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Scanlon’s Theories of Blame

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Notes

  1. T. M. Scanlon, Moral Dimensions: Permissibility, Meaning, Blame (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), p. 122.

  2. Ibid., p. 123.

  3. Ibid., p. 123.

  4. T. M. Scanlon, “The Significance of Choice,” In S. M. McMurrin (ed.), The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, Vol. 8 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1988), p. 170; and T. M. Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), p. 268.

  5. T. M. Scanlon, “Reply to Hill, Mason and Wedgwood,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 83 (2011): 490-505, p. 496.

  6. Ibid., p. 500. For discussion of difficulties for evaluative views of blame, see George Sher, In Praise of Blame (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 75-78; Hanna Pickard, “Irrational Blame,” Analysis 73 (2013): 613-26; and Neal Tognazzini and Justin Coates, “Blame,” in Edward N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2018 Edition), §1.1, available at https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2018/entries/blame/.

  7. See Thomas Hill, “Scanlon on Moral Dimensions,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 83 (2011): 482-9; Michele Mason, “Blame: Taking It Seriously,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 83 (2011): 473-81; George Sher, “Wrongdoing and Relationships: The Problem of the Stranger,” in David Coates and Neal Tognazzini (eds.), Blame: Its Nature and Norms (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 49-65; Angela Smith, “Moral Blame and Moral Protest,” in David Coates and Neal Tognazzini (eds.), Blame: Its Nature and Norms (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 27-48; R. Jay Wallace, “Dispassionate Opprobrium: On Blame and the Reactive Sentiments,” in R. Jay Wallace, Rahul Kumar, and Samuel Freeman (eds.), Reasons and Recognition: Essays on the Philosophy of T. M. Scanlon (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 348-72; Gary Watson, “The Trouble with Psychopaths,” in R. Jay Wallace, Rahul Kumar, and Samuel Freeman (eds.), Reasons and Recognition: Essays on the Philosophy of T. M. Scanlon (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 307-31; and Susan Wolf, “Blame, Italian Style,” in R. Jay Wallace, Rahul Kumar, and Samuel Freeman (eds.), Reasons and Recognition: Essays on the Philosophy of T. M. Scanlon (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 332-47. Among these, Hill, Sher, and Wallace emphasize doubts about Scanlon’s treatment of the notion of a relationship, and Mason, Wallace, and Wolf insist on the centrality of emotion in blame. For replies to these and other related criticisms, see Scanlon, “Reply to Hill, Mason and Wedgwood,” op. cit., and T. M. Scanlon, “Interpreting Blame,” in David Coates and Neal Tognazzini (eds.), Blame: Its Nature and Norms (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 84-99.

  8. Scanlon, Moral Dimensions, op. cit., p. 128.

  9. Ibid., p. 123.

  10. Ibid., pp. 128-9. For citations of this passage as Scanlon’s view, see Coates and Tognazzini, op. cit., p. 11; Mason, op. cit., p. 474; Michael McKenna, Conversation and Responsibility (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 104; David Owens, Shaping the Normative Landscape (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 36; Derk Pereboom, “Free Will Skepticism, Blame, and Obligation,” in David Coates and Neal Tognazzini (eds.), Blame: Its Nature and Norms (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 189-206, p. 191; Sher, “Wrongdoing and Relationships,” op. cit., p. 50; David Shoemaker, “Blame and Punishment,” in David Coates and Neal Tognazzini (eds.), Blame: Its Nature and Norms (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 100-118, p. 101; Smith, op. cit., pp. 37-8; Matthew Talbert, Moral Responsibility (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2016), pp. 58-9; Tognazzini and Coates, op. cit., §1.3.2; Wallace, op. cit., p. 349; and Wolf, op. cit., p. 332.

  11. Scanlon, Moral Dimensions, op. cit., p. 6, and T. M. Scanlon, “Précis of Moral Dimensions: Permissibility, Meaning, Blame,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 83 (2011): 459-63, p. 462.

  12. Scanlon, Moral Dimensions, op. cit., p. 131.

  13. Scanlon, “Reply,” op. cit., p. 497.

  14. Scanlon, Moral Dimensions, op. cit., p. 129.

  15. Ibid., pp. 129-30.

  16. Ibid., p. 128.

  17. Smith, op. cit., p.38.

  18. Ibid., p. 38.

  19. Scanlon, Moral Dimensions, op. cit., p. 131.

  20. Ibid., pp.186-7.

  21. Ibid., p. 141.

  22. Ibid., p. 138. For passages that are more ambiguous between [JCT] and [ACT], see pp. 131 and 155, and Scanlon, “Interpreting Blame,” op. cit., pp. 88-9.

  23. See T. M. Scanlon, “Giving Desert its Due,” Philosophical Explorations 16 (2013): 101-16.

  24. Scanlon, Moral Dimensions, op. cit., pp. 166-7.

  25. Ibid., p. 123.

  26. Ibid., p. 198; cf. pp. 179-206.

  27. Ibid., pp. 131, 186-7, and 138.

  28. Ibid., pp. 123, 166-7, and 198.

  29. Ibid., pp. 186-7. For other uses of lists in characterizing Scanlon’s view, see pp. 131 and 186-7; T. M. Scanlon, “Giving Desert its Due,” op. cit., pp. 105-6; and T. M. Scanlon, “Forms and Conditions of Responsibility,” in Randolph Clarke, Michael McKenna, and Angela M. Smith (eds.), The Nature of Responsibility: New Essays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 89-111, p. 92.

  30. Scanlon, Moral Dimensions, op. cit., p. 122.

  31. Scanlon, What We Owe, op. cit., p. 39. For critical discussion of this view of desire, see David Copp and David Sobel, “Desires, Motives, and Reasons: Scanlon’s Rationalistic Moral Psychology,” Social Theory and Practice 28 (2002): 243-76; and Michael Smith, “Scanlon on Desire and the Explanation of Action,” in R. Jay Wallace, Rahul Kumar, and Samuel Freeman (eds.), Reasons and Recognition: Essays on the Philosophy of T. M. Scanlon (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 79-97.

  32. Scanlon, Moral Dimensions, op. cit., p. 128.

  33. Ibid., pp. 129-31.

  34. Ibid., p. 122.

  35. Ibid., p. 4.

  36. Sebastian Watzl, Structuring Mind: The Nature of Attention and how it Shapes Consciousness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), p. 2.

  37. For useful recent discussions of attention and its role in emotion, see Lucy Allais, “Elective Forgiveness,” International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 21 (2013): 637–653; Elisa Hurley and Coleen Macnamara, “Beyond Belief: Toward a Theory of the Reactive Attitudes,” Philosophical Papers 39 (2010): 373–399; Leonhard Menges, “The Emotion Account of Blame,” Philosophical Studies 174 (2017): 257-73; David Zimmerman, “Thinking With Your Hypothalamus: Reflections on a Cognitive Role for the Reactive Emotions,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 63 (2001): 521–541; and especially Watzl, op. cit.

  38. For the details of Scanlon’s views about standing, see Scanlon, Moral Dimensions, op. cit., pp. 175-9 and 206-10. For further discussion, see G. A., Cohen, “Casting the First Stone: Who Can, and Who Can't, Condemn the Terrorists?” Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 58 (2006): 113-36; G. A. Cohen, “Ways of Silencing Critics,” in G.A. Cohen, Finding Oneself in the Other (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), 134-42; R. Jay Wallace, “Hypocrisy, Moral Address, and the Equal Standing of Persons,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 38 (2010): 307-41; Linda Radzik, “On Minding Your Own Business: Differentiating Accountability Relations within the Moral Community,” Social Theory and Practice 37 (2011): 574-98; Macalester Bell, “The Standing to Blame: A Critique,” in David Coates and Neal Tognazzini (eds.), Blame: Its Nature and Norms (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 263-81; and Marilyn Friedman, “How to Blame People Responsibly,” The Journal of Value Inquiry 47 (2013): 271-84.

Acknowledgements

My thanks to Craig Agule, Colin Chamberlain, Charles Goldhaber, August Gorman, Niko Kolodny, Arthur Krieger, Nathan Stout, R. Jay Wallace, an anonymous referee, and my audience at the American Philosophical Association (Central Division) 2018 meeting for helpful discussion of earlier versions of this paper.

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    Eugene Chislenko

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Chislenko, E. Scanlon’s Theories of Blame. J Value Inquiry 54, 371–386 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-019-09703-7

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