Podcast brief
Miranda Fricker on the Nature and Function of Blame
Miranda Fricker talks with David Edmunds and Nigel Warburton about what blame is for and why communicative blame beats revenge.
A Stoa brief of an episode from Philosophy Bites
Miranda Fricker on Blame
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The episode belongs to its makers. This page summarizes its arguments in Stoa's words and points to the moments where they are made. Brief updated .
The brief
Miranda Fricker argues that blame has no single tidy definition, and that philosophy has been wrong to look for one. Instead of starting with what blame is, she starts with what it is good for, and builds her account from there.
Surveying the literature, she notes that blame has been described as a hostile emotion, a reactive attitude, a judgment, a severed relationship, and a protest. She suspects these are not all descriptions of one phenomenon. So rather than adjudicate between them, she asks a functional question: what should blaming actually do. Her answer rules out retributive blame, the idea of causing a wrongdoer pain simply to get even. She argues this has no real justifying logic in interpersonal morality, and she is even tempted to extend the doubt to criminal punishment. In its place she defends communicative blame, whose point is to bring a wrongdoer to genuinely grasp the moral significance of what they did, ideally through an exchange that can also correct the blamer's own perception. From this she derives a minimal definition: blame is a judgment of moral fault animated by a disposition appropriate to holding someone responsible.
She extends the same method to apology, arguing it must be addressed to the actual person wronged and must clear a threshold of sincerity, and she treats collective apologies, such as a government apologizing for slavery, as a coherent but still socially unsettled practice of representation rather than personal guilt. On the deeper question of whether we are ever really responsible, given that our actions flow from genes and environment, Fricker sides with Peter Strawson: responsibility is not a separate metaphysical fact waiting to be verified, but something that grows out of our practices of holding each other to account.
The strongest challenge she faces is the abolitionist one: if blame is so often corrosive, why not drop it altogether. Fricker's reply, and this is Stoa's reading of the exchange, is not fully triumphant. She grants blame's dangers but argues suppressing it invites something worse, a passive-aggressive, dishonest substitute. Her closing suggestion is more modest and more useful: a better world constructs fewer things, lateness included, as matters of fault at all.
Strongest arguments
Blame lacks a single unified definition
0:46Fricker surveys the philosophical literature and finds blame described variously as a hostile emotion, a reactive attitude, a judgment, a severing of relationship, or a protest. She suspects these competing accounts are not all describing one phenomenon, so a neat definition is unlikely.
Retributive blame lacks justifying logic
1:41Fricker argues that blaming as vengeful payback, getting even for a wrong by causing the wrongdoer pain, does not make sense as a practice, whether in interpersonal morality or, she suspects, in criminal punishment. This clears space for asking what better forms of blaming might look like.
Communicative blame aims at shared moral understanding
3:01The most morally valuable mode of blaming aims to bring the wrongdoer to fully appreciate the moral significance of their action, through a conversational exchange that can also let the blamer's perception be corrected. From this functional analysis she derives a minimal definition: blame is a judgment of moral fault animated by a disposition appropriate to holding someone responsible.
Apology must address the wronged party and be sincere enough
6:50Fricker argues apology is a form of second-personal moral address that must be directed at the actual person wronged, unlike blame which can be communicated to third parties. Apology also has norms of performance, drawing on Jeffrey Helmreich's idea of an apology stance, and must be sincere enough to count, though sincerity is not all or nothing.
Collective and historical apologies are coherent but underdeveloped practices
10:52Fricker holds that representatives of a nation or institution can coherently apologize for wrongs committed even centuries earlier, since the relation is one of representation rather than personal guilt. She thinks this social practice is still evolving and not fully settled, which is why such apologies often provoke dissent.
Responsibility grows out of human practices, not metaphysics
12:49Against skeptics who deny moral responsibility because actions stem from genes and environment, Fricker argues that responsibility is a social construct built from human practices of living together, echoing Peter Strawson's view that our practices of holding each other responsible are not answerable to a separate metaphysical fact about freedom.
We could choose to construct less conduct as blameworthy
19:30Fricker suggests that since blame is a judgment of fault we actively construct, we have some choice about how much human conduct we bring under that construction. A better world might involve being more relaxed and not treating things like lateness as moral faults at all, while still preserving candid blame for serious wrongs.
Disagreements
Fricker versus free-will skeptics on the basis of responsibility
12:28Some philosophers hold that because our actions result from genes and environment we are never morally responsible, so blame is always inappropriate. Fricker rejects this, arguing that such arguments set the bar for responsibility at an implausible metaphysical standard rather than treating responsibility as grounded in shared human practices.
Fricker versus abolitionists who would eliminate blame entirely
22:05Fricker distinguishes her view from those who think blame is so toxic that it should simply be discarded. She argues blame cannot be given up entirely because candid moral address is valuable, and suppressing it risks a worse alternative of passive-aggressive, dishonest blaming.
Concepts discussed
- free will The capacity of an agent to choose or will among alternatives in a way that grounds moral responsibility.
Philosophers and works discussed
- Miranda Fricker
Questions this episode answers
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What is Miranda Fricker's definition of blame?
4:47Fricker defines blame minimally as a judgment of moral fault that is animated or activated by a disposition appropriate for holding someone responsible, derived from analyzing the moral function of communicative blame.
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What is wrong with retributive theories of blame?
2:14Fricker argues retributive blame, understood as vengeful payback that causes the wrongdoer pain to get even, has no real justifying logic in interpersonal morality, and she is tempted to extend this skepticism to criminal punishment.
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Why must an apology be addressed to the person who was wronged?
6:50Fricker argues apology is a form of second-personal moral address, so unlike blame it cannot be communicated to third parties. Apologizing to someone other than the wronged party is no apology at all, since its reparative function depends on repairing that specific relationship.
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Can a government coherently apologize for historical wrongs like slavery?
10:52Fricker holds that a representative can coherently apologize on behalf of a nation or institution for wrongs committed even centuries earlier, since the relevant relation is representation rather than personal guilt, though she thinks this social practice remains underdeveloped and contested.
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How does Peter Strawson's view of responsibility avoid the free will problem?
13:44Fricker reads Strawson as arguing that responsibility is not a separate metaphysical fact that can be assessed apart from our practices, but rather something that grows out of those very practices of holding each other responsible, so the order of explanation should start from practice rather than metaphysics.
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What is epistemic blame and how does it differ from ethical blame?
17:03Fricker applies her minimal definition of blame to the epistemic domain, arguing that finding someone at epistemic fault, for example for sloppy calculations, need not involve hostile emotion, contrary to assumptions imported from the ethical blame literature.
Sources
- Philosophy Bites, Miranda Fricker on Blame Podcast episode, original episode