Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Theorists are divided concerning the productivity of angry blame. Some argue that it has tremendous instrumental values or serves crucial social functions. But some argue that it is counterproductive, and we should thereby eliminate, or drastically revise, blame as a kind of moral practice. In this paper, I raise a new counterproductivity critique of angry blame. In contrast to the existing critiques, my critique does not rely on a negative characterization of blame’s content or functionality. I suggest that angry blame serves two positive social functions—a function of issuing a moral protest and a function of initiating and facilitating a moral dialogue. However, for these two functions to work optimally, they require different psychological stances in tension with each other. Angry blame is thus counterproductive, not because it is inherently bad, but because it is designed to do too much.
Source: Philosophers Imprint
DOI: 10.3998/phimp.5808
Author: Shawn Tinghao Wang
Institution: University of Washington
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4404963593