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Blame and the Humean Theory of Motivation

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Abstract

A classic, though basically neglected question about motivation arises when we attempt to account for blame’s nature—namely, does the recognition central to blame need help from an independent desire in order to motivate the blame-characteristic dispositions that arise in the blamer? Those who have attended to the question think the answer is yes. Hence, they adopt what I call a Humean Construal of blame on which blame is (a) a judgment that an individual S is blameworthy and (b) an independent desire about S not doing as they did or being as they are. This paper rejects arguments for the Humean Construal, illustrates deep failings of that view, and uses these considerations to support anti-Humean accounts of blame in particular and moral motivation more broadly.

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Notes

  1. See, e.g., Sher (2006, Chpt. 6).

  2. Strawson (1962). There are many versions of this account but this will not effect my arguments here.

  3. Named for Harry Frankfurt (1969). For excellent collections on this debate see, Widerker and McKena (2003) Moya and Cuypers (2009).

  4. Widerker (2003).

  5. Capes (2010, 73). Note that Capes’s argument is limited in scope, since it only appeals to those who reject the W-Defense.

  6. For instance, rejecting (W2) often involves debating the nature of alternative possibilities, since many think that some alternatives are insufficient for action attribution or irrelevant to attributing something to an individual as the basis of moral appraisal. Capes (2010) discusses those sorts of debates at length.

  7. Capes (2010, 13–15).

  8. Cf. Wallace (1994, 21–33) for a now classic statement of this position.

  9. Palmer (2013, 559–560).

  10. Sher (2006, pp. 71–88).

  11. Some deny the phenomenon like Wertheimer (1998). Others like Wallace (1994, 75–78) distinguish between blame and holding responsible. Cf. Wolf (2011, 344) and McKenna (2012, 24–26, 33 & 106).

  12. Cf. Scanlon, (2008, Chpt. 4, esp. 127–138) and Thompson available at https://sites.google.com/a/reasonsresponsive.com/www/research/defending-promiscuous-accounts-of-blame/defending-promiscuous-accounts-of-blame and https://sites.google.com/a/reasonsresponsive.com/www/research/defending-promiscuous-accounts-ofblame/how-anti-humeans-can-keep-the-blame-in-blame-without-emotion-and-why-humeans-cannot.

  13. To be clear, this ‘first’ and ‘second’ is not meant to identify an order in time.

  14. See, e.g., Smith (1987, 1994, 111–119).

  15. See, e.g., Smith (1987, 1994, 119–125).

  16. Shafer-Landau (2003, 173 n. 11).

  17. More on what this independence comes to below.

  18. Smith (1987, 1994, 111–119). Many attribute directions-of-fit talk to Anscombe (1957).

  19. Price also rejects arguments by Lewis (1988) and Collins (1988). Lewis (1996) continues his support for HTM and Hajek & Petit (2004) aSchueler (1991)nd Weintraub (2007) respond. For different sorts of responses to (a)-style objections, see, e.g., , Sobel and Copp (2001), Coleman (2008), and Alverez (2012, 66–71).

  20. Bedke, Matthew (Unpublished ). A Case for Besires. Faculty.arts.ubc.ca/mbedke/Research.html. Accessed 18 Jan 2014. Available at: http://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/mbedke/Research_files/Besires.pdf.

  21. See, e.g., Smith (1994, 123) who cites R. Jay Wallace’s BA thesis as inspiration.

  22. Some of Smith’s targets might actually be committed to the entailment.

  23. See Swartzer (2013) for an alternative response that essentially shows that anti-Humeans can use cases and explanations like those offered by Humeans to make sense of irrational behavior like the one featured in Stocker’s.

  24. Nagel (1970, 27–32) and Dancy (1993, Chpts. 1 & 2; 2000, Chpts. 2 & 3).

  25. Adapted from Dancy (1993), 9, Fig. 1 .1).

  26. See Barry (2005) for a nice summary and critique of Humean commitments.

  27. Following Sher (2006, 112–113) I’m only interested in locating the phenomenon that fulfills the causal and normative roles that moral-responsibility responses like blame do. I am not doing conceptual analysis or attempting to determine what our word ‘blame’ refers to.

  28. Ibid., 102.

  29. Ibid., 99–101.

  30. Sher (2006, 94–95). Sher also notes that self-blame involves the disposition to apologize.

  31. Ibid. 103–111.

  32. Ibid. 104. The bulleted points are directly from Sher. I left out quotation marks to avoid confusion.

  33. Ibid., 105–106. This goes mutatis mutandis for the other blame-constituting desire.

  34. Thus, perhaps he could allow that the dispositions (a) – (c) are partly constitutive of blame. However, if the motivating frustration Sher cites is necessarily affective, it cannot be constitutively tied to blame. And, even so, it seems an individual can blame without being frustrated at all. Suppose that Jaclyn, despite maintaining a good relationship with her brother, wanted to bring some of her concerns about his lifestyle to his attention but could never find the right opportunity. In the face of Hugh’s disrespect, she may see her chance. Thus, rather than being frustrated she is relieved—she finally can say what she thinks needs to be said at a moment when Hugh will likely listen. Thanks to Mark van Roojen for this point.

  35. Sher (2006, 116–133).

  36. To be clear, the worry is simply that both blame-constituting components at least in part originate from the same source—namely, the set of moral principles adopted by the blamer. This would be true even if the blame-constituting belief were about badness and not blameworthiness. I thank an anonymous referee for asking me to clarify this point.

  37. To be clear, we’re not assuming that the blamer is being irrational—she can have an attitude that is non-rationally related to another attitude or set of attitudes and still be rational. Thanks to an anonymous referee for pushing me to clarify this.

  38. Sher (2006, 101–103)

  39. See, e.g. Smith (1987).

  40. See, e.g. Smith (1994, 165).

  41. I am happy to replace wrongdoing and bad character with ill or insufficiently good will and allow for a pluralist view about what an ill will amounts to as Shoemaker (2013, 2015) does.

  42. Sher’s (2006, 94–111) account of how frustration of the blame-constituting desire helps motivate the blame-characteristic disposition strongly suggests that this is how he is thinking of the independence. This argument will go mutatis mutandis for the present-looking desire.

  43. Sher (2006, 126).

  44. Sher (2006, 78–91). For an alternative reason to reject, see, e.g. Oshana (1997).

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Acknowledgements

I’d like to thank Mark van Roojen and Steve Swartzer for extensive conversation about the topics in this paper. I thank several anonymous referees for comments on earlier drafts of this paper. I thank Franz-Peter Griesmaier, Susanna Goodin, and audience members for helpful discussion at a special colloquium on my work at the University of Wyoming, December 3, 2015. I thank Aaron Elliot, Luke Elwonger, Allison Fritz, Shane George, Christopher Gibilisco, Cliff Hill, Timothy Loughrist, Chris Richards, Chelsea Richardson, Andy Spaid, Mark Selzer, Lauren Sweetland, and others in attendance at the Friday Research Colloquium at the University of Nebraska-Linocln, Fall 2015, for helpful discussion. Finally, I thank Derek Shiller and audience members at the 4th Annual Philosopher’s Cocoon Philosophy Conference, Fall 2016, for helpful feedback.

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  1. Robert J. Kutak Center for the Teaching and Study of Applied Ethics, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, P. O. Box 880321, Lincoln, NE, 68588-0321, USA

    Adam R. Thompson

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Thompson, A.R. Blame and the Humean Theory of Motivation. Philosophia 45, 1345–1364 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-017-9818-z

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