Abstract
In this paper, I take it for granted both that there are two types of blameworthiness—accountability blameworthiness and attributability blameworthiness—and that avoidability is necessary only for the former. My task, then, is to explain why avoidability is necessary for accountability blameworthiness but not for attributability blameworthiness. I argue that what explains this is both the fact that these two types of blameworthiness make different sorts of reactive attitudes fitting and that only one of these two types of attitudes requires having been able to refrain from φ-ing in order for them to be fitting.
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Notes
Some think that there are more than two. For instance, David Shoemaker (2015) argues that there are three distinct types: attributability, answerability, and accountability.
See CarlssonForthcoming, Nelkin2015, and Watson1996.
For a defense of the view that these are the relevant reactive attitudes for each type of blameworthiness, see CarlssonForthcoming.
This set up of the problem involving both the Guilt Argument and the Shame Argument is inspired by the same sort of set up found in CarlssonForthcoming.
Admittedly, there are different interpretations of the notions of desert, fairness, and fittingness. For instance, some deny that desert has any axiological implications. And some take desert to be just a kind of fittingness. But whether you agree with my labels for these norms is not what’s important. What’s important is that there are these different norms of appropriateness.
Others who think that the claim that a subject deserves X entails that it would, in some respect, be non-instrumentally good that she or he gets X include Carlsson (Forthcoming), Clarke (2013), and McKenna (2012). But Nelkin disagrees with this—see her Nelkin 2016.
I’m not committed to the view that all attitudes (or that all emotions) necessarily have some sort of representational content. For instance, it may be, for all that I claim here, that anger needn’t have any representational content. But I will insist that each of the following is essentially representational: guilt, pride, shame, disdain, resentment, and indignation. So, my view is compatible with the sort of view offered in D’Arms and Jacobson2003, where they distinguish between natural emotional kinds such as anger and what they call cognitive sharpenings. Cognitive sharpenings are a proper subset of instances of some natural emotional kind that are identified by their essential representational content. For instance, resentment is, on their view, a cognitive sharpening of anger that’s identified as a species of anger that represents the world as being one in which the subject has been wronged. I should note, however, that they provisionally suggest that guilt is a natural emotional kind and not a cognitive sharpening, contrary to what I’ll claim here (see 2003, p. 138).
Perhaps, this is too quick. For it does not seem appropriate for a worm to fear a bird unless the worm is capable of representing the bird as a threat to itself. So, I should probably qualify the above as follows: it’s appropriate for a subject to form an attitude only if she has the option both to form this attitude and to form the representations essential to it. Of course, I’m not committed to fear having some essential representational content; it could, as D’Arms and Jacobson suggest (2003), be a natural emotional kind. But if it is, it’s fitting when, and only when, it has some representational content and that representational content is accurate.
The idea that it would be fitting/unfitting for a subject to φ is distinct from the idea that it would be fortunate/unfortunate that she φs. Consequently, we must allow that it could be fitting, say, to fear an animal even if this would be unfortunate given that the animal would then sense this fear and become even more of a threat as a result. Despite its being unfortunate to have this fear, it would, nevertheless, be fitting so long as it correctly represents its object as a threat. In general, attitudes represent their objects as being a certain way and are, therefore, fitting (that is, correct) to the extent that their representations are accurate. By contrast, an attitude is fortunate if and only if good consequences would result from one’s having that attitude. For more on this distinction, see Chappell2012.
Likewise, it seems to me that when one resents, or is indignant with, a subject for having φ-ed, one represents the world as being one in which that subject deserves to suffer the unpleasantness of feeling guilty in virtue of her having violated a legitimate demand in φ-ing. Of course, in the case of resentment, one will additionally represent the world as being one in which one was a victim of this violation.
Here, I concur with Darwall and Mill: “Mill calls guilt a kind of ‘internal sanction’, but it is important to appreciate that guilt is not merely painful, or the (painful) fear of further (external) sanctions (Mill1991: Ch. III). It is the painful sense of having done wrong, having violated a legitimate demand that comes, not just from someone else, say God, but also that one implicitly makes of oneself, through blaming oneself in feeling guilt” (Darwall2013, p. 16).
Thus, my view is compatible with the possibility of experiencing recalcitrant guilt—that is, with the possibility of experiencing guilt while at the same time believing that one does not deserve to feel its unpleasant affect. But although this is possible, it is, on my view, no more possible for a subject to feel guilt without it seeming to her that she deserves to suffer its unpleasant affect than it is for a subject to feel resentment without it seeming to her that she’s been wronged. And, contrary to D’Arms and Jacobson (2003, p. 143), I contend that there is no difficulty or instability in a subject’s continuing to resent someone while believing that that someone did not wrong her. Take, for instance, this real-life example. My wife once dreamed that I cheated on her. That morning, it was clear to me that she resented me. Initially, she denied it. But when I explained how she was treating me as if I had wronged her, she admitted that she had this dream and that, although she knew that I had not wrong her, it still seemed to her as if I had. Consequently, it was recalcitrant resentment that she was feeling. And this recalcitrant resentment continued stably for as long as it continued to seem to her that I had wronged her.
Note, then, that I’m not saying that an attitude is fitting if and only if it would not be morally bad to have such an attitude. That would be to commit what Justin D’Arms and Jacobson (2000) call the moralistic fallacy. For fittingness is a matter of accurate representation rather than moral goodness. And, thus, a reaction can be fitting even if morally bad. For instance, amusement can be the fitting response to a funny joke in that it accurately represents that joke as amusing even if that response would be morally bad given both that it’s a cruel joke and that any visible or audible expression of amusement in response to it would cause harm to others.
This thought is connected to several of Herbert Morris’s thoughts: “the man who feels guilty often seeks pain and somehow sees it as appropriate because of his guilt; indeed, the feelings of guilt may disappear and the man may connect their disappearance with the pain he has experienced. When we think of what it is to feel guilty then, we think not only of painful feelings but of something that is owed; and pain is somehow connected with paying what one owes” (1976, pp. 89–90). Thus, “what is sought out is the pain of feeling guilty as punishment for wrongdoing” (1976, p. 104).
Clearly, one reason that it would often be morally problematic to take a pill to alleviate one’s guilt is that experiencing guilt can often be instrumentally valuable in making one less likely to commit future wrongs. Likewise, shame can be instrumentally valuable in helping one to regulate one’s conduct. But it seems to me that it would be morally problematic to take a pill to alleviate one’s guilt even if experiencing that guilt would be of no instrumental value. It would be morally problematic in that one deserves to feel bad for violating a legitimate demand and it is morally and non-instrumentally good for people to get what they deserve. In this respect, then, guilt seems unlike shame.
Appropriate grief is a bit more complicated. There does seem to be something morally problematic about taking a pill to get rid of one’s appropriate grief. But I suspect that this is because it may count as disrespectful to the one lost and/or as a form of denial that hinders one’s ability to heal from that loss. In any case, the fact that there is nothing problematic about taking a pill to rid oneself of one’s appropriate fear in instances where having that fear would be of no instrumental value shows that the mere appropriateness of a feeling does not determine whether it’s something that it would be morally problematic to get rid of.
Many find this idea unacceptable. For instance, T. M. Scanlon rejects the idea that “it is good that people who have done wrong should suffer” (2013, p. 102). Likewise, R. Jay Wallace rejects the “problematic thought that wrongdoers positively deserve to suffer” (Wallace, 1994, p. 108). But rejecting this idea does not entail rejecting the idea that someone accountable for some wrongdoing deserves to suffer the unpleasantness of feeling guilt for having committed that wrongdoing. Indeed, Scanlon now accepts that wrongdoers deserve to feel guilt for their wrongdoing—see Scanlon2008, p. 188. So, even if we reject the idea that wrongdoers deserve to suffer generally, we should not necessarily reject the idea that wrongdoers deserve to suffer the specific unpleasantness of feeling guilt for their wrongdoing—see, for instance, McKenna2012 (chaps. 6–7).
Why think that she deserves to feel bad at all? Here’s my argument: (P1) Given that she’s accountable for having mistreated me, it’s appropriate to want her to feel guilty for having mistreated me and to want her to have this experience even if her having it would not be instrumentally valuable. (P2) If it’s appropriate to want X even if X would not be instrumentally valuable, then X must be non-instrumentally valuable. (C1) Thus, her feeling guilty for having mistreated me is non-instrumentally valuable. (P3) What most plausibly accounts for C1 is that she deserves to feel guilty for having mistreated me. (C2) Therefore, she deserves to feel guilty for having mistreated me. And, in defense of P3, I would add, first, that what explains the non-instrumental value of her feeling guilt for having mistreated me is not that her having this experience is itself non-instrumentally valuable. It is not. After all, her having this experience would not be non-instrumentally valuable if she were not accountable for her mistreatment of me. Second, the fact that it is fitting for her to feel guilt for having mistreated me is not what explains why her feeling guilty is non-instrumentally valuable. For, in general, there’s nothing non-instrumentally valuable about having a fitting attitude. There’s nothing, for instance, non-instrumentally valuable about fearing that which poses a threat even though it is fitting to fear that which poses a threat. Thus, it seems that what explains the fact that her feeling guilt is non-instrumentally valuable is both that she deserves to feel guilt and that it is, in general, non-instrumentally valuable that people get what they deserve.
If you think that there’s nothing non-instrumentally good about her feeling guilty for having accountably mistreated me, then you would have to think (implausibly) that the world in which she feels guilty for having accountably mistreated me is, other things being equal, no better than the world in which she likewise feels guilty for having non-accountably mistreated me.
Note that my very minimal claim about desert is even more minimal than what others consider to be a relatively minimal claim about desert—see, for instance, Carlsson’s claim that “if an agent deserves some harm, it will be non-instrumentally good that this harm occurs” (2017, p. 99). These others are committed to the view that the world in which my wife feels guilty for having accountably mistreated me is, other things being equal, better than the world in which she does not feel guilty for having accountably mistreated me. On this view, her feeling guilty is not just, in some respect, non-instrumentally good, but is, overall, non-instrumentally good. I’m not committed to this stronger claim.
As Morris notes: “feelings of guilt may disappear and the man [who used to feel guilty] may connect their disappearance with the pain he has experienced” (1976, p. 90). The idea, I take it, is that punishment (even self-punishment in form of guilty feelings) can undercut the appropriateness of feeling further guilt, for if we have suffered enough for our wrongdoing, it is no longer appropriate for us to continue to suffer (1976, p. 62). As Brad Cokelet has pointed out to me, once you have suffered enough guilt, the wronged party may forgive you and rightly tell you that you should not feel guilty anymore. Of course, even if you have already suffered a sufficient amount of guilt that does not mean that those who you have wronged must forgive you, nor does it mean that you do not still owe it to them to make amends and express your contrition. Also, there may be some transgressions that are sufficiently serious that it never ceases to be appropriate to feel guilty about them—perhaps, it ceases only to be appropriate to feel guilty with the same intensity and/or frequency.
Note that the presence of the indexical “this” in this proposition is what allows for the fact that the thought given in quotes can be true when entertained at a time prior to one’s having suffered a sufficient amount of self-reproach and then false when entertained at later a time—a time after which one has suffered a sufficient amount of self-reproach.
Someone might claim that, as some level, it must strike Finn as if turning Jim over to the authorities is wrong. But consider the mafioso who has turned state witness. As T. M. Scanlon (2013, 88) points out, it seems that he may blame himself for violating the code of omertà and, consequently feel guilty, and, yet, it needn’t strike him as if testifying against his criminal co-conspirators is wrong.
See, for instance, Prinz & Nichols2010.
For two very interesting discussions of how, after the passage of time, it can be appropriate to feel attitudes such as guilt, grief, and anger less intensely and/or less frequently, see MarušićForthcoming and MollerMANUSCRIPT.
Of course, I will still have the non-occurrent belief that his death is bad and constitutes a significant loss for me. But I tend to think that this non-occurrent belief does not put much rational pressure on me to grieve just as the mere fact that there are certainly some logical inconsistencies among all my many non-occurrent beliefs puts little to no rational pressure on me to revise my beliefs. Such rational pressure arises only after, say, some philosophical inquiry brings the inconsistency to the forefront of my conscious mind in the form a set of jointly inconsistent occurrent beliefs.
Again, I want to allow that some transgressions may be sufficiently serious that there will never come a point at which one has suffered enough such that any further guilty feelings would be unfitting—perhaps, what’s unfitting is only that one continues to feel guilty with the same intensity and/or frequency. But it does seem to me that if I’ve already punished myself with guilt for, say, the candy bar that I stole as a teenager, it is unfitting for me to feel any more guilt about it, although it could be perfectly rational for me to feel this way when I have certain recollections about it.
For helpful comments and discussions, I thank Andreas Brekke Carlsson, Brad Cokelet, Josh Glasgow, Pat Greenspan, Berislav Marušić, Shyam Nair, David Shoemaker, Sergio Tenenbaum, an anonymous referee, and the organizers and participants of the 2018 Bled Philosophy Conference on Ethical Issues.
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Portmore, D.W. Desert, Control, and Moral Responsibility. Acta Anal 34, 407–426 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-019-00395-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-019-00395-z