I've seen the light! Well, someone has shed light on one of my beliefs and I have seen fit to adjust it. This is a process of enlightenment.
So, I listened to the philosopher T. M. Scanlon give a lecture on blame and that made me question my earlier thoughts. Scanlon distinguishes between considering someone blameworthy (making the judgment that they are wrong in a given situation, according to the relational rules in which they were acting - which seems to conform to Fricker's view - see here) and blaming them (holding them to account in some way, by changes in behaviour or by expressing the blame verbally). It seems that he feels people can be blameworthy in breaching relational expectations - so a friend can be blameworthy for talking about one nastily behind one's back, by failing to help, by being unwilling to devote time to the maintenance of the relationship and so on. The relational expectations within families, workplaces, communities and nations are all played out according to the normative expectations of those particular situations.
Scanlon is - a word I hadn't embraced before - a contractarian. So, that means something like this: an action can be deemed wrong and blameworthy if anyone who is affected by it has just cause to refute it. An example: Jess breaking a promise to Joe because keeping it would be inconvenient. Joe had just reason to expect Jess to keep the promise, because he had acted on the basis of that verbal commitment. Others in the community could also judge it wrong, because if people went around breaking promises willy-nilly there would be no basis for trust and communal activities and relationships would suffer.
He further maintains that blaming - which might be telling the person that they acted wrongly and/or changing behaviour toward the person - serves the purpose of deterring repeats of such infractions and thus helps to improve society. Changing the behaviour toward the person would depend on the social contract in which the relationship existed. A friend who had been betrayed by a friend talking nastily behind her back might respond by no longer trusting the blameworthy person, being less willing to help them, spending less time with them and so on.
Scanlon claims that not blaming denies the respect due to the wrongdoer - as it denies that she could have acted differently and could be redeemed - and for the victim (which could be oneself) - as under relational contracts they should be treated in the appropriate fashion.
This has implications in the debates surrounding cultural tolerance and moral relativism, too. Charles Taylor says that just 'respecting another culture' without analysing it or considering if it falls short of shared moral principles is patronising. Instead, an affirmation of positive value only shows a real respect if we have judged it on cross-cultural terms, not just on its own standards.
The important part of Scanlon's blame thesis, for me, is that the blameworthiness is defined within specific relational constructs and that in order to judge blameworthiness one must be sure of the facts and understand the obligations of the social relationship. This could be a relationship between citizens and government, employers and employee and so on. While one can judge blameworthiness from outside the relationship, one can only blame (I think) from within it (as an interested party).
Scanlon did persuade me of the validity and importance of blame within given contexts - and his view is not retributative, it is forward-looking. So it does not seem totally inconpatible with Martha Nussbaum's ideas - see here - which I have found very persuasive. It also seems to be somewhat distant from the moral-highgrounding and shaming that I find so distasteful. It demands epistemic virtue - in being sure of facts, certain that it's not just one's own prejudices playing out and so on.
In short, I can now see that blame can play a part in an effective society.
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