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Direct Blameworthiness for Non-conduct?

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Abstract

Peter Graham (2017) argues against the prima facie plausible thesis that one can be directly blameworthy only for one’s conduct—that is, only for one’s actions or omissions to act. Because this thesis serves as a premise in a challenging recent argument for the revisionist conclusion that we’re at most rarely directly blameworthy for anything, Graham’s argument holds out a promise of contributing to a defense of a wide range of commonsense ascriptions of blameworthiness. After reconstructing Graham’s argument for the possibility of direct blameworthiness for non-conduct, I develop the following objection to it: in light of a clear counterexample, one of Graham’s two premises must be weakened, which in turn requires that Graham’s other premise be strengthened; unfortunately, the resulting strengthened premise is implausible on balance.

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Notes

  1. Does this assumption really hold in the case of guilt? Arguably, yes (cf. Rosen 2015: 82–3): blaming yourself for Z involves your having a certain essentially unpleasant mental state that strikes you as deserved on the basis of Z.

  2. This objection to (7) is indebted to Robert Audi’s discussion of what he calls ‘retentional responsibility’ for traits (1993: 236ff.) and ‘direct negative control’ over the possession of mental states like those that Graham’s examples involve (2001: 94–5; 2016: 155–6). Thanks also to an anonymous referee who (a) helped me see that an earlier attempted counterexample to (7) was insufficiently persuasive as well as dialectically infelicitous, and (b) provided a case that inspired the present attempted counterexample to (7).

  3. For discussion of the distinction between character-focused and act-focused constitutive moral luck, see Nelkin 2013.

  4. It’s worth emphasizing here that the essentially unpleasant mental states to which (11) alludes are instances of suffering that include such episodes as a painful awareness of “…the harm that [S] has caused or risked, the disrespect [S] showed, and so on” (Rosen 2015: 82). Propositions (8), (9), and (11) jointly entail that one’s bearing a hostile blame emotion toward an agent on the basis of a mental state that the pertinent agent doesn’t possess through their own conduct would involve a misrepresentation of the agent’s relation to the relevant (passively possessed) mental state, and thus would be alethically inappropriate. The indicated combination of claims leaves it open, however, that one’s bearing a hostile blame emotion toward an agent on the basis of a passively possessed mental state might be appropriate in some other, non-alethic way—for example, morally or prudentially appropriate. (Thanks to an anonymous referee for comments that led me to add this note.)

  5. Scanlon (2015: 95) seems to be endorsing a thesis similar to (11) when he claims that “[i]t is not plausible to suppose that the infliction of suffering could be justified simply by what a person is like (what attitudes he or she has toward others) regardless of whether he or she could have avoided being this way” (cf. Zimmerman 2015: 58–9; Clarke 2014: 112–3; FitzPatrick 2017: 32–7).

  6. Thanks to an anonymous referee for pressing me to say significantly more on behalf of (11) than I did in an earlier draft.

  7. An anonymous referee suggests that a Graham-style variant of the above counterexample to (7) may impugn (1) in a relatively direct way. Suppose that, as Marisol passively acquires a desire for Emilio’s agony, she also learns that extinguishing this desire (call it ‘D’) would have certain horrible consequences. Marisol rightly refrains from extinguishing D. But Marisol is content with D independently of what she has learned about the consequences of extinguishing D; accordingly, she would have refrained from extinguishing D even if she hadn’t learned anything about the consequences of extinguishing D. If Marisol is here blameworthy just for having D, then this case constitutes a counterexample to (1).

    I can’t yet see that this new case threatens (1). In my view, we lack reason to believe that Marisol is blameworthy just for having D, and we have reason to disbelieve that Marisol is blameworthy just for having D. If Marisol is blameworthy just for having D, then she’s blameworthy neither for her failure to extinguish D nor for her contentment with D. While reflection on a duly amplified version of the case elicits from me a sense that Marisol merits some or other of the non-hostile blame-like reactions discussed above in connection with (6-), such reflection does not elicit from me any sense that Marisol is blameworthy for having D. Moreover, by (8) and (9) above, Marisol is blameworthy for having D only if she deserves induction of an essentially unpleasant mental state for having D. Reflection on the pertinent version of the case elicits from me a sense that Marisol does not deserve induction of an essentially unpleasant mental state for having D. Notably (and here I echo footnote 4 above), while the claim that Marisol doesn’t deserve such treatment for having D entails that one’s bearing a hostile blame emotion toward Marisol on the basis of D would be alethically inappropriate (since such a reaction would misrepresent Marisol’s relation to D), the claim that Marisol doesn’t deserve such treatment for having D leaves it open that one’s bearing a hostile blame emotion toward Marisol on the basis of D might be appropriate in some other, non-alethic way—for example, morally or prudentially appropriate.

  8. See Coffman (forthcoming) for assessment of arguments bearing on (2). Many thanks to the anonymous reviewers recruited by this journal for comments that enabled me to improve significantly upon earlier drafts.

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Coffman, E.J. Direct Blameworthiness for Non-conduct?. Philosophia 47, 1087–1094 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-019-00055-x

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