2014/05/15 by Miranda Fricker · 463 citations
Arts and Humanities · Neuroscience · Psychology · #Blame #Computer science #Epistemology #Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics #Free Will and Agency #Philosophical Ethics and Theory #Philosophy #Psychology #Social psychology #Subject (documents)
paper · doi:10.1111/nous.12067
published in Noûs 50(1), 165-183 (Wiley)
openalex publication_date 2014/05/15 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/25
Abstract When we hope to explain and perhaps vindicate a practice that is internally diverse, philosophy faces a methodological challenge. Such subject matters are likely to have explanatorily basic features that are not necessary conditions. This prompts a move away from analysis to some other kind of philosophical explanation. This paper proposes a paradigm based explanation of one such subject matter: blame. First, a paradigm form of blame is identified—‘Communicative Blame’—where this is understood as a candidate for an explanatorily basic form of blame. Second, its point and purpose in our lives is investigated and found to reside in its power to increase the alignment of the blamer and the wrongdoer's moral understandings. Third, the hypothesis that Communicative Blame is an explanatorily basic form of blame is tested out by seeing how far other kinds of blame can reasonably be understood as derivative, especially in respect of blame's point and purpose. Finally, a new and quasi‐political worry about blame is raised.