The Architecture of Blame and Praise: An Interdisciplinary Investigation

Many philosophers assume that to be a responsible agent is to be an apt target of responses like blame and praise. But what do these responses consist of, precisely? And do they really belong together, simply negative and positive symmetrical counterparts of each other? While there has been a lot of philosophical work on the nature of blame over the past 15 years--yielding multiple conflicting theories--there has been little on the nature of praise. Indeed, those few who have investigated praise--including both philosophers and psychologists--have concluded that it is quite different in some respects than blame, and that the two in fact may not be symmetrical counterparts at all.

In this book, David Shoemaker offers the first detailed deep-dive into the complicated nature of blame and praise, teasing out their many varieties while defending a general symmetry between them. The book provides a thorough normative grounding for the many types and modes of blame and praise, albeit one that never appeals to desert or the metaphysics of free will. The volume draws from moral philosophy, moral psychology, the philosophy and psychology of humor, the psychology of personality disorders, and experimental economics. The many original contributions in the book include: the presentation and defense of a new functionalist theory of the entire interpersonal blame and praise system; the revelation of a heretofore unrecognized kind of blame; a discussion of how the capacities and impairments of narcissists tell an important story about the symmetrical structure of the blame/praise system; an investigation into the blame/praise emotions and their aptness conditions; an exploration into the key differences between other-blame and self-blame; and an argument drawn from economic games for why desert is unnecessary to render apt the ways in which blame sometimes sanctions.

Author: David Shoemaker
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 01/10/2025
Pages: 224
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.08lbs
Size: 9.29h x 6.36w x 0.69d
ISBN: 9780198915836

About the Author
David Shoemaker, Professor, Sage School of Philosophy, Cornell University

David Shoemaker is a Professor in the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell University. He is the author or co-author of over sixty academic papers, four monographs, and an introductory philosophy textbook. He is also the ongoing series editor of Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility. His publications have been about numerous topics in agency and responsibility, moral philosophy, moral psychology, the philosophy of humor, political philosophy, and personal identity. He has taught at several universities over the course of his career, including California State Northridge, Bowling Green State University, the University of Memphis, and Tulane University.


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