Högre seminarium i praktiskt filosofi: Justin Snedegar (University of Virginia)
Seminarium
Datum:tisdag 25 mars 2025
Tid:13.15 – 15.00
Plats:D700
Setting Boundaries on Blame
Abstract
Blame is a central part of our moral practice, and blaming interactions can be very valuable. But despite the potential for reconciliation, edification, and more, wrongdoers often refuse to engage with blame. Rather than accepting blame, rejecting it by offering an excuse or justification, or taking the opportunity for a joint discussion of the relevant moral issues, they often simply dismiss blame.
This raises important ethical questions. Discussions of this response in the literature on the ethics of blame tend to understand it primarily as a challenge to the blamer’s standing or authority to blame. However, wrongdoers dismiss blame for many reasons that do not involve any challenge to the blamer’s standing.
I propose that we understand dismissing blame instead as setting a boundary on blame: invoking (supposed) norms that prohibit blaming in the circumstances, even assuming that the recipient is blameworthy. Familiar standing norms are among those that can serve as a wrongdoer’s basis for setting a boundary, but there are others. I argue that this more general conception of dismissing blame better captures the practice. It also brings out important questions in the ethics of blame, and especially the ethics of responding to blame, that go beyond questions of standing.
