Miranda Fricker on Blame

Defining blame and its objects

0:00This is Philosophy Bites with me, David Edmonds. And me, Nigel Warburton. Philosophy Bites is available at www.philosophybites.com. Should we blame people when they harm us? Many of us do. It's a common reaction to moral failing. But is that response rational and appropriate? Particularly when we recognise that much of what people do is not directly within their control. Miranda Fricker, who delivered the 2026 Oxford Uhero Lectures, thinks we should blame people less.

0:35Miranda Fricker, welcome to Philosophy Bites. Hi, very glad to be back. We're talking today about blame. Philosophers like to define concepts. Is there a neat definition of blame? Well, I tend to suspect that there isn't. I mean, if you look first at the philosophical literature itself, you see a huge array of different views that blame is a hostile emotion, perhaps a reactive attitude. Maybe it's just a judgment. Maybe it's a severing of a relationship after wrongdoing, or maybe it's a protest. And although it's really normal in philosophy that there's

1:08lots of different views of one thing, sometimes one starts to suspect there isn't really one thing these are all different views of. And that's my suspicion. So give us an idea of the variety of circumstances in which one might use blame, because one can blame a person, but one can also blame an institution. Yes, I agree. I mean, I think the object of blame can be any kind of agent. And the persons, individuals are agents, and institutions and collectives, even as big as nations, can be agents. And so they're all proper objects of blame for the things that they do when they're wrong.

1:41Does blame have a purpose? Well, I think that the useful way to proceed in all this is first to observe that there's lots of really dysfunctional, not very purposeful, not very morally pleasant forms of blaming. I personally think that retributive forms of blaming that are basically a kind of vengeful payback for a wrong done don't make any sense. And so then it raises the question, are there other kinds of blaming that we're able to go in for, perhaps that we go in for already, and that we could somehow prioritise as the best kinds?

2:15Unpack that a little. What's the retributive idea of blame? Well, basically, it's just the idea that if you wrong me, now I'm at a disadvantage, and I'm entitled to get payback from you by causing you a little pain. And to get even is the perfect sort of metaphor for that. So I, you know, without commenting on exactly what one's views might be about criminal punishment, though, I'm very tempted to think that retributive ideas there are pretty unpleasant, but certainly in interpersonal morality. I don't

2:45believe in its logic. And I don't think it's very helpful. And I think there are really useful alternatives.

Communicative blame versus retributive payback

2:53So if one's not trying to extract revenge by blaming somebody, what is one trying to communicate? Yes, well, I think the most morally valuable mode of blaming is a mode of blaming that aims to bring the other person to fully appreciate the moral significance of what they've done. So if you blame me for wronging you in some way, maybe I don't fully understand just what the moral significance of my

3:24behaviour is. It'd be very useful for both you and me that you put it out there in conversation with me, and I hopefully come to understand what I've done. Or if you've got a bit of a misconception, maybe I push back a little and I say, hey, you know, it wasn't that bad that I told you that lie and so on. And we eventually come to a kind of shared moral understanding of what it is that's gone on between us. Now, that's an ideal, obviously, but it seems to me worth aiming at that ideal. I call it communicative blame. Somebody might come to me and say, why did you do that? And I would say, that's not my fault.

3:57Miranda told me to do it. I blame you. I'm not actually communicating with you. I'm communicating with somebody else, but I'm still blaming you. That's absolutely right. And there's lots of modes of blaming which aren't communicative blame or indeed not communicated at all. That's why I think the way to approach blame via communicative blame is to understand we're looking at its moral function or primary good moral function. And that is very different from saying what blame is. I tend to think that if we come at blame by thinking about

4:29the value of communicative blame, so we might then try and stop being retributive, stop just being angry, etc. and focus more on trying to, as it were, achieve a shared moral understanding. That still leaves the question, indeed, it actively raises the question, what is it that's communicated in communicative blame? So if I blame you for something, I want you to understand that you're at fault, to acknowledge that, and presumably to articulate it. Yes, if you're going in for communicative blame, that's the purpose, at least of the practice. I'm not saying it has to be exactly

5:02your motive, but the style of blaming you go in for should be a practice which is conducive to achieving shared moral understanding. And then this definition of blame that I think is called for once one's done this little bit of functional analysis. In my view, what blame is, is a judgment of moral fault, because we're talking about moral blame here for the moment, a judgment of moral fault that's in some way activated or animated by some disposition, which is appropriate for holding

5:35someone responsible. I think you're responsible for a wrong, perhaps a wrong to me, perhaps a wrong to

The role and performance of apology

5:40somebody else. What's the role of apology here? Because that seems to be connected to the idea of blame. Yeah, that's a really interesting question. In some ways, I think that communicative blame and calling for an apology can merge. So supposing you've wronged me in some way, and I see you the next day, and I say, hey, Dave, you lied to me, you really should say sorry. I'm sort of merging the commutative blame element with the call for an apology, which I may not always do, but this is

6:11entirely possible. So calling for an apology can be one way of doing the commutative blame. But if one forgets for a moment, the business of calling for an apology, and one just thinks about the wrongdoers, maybe spontaneous capacity and as inclination to apologise, I think that what one's doing is showing and communicating back that one does fully morally appreciate the moral significance of what one's done, and that one's ready to try and make amends in some sort of reparative commitment with a minimal version of which is basically committing not to do it again.

6:45But in some cases, one might feel it's appropriate to commit to further measures to make amends. You have to apologise to the right person, right? If I blame you for something that you've done to a third party, it's, of course, inappropriate for you to apologise to me. Yeah, I think that's a very interesting feature of apology. Unlike blame, even communicative blame, which can be communicated all over the place, and we might understand the point of communicating blame to third parties derivatively from the point of communicating it to the person who's done the

7:17wrongdoing, one way or another promoting shared moral understanding. But apologising to someone who isn't the one that you've wronged really is no apology at all. So it's essentially a form of second personal moral address, and it's got to be done to the right person. Otherwise, one's just sort of ducking the issue. In my own experience, I think when somebody has wronged me, it's more important if it's a friend that they apologise than if it's a stranger. And I wonder if there are differences there too.

7:48Yes, I think that's because, you know, apology in particular, its reparative capacity relates to ongoing relationships. I mean, there's a sense in which if you just get randomly wrong by a passerby who you never want to see again and won't see again, there's no need to, as it were, somehow track them down and get them to apologise so that you can move on. We all have to learn to just let things go. But I think a lot of these responses, same with communicative blame, both communicative blame and apology are really about repairing relationships. I don't think that's

8:21their sort of immediate goal, but it's one of their secondary goals. With my kids, we sometimes demand an apology, demand that they say sorry for something they've done wrong. And they will often utter the words, but they're just words. There's not a lot of sincerity behind it. People have to mean what they say for an apology really to work. Certainly. I mean, apologies famously must be sincere to count properly as apologies at all, and empty words can't do any of the reparative things that a sincere apology can do. On the other

8:55hand, I think you're absolutely on the money to point to how we deal with children. And I think sometimes only words, as it were, is a first step. You've got to mean it enough so that it'll count as an apology. And not only with children, but even between adults, I think very often one makes a judgment on the fly about whether someone kind of means it enough, is sorry enough, whether you can tolerate the slight mismatch in your understandings about how serious or what exactly it was that they did. And there's always a kind of, do I mean pragmatism, but anyway, an irreducibly

9:29subjective element to what will count as a sufficient apology, and therefore what will even count as constituting an apology at all under the circumstances. So I think sincerity tends to get talked about as if it's all or nothing. And I don't really believe that's the case. I think for most of our practices of apology, basically, the person has to mean it enough for it to count as an apology, and to mean it enough in the right way for it to be accepted as an apology by the particular individual to whom they're apologising. And in the right way, you mean what exactly?

10:02Well, I think there are norms of performance around apology. So there are forms of not doing it enough, doing it too much, a kind of excessively flary apology would just be really irritating. And I think it's really important to understand apology as a form of social performance. And actually, I really like the work of a philosopher called Geoffrey Helmreich in this connection, who's really emphasised something he calls the apology stance, and that apologising is a kind of speech act which not only expresses, but also manifests or enacts, that's his word, enacts the inner

10:39state of being appropriately sorry. This idea of enactment, I think, is really important. Others too have talked about apology as social performance. And so you've got to do it within the bandwidth of appropriateness for it to be accepted. We talked about how you have to apologise to the person who's been wrong. Flip that round. Is it possible to apologise when you're not the person responsible? I'm thinking of those cases where a Prime Minister might apologise for something that was done by the nation 150 years

11:13earlier, slavery or whatever. Yes. I mean, to me, those sorts of situations are really important. I hope we all institutionally still continue to grow into situations where we collectively understand what counts as a real apology in those circumstances. I think at the moment, there's so much dissent and different expectations of what people want for such a thing that it makes political apologies like that extremely hazardous, as it were. Certain groups will find them thoroughly inadequate and it makes it worse

11:46rather than better. But I think it's entirely coherent for representatives of collectives to apologise for wrongs that that collective has done even many centuries ago. And that relation is really one of representation. And of course, you can't just elect yourself to be a representative of a nation or an institution. But if you are in fact representing it in other ways, then maybe it can fly that the nation accepts that you are the representative and you can speak for this past incarnation of the

12:17government. I think that's entirely coherent. But I also think it's a social practice of apology that is highly evolved. And I don't think we're fully there yet, actually, which is why they're so problematic. Some philosophers, a minority, but I would say a substantial minority, think that blame

Metaphysics, responsibility, and praise

12:34is always inappropriate. And that's because our actions are the product of our genes and the environment. And we're never actually morally responsible for anything. Where do you stand on that? I think it sets the bar for responsibility somewhere metaphysical rather than somewhere natural. I think the philosophical ideas, you push them and push them and you realise that, well, we don't have control over this or that, we don't have control over our characters and so on,

13:05are extremely misleading. I think of responsibility as something that grows out of human practices of trying to live together and trying to do so in ways that have a certain kind of social coordination and harmony and that builds the shared moral consciousness. So I'm quite happy to think that our practices of responsibility and responsible agency generally are, in a certain sense, a social construct, part of our way of life, a set of skills and capacities. And I do think that we have

13:35the kind of control over our actions that is required. I really like Peter Strawson's approach to what freedom needs to be for there to be responsibility. Strawson says that whatever the metaphysics, we can't help but praise and blame in ordinary life. Indeed. In fact, the way I read him, I hear him as saying something even stronger than that, which sort of suggests that looking at the metaphysics separately from our practices of responsibility is somehow going to lead one into

14:08error. I don't think it's that, well, the metaphysics might be true and it might in fact be the case that we're not free, but hey, us humans, we just can't help it. So let's carry on being human. I don't think that's the argument. I think the power of the argument is in a way to show that certain styles of philosophical thinking really do lead us to mistake our subject matter. And our subject matter, when it comes to human responsible action, isn't, I believe, something metaphysical that can be treated separately from our practices. I believe the whole idea grows out of our practices. And so

14:41that's the proper order to proceed in. That's not to identify the value of blame, is it in the consequences it has for society? Yes, I think defending blame in relation to the possibility of a really morally valuable version of blaming each other, namely communicative blame, which is conducive to shared moral understanding. In a way, that is to justify a practice of blaming primarily in relation to a thing that it produces. So in that sense, it's a forward looking idea, but it's also a backward

15:14looking idea. You hold me responsible for the thing that I did yesterday or last week or 10 years ago. And I continue to be responsible for that in a way that makes it appropriate, perhaps that I apologize, perhaps that I think very carefully about the meaning of what I've done and try not to do it again. And perhaps in a way that means I really do owe you specifically an apology. And all that is backward looking. So this kind of blaming is justified by reference to its consequences and its forward moral momentum, but not in a way that's supposed to forget about the ordinary idea of me being responsible

15:48for things I've done in the past. We've talked about the connection between blame and apology. What about the connection between blame and praise? Can we say the opposite of everything you've said about blame with regard to praise? Perhaps. I mean, there's a lot of really interesting work going on on praise these days, and they're very disanalogous in some ways. Praise is sort of for free, as it were, though, as many have pointed out, too much praise or the wrong kind of praise can be toxic in various ways. I mean, not least it can carry presuppositions about what you ought to be

16:23like, and it's encouraging you to be certain ways and not others and so on. So it can be kind of controlling. And it can make people too dependent on praise. And really, they should just get on with their lives and not worry too much. But since I like a minimalist account of what blame is, namely, blame is really nothing but a judgment of fault in relation to some piece of conduct, and where that judgment is animated by some disposition to hold you responsible for it. So it's kind of a form of moral engagement. I think one could say the same about moral praise,

16:55that there's a kind of minimal idea in there that it's a judgment of what's the opposite of fault. That's interesting. I can't think of an immediate opposite. Credit. Credit. Nice. Thank you. Let's call it a judgment of moral credit. Credit for some piece of conduct. And where that judgment is animated by some disposition to encourage it and lord you for it. And I quite like these minimalist definitions because they're very portable across different domains. So I've got an interest in epistemic blame, for instance. And

17:27there's a lot of work on epistemic blame trying to show that if you blame me for having done really sloppy calculations in our science experiment, and that's why the whole thing went wrong, it must be that you have some hostile emotion towards me or some other thing that people get from the ethical blame literature. But I don't think any of that's necessary. I think you just find, in this case, an epistemic fault with me for my conduct. And that judgment is made from a stance where you're animated to hold me responsible for it rather than merely observing it passively.

Why we should blame less

17:58So we've done, in Philosophy Bites, we've done interviews on forgiveness, on grief, on loneliness, on rage. We're talking today about blame. And I wonder what the project is. What's going on here? Is this conceptual analysis? What are philosophers doing when they take something like blame and they subject it to the philosophical gaze? Yeah, so I really think we should be pluralists about what philosophers might be doing. And I think for a long time, even if we felt you don't always have to go in for conceptual analysis,

18:33nonetheless, somehow it had a habit of defaulting back into that. So even if you put forward an account of something and you say, I'm not trying to make this a strict definition, this is just say a depiction of a central case or a typical case. The discussions used to kind of default back into finding counter examples and then you needed to patch up the characterization. But a lot of philosophers, and it seems to me, well, I suppose I'm a moral philosopher, so I'm most aware of this, but certainly in moral philosophy or ethics, there's a lot of people writing about exactly the kinds of

19:04phenomena you just named in ways that don't depend on conceptual analysis. In my own case, I really think it's useful to look at something like moral function. So functionalist accounts where you're still within morality, you're not saying, oh, the point of all this moral stuff is, I know, some economic or other evolutionary or, you know, social bonding function. You're looking within the moral system, the moral consciousness that we share. You're asking a first order question. What is this blaming thing? Does it actually do any good? What's the moral point of blaming?

19:34Does it have to be retributive? And we answer all these first order questions so that we can step back and think, let's blame differently. Maybe I do go in for retributive blame, but I can no longer see a justification for that. So I think I'm going to think differently about my blaming and also maybe try and blame less. I mean, if I'm right that blame is, and now I am defining it, a judgment of fault, where the judgment's made from this kind of morally animated stance of holding someone responsible. Maybe we have a choice about how much of human conduct we bring under that fault

20:05finding construction. You know, maybe we can choose to find fault a lot less, both with others and with ourselves. So we just don't go in for the blaming at all, because we haven't constructed it as fault. Maybe we just think, hey, they're late, or they lied to me, or they let me down, or I let them down. Whatever, that's human nature, just kind of let it go. And I'm not even going to really bother perceiving it in terms of fault. And I certainly won't bother going for this whole moral address business. I'm just going to be a little bit more chill in my moral life. I think that's one answer someone might give and really try and think about how to train themselves to blame less.

20:39That would be a better world, would it? Well, we didn't think that people were at fault as often as we do. Exactly. That's exactly what I mean. So we don't construct people as at moral fault at every opportunity. I mean, I sometimes use the example of being late. Some people are very moralistic about others being late. And other people are not moralistic at all. It wouldn't occur to them that it's somehow insulting that someone's a bit late for them or whatever. Okay, I'm obviously talking about myself here. But I kind of just prefer a world where everyone's a bit chill about, you know,

21:11say within 15 minutes, I think everyone's a bit more relaxed. And we don't have to construct it in the moral mode in terms of respect. It's just, hey, you're just a bit late. There's nothing more to it than that. Final personal question. You could have focused on grief or forgiveness or loneliness or rage, but you picked blame. Why? Well, the project is about blame and forgiveness and the middle figure in that trio, apology. So really, I feel I'm focused on moral address. And I'm just as interested in forgiveness as I am

21:47in blame. The reason I care about blame so much, which I do, is partly I think we do too much of it. Partly, I think the wrong styles of blame are really toxic and counter to the good aim of bringing, as it were, moral, shared moral understanding, shared moral consciousness. But also, I don't think we can give up blame. I don't agree with those who just think that blame need be terribly toxic. And obviously, we should try and just get rid of it. I think a kind of candid, hey, what did you do? That was lousy the way you treated me the other day. It's actually

22:21just really important part of moral development for all of us who are doing the bad things and those of us to whom bad things are done. I take it we're all both some of the time. And I think it's really good to cultivate ways where we can go in for those exchanges without feeling massively personally threatened and breaking up into sort of psychic fragments when we're feeling attacked. And I also think that the fear of blame being toxic can lead to something even more toxic that I detest, which is kind of passive aggressive, dishonest, gaslighty blaming.

22:53I'm not blaming you, but to me, that's even worse than, as it were, overly angry blaming. So I feel like one is caught between the Scylla and Charybdis when it comes to blame. And so I'm particularly interested in locating a kind of, as it were, candid, frank, respectful, blaming attitude that I think can be really helpful in moral life. Miranda Fooker, thank you very much indeed. Thank you so much.

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