the purposes of this paper, I will be agnostic about the precise conditions under which it is or is not reasonable to believe that an agent is morally responsible for her action in the hopes of achieving an ecumenical consensus concerning the fact that the activity of blame is governed by an epistemic norm. Accordingly, if you’re an internalist, then fill in the content of “reasonable for A to believe that …” in your preferred way, and if you’re an externalist, fill it in in your preferred way.
These considerations do not seem to arise in quite the same way in the case of a third party coming to someone’s defense. Indeed, it often helps us calm down when others remind us that we don’t know all the facts and that we shouldn’t jump to conclusions. Of course, if the third party knows that the agent in question is guilty, it would be disingenuous for her to suggest otherwise or appeal to ENB as a reason to refrain from blaming. But this still leaves open that some third-party appeals to ENB might be normatively significant in a way that first-person appeals typically are not.
For a classic discussion of this difficulty, see Barbara Herman (1989).
I suspect that conversational norms are broader than those just the set of norms considered by Paul Grice, but his conversational maxims are a very good attempt at circumscribing these norms. See Grice (1975).
It’s worth pointing out the criticism of Sylvia here is closely connected to Harry Frankfurt’s criticism of bullshitters, since the bullshitter, unlike the liar, is wholly unconcerned with the truth. Similarly, Sylvia seems more concerned with presenting herself as knowledgeable rather than getting it right for Steven. For more, see Frankfurt (1986).
You see this point being emphasized as the basis for due process in the criminal law, since there is significant harm done to those who are wrongly accused of crimes or who are incorrectly found to be guilty of crimes that they did not commit. Justice Brennan (1970), in his majority opinion in the decision of In re Winship emphasizes this: “The reasonable doubt standard plays a vital role in the American scheme of criminal procedure. It is a prime instrument for reducing the risk of convictions resting on factual error … The accused, during a criminal prosecution, has at stake interests of immense importance, both because of the possibility that he may lose his liberty upon conviction and because of the certainly that he would be stigmatized by the conviction. Accordingly, a society that values the good name and freedom of every individual should not condemn a man for commission of a crime when there is reasonable doubt about his guilt.”
This seems less true in the case of utterances of the type “that was a shoddy thing to do.” But even if blame itself is never assertoric, it seems plausible to think that in blaming you I have expressed my blame, I am implicating the truth of your being blameworthy. I’ll return to cases in which I merely implicate your blameworthiness in II.3.
As an anonymous referee has rightly pointed out to me, framing things in this way very much pits the value of innocence against the value of blame. For more on how we should understand this latter value, see Franklin (2013).
Of course, we also know that people regularly blame others even when they are not justified in doing so. Perhaps this gives us a reason to be more cautious in forming the belief that the blamee is morally responsible (or blameworthy) simply on the basis of what’s implicated by blame. Similarly, if I know that you in particular are very unreliable, then the fact you have implicated that p may not be a reason for me to believe that p. It follows, then, that we can have defeaters for the beliefs that we form (or might form) on the basis of others’ blame. Though, in such circumstances, we’ll have a reason to refrain from blaming that’s independent of ENB as I’m applying it here. In ordinary circumstances, however, it seems plausible that credulity is a reasonable response to others’ explicit testimony and implicature. Yet even in these circumstances, I want to emphasize, ENB should govern our blame in a way that encourages some resistance to being overly credulous in these contexts.
This example is due to Coleen Macnamara.
For a defense of this claim, see Michael Huemer (2007). N.B., Huemer discusses the paradoxical nature of Moorean assertions of the form “p but I do not know that p,” and so focuses on the connection between assertion, belief, and knowledge. Presumably, the same relation exists between assertion, belief, and reasonable belief.
I am very grateful to an anonymous referee for alerting me to Brown’s paper.
For more on TRAIN and related cases, see Brown (2012): 140 ff.
This isn’t a problem for Brown’s argument as I understand it, which is really going after the idea that she calls “Commonality,” which is the thesis that there is a single epistemic standard common to assertion and practical reasoning. My argument here will go through as long as a failure to meet the norms of believing that govern practical reasoning is sufficient to ensure that an agent will also fail to meet the norms that govern assertion, and this can be true even if Commonality is false.
For a strong defense of this claim, see R. Jay Wallace (2011).
Strictly speaking, Kearns’ thesis is one concerning free will. But since free will (or control) is a necessary condition on instantiating the property of being morally responsible, it would follow that free will agnosticism entails moral responsibility agnosticism.
Indeed, after defending weak free will agnosticism, Kearns notes that one of its consequences might be that we would need to radically alter our blaming practices (Kearns himself focuses on the reactive attitudes, but the point would generalize). And although he doesn’t explicitly invoke ENB or some ENB-like principle, it’s only in conjunction with an epistemic norm like ENB that free will agnosticism would have significant implications for our blaming practices. Thus, it looks like Kearns doesn’t just defend free will agnosticism but also the kind of skepticism that I am considering here.
The original characterization of the debate between compatibilists and incompatibilists as being a “dialectical stalemate” is due to John Martin Fischer (1994).
As an anonymous referee has rightly pointed out to me, this over-intellectualizes the issue. What’s really at stake is whether we are reasonable in our belief that we can do otherwise. And issues about the correct analysis of this power aren’t obviously germane to this question.
Gideon Rosen deploys this precise argument in defense of moral responsibility skepticism. According to Rosen, we are responsible for an action only if that action was the result of clear-eyed akrasia. But we are never in a position to determine whether an agent was genuinely akratic, merely ignorant, or weak-willed in some more banal way. Therefore, we are never in a position to be reasonable in our belief that the agent is morally responsible for his or her actions. For more, see Gideon Rosen (2004). What I say below thus serves as a reply to Rosen’s form of moral responsibility skepticism.
Rosen (2004): 308.
This version of the case is based on Stanley’s low stakes case. However, since I am interested in issues concerning reasonable belief rather than knowledge, I have amended Stanley’s case to reflect this concern.
Although this is apparently in conflict with my earlier contention that interpersonal blame is plausibly understood as a low stakes affair, I do not think there is any deep tension between (i) thinking that the epistemic standards in cases of interpersonal blame are fixed by the relatively lower stakes and (ii) also thinking that the truth of ENB would rationalize the virtue of interpersonal generosity. After all, low stakes standards are not no stakes standards. This means that while it is relatively easy to meet those standards (and so satisfy ENB) in low stakes cases, we should still be willing to attend to our reasons for believing someone to be blameworthy in a way that is colloquially captured by the injunction to “look before you leap.”
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Acknowledgments
For help on these ideas and comments on earlier drafts of this paper, I’d like to thank Zac Bachman, John Martin Fischer, Christopher Franklin, Coleen Macnamara, Michael Nelson, and Philip Swenson.
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Coates, D.J. The Epistemic Norm of Blame. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 19, 457–473 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-015-9639-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-015-9639-8