Pathologies of Blame

This paper argues that a signalling and sanctioning account of blame can provide a taxonomy and unified theory of the many ways that blame can go wrong. Blaming not only signals a blamer’s commitment to a norm (understood as internalisation of the norm and willingness to enforce said norm), it also sanctions wrongdoers, deterring norm violations. The important role these two functions play in upholding norm compliance allow us to understand why many kinds of blame are objectionable—what I call pathologies of blame. These include harsh blame, trigger-happy blame, moralising blame, feeble blame, inconsistent blame, meddlesome blame, hypocritical blame (which itself has a number of forms), and virtue signalling blame. Allowing any of these pathologies to become standard practice threatens the very valuable norms we care about, and which appropriate blame plays a crucial role upholding.