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Blame & Hume
Apr. 6th, 2009 02:38 amBlame has for a long time seemed useleess and archaic to me. Saying "look what you did!" does not necessarily help to remedy the situation; it may even make things worse, through making the responsible party resent the excessive blaming; and it may make her inclined to see her responsibility for the bad situation seem inevitable and unchangeable--that there is nothing she can do to make things better at present or to escape from being shamed in the future.
Blame reinforces responsibility. That is, ir reinforces the sense that some occurrence was done or controlled by a certain person. Because of this it can help one to become aware of the things that one does, so that one can be more careful in the future. Thus far, it's alright. But reinforcing an agent's connection to her action can have two different effects: it can lead her to think, this is what I've done, because I'm the kind of person who does these things, and there's no escape from that or to think, this is what I've done, and I can use the control that I now see that I had over this action to make things better now and do better things in the future. Blaming a bad action on someone's character seems particularly useless, as it will only lead them down the first path. Changing one's character (whatever that is) seems much harder than changing one's future actions. Yet, some say (Hume) that the criterion of responsibility is whether an action proceeded from an enduring character trait in the agent.
And something in that criterion is right: namely, that it seems natural to excuse someone experiencing temporary insanity of some kind, or someone coerced, from at least some of the responsbility for what they do in that state. How to reconcile the intuition that blame often leads down a pernicious and useless path for the responsbile party, and the intution that people are responsible only when their actions stem from enduring character traits?
1. One could say that blame is not necessarily part of responsbility; it's something we do in reaction to an agent's having been responsible for something.
2. Perhaps we need a criterion other than stemming from an enduring character trait; one that does not tempt the agent to think he cannot avoid doing such things in the future.
3. An action's stemming from an enduring character trait does not necessarily mean that the agent will be unable to escape such actions in the future. (...But it is my complaint that this criterion brings us too close to condemning a person, and not an action.)
Blame reinforces responsibility. That is, ir reinforces the sense that some occurrence was done or controlled by a certain person. Because of this it can help one to become aware of the things that one does, so that one can be more careful in the future. Thus far, it's alright. But reinforcing an agent's connection to her action can have two different effects: it can lead her to think, this is what I've done, because I'm the kind of person who does these things, and there's no escape from that or to think, this is what I've done, and I can use the control that I now see that I had over this action to make things better now and do better things in the future. Blaming a bad action on someone's character seems particularly useless, as it will only lead them down the first path. Changing one's character (whatever that is) seems much harder than changing one's future actions. Yet, some say (Hume) that the criterion of responsibility is whether an action proceeded from an enduring character trait in the agent.
And something in that criterion is right: namely, that it seems natural to excuse someone experiencing temporary insanity of some kind, or someone coerced, from at least some of the responsbility for what they do in that state. How to reconcile the intuition that blame often leads down a pernicious and useless path for the responsbile party, and the intution that people are responsible only when their actions stem from enduring character traits?
1. One could say that blame is not necessarily part of responsbility; it's something we do in reaction to an agent's having been responsible for something.
2. Perhaps we need a criterion other than stemming from an enduring character trait; one that does not tempt the agent to think he cannot avoid doing such things in the future.
3. An action's stemming from an enduring character trait does not necessarily mean that the agent will be unable to escape such actions in the future. (...But it is my complaint that this criterion brings us too close to condemning a person, and not an action.)
