Abstract

Abstract: Philosophers take the practice of holding each other morally responsible for wrongful actions seriously. Hannah Pickard (2011), Andrea Westlund (2018), and Katrina Hutchison (2018) all talk about the sting of blame and resentment. Eugene Chislenko (forthcoming) further argues that some of that sting stems from being seen by others as “a source of badness” and “a disaster”.

We can remove the sting from a bad situation if we show that the real source of badness was a non-agent; if we blame, e.g., some unforeseen natural disaster rather than an agent for what happened, no one is stung by it (ibid). However, we cannot similarly remove the sting by shifting blame to another agent who allegedly lacks moral responsibility for what they did. Agents suffer when others see them as sources of badness and disasters, even if people add the caveat that all this badness wasn’t their fault.

This point was recognized by Bernard Williams (1981; 1993) in his discussions about agents who feel agent-regret or shame for things that were not their fault. Williams focused on situations in which, according to traditional moral responsibility theory, a morally responsible agent should be excused for the disaster he caused due to momentary lack of control or a lack of crucial information. According to Williams, it’s still natural and justified for this agent to suffer from knowing that he caused something terrible to happen, even if present-day moral philosophers insist that he is excused and shouldn’t feel guilty. Similarly, I argue, agents who are supposedly exempted from moral responsibility due to their young age and/or serious mental disorders, will feel stung and suffer when seen as the source of badness and disasters. I use real-life examples to illustrate this point (Luhrmann 2000: 284; 2007: 239-242; MacKinnon and Pies 2006).

The sting of blame and resentment is not generally considered a reason to abandon our moral responsibility practices altogether; it is, however, considered a reason to take this practice seriously, and not throw blame around willy-nilly. I argue that we should be similarly cautious when attributing causal responsibility for some badness or disaster to the supposedly exempted, and discuss concrete implications for my previously mentioned real-life examples.

References
Chislenko, E. “Causal Blame”. Forthcoming in American Philosophical Quarterly
Hutchison, K. 2018. “Moral responsibility, respect and social identity”. in Hutchison, Mackenzie, and Oshana (eds.) The Social Dimensions of Moral Responsibility. Oxford University Press.
MacKinnon, D. F., and Pies, R. 2006. “Affective instability as rapid cycling: theoretical and clinical implications for borderline personality and bipolar spectrum disorders.” Bipolar Disorders. 8: 1-14.
Luhrmann, T. M. 2000. Of two minds: An anthropologist looks at American Psychiatry. New York: Knopf.
Luhrmann, T. M. 2007. Social defeat and the culture of chronicity: Or, why schizophrenia does so well over there and so badly here. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry. 31: 135-172.
Pickard, H. 2011. “Responsibility without Blame: Empathy and the Effective Treatment of Personality Disorder.” Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 13 (3): 209–224.
Westlund, A. 2018. “Answerability without blame?” in Hutchison, Mackenzie, and Oshana (eds.) The Social Dimensions of Moral Responsibility. Oxford University Press.
Williams, B. 1981. Moral Luck. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Williams, B. 1993. Shame and Necessity. Berkeley: University of California Press.