Simply Responsible: Basic Blame, Scant Praise, and Minimal Agency 0192883593, 9780192883599

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Simply Responsible

Simply Responsible Basic Blame, Scant Praise, and Minimal Agency MATT KING

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Matt King 2023 The moral rights of the author have been asserted All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2022950586 ISBN 978–0–19–288359–9 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192883599.001.0001 Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

Contents Preface Introduction: A General Theory of Responsibility

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1. The Basic Responsibility Relation

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2. Basic Agency

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3. Basic Blame and Basic Praise

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4. Basic Desert

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5. Beyond Basic Responsibility

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Conclusion: Odds and Ends

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References Index

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Preface I’m the sort of reader who likes a good preface to an academic book. I’m mostly intrigued by the autobiographical history behind the work or behind-the-scenes details regarding how it took shape. I also confess to having scanned quite a few to see if my name was mentioned. That said, if prefaces aren’t for you, I won’t take offense if you skip this part. I’ll start with some background on how I came to write this book, and then I’ll thank some folks. (In the lists below, I go alphabetically, to help others find their names.) The main idea of this book first took shape way back in graduate school. Like many who think and write about responsibility, I was immediately animated reading Peter Strawson’s “Freedom and Resentment.” I had started out as a political philosopher, thinking largely about issues of political legitimacy. But I soon found myself thinking about our ordinary practices of holding each other responsible, especially Strawson’s methodology of looking to when it would be inappropriate to hold others responsible as a means to uncovering the conditions on being responsible. I couldn’t help noticing that our ordinary practices extend well beyond moral cases exhibiting good and ill will toward others, and I was struck by the many parallels I saw across domains. I came to believe that non-moral cases of responsibility were as theoretically significant as the moral ones. This led me toward a project much in Strawson’s spirit, I suppose, but with a very different structure in the end. A dissertation followed, defending a compatibilist account of responsibility, using many of those same observations of symmetry. But, as with many dissertations, the discussion was a bit programmatic, and it certainly was a bit too full of itself. In subsequent years, I was fortunate to successfully publish work on a number of topics regarding responsibility. However, the broader project I had begun in the dissertation didn’t really figure directly into any of it. It was still there in my thinking, of course, it was just operating in the background in ways that didn’t affect those arguments (I hope). So,

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I have been thinking about responsibility for almost twenty years, and it has taken that long for me to develop that basic view into something presentable. If you are one of the six people who read my dissertation, you’ll no doubt recognize many familiar ideas and themes. But I hope you will also appreciate the ways in which the ideas are more refined and the theory more mature. For the rest of you, you’ll be no worse off for having missed my earlier offering, though some of you may wish I had taken even longer. There are many people to thank. I’ll begin by thanking two graduate school officemates, Josh Kassner and Bénédicte Veillet, who were subjected to my very early thoughts on the significance of non-moral cases. Since then, Bénédicte has been further subjected to my developing thoughts on these matters, and I’m grateful for her many insights and friendship over the years. Special thanks as well to Peter Carruthers, whose guidance in graduate school—and beyond—has been invaluable. In particular, he’s been very influential in how I think about minds. Around 2007, I somehow convinced Manuel Vargas into serving as the external member on my dissertation committee, despite having never really met him before. With his patience and friendly criticisms, from a three-day marathon to go over the entire dissertation (over the phone, and a landline, no less) to many subsequent exchanges over the years, he has been a most generous mentor. A final “old school” thanks goes to Mark Schroeder, who supervised my dissertation. Much of my current thinking on responsibility has been shaped by both the space he gave me to develop my own ideas and his uncanny ability to understand the virtues of those ideas better than I did. Throughout my career, I’ve often turned to Mark for advice, and he has rarely steered me wrong. I’m particularly pleased that he has finally turned some of his own attention toward thinking about responsibility, so now he can learn from me for a change. Over the years, several senior philosophers have taken the time to engage with me and my work. Whether they knew it or not, their attention or kind words often came at the precise moment when I needed it most. My thanks to Sarah Buss, John Martin Fischer, Pamela Hieronymi, Michael McKenna, Herbert Morris, George Sher, Seana Shiffrin, David Shoemaker, Angela Smith, Holly Smith, Mark van Roojen, Gary Watson, and Gideon Yaffe.

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As for the book you now hold in your hands (or on your screens), it benefited from the contributions of many individuals. Several people read and commented on full drafts of the manuscript: John Martin Fischer, Josh May, Mark Schroeder, and David Shoemaker. Each unquestionably improved the final product. I invite them to read the book again carefully to see the fruits of their labors. I’d like to thank the “Simpletons” Reading Group: Eric Brown, Daniel Miller, and Nick Sars. We hung out on Zoom in three separate sessions to discuss the entire manuscript during summer 2021, when I had the basic ideas (mostly) worked out but many of the details underdeveloped. (Nick Sars deserves an additional shoutout for giving me pages of further comments after each session.) Their sharp criticisms and constructive suggestions are evident in all chapters, even if some of the details remain under-developed. They are, however, only now finding out what I named our little group (owing to the book’s title, not our collective intellect!). The bulk of the writing was completed while I was on sabbatical from UAB. My thanks to the Provost’s Office, Dean’s Office, and my chair, David Chan, for granting me the year off from regular duties to complete the manuscript. During that same time, I was fortunate to hold a Murphy Fellowship at the wonderful Murphy Institute at Tulane. My thanks to Steven Sheffrin and David Shoemaker, who were at the time Executive Director of the Institute and Director of the Center for Ethics and Public Affairs, respectively, for the opportunity to work and learn with so many great colleagues. The constraints of the COVID-19 pandemic forced me to make the most of the fellowship remotely, so added thanks to the Institute and all involved for providing such an excellent and accommodating environment in which to work. As part of my year “at” Tulane, I was able to present a snapshot of the book’s project early in its development. My thanks to all who attended and asked great questions: Nathan Biebel, Bruce Bower, Eric Brown, Alison Denham, Robert Hartman, Cynthia Ma, David O’Brien, Abelard Podgorski, Jonathan Riley, Nick Sars, David Shoemaker, Chad Van Schoelandt, Geoff Weiss. Abelard Podgorski and Robert Hartman warrant special thanks—as my fellow Murphy Fellows they were a regular source of support and insight as I wrote.

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In the later stages of writing, I was lucky to present material from the latter half of the book—mainly some ideas about blame—to several audiences. I’d like to thank all the participants for their penetrating and helpful questions: Peter Carruthers, Shen Pan, Paolo Santorio, and Allen Stairs (University of Maryland Work-in-Progress Series); Abdul Ansari, Sarah Buss, Jason Byas, Mica Rapstine, Peter Railton, Joseph Shin, Chandra Sripada, and Lianghua (Glenn) Zhou (University of Michigan’s Ethics Discussion Group); Trevor Adams, Aaron Bronfman, Bjorn Flanagan, Guillermo Gonzalez, Janelle Gormley, Jason Lemmon, Jennifer McKitrick, Adam Thomson, and Mark van Roojen (University of Nebraska-Lincoln Seminar); David Brink, Rosalind Chaplin, Kathleen Connelly, Ying Liu, Dana Nelkin, Sam Ridge, Manuel Vargas, and Shawn Tinghao Wang (University of California-San Diego Agency and Responsibility Group). I had a fantastic time with each group, and, while I tried to take accurate notes of who was there, my sincere apologies to anyone I may have missed. Additional thanks to Peter Momtchiloff at OUP and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful guidance on the manuscript and for considering the project on its own terms. Thanks as well to the entire OUP production team for the excellent work bridging the gap between my files and an actual book. The community of philosophers working on action and responsibility has been the most welcoming, generous, and, dare I say, fun group I’ve met. I’m grateful to you all for making that community so special. Given my fallibility, I’m sure I’m forgotten to thank someone, for which I’m sorry. I’m somewhat consoled, however, by the fact that, since we’re the kindest and coolest philosophers around, no one will hold it against me. My final, and deepest, gratitude goes to my spouse, Jennifer. At this stage, it is simply impossible to disentangle all the various threads of support, insight, and partnership that she has provided over the years. She deserves special recognition for having to listen to more of my ideas on responsibility than anybody, and she has done so with virtuous good humor, wisdom, and clarity of thought. Simply put: thank you for everything.

Introduction A General Theory of Responsibility

This book is about responsibility. Moral responsibility is serious business. Holding others responsible for their actions is central to our ordinary practices. We blame, we praise, we decry, we applaud, we punish, we pin stars. When someone wrongs us, or shows us great kindness, we respond with our anger or gratitude accordingly, blaming or praising them for their deeds. However, our ordinary practices are not limited to moral actions. We also hold people responsible for a wide range of non-moral activities. We cheer the catch and we boo the ref. We give one-star reviews and we commend the chef. The radical proposal for this book is that the blameworthy artist is responsible in just the same way that the blameworthy thief is. We can be responsible for all kinds of different activities, from lip-synching to long division, from murders to meringues. But the relation involved, what I’ll call the basic responsibility relation, is the same in every case. We are responsible for the things we do first, then blameworthy or praiseworthy for having done them in light of whether they’re good or bad, according to a variety of standards. Why is this a radical proposal? Firstly, because so much of the contemporary literature on moral responsibility has moralized its nature. According to the vast majority of accounts, moral responsibility is either a special species of responsibility or else depends on moralized capacities. In contrast, I think that we get a more complete and unifying picture of responsible agency from a more general theory of responsibility. Secondly, the proposal is radical due to its drastic simplicity. I forego many of the complications that feature in other accounts of responsibility, arguing that we can make do with less demanding theoretical Simply Responsible: Basic Blame, Scant Praise, and Minimal Agency. Matt King, Oxford University Press. © Matt King 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192883599.003.0001

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elements. The resulting account is exceedingly minimal, and yet, I remain attracted to its numerous virtues and explanatory strengths.

An Initial Case Study Some years ago, I attended a performance of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, put on by my local orchestra. It’s a favorite of mine, and a familiar one (especially that opening phrase), deservedly recognized as a masterpiece. That night, it was superbly performed by the orchestra. At its conclusion, there was a standing ovation that persisted for some time. (There was also, if memory serves, a good bit of whistling, hooting, and a smidge of hurrahing.) It struck me at the time that I was doing (at least) two separate things. One, I was applauding the orchestra, who had so admirably executed a wonderful piece of music. Two, I was standing in admiration of the piece of music itself, directing acclaim at Beethoven, the composer. This seems to me to make perfect sense. The composition is amazing in its own right,¹ and would remain so, even if a particular performance missed the mark. But the orchestra’s performance is separable from the composition in the other direction as well. The symphony is inert until brought to life by the performance, and, as aficionados will tell you, there is much room for interpretation in an orchestral score. That the performance was so lovely was a credit to the orchestra and its members, quite apart from Beethoven’s contribution. At this stage, I want to make but two brief points about this, dare I say, ordinary example. First, there are many different sorts of things for which we can be celebrated. Composing a great caprice, for instance, is one sort of thing. Performing that caprice is another. If one thinks about it, there isn’t a whole lot that composition has in common with performance, and, of course, one can be a great performer without being a great composer (and vice versa).

¹ Selecting any work on which to base this little bit of commentary is a bit risky, since a reader may not share my estimation of the work. But my observations should generalize to any piece of music one prefers instead.

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But our praise is not limited to great works of art. We are celebrated for our contributions at work, the cake we bake, and the shots we make. There is a great diversity to and broad range of things for which we are praised. These observations extend to the negative side of things as well. We are criticized for our cooking, our trip planning, and our mismanagement of money or time. There is no less diversity here. The second point I want to make is that there is also a wide and diverse range of ways in which we celebrate others. We applaud (but also hoot and holler), we fête, we write moving tributes, we smile, we cheer, we stand in awe, and we hand out trophies. Again, there isn’t much that cheering has in common with handing over a bronze statuette. Yet, both are ways by which we give praise. Similar claims apply, again, to the negative side of things. We boo, we give negative reviews, we jeer and call out others, we mark down, we feel our ire rise, and we impose penalties. Again, there is extraordinary diversity, and yet all are ways of disparaging others. I make these observations at the outset to indicate the set of phenomena with which I’m interested. We blame and praise each other throughout a remarkable range of human endeavors—an incredibly diverse set of activities taking place within a staggering array of domains. Across academic, artistic, and athletic domains (just to stick with “A”), we commend and condemn, acclaim and accuse, give props and throw shade. It strikes me that we clearly hold each other responsible for what we do in all these areas. My starting point, then, is the whole range of human activity (though I will often privilege artistic and athletic cases, to keep the discussion focused). Importantly, a guiding idea of this book is that the entire set of human activity, while broad and diffuse, is nonetheless fundamentally unified. There is no special moral realm of enterprise; rather, we do things in the world that can be assessed in a variety of ways. We are not morally responsible for some things we do. We are simply responsible for them, and some of them turn out to be morally evaluable.² ² Arguably, virtually all we are responsible for is at least open to moral assessment. One virtue of the account is that it can deliver this result straightforwardly and simply.

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What’s in a Name? Philosophical work on moral responsibility has exploded in the last twenty-five years or so. In that time, numerous families of theories, styles of approaches, and an increasing diversity of distinctions have proliferated. It has become commonplace to situate one’s own account within a panoply of trademarked camps or pick one’s team in a series of debated distinctions.³ While I will, of course, place my view in contemporary context, I’m driven more by a distinctive methodology and the theoretical virtues of generality and simplicity than by the signposts and guardrails placed by extant discussions. The central conceit of the book is that our best theory of responsibility should be developed out of a fuller range of cases across a broader set of domains.⁴ I don’t pretend to theorize in a vacuum, but I do explicitly seek a greater level of generality than most mainstream work.⁵

³ A partial set includes: attributability vs. answerability vs. accountability; voluntarism vs. non-voluntarism; real-self vs. control-based accounts. ⁴ Russell 2008 starts from a similar premise, parallelism between art and morality, but the focus is on free will and its compatibility with determinism, and the chief exploration is through concerns regarding the problem of luck. We thus develop the starting point in different directions with different details. Haji 1998 also discusses blameworthiness across normative domains, but leaves the concept unanalyzed, and doesn’t detail a supporting account of responsibility to cover all the instances. Other projects that look at the broad set of agential activities, but without a focus on responsibility, include Bradford 2015 and Shepherd 2021. ⁵ Admittedly, this is shifting. Some very recent work has started to look at similarities across domains. See e.g. Brink 2021 (on legal and moral); Matheson & Milam 2022 (on non-moral blame); Nelkin 2020 (on moral, aesthetic, and epistemic responsibility); Shoemaker 2022 (on athletic anger). Still, my approach here is distinctive in just how general it aims to be (and, of course, in the details of the account). The most similar approach might be in Wolf 2015: Philosophers of action and of ethics tend to think that moral responsibility is a central if not the central feature of human beings that distinguish us, at least in a good way, from lower animals and machines. But if moral responsibility is not a part of some larger or more general feature of human agency, it will be irrelevant to our capacity for humor or creativity or to our susceptibility to nature or to beauty. It will be irrelevant to much of what makes us alternatively lovable or obnoxious to each other. This suggests that either moral responsibility has more limited significance than these philosophers think, or—as I would prefer—that the most important and deep kind of responsibility that distinguishes us as human is not limited to the moral. (141) As we’ll see, there are important points of divergence between this picture and the one I’ll defend in this book, but the basic sentiment—that the most important and deep kind of responsibility is not limited to the moral—is the same.

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Indeed, despite all the diversification in the literature, the vast majority of theories are designed as theories of moral responsibility.⁶ They are organized around cases of moral significance and moral evaluation, actions that are either morally bad or wrong. (Indeed, even moral praise has been given short shrift.)⁷ For example, Michael McKenna considers that “[p]erhaps there is a distinct notion of personal responsibility (between intimates), or professional responsibility; another that concerns aesthetic commitments, or athletic commitments, or matters of etiquette” (2012: 7), before setting such considerations aside. R. Jay Wallace admits that we praise an artist’s “striking and successful work of art” such that “our praise and admiration reflect a kind of credit on its creator” and that we can “condemn the pianist’s latest performance . . . in a way that reflects discredit on the pianist,” but dismisses such cases because “this kind of direct appraisal does not seem especially moral in its quality” (1994: 53–4). More often, a theory’s default concern is with the moral cases, and so the parallel instances aren’t explicitly addressed.⁸ This focus is, in one sense, perfectly understandable, since what motivates our consideration of questions of responsibility is so often its moral dimensions. It is cases of wrongdoing and punishment, of viciousness and harm, that so animate our initial interest. It is thus unsurprising that many would begin with the moral. Nevertheless, neglecting the nonmoral cases risks myopia. If we limit our gaze to morally significant actions, it can appear obvious that non-moral cases aren’t relevant to developing a theory of moral responsibility. Indeed, it is common for theorists to simply stipulate that their theoretical focus is on moral responsibility. One advantage of such a move is that it clarifies one’s project at the outset. Responsibility is a particularly nebulous and shifty topic. The ways in which we talk about responsibility are “richly ⁶ While this orthodoxy is slowly shifting, and though there have certainly been exceptions (e.g. Fischer & Ravizza 1998 takes the moral responsibility relation to apply to non-moral actions and outcomes), it remains true that most theories of responsibility are developed in exclusively moral terms. Even those that indicate the relevance of non-moral instances tend to focus exclusively on moral cases in developing their views. ⁷ Shoemaker 2015 and Vargas 2013 are notable recent exceptions. ⁸ Still others give accounts of something much closer to free will, if understood as the control condition on responsibility. See McKenna 2012 for discussion. Prime examples would be Fischer & Ravizza 1998 and Mele 1995. Even so, their focus still tends to be restricted to moral phenomena (explicitly so in the case of Mele).

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ambiguous,”⁹ suggesting subtle but potentially important differences. An attractive approach to such a nebulous topic is to start with some stipulations in an effort make the questions more tractable and narrow the field of inquiry. A significant drawback of such an approach, however, is that stipulations restrict the theoretical possibilities.¹⁰ For instance, an approach that concerns itself with blameworthiness alone denies itself potential resources that may be revealed by examining praiseworthiness.¹¹ If a view constricts its focus to moral cases alone, it excludes the possibility that non-moral cases may shed additional light on the conditions on moral responsibility. Indeed, even stipulating the sense of responsibility one is investigating presumes there are different sorts of responsibility to give an account of, and that they are indeed separable. Regardless, while there may well be multiple kinds of responsibility, I don’t want to bias that question by fiat in characterizing the project. A major objective in the discussion to come is to clarify the notion of responsibility underlying agential assessment across evaluative domains.¹² Of course, theorists have discretion over the starting points of their theories or in addressing the phenomena in which they’re interested. But they do so at their own peril; for theories are not constrained solely by what they set out to explain. For example, I am writing this in my home in Alabama, which has coastline on the Gulf of Mexico. As a result, we ⁹ Zimmerman 1988: 1. He in turn cites Baier 1970: 103–7; Glover 1970: 19; and Hart 1968: 211–12, as making similar observations. No doubt this is a pervasive feature of the background on theorizing about “responsibility.” ¹⁰ See Rosen 2015 for an analysis of moral responsibility that begins, explicitly, with several rounds of stipulations. It is a model of clarity, and it makes the resulting discussion extremely composed and tractable. It also, by necessity, restricts theoretical options, and involves ruling out certain possibilities: “When you admire someone for . . . her fine performance on the bongos, you do not thereby deem her morally responsible in any sense” (68 n. 7, italics in original). I don’t want to stipulatively foreclose the possibility that excellent bongo-playing is relevant to moral responsibility. ¹¹ See Wallace 1994 for such a view. ¹² If it helps, one can imagine for a moment that it is 1995. Alanis Morissette’s “Jagged Little Pill” is dominating the airwaves, “Matlock” just broadcast its final episode, and NASA’s Galileo probe has reached Jupiter. Of more immediate bearing, Gary Watson hasn’t yet published “Two Faces of Responsibility” (though its ideas may certainly have started circulating, I can’t speak to that). Consequently, the literature isn’t framed by a division between kinds of responsibility, like attributability and accountability. (Of course, one will have to return to the present to continue reading, else many of my references will make no sense.) I return to the idea of pluralism about responsibility in Chapter 5.

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often pay attention to hurricane activity. Though I am unlikely to face a hurricane directly where I live, these powerful storms yield indirect effects. They pose significant threats to nearby areas and affect local weather patterns, including increasing the risk of flooding or tornadoes. So, while I don’t worry about hurricanes per se, they are relevant to my concerns. (Indeed, since moving here in 2014, there have been two hurricane remnants that have passed through town as tropical depressions after making landfall, and many more have come nearby.) In contrast, I don’t worry about typhoons at all.¹³ Typhoons are pacific tropical storms (between 100 and 180 degrees longitude). They occur very far away from my home in Alabama, and tend to move from east to west—i.e. further away from me. While such storms might produce incidental effects on my weather or well-being, these are very unlikely to be significant enough for me to pay attention to.¹⁴ For the record, typhoons are limited to the northern hemisphere. Storms in the southern Indian or southwestern Pacific oceans are simply called by the generic, “cyclone.” So, if you live in Alabama, you worry about hurricanes. In Japan, it’s typhoons. And Tongans should be on the lookout for cyclones. If we want to give an account of tropical cyclones, however, it won’t do to limit our gaze to hurricanes. Even if we begin with only an interest in Caribbean storms, even if we generate a perfectly adequate account of Caribbean storms, our explanations will plausibly not be limited to Caribbean phenomena. Given the similarities between hurricanes, typhoons, and cyclones, we should want to explain those similarities. Thus, an account of cyclones ought to explain not just hurricanes, but typhoons as well. Though focused on meteorological phenomena, there is an instructive methodological lesson here. Theories seek to unify a range of phenomena under general explanations. More general theories, naturally, seek to unify a broader range of phenomena under more general explanations. My proposal here is to seek a more general explanation of both moral ¹³ On these distinctions between kinds of storms, I follow National Public Radio’s reporting (https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/11/08/243980516/which-is-it-hurricanetyphoon-or-tropical-cyclone). ¹⁴ The suffering they cause where they are located is another matter entirely.

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and non-moral conduct. I’ll argue that the parallels between moral and non-moral evaluation reveal an underlying commonality, what I’ll call the basic responsibility relation. I may be mistaken, of course. Perhaps moral blameworthiness and praiseworthiness really are distinctive, and moral responsibility is its own special relation.¹⁵ But there is a difference between objecting to a general account and dismissing it. One cannot dismiss planetary motion whilst defending Galileo over Newton, insisting that one is only concerned with the motion of falling bodies, or ignore Maxwell’s account of electromagnetism by stipulating an interest in electricity alone. Likewise, one cannot dismiss my approach because one thinks the non-moral cases are irrelevant to moral responsibility, for even if they are, they are clearly relevant to a more general theory.

Being Responsible The goal of the present project, in any case, is to present a positive general theory of responsibility, and I will thus say relatively little upfront to sharpen the concept. Nevertheless, there are some general remarks to help to set expectations. By way of orienting the discussion, it’s important to signal that my primary interest concerns what it takes to be responsible, in the sense that Beethoven is responsible for his 5th Symphony and the orchestra was responsible for that performance.¹⁶ I consider this to be the principal question for a theory of responsibility, one explanatorily prior to questions about the appropriateness of holding someone responsible.¹⁷

¹⁵ Obviously, I don’t deny that there are some differences between moral and non-moral responsibility. I only deny that moral responsibility is a distinctive relation. Still, it’s plausible that moral responsibility has a distinctive significance, a point to which I return at various stages. ¹⁶ Or, alternatively, each of its members for their contribution. The question of collective responsibility is interesting in its own right, but I won’t consider it here. For some relevant discussion, see Björnsson & Hess 2017; French 1984; Isaacs 2011. ¹⁷ Cf. Smith 2007: “to say that a person is morally responsible for some thing is to say that it can be attributed to her in the way that is required in order for it to be a basis for moral appraisal” (467). See also Berofsky 1987; Oakley 1992; Scanlon 1998 (all referenced in Smith 2007: 468 n. 6).

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Responsibility of this sort concerns (among other things) the problem of free will,¹⁸ our ability to exert meaningful control over what we do, to author our own stories, and to be genuinely worthy of the evaluations others make of us. These features, however, while undeniably crucial to our moral practices, are far more general than this. They speak to our natures as agents, beings who act in the world to create art, advance science, achieve great feats of athletic prowess, and yes, do moral evil as well as good. While I will consult our practices of holding each other responsible in what follows, I take those practices to be of secondary explanatory importance. This is not because they are less important. On the contrary, they figure into some of the most significant ways we relate to one another. (Though, crucially, they do not exhaust those ways.) But my aim is not to justify our practices. Instead, I enlist them in service of getting clearer about being responsible.¹⁹ Thus, for me, the justification of our practices, and all the contours of their particular elements, is importantly a separate question (or set of questions). Admittedly, even designating this set of practices as the category of “holding responsible” is imperfect, given, as it does, its stronger affinity for the negative side of things. It is somewhat odd, for instance, to say that when we give out an Emmy we are thereby holding the performer responsible for her performance. But, for all that, I think it clear that we take such performers to be responsible for their performances, and, if they were not, we would have clear grounds for denying them the award.

¹⁸ There is no consensus on just what the problem of free will is. But I take at least a major recognizable strand of that problem to concern our ability to be meaningfully connected to the things we do in the world given the way that the world is structured. ¹⁹ Cf. Shoemaker 2015, which cites a division between theories that take being responsible to be the primary relation (what he calls the b-tradition) and those that take the appropriateness of holding responsible to be primary (what he calls the h-tradition) (19–20). See also Brink & Nelkin 2013. In my view, the heteronomy of our practices of holding others responsible, the wide variety in our appropriate responses, makes the h-tradition unstable. The more varied our responses, the less likely we are to derive a notion of being responsible out of them, rather than many. The h-tradition, then, is more likely to result in pluralism about responsibility as a methodological consequence. I take there to be some sociological support for this claim given that most h-tradition theorists are either pluralists about responsibility or else artificially restrict the scope of their views. For a nuanced discussion of the relative priority of these two questions, by which I’ve been influenced, see McKenna 2012: 39–55.

10   It is therefore perhaps most accurate to say that I begin with a distinction between what it takes to be responsible and how we ought to respond to the responsible. These responses, how we treat the blameworthy and praiseworthy, the ways in which we take their responsibility to be significant, can all count as responsibility-related elements of our practices. Yet, despite being related to responsibility, it doesn’t follow that this diverse and disparate set of practices should be the principal province of theories of responsibility. We view and relate to each other in various ways. As subjects-of-a-life, as moral patients, as embedded in relationships (friends; family; teammates), as inhabiting roles (citizen; shopkeeper; artist), as sources of interdependence, as minded creatures with complex attitudes and emotions, etc. I cannot hope to address all these features that bear on our interpersonal interactions, nor do I think they must all be central to a theory of responsibility, especially if that theory is aiming at a suitable level of generality. What I propose is starting with a way that we relate to the world around us, saving these interpersonal dynamics for later-stage theorizing. My framing of the issues then, is essentially metaphysical. Strawson (1962) may have been right that there is much about relating to other persons that is insulated from “panicky metaphysics,” but there is also something centrally relevant to how we interact with the world. In my view, when we are responsible for things, it is our connection to those things that matters. And that relation is primarily metaphysical.²⁰ One way to approach this idea clearly is to think about the notions of apology and forgiveness. One could insist that both are central elements of a theory of responsibility. I think they are better conceived as constituents of a broader domain regarding the dynamics of our responses to those responsible for things, one which far outstrips the boundaries of, for lack of a better term, the responsibility domain. As some initial evidence for this priority, notice that we remain responsible and blameworthy for the

²⁰ I take no stand, however, on the precise nature of the metaphysics involved, whether the relation is to be understood as, say, part of the “furniture of the universe” or in some other respectable way. The idea here is simply that responsibility is best understood as relating persons to things they can be evaluated for in a way that is inescapably metaphysical, in contrast to certain contemporary approaches that frame questions of responsibility in normative terms (see e.g. Darwall 2006; Scanlon 2008; Wallace 1994).

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things we’ve done even when we’re forgiven for them and it often makes perfect sense to apologize for things for which we aren’t responsible (damage produced by our child; an innocent but consequential mistake). Naturally, our more general theories will have to accommodate facts about apology and forgiveness. But that is to be expected. Indeed, to the extent that non-moral apology abounds (a player might apologize to a teammate for dropping a pass—and be subsequently forgiven), the general framework I’m providing may prove fruitful beyond what I set out to explore here.²¹ Nevertheless, I will leave a detailed consideration of the complicated dynamics involved in the fuller range of our responses to the responsible for later work, though I will at times revisit this theme in the chapters to come. In particular, I’ll consider the relevance of justifying punishment in Chapter 4. For similar reasons to those regarding apology and forgiveness, I’ll argue that the appropriateness of punishment is largely orthogonal to a theory of responsibility. For now, I’ll note that questions of punishment are inapt across a wide swath of human activity in which we are seemingly nonetheless responsible. There are, of course, different ways we might seek more generality from a theory of responsibility. Thus, I acknowledge at the outset that my approach isn’t necessarily the only sort of worthwhile generalization. Different strategies may yield different virtues worth considering. Nevertheless, my initial interest is in consulting the broader set of activities in which we’re responsible. If there are commonalities between being responsible for the moral things we do and, say, the artistic ones, those commonalities are worth exploring. And investigating these commonalities directs us toward a more general theory of responsibility.

An Argument in Two Keys In what follows, I develop that general theory. I argue that despite its simplicity, the basic responsibility relation figures in an attractive and

²¹ Though, again, see Matheson & Milam 2022 for an argument that all such cases of responsibility are in fact cases of “moral” responsibility. I discuss their approach in Chapter 3 when considering non-moral blame.

12   explanatorily powerful account of responsibility, one that warrants consideration amidst competing accounts of moral responsibility. Thus, the main way to take the project of the book is as a defense of a thoroughly minimalist theory of responsibility, necessary to explaining the wide set of data/cases/explananda. In this major key, one objective of the book is to reorient how we should theorize about (moral) responsibility. However, I recognize that some readers may balk at my attempt to appeal to non-moral cases, or otherwise reject that (at least some of) the things I claim need explaining really need explaining by a theory of (moral) responsibility. Others may complain that the distinctiveness of moral responsibility is the thing to be explained, and that giving it up is a cost to be avoided. In an effort to nonetheless bring something of value to such readers, I offer a second interpretation. One can instead treat the book’s project as taking a conjecture and exploring how much work it can do. In this minor key, the aim is to demonstrate how many resources a rather simple sort of picture about responsibility has, even if that picture doesn’t ultimately capture all you might want your theory of moral responsibility to explain. Though I will argue that where the view doesn’t deliver on some element of our practices we have independent reasons to be suspicious of those elements (or else that they should be captured independent of a theory of responsibility), those unpersuaded are free to treat the basic responsibility relation as being foundational to their own preferred responsibility framework.²² Both interpretations are equally conditional on the basic responsibility relation, but the minor key gives one more room to disagree with the initial framework. Regardless of which key one favors, I hope that even where I’m wrong in what follows, I am wrong in interesting and productive ways. And for those that choose the minor key, I hope to demonstrate the merits of transposing into the major along the way. No matter the key, my aim is to defend the argument with a minimum of technical jargon or theoretical formulations. This can be potentially ²² So, for instance, those that take responsibility (in whatever flavor) to be importantly about grounding desert of sanction or punishment can interpret the basic responsibility relation as being fundamental to that other notion of responsibility. I’ll revisit some of the available takeaways in the Conclusion.

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off-putting. It risks implying that I’m ignoring swaths of a literature which has carefully regimented our understanding of action, intentionality, responsibility, and blame. I hope to manage without such an intricate infrastructure. To assuage some worries, however, I will gesture toward ways in which the framework I develop can be fit into some of the more familiar philosophical apparatus.²³ In most cases, the elements of the theory I propose are compatible with various ways of developing the details. Indeed, one main strength of the theory to come rests on its relative simplicity and the generality of its scope. These are virtues worth preserving, even if we encounter some counterintuitive results.²⁴ The standard problem for such a view is that it leaves something out. The more minimal a theory is the more likely it is to lack various resources, resources we may need in order to explain important phenomena. (It would have been simpler to stop physical ontology at protons, neutrons, and electrons, but these particles appear unable to handle certain complex phenomena.) Consequently, I will often focus in what follows on elements of our blaming and praising practices that seem unaddressed by my account. I argue that once we appropriately clarify the nature of these elements, three solutions typically suffice. First, the element is easily accounted for by the theory, so presents no special explanatory difficulty. Second, the element ought to be rejected on independent grounds—that is, independent of my account. Finally, for those elements that should not be rejected and are not already captured by my account, I argue that they are best located within our broader moral practices rather than specific to a theory of responsibility. Such elements will typically concern specifically moral matters (or manifest in distinctive ways when applied to moral matters), and thus, per hypothesis, will be separable from a general theory of responsibility. I’ll aim to justify that exclusion when such elements arise.

²³ Such connections will often be relegated to footnotes, however, in the interest of maintaining flow. My apologies to those whose sensibilities are offended by this possibly profligate deployment. ²⁴ Cf. Weatherson 2003.

14  

Local Focus In addition to concentrating on being responsible, as evidenced across many different domains, another distinctive component of my approach concerns the kind of object it treats as fundamental. Many accounts of moral responsibility frame their approach by targeting a kind of individual. For example, David Shoemaker writes, “I will not (primarily) be investigating those conditions that make a generally responsible agent responsible or not for some specific action or attitude. Rather, the focus of my investigation is prior: What makes someone have the status of being a responsible agent in the first place?” (2015: 5). I approach matters from the opposite direction. I am interested in precisely those conditions that make one responsible for a particular thing—what we might call local responsibility. I will, for the most part, ignore responsible agency altogether, taking it as given that we are responsible agents so long as we can be responsible for some things. The idea here is that what makes for a “generally responsible agent” is entirely dependent on satisfying the criteria for local responsibility, and, in any case, is of secondary importance. Thus, I privilege theorizing from the actual elements that play a role in local exercises of agency, rather than in global capacities, conditions, dispositions, or powers. The main reason for my approach is theoretical simplicity. An account of local responsibility can provide an account of responsible agency, but not vice versa. Put differently, the capacities involved in responsible agency can never be explanatorily sufficient for being responsible for a particular thing. In this way, I am explicitly rejecting the idea that “being a responsible agent” precedes “being responsible for something.” Consider the capacity to ride a bike. If I’m able to ride a bike, it means that given appropriate circumstances and means, and the appropriate mental states and decisions, I ride a bike. But being able to ride a bike can’t explain any particular instance of successfully riding. To do that, we’d have to appeal to different things, like pedaling, steering, and balancing. Now, one might note that the capacity to ride a bike surely requires, among other things, the capacities to pedal, steer, and balance. But this just reiterates the problem, for the capacity to do these things is

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not sufficient for actually doing them. Successfully riding a bike requires actually pedaling, steering, and balancing.²⁵ Thus, I focus on what people do do, rather than what they can do. Their capacities are of secondary importance, for having the capacity to be responsible cannot adequately explain being responsible for something.²⁶ And it’s being responsible that I’m most interested in. Moreover, focusing on who is a responsible agent and who isn’t is liable to get things importantly wrong. For instance, it is common to examine exemptions as considerations that establish a lack of responsible agency. The exempt cannot be responsible for anything.²⁷ But this often treats matters too crudely. Those in the latter stages of progressive dementia typically suffer from numerous cognitive and regulatory impairments. Let us assume these impairments render them nonresponsible for their actions, such as angry outbursts or a remark that would otherwise appear careless but for their confusion. Still, even those with progressed dementia are subject to occasional bouts of clarity, where symptoms largely abate, allowing them to think more clearly. Such a person would seemingly be responsible for their outbursts or insensitive comments under such conditions, regardless of their more general capacities.²⁸ And this observation generalizes, I think. It follows from my approach that so long as one satisfies the conditions on being responsible for a particular thing, one is thereby responsible for it, no matter their general capacities, and no matter the likelihood that they are (or will be or were) responsible for anything else.²⁹

²⁵ We could call these instances of exercising a capacity, of course. Still, that doesn’t really help matters. It is unclear what exercising a capacity involves that isn’t exhausted by doing the particular elements themselves. ²⁶ Contrast Wallace 1994: “what matters is not our ability to exercise our general powers of reflective self-control, but simply the possession of such powers” (183). ²⁷ This might be a general exemption across the board or, for pluralists, exemption from a particular type of responsibility. See Shoemaker 2015 for a project organized around particularized exemptions. ²⁸ For a discussion of the dangers of exemption, both methodologically and morally, see King & May 2018 and Shoemaker 2022. There are also many complications here I’m ignoring, such as implications that certain conditions, like dementia, might have for, say, personal identity (see e.g. Dresser 1995). ²⁹ One way of interpreting this position is as an extreme version of an “actual-sequence” approach to responsibility. See e.g. Fischer 2011.

16   All that said, my objective here is not to criticize such approaches, but to disclose my reasoning in favor of an alternative method. If this approach rankles, fear not, for very little hangs on it. Indeed, I reference what I call basic agency in Chapter 2, exploring what is required for being locally responsible for things. There, I look at the things that agents— doers of deeds—like ourselves can do. But, if I’ve been suitably careful, one will note that I always begin by working from what we in fact do do. I believe there are advantages to approaching matters in this way, but nothing about the nature of the basic responsibility relation, or its attendant elements to be developed, fundamentally depends on this approach. All the preceding constraints on framing the project involve substantive claims that are subject to dispute. I won’t argue directly for any of them. Nonetheless, they can be glossed in either the major or minor key. In the major mood, the theory of responsibility to follow will provide indirect support for the background picture here. The strength of the account lies in the way the pieces fit together, so to the extent that I can successfully defend its parts, it will lend some credence to these preliminary claims. In the minor mood, these assumptions fall under the heading of “truth in advertising.” I’m laying some cards on the table so that readers have a better sense of where I’m coming from, even those that may have diametrically opposed preferences. Still, even though these parameters are all contestable, I take them to be perfectly plausible predilections, and together they form a suitably sensible starting point.

Roadmap When I was growing up there was a popular board game called MouseTrap. Some readers may be familiar. The object was to roll dice and move one’s piece, a plastic mouse, around the board. As the pieces went around you could build up the contraption, basically a Rube Goldberg machine, which culminated in dropping a cage down around an opponent’s piece on a particular square. I was never much for playing the whole game, but I loved building that machine and setting it

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into motion—watching the boot kick the cup over, which released the ball bearing down the zigzag path, eventually flipping the man off the see-saw . . . . Rube Goldberg machines can be immensely fun to construct and watch. This was certainly my experience with MouseTrap. But as a means of accomplishing their goal, they’re definitionally overly complex. Far easier than using the board game’s contraption to trap the opponent’s piece would be to simply drop the cage directly.³⁰ Similarly, elaborate theories and explanations of phenomena can ensnare our interest and attention. And while an intricate account can explain just as well as a simpler one, the simpler one is generally to be preferred. In my view, contemporary theories of responsibility are a bit like Rube Goldberg machines. They are more complicated than they need to be. Part of the ambition of this book is to correct for these extraneous complications. Indeed, I think responsibility comes rather easily—“on the cheap,” as it were—and this book constitutes an initial defense of that claim. In its ambition, the project risks arrogance. After all, many very talented theorists have turned their careful attention to the nature of moral responsibility, and whether concentrated on the traditional problem of free will or more contemporary concerns, the subject matter has been carefully, and thoroughly, scrutinized. But my aim here isn’t to quarrel directly with such attempts. Instead, I’m offering an alternative approach for consideration; a possibility story. The aim is to draft a competing view, to get the picture up and running, demonstrating its attractions, rather than to establish it as superior to all rivals. The book is thus oriented toward getting the basic pieces in place. To that end, it will be helpful to have a sense of the full picture before beginning. Obviously, I can only sketch the overall structure of the theory at this stage. Still, I hope that having at least that sketch will help readers in discerning and digesting the discussion to come.

³⁰ Somewhat ironically, this is often what had to be done during gameplay anyway, as the penultimate step in the contraption, responsible for triggering the cage dropping, was notoriously unreliable.

18   Chapter 1 lays out the initial case for the basic responsibility relation. I observe a number of parallels across a wide range of moral and nonmoral cases, which support a shared relation that connects doers to their doings so that the former can be evaluated by the latter’s lights. This is the basic responsibility relation. The goal is to establish a framework from which we might build a theory of general responsibility. Chapter 2 develops the elements of the basic responsibility relation and explains why those elements contribute to the relation doing the work that it does. I argue that the basic responsibility relation is grounded on the core features of our agency that we use to navigate the world as we do. These elements constitute our basic agency and provide the basis for a kind of control over our activities. This control is sensitive to some very basic conditions, which I argue are the conditions on the basic responsibility relation. The structure of the basic responsibility relation connects agents to the things they do such that they can be evaluated by the properties of their actions. The evaluations of the agents come in two basic flavors: positive and negative. Chapter 3 articulates these evaluations in terms of basic blame and basic praise. I begin with the tight conceptual connection between blameworthiness and blame: blame is just what the blameworthy are worthy of. (The story for praiseworthiness and praise is perfectly parallel.) Through the first two chapters, we’ll have seen a wide variety of things for which we can be blameworthy and praiseworthy. There is also a diverse array of ways to be blamed and praised. Consequently, I argue we have reason to look for a very minimal notion of basic blame (and basic praise) that all cases of blame (and praise) share. I argue that basic blame is the response merited by all who are responsible for something bad and basic praise is the response merited by those responsible for something good. The rest of the chapter develops the view by highlighting what it gets right about blame and blaming, while defending it against worries that it is too modest a notion. In constructing my account of basic blame and basic praise, the worthiness relation is left unanalyzed. If the blameworthy are worthy of blame, then an account of blameworthiness owes us an account of the way in which they are worthy of that blame. Chapter 4 outlines this worthiness relation in terms of a familiar notion: basic desert. I argue

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that desert is a natural candidate for the worthiness relation, and, though not entirely uncontroversial, one that has consensus support already. I suggest that we understand the desert in question in terms of a kind of fittingness, and that this relation is non-trivial. When the basic responsibility relation holds, we merit the evaluative responses we do (basic blame and basic praise) in light of our evaluative properties (basic blameworthiness and praiseworthiness), which we have in virtue of the basic responsibility relation (and whether the thing we’re responsible for is good or bad). Chapter 5 examines the prospects for the theory of basic responsibility to speak to some familiar themes from the existing literature on moral responsibility. In particular, I develop some ideas sketched in Chapter 2 regarding the connection between the control afforded us via basic agency and our evaluative stances. There is a long tradition that seeks to isolate the responsibility-grounding elements of a person—the so-called “real self.” Drawing upon some insights from that tradition, I argue that the picture I’ve developed in the book gives us satisfying, if unusual, explanations of deep evaluations of ourselves, our characters, and attitudes. A brief conclusion, well, concludes. I gesture toward some larger lessons from the preceding discussion, as well as consider some more speculative implications of my overall view.

1 The Basic Responsibility Relation In this chapter, drawing on widespread symmetry between moral and non-moral cases of responsibility, I set out the organizing idea of the book: that there is a single responsibility relation shared across the cases, one which grounds positive and negative evaluations of agents in light of the positive and negative features of the thing done. My aim here is merely to get the ball rolling, so to speak; to show that we have good reason to think such a relation exists. Chapter 2 will develop the idea and the relation’s conditions.

Symmetry in Praising and Blaming A moment’s reflection reveals the vast array of ways in which we hold each other morally responsible, as well as the diversity of things for which we hold them responsible. We blame our friends for letting us down, make angry calls to our representatives for their policy decisions, and criticize the bad behavior of celebrities. We praise our spouses for their support, laud those that stand up for positive change, and express gratitude for a simple kindness. Indeed, our everyday lives as we understand them are shot through with attributions of responsibility. Horns blare toward a seemingly selfish driver, holding up traffic; a brief wave to the commuter who let someone merge. Our coworkers annoy and frustrate with missed deadlines or dropped assignments, but they also pitch in to cover for us or support us in a new project. A passing “thanks” directed to those that hold open doors or an exasperated sigh when someone cuts in line. These all highlight the varying ways in which we hold others responsible for their moral conduct.

Simply Responsible: Basic Blame, Scant Praise, and Minimal Agency. Matt King, Oxford University Press. © Matt King 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192883599.003.0002

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This is but a subset of such instances, however. We hold people responsible for many non-moral things, too. In the 10th inning of Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, a routine ground ball passed through Boston Red Sox first baseman Bill Buckner’s legs, allowing the winning run to score. Whether fair or not, many fans held Buckner personally responsible for the loss. Indeed, according to the rules of baseball, his error means, amongst other things, that the run scored as a result is not charged to the pitcher. It’s Buckner’s fault; he’s to blame. The severity of this assessment throughout New England was manifested in the death threats and personal attacks Buckner and his family suffered as a result, eventually culminating in the Red Sox releasing him the following season. In fact, despite returning to finish his career and retire as a member of the Red Sox, forgiven by at least some fans,¹ Buckner decided to move away from Boston in the early ’90s, in large part due to repeated encounters with hostile fans who were unwilling to move on from his error.² While an undoubtedly extreme example, such reactions to athletic performance are not rare. Attend most any sporting event and one will hear both cheers and jeers directed at players and officials alike. Sometimes, of course, all this hullabaloo is merely registering like or dislike for various individuals or occurrences, but more often than not it reflects the assessment of a particular play or performance. Indeed, each year across a variety of sports, All-Stars are selected, ostensibly as a result of their stellar play. Within both professional leagues and amateur ranks, awards are doled out in recognition of seasonal achievements and spectacular plays. Fans and pundits alike argue about undeserved inclusions or who was “snubbed”—i.e. who should have won but went unrecognized.³ Bestowing awards are somewhat formal examples, where there are established policies and procedures and, usually, some voting mechanism

¹ Buckner reportedly received a standing ovation when his name was announced in the first home game of his second stint with the club, indicating a good many fans had forgiven him. ² Some coverage can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Buckner. ³ The relationship between responsibility and desert is contentious. I’ll take up the relationship directly in Chapter 4. For now, desert talk can be treated loosely, as synonymous with whatever worthiness is involved in being blameworthy and praiseworthy.

22   by members. But less formal examples abound. In barrooms and basements rage endless arguments over who was the “Greatest of All Time” in a particular sport or position, fans lay blame on particular players for a lost game or missed catch, and sing the praises of she who scored the winning goal, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. (Indeed, innumerable sports talk programs arguably exist solely to provide a forum for such discussions.) Professional athletes regularly exhibit similar displays, whether it’s a pat on the bum for a scoring catch or an incredulous stare for the pass that didn’t come, though weekend players are not exempt. High fives are no less frequent on the intramural pitch as they are on ESPN. Similar observations can be made in artistic fields. Regardless of whether they succeed in their task, the Academy Awards are meant to honor the best performances in film, both in front of and behind the camera. While certainly less notable, the Golden Raspberry Awards (or Razzies) somewhat affectionately “honor” the worst performances in film.⁴ In this domain, as well, arguments can be made and rebutted about who deserved which award or which selection was unwarranted. Here, too, we find less formal practices. Coverage of those very same awards ceremonies often features commentary on the style of the attendees, in popular “Who wore it best?” discussions. While we may disagree over precisely to whom the credit or embarrassment should go (the wearer or their stylist), the implication is that there is such a person. Message boards and internet comment threads fill with criticism of directorial choices, a depiction of a favorite character, or, more rarely, props for a particularly amazing or delightful performance. As the close of each year approaches, countless websites and publications issue their annual “best” lists, touting their picks for the finest in television, film, music, etc. In a 1949 article, LIFE magazine framed its treatment of Jackson Pollock by asking whether he was the greatest living painter in the United States.⁵ A legend in his own time, Pollock had garnered fame for his abstract expressionistic style, lauded by art critics for his creativity and revolutionary approach. In contrast, in what has now become a cult classic, Tommy Wiseau’s 2003 movie, The Room, is widely regarded as ⁴ See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Raspberry_Awards. ⁵ LIFE Magazine, August 1949.

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one of the worst films ever made. As writer, director, and principal actor, the ignominy for its many flaws seems to rest squarely on Wiseau’s shoulders.⁶ (Its making has since been immortalized—and somewhat celebrated—in the 2017 film, The Disaster Artist.) The list could go on. Sometimes, after reading a particularly incisive philosophy paper or coming across an inventive argument, I write to its author to commend them. (Even more frequently, I am sure to tell students when they’ve been creative or otherwise excellent in generating a question, argument, or objection.) Or consider the importance of academic practices of citation and the related misconduct of plagiarism. To fail to give credit to the work of others is to try to claim it for oneself. At a minimum, one risks misleading a reader about where credit is due. Our default is to see the written piece as a product of its author. Here, as elsewhere, we are assessed for the products of our work (as anyone who has filled out an annual report for administrators can attest). It’s also worth considering some more mundane examples, to give a sense of the proper scope and diversity of these practices. When one comes home to find one’s spouse has tidied the house or made dinner, one is appreciative of them because they are the one who is responsible. If a neighbor had brought over dinner or the kids had done the tidying, one’s gratitude would have to be redirected. The plumber gets our thanks for the cleared clog, and the mechanic our ire if he overcharges or makes the problem worse. One might think that such a disparate set resists systematization, but several features are common to all these examples. First, individuals are being evaluated for their activities. While we can appreciate the beauty of a painting in the way we might appreciate, say, the beauty of a sunset, without attributing it to any author, this is not how we normally respond to artwork.⁷ Our stance toward the object treats it as someone’s doing. It is not just an agreeable arrangement of properties, but the result of someone’s activity. In museums, we search out that card or plaque with identifying information. Just who is responsible for this remarkable

⁶ For discussion, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Room. ⁷ Of course, many who appreciate natural beauty do attribute it to a divine creator, but this is not necessary.

24   sculpture? Whose mistaken vision is behind this crass and clumsy still life? Why is there a urinal on display?⁸ It usually isn’t enough to read that our team won the game. We also want to know how the players played: who scored the runs, who made the stops, who fumbled. (Indeed, it’s somewhat telling that we often metaphorically employ phrases originating from holding players responsible in sport contexts elsewhere: “I really dropped the ball at the grocery store”; “That presentation was a hole-in-one!”) Moreover, whatever we think about the activity is connected in some way to its author. It was Buckner’s fault the ball made it past him. Even if others can be implicated in the run scoring, missing the ball at first was a bad play, and it was Buckner’s.⁹ While many Red Sox fans no doubt overreacted with their vitriol and their manner of holding him responsible, they were not mistaken in finding him at fault. His performance on the play certainly gave them reason to be unhappy with him. When the museum-goer derides a Pollock or Rothko by claiming, “I could’ve painted that,” they are diminishing the role of the artist and her skill, suggesting that there is no talent on display. Regardless of whether their assessment is correct, they clearly take the artist to be responsible for the painting, and so its qualities are reflective of the artist. The point is no less obvious for moral activities. The allure of whodunnits is not limited to solving the puzzle, but to fix our anger and reproach. Moral disasters are tragic, but we do not rest with merely registering the loss. It matters who the author of the atrocity is, for that is who warrants our outrage. Even in less serious moral matters, we seek out the relevant culprit. Anonymous donations leave us wondering who’s responsible, who warrants our admiration.¹⁰ It is not a happy accident, but rather the work of someone.

⁸ A reference to the readymade artwork, “Fountain,” by Marcel Duchamp. ⁹ Some assert that others in addition to Buckner are at fault, such as the right fielder who didn’t properly back Buckner up on the play, and even the Red Sox manager, who chose not to replace Buckner with a superior defensive player to protect the lead. However, it seems no one denies that Buckner messed up, so at most these claims seek to hold additional people responsible, not excuse Buckner. ¹⁰ Björnsson & Persson 2012 make a similar observation with respect to, specifically, moral responsibility: “[P]eoples’ concern with moral responsibility is mainly driven by a concern with whom to hold responsible for what” (328).

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Second, all these activities are governed by standards. For now, we needn’t settle their precise content to observe the basic point. Since my present aim is to uncover the basic architecture of the relations, the content of these evaluative standards, as well as the domain boundaries, can be left open at this stage, so long as they admit of positive and negative verdicts. Art, athletic play, and morality, are all evaluative domains. Each has standards by which their activities are measured.¹¹ Indeed, even within such general categories there can be further divisions (painting vs. sculpture; baseball vs. hockey). Part of what makes Buckner’s play an error is due to its measurement against the relevant standards. As a simple starting point, infielders should not miss ground balls. Buckner should have fielded the ball cleanly and recorded the out at first. After all, it was a routine ground ball. Such sporting examples may be the easiest because games are in part constituted by their rules, thus at least some of the standards come builtin, as it were. But we can also recognize exceptional play even when it is not related to the rules of the game. A quickly and efficiently turned double play or a beautifully curled free kick in soccer are rightly praised as exemplifying stellar play. Likewise, there are aesthetic standards for artistic endeavors, for what makes for a striking sculpture or a loathsome landscape, for what makes a track a “banger” or dismissed as “muzak.”¹² Third, applying these standards yields positive and negative evaluations. There are good plays and bad plays, good paintings and bad paintings, good academic papers and bad ones. Naturally, disagreement is possible, but such disputes concern the extension of the categories, what belongs to each, rather than the categories themselves. My colleagues and I can argue about what makes for a good paper, but none of us is skeptical that there are good papers, or that the good ones are such for the positive properties they possess. Indeed, such disagreements tend to occur against the backdrop of significant consensus. ¹¹ I am not drawing any meaningful distinction between “normative” and “evaluative.” Those with more demanding terminology are welcome to restrict use to “evaluative” throughout. It should make no difference to the arguments. (Though see Chapter 5 for discussion of particular objections that could be framed in terms of the presumed distinctiveness of the normative.) ¹² Cf. Aziz Ansari’s character, Tom Haverford, on how he selects all his music in the Parks and Recreation episode “Prom” (Season 6, Episode 18).

26   The same is true of aesthetic matters. That we may disagree about what films are good and bad, or even why each is good or bad, does not impugn the claim here. Whatever the relevant standards are, they’ll sort the performances, or objects, or actions, into good and bad per those standards. Some things are morally good, others are artistically good, and still others are athletically good (or, at least, good plays in baseball, for example). Others are morally bad, artistically bad, and athletically bad. Despite there being different evaluative domains, we see symmetry across them.¹³ Pulling these initial observations together, we see that, across a wide variety of domains, we take the conduct of others to reflect back on the doers in both positive and negative ways. A natural claim to make is that when we do so we are praising and blaming them. We don’t wonder at the miraculousness of an exquisite sculpture; we instead marvel at the sculptor who brought it about. We don’t just stand awestruck by a particular artistic effect; we admire that the artist managed that effect. There is a difference between bemoaning that the puck rang off the post, on the one hand, and that the player missed the shot, on the other. And, just as importantly, in doing so, we give credit for those positive qualities to the artist in question and we criticize the player for the bungled shot. Of course, the ways in which we give credit and criticize are quite broad and diffuse, but there is a basic underlying symmetry. We regard the performer positively in light of a good performance and we regard them negatively for a bad performance. This isn’t an all things considered evaluation, and it may be complicated by numerous other factors, including how we feel generally about the person or our moral assessment of them.¹⁴ We have a tendency to express these assessments— again, in a variety of forms—both to the performers and those around us. Moreover, we can even separate our evaluations of the same conduct. A piece of art can be aesthetically sublime whilst morally troubling. Thus, despite the variation in formats and the differences in context, we ¹³ I am here denying a kind of value skepticism in which there simply are no relevant values to make any activities good or bad. Such a robust skepticism seems to me extraordinarily pessimistic and undermotivated. ¹⁴ I consider these complications in later chapters; for now, I’m concerned with outlining some general features of the cases.

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evaluate agents in light of the positive and negative qualities of their doings across a wide range of human activities, and the positive evaluations reflect positively, while the negative evaluations reflect negatively. Natural labels for these evaluations of agents are “praise” and “blame.” Whether an artist’s brushstrokes, or a footballer’s passing, a coach’s decisions, or your spouse’s cleaning habits, we praise and blame each other for the things we do, holding them responsible for their doings and evaluating them against certain standards.¹⁵

The Basic Responsibility Relation Though we hold individuals responsible for their conduct across a diverse range of activities, there is a more striking symmetry. The very same considerations make blame and praise inappropriate across the cases. At this stage, I will ignore some possible complications in the examples. I do this for two reasons. First, doing so keeps the present discussion as uncluttered as possible, to bring out the parallels as sharply as possible. Second, and more importantly, since moral cases are subject to the very same potential complications, they only support the symmetry I’m defending here between the moral and non-moral. I’ll return to some of the elided complications in the next chapter. Pollock is famous for his abstract expressionism that involved dripped paint, splatters, and splotches. But no one takes him to have accidentally marred his canvasses. On the contrary, his works were the product of careful thought and execution. Had someone mistaken the drop cloth from his studio as a work of his and praised him accordingly, they would be making an error. He isn’t praiseworthy for the drop cloth because it isn’t reflective of his artistry. Similarly, whatever artful properties a work or performance might have, they do no service to their authors if done accidentally. ¹⁵ This is a somewhat simplified way of putting the point. We sometimes hold ourselves responsible and we also hold people responsible for things besides their actions. But my untechnical “doings” is meant to be understood broadly and so capture more than might be connoted by the term “action.” I take up holding oneself responsible in Chapter 3, and responsibility for non-actions in Chapter 5.

28   Relatedly, Buckner misplayed the ball. But had he done so because he suffered some sort of spasm or seizure, then blame would surely be inappropriate—as inappropriate as if he had missed the ball due to some crazed fan tackling him or hitting him with a beer bottle. As in moral cases, where we recognize a range of mitigating factors, our blame and praise are similarly affected by the same considerations in nonmoral cases as well. Accidents and spasms render both blame and praise equally inappropriate. Indeed, it’s natural to say that these sorts of considerations undermine an agent’s blameworthiness or praiseworthiness. That is, they disrupt or negate Buckner’s responsibility, as opposed to mitigations that plausibly preserve responsibility.¹⁶ Buckner’s responsibility appears to be disrupted if the missed ball was due to a spasm. It is no longer to Pollock’s credit if the painting was accidental. We could go on. If the opening chords of a guitarist’s performance are abysmal because she mistakenly thought the guitar was in tune (when it wasn’t), then she isn’t blameworthy for the resulting cacophony. Or suppose that McGraw eagles the 14th hole at the Master’s. Ordinarily, he’d be praiseworthy for doing so, but not if he thought he was using a 4-iron, but mistakenly had pulled a 7-iron from his bag (having misjudged the wind, say). Under those circumstances, he may be lucky, but he isn’t praiseworthy for sinking the shot. We rightly praise Huckleberry’s painting of a majestic landscape only if it isn’t done while sleepwalking. Should his somnambulistic movements somehow create a remarkable artwork, it nonetheless is not to his credit. Importantly, whatever its artistic qualities, the painting simply isn’t a reflection of Huckleberry’s talents. These observations are no less true for moral cases. Intuitively, Barbie is blameworthy for slapping Ken. But if she hits him because of a seizure or spasm she suffers, which causes her to flail wildly, she has a clear excuse. Hitting Ken no longer reflects on her negatively as a moral agent;

¹⁶ Some considerations, it seems, plausibly count in favor of tempering our responses, but this could be so without affecting the underlying blameworthiness or responsibility. For example, a spouse might apologize for snapping at their partner by noting that they’ve “had a really rough day.” My view is to treat such reasons as being relevant to how we ought to hold others responsible rather than the responsibility relation itself. I’ll return to such considerations in Chapter 3 and Chapter 4.

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she is not blameworthy. Parallelly, Larry might be praiseworthy for disarming a violent assailant threatening others. But not if he did so entirely inadvertently, as a result of tripping.¹⁷ Suppose Fred hits Barney in the eye. Shame on Fred. But not if he had been opening a bottle of champagne whose cork flew out and ricocheted several times before hitting Barney, who’d just arrived in the kitchen. An accident like this excuses Fred from blameworthiness. Similarly, stopping a would be assassin would be praiseworthy. But not if done by accident. If, in opening the door, Bruce knocks over a hitman about to take a fatal shot, he doesn’t rate any credit for having done so. Finally, suppose Jan takes Marsha’s jacket without her permission. Ordinarily, she’d be blameworthy. But suppose they both unknowingly wore the same kind of jacket to the party, so Jan thought she was taking her own jacket home. In this case, it seems Jan takes Marsha’s jacket by mistake, and thus has an excuse. Similarly, Diana saving someone’s life is only praiseworthy if not done by mistake. Perhaps she thought she was merely adding sugar to a customer’s coffee, when in fact she added medication without which the customer would have shortly died. Though she saved the customer’s life, she isn’t praiseworthy for having done so. So, we have a striking set of parallels. The same considerations undermine blameworthiness and praiseworthiness across cases, both moral and non-moral. Spasms and sleepwalking render one’s behavior importantly involuntary. Other times, one produces results unintentionally (i.e. by accident). And in other cases, one is relevantly mistaken about what one is doing. (These labels are merely provisional markers, meant to indicate some of the parallel threads in the examples above, and they aren’t meant to be exhaustive. As a reminder, at this stage, I’m only identifying some basic symmetry.) The striking parallels between the cases call for explanation. A plausible explanation for why the same considerations undercut blameworthiness and praiseworthiness across these evaluative domains is that these considerations affect something shared by each case. Since spasms, accidents, and mistakes (among other things), plausibly reduce ¹⁷ Inspired by Curb Your Enthusiasm’s “The Hero” (Season 8, Episode 6).

30   responsibility, a simple view emerges. Doers can be evaluated for various kinds of doings and those doings can be evaluated in various ways. But in all cases, it is a single relation—the basic responsibility relation—that links the doers to their doings such that they are evaluable for them.¹⁸ The considerations work in parallel, across the domains, because in each instance they disrupt that responsibility relation. Since the relation is disrupted in those cases, whatever the standards say about the thing done, whether positive or negative, no longer reflects on the doer. In this way, the basic responsibility relation helps explain the symmetry across cases. Buckner is responsible for the missed ball in the very same way that Pollock is responsible for his painting. The same relation ties each to their activity, just as it ties each of us to our moral activity. When related in this way, the evaluation of the activity reflects back on us, positively or negatively (or neutrally).¹⁹ Thus, what distinguishes moral responsibility from, for example, artistic responsibility is not a special kind of relation, but rather the kinds of standards applied to the things for which one is responsible. This makes possible many different types of evaluations of agents, all underwritten by the same basic responsibility relation. In Buckner’s case, he’s responsible for missing the ball, which is bad (relative to baseball standards). In Pollock’s case, he’s responsible for the painting, which is good (relative to artistic—or painting—standards). Buckner is blameworthy for missing the ball because he’s responsible for the bad thing; Pollock praiseworthy because he’s responsible for the good thing. (“Good” and “bad” here should be treated as helpful labels, rather than as substantive claims. They merely stand as shorthand for “positively evaluated by the relevant standards” and “negatively evaluated by the relevant standards.”) What determines the evaluation of each object of responsibility will be a function of the relevant standards, but what ¹⁸ Compare Smith 2007: “To say that a person is morally responsible for something, then, is merely to say that she is connected to it in such a way that it can . . . serve as a basis for moral appraisal of that person” (468). I broadly agree, so long as we do not limit ourselves to moral appraisal. ¹⁹ While there is very plausibly morally neutral activity, it’s less clear that there is evaluatively neutral activity. Most of what we do can be assessed according to some standard or another. At a minimum, most things we do can be done well or poorly. But, so I contend, they only reflect well or poorly on us when we’re responsible for them.

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explains why it applies to the agent in question is the basic responsibility relation. Thus, it makes no difference to the argument whether Pollock’s paintings are in fact good. If they are, then he’s praiseworthy for them. But if they aren’t good, he’s still responsible for them; only the valence of what he’s worthy of will change. Thus, I think we have good evidence for considering that individuals are responsible across evaluative domains, related by a single responsibility relation. At this stage, it remains an open question how much mileage we can get out of this picture. That’s precisely the aim of the rest of the book. I hope to develop my suggestion, explaining why the basic responsibility relation obtains when it does, why it holds across domains, and how much of our practices of holding others responsible it can illuminate. Despite its simplicity, the theory has the resources to do all that, though that remains a promissory note the remaining chapters must fulfill.

The Case for Asymmetry Before proceeding, however, it’s worth acknowledging that while I’ve pointed to a swath of symmetrical data, my proposal would be somewhat infelicitous if I were ignoring wide swaths of asymmetry. And many folks think that there are important differences between blame(-worthiness) and praise(-worthiness). Perhaps expectedly, this asymmetry is almost always characterized in terms of moral praise and blame.²⁰ But if there were deep and important asymmetries between moral blame(-worthiness) and praise(-worthiness), this might make double trouble for me, as we might have two important divides on our hands: between blame and

²⁰ Though not always. To some, “praise” connotes overt activity in a way that “blame” does not, independent of the standards one is using to evaluate. My intuitions differ, but even if blame and praise came apart in this way conceptually, it would not doom the account to come. I could always supplant the view with a different set of parallel evaluative notions, since I’m more confident that we evaluate the activities of agents across domains than I am that blame and praise are the only evaluative notions we have to use when theorizing about responsibility. Regardless, I do think that these positive and negative evaluations are justifiably conceptualized as praise and blame, as I argue in Chapter 3.

32   praise, on the one hand, and between the moral and non-moral on the other. Still, even if there were important asymmetries, the symmetrical data is significant. If I’m right, then to the extent that blameworthiness and praiseworthiness are undermined in parallel, this still suggests that there is something the cases share. Thus, asymmetries only threaten the basic responsibility relation if they are threatening to the worthiness of blame/ praise. To take a trivial example: blame is “negative” and praise is “positive,” but that difference isn’t relevant to the argument for a basic responsibility relation. (This is why I talk of symmetry rather than sameness.) Naturally, the trivial example is not what proponents of asymmetry have in mind, but it is nonetheless suggestive. I don’t deny, for instance, that we often do very different things when we’re blaming than when we’re praising. There’s often a confrontational element to blaming another that isn’t present when we praise, and we may be more prone to raising our voices. (It is telling, however, praising often includes a similar element of seeking out the responsible party, though the purpose is not to confront.) The oft-cited emotional elements of blaming (e.g. resentment or anger) look harsher and more aggressive than those mentioned for praise (e.g. gratitude or admiration).²¹ We also may have more reason to be concerned about the ways in which blame is deployed than for praise. Worries that attend the potential harms of blame may not resonate at all (or only less so or differently) when considering praise. Such differences, however, to the extent that they mirror the trivial example—that is, to the extent that the things we do when blaming are, roughly, “negative,” whereas those when praising are “positive”—they fail to undercut the significance of the symmetrical data. Perhaps we might care more about blaming than praising. My contention is that blameworthiness and praiseworthiness share a symmetry of structure, not necessarily significance. Some defenses of asymmetry, in contrast, are explicitly cast in structural terms. Perhaps mostly famously, Susan Wolf (1990) argues that ²¹ See Chapter 3 for more on the significance of this variation in our responses.

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blameworthiness has a necessary condition that praiseworthiness lacks.²² While the conditions on blameworthiness require that the agent could have done otherwise, the conditions on praiseworthiness do not. Her evidence for this is that an agent who was compelled to do evil, and thus couldn’t do otherwise, would be excused. In contrast, the fact that an agent was compelled to do good, and thus couldn’t do otherwise, isn’t a mitigation of praiseworthiness, but a testimony to it (156). I certainly haven’t here demonstrated that blameworthiness and praiseworthiness are symmetrical with each other. Rather, I am pursuing a line of thought, that there are parallel observations to be made of the blameworthy and praiseworthy, which are supported by a simple and compelling explanation involving the basic responsibility relation. By itself, this line of thought cannot show that Wolf ’s view is mistaken. Nevertheless, we have good reasons to reject Wolf ’s asymmetry thesis.²³ Consider a kleptomaniac, and let us suppose for the sake of argument that he cannot help but steal.²⁴ Let us also grant, along with Wolf, that citing this inability counts as an excuse to blameworthiness.²⁵ Given these assumptions, the claim, “But he couldn’t help it!” serves to indicate that he lacked control over his choice or action, and, therefore, that he is to be excused. I agree that something is different with praiseworthy cases. One of the reasons for this is that we ordinarily don’t cite excuses to charges of praise. So in the context of an act of kindness or beneficence, the claim, “He couldn’t help himself,” is meant to call our attention to the agent’s virtue, rather than signal a consideration which undermines praiseworthiness. But all this shows is that we put the same words to quite different purposes. The same phrase (“He couldn’t help it”) functions differently in the two cases, highlighting different considerations. In one case, the consideration is lack of control, which

²² See also Nelkin 2011. ²³ For separate criticism, see Fischer & Ravizza 1998. ²⁴ This is not an innocent assumption. The empirical data suggest things are far more complicated than depicted in this naïve picture of the kleptomaniac (as typically portrayed in Hollywood, e.g.). But it’s a useful fiction for current purposes. For further discussion, see King & May 2018, 2022 and Schroeder 2005 (which discusses Tourette Syndrome). ²⁵ This is also not an innocent assumption. Requiring that the agent “could have done otherwise” is an infamously contentious condition on responsibility. The relevant literature is enormous. Two good starting places are Frankfurt 1969 and Nelkin 2011.

34   undermines blameworthiness. In other cases, however, the relevant consideration is degree of virtue, which reinforces praiseworthiness. This is not enough, I think, to show that there is asymmetry in the conditions on blameworthiness and praiseworthiness (and, thus, on responsibility for bad and good, respectively). Importantly, the cases above are not really parallel. Consider a case rather like the fictional kleptomaniac, but wherein the individual cannot help but buy presents they think their friends will enjoy (in keeping with Wolf ’s example). But now suppose that, like that kleptomaniac, they cannot resist buying presents even if it would result in terrible misfortunes, like defaulting on their mortgage or being fired from their job. While benefitting their friends still looks like a good deed and reflects their consideration of their friends, they seem far less responsible for these choices. At least, if the kleptomaniac suffers from control-undermining compulsion, then this present-giver seems to suffer in just the same way. Indeed, it seems odd to say of them, “Look at how virtuous they are! They keep giving others presents even though it causes them to suffer so.” Thus, to the extent that the kleptomaniac is excused, the present-giver seems similarly excused. We can also run things the other way. When a hero says of jumping into dangerous waters to save a drowning child, “I had to jump in— I couldn’t imagine letting the child drown,” we take this to be emblematic of her virtue. She is so good that opting not to jump in was not a psychologically available option for her. In contrast, we tend to view the desire to steal (in kleptomania) as an imposition on the person. But if we likewise imagine someone who couldn’t help but steal because he is so bad so as to be incapable of not stealing, then we should (and I think would) take this to be emblematic of his vice. He is so bad that not stealing is not a psychologically available option for him. But neither indomitable virtue nor intractable vice count as excusing conditions; each indicates preserved responsibility. At the very least, they look the same, and so should be treated the same. Thus, when we attend to parallel properties, focusing on lack of control in one case and thoroughgoing virtue or vice in the other, we actually get symmetrical results. Again, I won’t claim to have refuted Wolf ’s grounds for asymmetry in so short a space. In any case, I’m not interested in proving her wrong (or, for that matter, refuting any comparable argument for asymmetry).

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My aim instead is to defend my symmetrical methodology, and shifting some of the burden of proof to proponents of asymmetry is sufficient for that purpose. It is perhaps worth noting in closing that at least some of the explanation for the focus on asymmetry may be found in the outsized influence of morally laden cases and the negative side of responsibility on the literature. Blame and blameworthiness have more or less dominated discussion, with particular attention paid to specific negative reactions, like anger and sanction-like behavior. Praise and praiseworthiness have been far less prominent, often mentioned in passing or else explicitly set aside. If one considers praise and praiseworthiness to be an importantly different kind of phenomena from blame and blameworthiness, then it is easy to see how such notions would no longer correspond to the “positive side of things” at all, as there would effectively be no shared substrate.

What’s Next I won’t pretend to have established the basic responsibility relation here. Instead, I’ll take it that I’ve made the initial case for it. There’s more work to do in elucidating the relation and its conditions, connecting it to a picture of agency that can serve to underscore and justify its presence across a wide swath of human activity. I begin that work in the next chapter.

2 Basic Agency So far, I have set out a conjecture: there is a basic responsibility relation connecting doers to their doings, such that the doers can be evaluated by the lights of the doings. But what is it about doers that makes possible such evaluation? We need an account of the underlying conditions on the basic responsibility relation. The basic responsibility relation was suggested both by the wide range of instances of non-moral blameworthiness and praiseworthiness, and the parallel operation of various excuses and undermining factors. Those same parallels also suggest some constraints on what we should expect of the underlying conditions. If we can be blameworthy and praiseworthy in all these different domains, and there is a shared responsibility component throughout, we should expect that component to be realizable despite the many differences between those domains. The more minimal the underlying mechanisms, the more likely those mechanisms will be found across the various domains. Consequently, I argue that our responsibility is grounded in fairly basic mechanisms of agency. To avoid suspense, I’ll lay out the rough answers first, then show my work in getting to them. (This is a bit of a sneak any way you slice it, as my answers will involve some rough approximations at this point, both for clarity and simplicity.) Doers represent potential states of affairs and act so as to realize them. Their doings are products in the world realized by their activities.¹ The connection between the two depends on the relevant properties of those objects being represented accurately in the psychology of the agents. When the activities are properly guided by the agent’s accurate representations, they are responsible for them, and the qualities of the doings ¹ While I have my own metaphysical preferences about how to treat doings, the general view I defend will be somewhat transposable into different metaphysical keys. Simply Responsible: Basic Blame, Scant Praise, and Minimal Agency. Matt King, Oxford University Press. © Matt King 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192883599.003.0003

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attach to the doers. When those properties are negative, the agents are blameworthy; when they are positive, the agents are praiseworthy. In the remainder of this chapter, I set out to explain why the basic responsibility relation allows for an assessment of agents in light of the evaluative properties of their actions. I argue that the underlying basic structures of our agency provide a compelling picture for how we are properly linked to our conduct in this way. The basic responsibility relation is thus grounded in our basic agency.

Doers and Doings We can talk of events that occur in the world. They include things like earthquakes, explosions, and writing an essay. But some events are unlike other events because someone brought them about. Outside of supervillain shenanigans, an earthquake is no one’s doing. Rather, earthquakes are a product of the constant interaction of geological forces and tectonic plates. In contrast, essays are produced by people. In broad strokes, one sits down and writes, phrase by phrase, paragraph by paragraph, one edits and emends, until one has finished the essay. Essays have authors in the way that earthquakes do not. Explosions come in both flavors. Some are happenings, like when a volcano erupts, or lightning strikes a tree, shattering it apart. Others look to be someone’s work, like when a mountainside is blasted to make room for a road, or Timothy McVeigh’s 1995 attack in Oklahoma City. This way of observing the point only gets us so far. Not all of the things we do are things for which we’re responsible. For example, sneezing is something I do, but it is not something that can count to my credit or discredit.² Distinguishing between which things we are responsible for and which we are not is part of the work a theory of responsibility should do. But we have to start with some pre-theoretical understandings of the differences in order to better guide our theorizing, subject to subsequent

² Though holding a sneeze or mitigating its interruptive force, say, possibly could so count.

38   revisions in light of how our theory develops and further reflection on specific phenomena. One useful heuristic here is to examine a simple case of moral responsibility. When morally responsible for something, one is linked to that thing in such a way that one’s evaluation as a person is changed. To take a moral example, if Gustav blows up the dam, then he’s blameworthy for the dam’s destruction and subsequent flooding. His blameworthiness is due (in part) to being responsible for the explosion.³ But that relation isn’t limited to moral cases. Suppose Ramona composes and plays a catchy riff on the guitar. If it really is a cool and interesting riff, then she’s praiseworthy for having written it, and her praiseworthiness is due (in part) to being responsible for the riff. (Likewise, if it is a terrible riff, she’s blameworthy for it because she’s responsible for it.) Moreover, it matters that Ramona wrote and performed the riff, rather than the phrase of notes being produced in some other way. For instance, the wind might produce a beautiful passage of notes in a windchime, but, while we might give some credit to the manufacturer of the chimes, there is no praise due the wind. Similarly, an algorithm can produce a loop that fits the key of a given song, and that loop could be—ahem—instrumental to a given passage’s musicality, but the algorithm doesn’t share in the acclaim for song.⁴ So, it is only doers like Ramona that can be responsible for the music they produce, not objects like chimes or unthinking algorithms. But why are Ramonas responsible when the other things aren’t? The short answer is psychology. Doers, like Ramona, represent and respond to the world around them.⁵ Importantly, they represent and evaluate potential states of affairs, and tailor their conduct accordingly. Chimes in the wind do not employ this kind of processing. Similarly, unthinking loop

³ The nature of the destroying also matters for blameworthiness. He’s not blameworthy unless destroying the dam is bad or wrong. ⁴ At best, the programmer of the algorithm might get some credit, though this would mostly be for the operation of the algorithm itself rather than a particular deployment. Of course, the composer or engineer of the track could be praiseworthy for the use of the loop. ⁵ In the common parlance of theories of agency and responsibility, they are “reasonsresponsive.” I here appeal to the generic idea of reasons-responsiveness, however, not more detailed and substantive versions developed by particular theorists. The canonical origin of the term is Fischer & Ravizza 1998.

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algorithms, while they respond to their inputs, only operate within their rigid, limited parameters. In contrast, doers like Ramona dynamically and flexibly navigate the world, set goals, plan, and perform actions. As such, their doings are the products of their activities as agents. While the earthquake is a function of tectonic processes, doings are a function of the doers’ psychological processes. We exercise control over what we do and the world around us by modulating our conduct in response to our circumstances. And it is in exercising this control that we get a say over what happens around us.⁶ All of this can be had relying only on fairly minimal agential structures. Indeed, minimalism is what we should expect given the basic responsibility relation. If our responsibility across evaluative domains is grounded in features of our agency, we should predict that those features will be generic and general, rather than specialized and specific. A second advantage of such minimalism is that the resulting view should be broadly compatible with however the empirical details shake out. This much, at least, appears to be part of the basic structure of our agency.⁷ We set goals, which may be simple (taking a sip of water) or more complicated (playing a C-diminished scale). We represent the world around us, which sets the parameters for how we might accomplish those goals, including possible affordances and obstacles we might meet. And we initiate action schemes, which represent the steps to get us from our current situation to the goal. We also have plans:⁸ longer-range intentional structures that coordinate our activity over time.⁹ These needn’t be particularly robust. It may

⁶ “Having a say” is to be read neutrally with respect to the traditional debate over the compatibility of responsibility with determinism. I remain neutral on those questions here, but briefly return to the topic in the Conclusion. ⁷ For a similar approach, see Shepherd 2021. His aim is to develop an account of agency. My aim here is to develop an account sufficient to explicate the basic responsibility relation. It is possible these two aims co-extend, though my account here is intentionally sketchy to allow for variability in developing the details. Relatedly, his account does not target responsibility or blameworthiness and praiseworthiness. ⁸ I’m not placing too much importance on the various labels I’m using. For example, we have various conceptions of a “plan,” and they needn’t all inform the sort of representation I’m pointing to here. Feel free to treat the labels as provisional or stipulative. ⁹ Compare Brand 1986: “[the agent] has before his mind, as it were, a pattern of activity to which he brings his actions into conformity” (213). See also Bratman 1999, 2007. I take it that bringing before one’s mind can be unconscious.

40   be a simple series of steps in order to achieve our goal of making a sandwich or taking a shower. Other times, our plans will be more complicated and involve many sub-plans, as when set out to write a philosophy paper or a student works toward graduating. Plans structure our activity in both the short- and long-term, as well as interact with one another to help us coordinate our conduct across shifting circumstances and environments. Moreover, we monitor our situation, measuring inputs, comparing courses of action, and assessing import. We have background beliefs, values, and commitments, all of which shape our deliberation and contour our plans, constraining options, directing us toward and away from various possible options. Thus, we represent our situation, assess it against a backdrop of our goals and standing plans, initiate action schemes for the pursuit of those goals, all while monitoring our environment and courses of action, adjusting our conduct accordingly. These elements interact in dynamic and flexible activity that provide us control over what we do.¹⁰ This is the core of our basic agency. We can begin to connect basic agency to basic responsibility. Return to Ramona and the riff. There are various reasons why a guitar riff is a good riff. After demonstrating the short passage, Ramona’s bandmate might say, “That’s a really cool riff. I love the syncopated feel!” Here, the bandmate is not only crediting Ramona for the riff, she’s specifying a particular quality of the riff that makes it good and implying that Ramona is responsible for that quality. Indeed, when we praise or blame others for their works, we’re giving them credit not just for the work, but for the positive (or negative) qualities of the work. Sometimes this is explicit, as when we elaborate on our assessment of a performance or work of art. Other times it is implicit in our generic assessment. If I tell you that the goalie “stunk” last night, this is a general evaluation of the way she played. Nonetheless, it is supported by more particular features of her play that determine the nature and degree of its “stinkiness.”

¹⁰ I’m neutral with respect to the empirical details regarding precisely how all this is achieved, but some plausible psychological elements include things like efference copying mechanisms and predictive models. For a helpful reference, see Pacherie 2012.

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Thus, we can see in the case of Ramona that she is responsible for the riff, in a way that reflects positively on her because of the positive qualities of the riff. Likewise, if the riff sounded terrible, then this would reflect poorly on her in light of its negative qualities (provided she was responsible for those qualities). Moreover, the connection between these two things isn’t happenstance. The reason why the positive qualities of the riff reflect positively on Ramona is plausibly because of something about Ramona that played a role in the riff being that way. If the striking syncopation was an accidental property, then the syncopation may be a noteworthy feature, but it wouldn’t be to Ramona’s credit. When the syncopation is not accidental, however, when Ramona, as it were, means for the riff to sound that way, then that property is a credit to Ramona. The riff reflects positively on Ramona because the riff has the characteristics that she aims at it having and around which she coordinated her conduct to produce.¹¹ That is, she set about trying to produce a riff that sounds a certain way, and so did it. At a minimum, this requires Ramona representing those particular features of the riff (and how they fit together) and then representing and acting on the sorts of plans sufficient to bring about those features. This brief sketch assumes that Ramona’s goal was to have a riff that sounds that way. But this isn’t always the case. Artists often don’t explicitly map all the features of their artistic products in advance; sometimes they stumble onto something good. (This isn’t unique to artists, of course.) A guitarist might “noodle around” without aiming at any intended particular sequence of notes, and nonetheless play something pleasing or interesting. However, such “noodling” is not accidental or random, but rather guided activity. The guitarist is monitoring her activity via listening, has stored representations of scales and modes, motor programs for piecing certain notes together, all of which combine to allow her to construct passages both on the fly and to be guided by ¹¹ Though, obviously, Ramona likely doesn’t aim at the riff having every characteristic it has, such as the specific sine wave of each note. However, this fact is only significant in the unusual circumstance in which the doing we’re interested in specifically concerns the sine wave characteristics of the riff. See below for necessary clarifications regarding the detail of our representations.

42   certain intentional states in specific directions without specifying the detailed elements of getting there. Such spontaneous playing is no less a guitarist’s activity than deciding in advance on what the riff should look like.¹² Writing processes may differ, but unless we think some bit of artistry is divine inspiration¹³ (as with actual muses, say) or an actual accident (as when the guitar slips from Ramona’s hand), it is clearly the work of the artist.¹⁴ Things are no different in the moral realm. When Gustav is responsible for blowing up the dam, the negative qualities of the destruction reflect on Gustav negatively. This is because the dam explosion has the particular negative features it does due to Gustav’s goals, plans, action sequences, and other representations, that led him to coordinate his conduct to produce those features. But not all moral doings are preplanned, as it were. Sometimes we spontaneously act, and such action is neither unguided or accidental, nor, importantly, excused. Thus, doers represent potential states of affairs and action sequences to bring certain outcomes about. I’ll call this representational structure the agent’s action architecture. This shouldn’t be read as specifying a particular architecture per agent’s action. Our mental structures shift dynamically in line with changing circumstances, novel cues, and the further effects of continual monitoring and assessment. We rarely do one thing exclusively, to then turn, once completed, to do the next thing. The more typical arrangement reveals a smoother, more nebulous, process whereby we manage various overlapping activities at once. No doubt parents will be able to produce several examples, but, importantly, the claim here does not require divided attention. While I’m giving a lecture in class, I’m also monitoring the audience for raised

¹² For some relevant discussion, see Brownstein 2018. ¹³ In a visit to Jason Becker, Edward van Halen attributed his good guitar ideas to a higher power (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cN3Gn8W4ZvA). Two comments, however. First, I take him to be simply mistaken in assigning credit in this way. Second, even if the idea is to be credited to a higher power, its realization was EVH’s work and so remains to his credit. Similar examples abound. Autobiographically, my spouse often comes up with great ideas for what we should have for dinner, which I then typically execute. She may be due credit for the idea, without this mitigating in any way my responsibility for the resulting dish (for good or ill!). ¹⁴ It’s also worth noting that “stumbling” upon a cool riff usually results in the basic shape of a riff, which is then refined into a more finished product. Rarely does one just come upon a really cool riff without any further editing, revising, or modification.

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hands, considering my time management and sense of when to move on to the next activity, etc., without such activities serving as distractions. Indeed, they can be well integrated into my overall activity of teaching. My view is consequently extraordinarily permissive in the individuation of activities. When our activities are appropriately guided by these representations, they are our doings. In order to be responsible for their features, for their positive and negative properties to reflect on us, those features must be present in the agent’s action architecture. (And so not every property of our doings will be reflective on the doer.)

Where the Action Is I have so far focused on what I’m calling agential activities. This is by design. We need an account of doings that is sufficiently flexible to handle the wide variety of things we can be responsible for.¹⁵ Ramona isn’t just responsible for the riff. She’s also responsible for its syncopation, and for its “coolness.” She’s responsible for the particular notes she plays, her languid phrasing and pick attack, her guitar’s tone, and more besides. So, in some cases we might be interested in responsibility for particular end-states or material outcomes; in others, an active action-state, still in movement; in still others, various properties of the performance. In my view, none of these is the correct kind of object of responsibility, nor do any of them constitute a kind more fundamental than the rest. They are all things we can be responsible for, and are all things we have an interest in determining whether one is responsible for. This is why I put the sketch of the basic responsibility relation in terms of “doings,” rather than some more specified or technical notion. It ought to be relatively uncontroversial that among the things Ramona has done include: playing a riff; playing a cool riff; playing an interesting

¹⁵ Many will take it as obvious that we are also held responsible for things besides our doings, such as our attitudes and character. See Chapter 5 for an examination.

44   syncopative phrase; playing a c-diminished phrase; playing with a heavy pick attack; playing a riff that sounded the way it did; etc.¹⁶ By focusing on activities instead of action, we have a more flexible framework for capturing this large range of objects and features. The central theme running through all these possible objects is the ongoing process of playing the riff—a guided activity. It is guided because Ramona’s movements and more specific actions are appropriately sensitive to her representations. The notes and rhythms follow her plan states for them. There is thus a correspondence between the particular objects and Ramona’s representations. She will adjust to the position of the guitar, or possibly even suspend playing given certain changes in the environment (her bandmate screaming, “STOP”) or her priorities (realizing that she needs to make an urgent call), reflecting the dynamic nature of her involvement in producing the riff.

Intentionality One advantage of this approach is that by concentrating on intentional activity we can ignore various complications that might arise in giving an account of intention or intentional action more narrowly construed. The action theory literature is littered with accounts aiming at the individuation of action, often in terms of the intention on which an agent acts.¹⁷ I’m pursuing something like the opposite strategy; what we might call the plethorization of action, replete with intentional states. Fortunately, for the purposes of clarifying responsibility, we need a broad notion of intentionality anyhow. Intuitively, responsibility is in some way connected with intentionality. But there is an ambiguity in the notion of doing something intentionally. Often, when we say that something was intentional, we mean,

¹⁶ This is just a partial list, and it is semi-stipulative, since the example is made up. Readers may well note the similarity here to the discussions in action theory regarding “actions under a description.” To borrow one of Davidson’s examples, I may both switch on a light and startle a burglar, and doing the one may constitute the doing of the other. Relatedly, if one eats a sandwich quickly, then one has also eaten a sandwich and eaten something. (See Davidson 1980.) ¹⁷ For a good overview, see Wilson & Shpall 2016.

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narrowly, that it was our objective or aim. So, if someone complains that the portraits I’m painting all have droopy faces, I might reply that that feature is intentional. I was trying to paint droopy faces, so they look that way on purpose. However, if we relegated to the unintentional everything that wasn’t so narrowly intended, we would exclude too much. Sometimes, I’m aware that certain outcomes will obtain or that they will have certain properties even though I’m not actively seeking them. In some cases, they may be necessary features of the activity I’m performing. When there’s only one serving of ice cream left, I don’t (narrowly) intend to finish the ice cream just because I intend to eat it.¹⁸ It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that I didn’t mean to finish the ice cream, even though I was aware that there would be none left. Obviously, there is one sense in which that is true: it wasn’t my goal to finish it. After all, that means I have to go buy more ice cream. But it’s also the case that I didn’t intend not to finish the ice cream, for if I did seek to avoid finishing it, the easiest course of action would have been choosing something else for dessert. So, while we can finely separate out a class of results that were narrowly intentional, such a category is not coextensive with our responsible doings. It is plain that my finishing the ice cream was not an accident. If my wife asks why I finished the ice cream, I can’t reasonably claim that I didn’t mean to. It would be entirely infelicitous to insist that, “I just wanted a serving of ice cream, ate one, and then there wasn’t any ice cream left.” While finishing the ice cream wasn’t itself my objective, I still finished it knowingly.¹⁹ The upshot is that our responsible doings aren’t limited to that which we set out to do, they also include the things we know will (or might reasonably) happen as a result of what we set out to do.²⁰ Other foreseen outcomes may be less integral to one’s activity. I can foresee that some goal of mine will hurt another’s feelings, or risk making me late for an important meeting, or break some dishes. To foresee such ¹⁸ This observation is familiar from the literature on the “doctrine of double effect,” though it applies much more generally. See McIntyre 2019 for an overview. ¹⁹ One finds something similar in the criminal law’s classification of intentional states (see e.g. Model Penal Code 2.2.02). ²⁰ “Know” here is also to be understood broadly here, in a way that will be clarified below.

46   things is to see various potential states of affairs as being reliably connected to your course of action. Not only do we predictively represent how our conduct will immediately affect the world so as to dynamically guide our activities toward completion (and away from failure), we also represent the ways in which our activities will generate further effects in the world. This mechanism is important for plan revision, as when we predict that a course of action is liable to produce a costly effect or an exogenous circumstance forces us to adjust our conduct to better secure our goal. (Consider turning down a burner so a pot doesn’t boil over or a hockey player adjusting his shot on the backswing given the actions of the defender.) But it’s also crucial to our ability to integrate particular plans into larger intentional structures.²¹ We must coordinate our activities both with our immediate goals, and with long-term plans, standing commitments, and independent goals. As such, we must monitor not only how to achieve our goals, but what effects pursuit of those goals might produce, as they may conflict with success for our immediate aim, as well as introduce new and costly consequences. Thus, the relevant contrast is not between that which is narrowly intended and everything else. So, when I speak of intentional doings, I have in mind this broader class. A better way to get at the relevant category is to contrast the intentional with the accidental. Accidental doings are those that are unforeseen by-products of one’s intentional doings. They are things we do unknowingly, such that the relevant outcome or property is unrepresented in the action architecture. When Fred is opening the champagne bottle he is representing many things, like the scheme for removing the cork, the location of the glasses for pouring, etc., but plausibly he is not representing the possibility of ricochets resulting in Barney’s injury. (If he were to represent such a possibility, of course, then the injury would be non-accidental, and so relevantly intentional.)²² One complication comes from the observation that some things we don’t mean to do are in fact things we actually tried to avoid. When I’m

²¹ A sympathetic framework can be found in Bratman 1999, but I am not here relying on his detailed view. ²² Fred might, of course, represent a risk of the ricochet. I take up such complications below.

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carrying a very full cup of coffee I’m usually also trying very carefully not to spill any. And yet, if I spill it, it’s hardly an accident, even though I didn’t mean to do it. An important consideration, however, is that in seeking to avoid a particular result I am guided by its possibility. If I’m trying to hit the bullseye, then I must be representing the possibility of missing it. After all, any shot that isn’t a bullseye must be missing the bullseye. So, if I have the goal of hitting the bullseye, I must also have the goal of not missing the bullseye. If I do miss, I can of course advertise the fact that I didn’t mean to miss, but doing so is a bit gratuitous. When we’re aiming at some success, failure is usually implicitly represented in the activity itself, for we have to regulate our conduct in step with shifting circumstances towards success and away from failure. A batter may have to adjust his swing in order to meet the ball as it changes trajectory. Such regulation does not preclude failing, however. Sometimes we just whiff. A shot goes wide; a drawn line is wobbly; some coffee is spilled. Naturally, we don’t mean to miss the shots we take. But as we are imperfect performers, occasional failure is inevitable.²³ The lesson here is that our control is imperfect. We cannot guarantee that certain outcomes obtain, despite our efforts. If one intends to hit the bullseye, there is of course a sense in which one must intend to not miss the bullseye. But in so doing one is nevertheless open to the possibility of failure, aware that success is not guaranteed. (Notice, for instance, the relevance to an agent if serious stakes attach to failure. We recognize being on the hook if we screw it up.) Accordingly, simple failures are always foreseen. The archer, in effect, misses the bullseye knowingly. Consider just how strange it would be if the archer said, “I had no idea I could miss!” We likely wouldn’t believe them. This is further evidence that they represented possible failure. This is different from thinking that one wouldn’t miss. The archer could be confident—even overconfident— and so think that he would definitely make the shot. Indeed, he might not even have consciously considered missing it. What I’m claiming here, however, is that he cannot guide taking the shot without representing missing it. Such representations are nonetheless compatible with flawless action architectures. In analyzing my performance when I fail, while ²³ Cf. Austin’s missed putt example (1956). All pro ballers miss at least some free throws.

48   there must be something that went wrong, there may be no part of my action with which I find fault, apart from not having accomplished what I set out to do. In some cases, of course, we’ll be able to identify something we ought to have done differently, as when a goaltender takes the wrong angle, and so gives the shooter too much net to aim at. But in other cases, we will simply fail. This lesson in imperfection can be extended to other sorts of cases. Imagine if Ramona said, “Oh, the syncopation was a mistake; I didn’t play it right. I’m still trying to get the feel for it.” Now Ramona is denying credit for the property that her bandmate found so attractive. Importantly, she isn’t denying all responsibility for the riff itself, as she might if she clarified that she didn’t write it (only performed it) or if it had been a freak occurrence caused by setting down her guitar roughly.²⁴ But Ramona can take responsibility for the riff whilst denying it for a particular quality. She is essentially saying that though the syncopated effect may have been a happy accident, what she did was flub the notes. When Ramona represents the structure of the riff, in order to coordinate her hands to produce the relevant tones and rhythms, she also plausibly represents ways in which the performance could go wrong. As part of her action architecture, she both identifies the tones she needs to play, as well as their place amongst the other tones that would be incorrect. In order to guide her rhythm, she must represent the placement of the notes both within the sequence, and in contrast to places where the notes don’t go. This plausibly must be the case, for when guitarists do mess up, they can nonetheless reorient their playing to the correct place; adjusting parts of the passage so as to “get back on track,” rather than merely stopping altogether and starting again at the next measure, say.²⁵ So, when Ramona flubs the riff, the negative properties can be found in her action architecture, as aversive possibilities nevertheless guiding her movements. At the same time, her action architecture can lack the ²⁴ Of course, writing an excellent riff is different from playing an excellent riff, so she could still be responsible for having played it superbly. Plausibly, the relevant standards differ between the two kinds of doing, but that won’t affect the basic responsibility relation. ²⁵ Some readers may be reminded of Dennett’s (1984) discussion of the algorithmic behavior of the ground wasp, in contrast to the control agents exercise.

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syncopation because syncopation is a relational property. It results from the comparative placement of the notes in a sequence against the background rhythmic scheme.²⁶ Therefore, if the syncopation was the feature that made the riff especially cool, then in order to responsible for it, Ramona would had to have represented those various properties. While one can accidentally produce a syncopative passage, one can’t accidentally play syncopatively. In order to represent syncopation at all one is representing certain things (the spacing and duration of the notes within the phrase) along with other things (the background rhythmic scheme). In short, syncopation has to be represented as syncopation.²⁷ It is thus unlikely that Ramona could represent the syncopation without intentionally seeking to produce it. The aversive possibilities alone wouldn’t have the relevant relational structure. This is not particularly unique to syncopation, either; many features work this way. Harmonies, too, are relational. To be responsible for a terrible harmony, it isn’t enough that Ramona represented the two notes (in a dyad, say). Part of representing it as a harmony is to see the way the two notes relate to one another, as a pair, occurring at the same time in the musical phrase. Similarly, to be responsible for the flavor combinations in a delicious dish, the cook must have represented the additions as combinations: flavors that would coexist in the finished product. The rough idea here (in a way to be clarified below) is that to be responsible for a given feature of one’s doings one must have represented that feature. Accidental harmonies and flavor combinations are not to the maker’s credit or discredit. Admittedly, other cases are less definitive. Suppose Padma, a painter, splashes a particular color across a portion of the abstract painting she’s working on. It may be that that splash of color is good only in combination with the other features that makes it such an enchanting addition to the composition. Padma may or may not have had in mind precisely how that color would fit into the overall work. Sometimes artists just try something out. But she needn’t have in full view the entirety of the ²⁶ For those unfamiliar with syncopation, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syncopation. ²⁷ Though, one need not know the term for the property or anything relating to, say, the conventions of music theory. (In common—though wholly unhelpful—philosophical jargon, the representation need only be de re rather than de dicto.)

50   painting to add the particular brush strokes with that particular color. That activity will be under her control, guided by her representations, even if she is unsure about the final effect the addition will have. This is especially true in creative endeavors, where trying out combinations or techniques is a trusted mechanism of discovery. But such cases aren’t limited to the aesthetic realm. Often when rearranging the furniture in a room, or packing a car for a long trip, one tests out various configurations trying to figure out the best way to organize it all. We aren’t responsible solely for those things we’ve completely worked out in advance. Parallel moral cases are perhaps a bit unusual, if only because they are not often discussed. Sometimes, we might simply fail to do the right thing we were aiming at. For example, someone might aim to save someone’s life in an emergency situation but fail.²⁸ In such cases, it is plausible that one is nonetheless responsible for the failure. This need not imply that they are blameworthy for such a failure, of course. Whether one is morally blameworthy will depend on what the moral standards say about the relevant doing.²⁹ In other instances, the failure might be due to a miscalculation. One person may try to deliver bad news to another (or, say, break up with them) in a kind way, but fail to do so. They were aiming at being gentle and considerate, but they beefed it. They are plausibly still responsible (and blameworthy) for doing so.

Mistaken Impressions Our representations come in varying degrees of granularity. To take a trivial example, when cooking, I might represent adding “vanilla” to my pancake batter, or, alternatively, I might represent adding “Tahitian vanilla.” As Tahitian vanilla is a species of the more general kind, I might

²⁸ In the movie Cliffhanger, Sylvester Stallone’s character attempts to rescue an imperiled climber, suspended over a huge chasm. He has a grip on her, but she slips from his grasp, plummeting to her death. This looks like a moral case of simple failure. ²⁹ I’m open to various possibilities here. One is that it isn’t morally negative to try to save someone but fail. Another is that it is morally bad to fail, but morally good to try, and the trying outweighs the failing. Other possibilities are no doubt . . . possible.

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have in mind either description, depending on the level of specificity required by my task. It won’t often matter to my activity whether my vanilla is Tahitian or otherwise, so it won’t often matter which representation I have. Indeed, it will only matter which representation is operative if it matters to the standards of evaluation governing my activity. Different properties will be important to different standards. Cooking standards, whatever they are, are unlikely to be concerned with, say, the manufacturer of the pans or utensils I’m using. So it won’t matter whether I represent my pan as more particular than “sauté pan” (e.g. “Le Creuset sauté pan”). But sometimes it will. Our representations imperfectly correspond to the world. Suppose that Calah, while cooking, grabs the wrong spice. As such, she thinks she’s adding paprika, but she’s in fact adding cayenne. Her representations will thus be skewed. From her perspective, she’s adding one thing, when she’s actually adding another. Suppose as well that the resulting dish is far too spicy, owing precisely to the copious addition of cayenne. Calah has made a mistake. And it certainly matters to the quality of one’s cooking whether it’s paprika or cayenne that’s added.³⁰ If Calah doesn’t represent the cayenne, with its particular qualities (like Scoville spiciness), then the resulting element of the dish is neither to her credit nor demerit.³¹ Whatever the cayenne contributes to the dish is accidental, either a fortuitous or unfortunate addition, but not one for which Calah is either blameworthy or praiseworthy. Similarly, return to the opening chords of a performance being terrible because, unbeknownst to the player, the guitar is out of tune. The player’s representations of the notes fail to match the world in important ways, because the strings are out of step from their usual arrangement. Like

³⁰ Technically, I don’t think it matters whether Calah represents the particular spice as such. She could instead represent “red spice that adds that certain something,” where “that certain something” is a placeholder for the flavor of paprika (which, for whatever reason, Calah doesn’t know by name). ³¹ Thus, it’s possible for Calah to represent “cayenne” (by name) whilst being mistaken about the nature of cayenne, and so not representing that it’s spicy. Such a mistake would also plausibly disrupt responsibility.

52   Calah and the dish’s spiciness, the guitar player is not responsible for the harshness of the music.³² Things clearly haven’t gone as planned for Calah and the guitar player. It might be tempting to think that, since both failed to achieve their goals, they must, like the archer, have similarly been representing failure. But their mistakes aren’t simple failures. It isn’t just that they tried to do something and failed—though they did do that—it’s that they are being guided by representations that don’t accurately represent the world. Missing, as well as hitting various circles of the target that aren’t the bullseye, are live options for archer, in a way that adding cayenne and a wildly out of tune guitar aren’t for Calah and the guitarist. The nature of the activity of target shooting yields a fairly narrow range of possibilities within a carefully circumscribed set of parameters. As such, the archer likely represents all of them, and would likely be responsible for any shot they take. (Though they might not be responsible for strange results further outside the scope of their activity, like hitting a bird midflight.)³³ In contrast, Calah and the guitarist are engaged in activities with a more intricate set of possibilities. In cooking, which is less constrained and more open-ended than is target shooting, one doesn’t represent all the various possible things you might add to the pot. For example, it is terribly unlikely that Calah represents the possibility of adding miso paste to her dish, while she’s collecting her spices from the pantry. The series of conspiring events that would lead the opened miso paste to be in ³² An interesting case study (and second Van Halen reference!) is the infamous “Greensboro Guitar Disaster” of 2007 in which Edward van Halen played the entirety of “Jump” while very much out of tune. The result is tough to listen to, as, though the rest of band did their best to compensate, the keyboard part was prerecorded and thus established the performance’s key. Various explanations have been offered for why EVH continued through the whole performance without modification, including the fact that the keyboards weren’t in his monitor, so he didn’t really hear them. Ordinarily, of course, a guitar player would have immediate evidence that something was wrong that would lead them to change their behavior if the song was wildly off. ³³ For a real-life case, consider the March 24, 2001, spring training game between the Arizona Diamondbacks and the San Francisco Giants. During the 7th inning, pitcher Randy Johnson threw a fastball toward home plate, which struck (and obliterated) a dove midflight. As a major league pitcher of some distinction, Johnson no doubt represented many possibilities while pitching. Equally plausibly, however, is the fact that hitting a bird midflight was not one of them. And so, by my reckoning, Johnson is not responsible for hitting the bird. (For whatever it’s worth, the game’s umpire ruled it a “no-pitch,” meaning that it was like that pitch hadn’t been thrown, and so was neither a ball nor a strike. Thanks to Eric Brown for reminding me of the incident.)

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the pantry instead of the refrigerator, mixed in amongst the spices, is too remote, outside the normal bounds of the background circumstances in which we navigate our plans, and so it isn’t even the sort of remote possibility Calah is likely to guard against. The likelihood of representing possibilities closer to our aim—e.g. cayenne instead of paprika—is an open question, and will depend on other things, like the presence of various cues in the environment. For example, if the cayenne is stored next to the paprika, we might think it more likely that such contents will be cued, as it would be more relevant to Calah’s plans that she pick the correct red powdered spice from those near it that are visually similar. If they are instead stored alphabetically, however, then the likelihood may be reduced. Settling such matters seems to me to be a largely empirical question. And so it remains possible that Calah is in fact responsible for the addition (because she represented its possibility). That said, notice that there is also some ambivalence in our reactions to such cases. Whether Calah feels badly over the mistake is likely to be a function of whether she thinks she should have realized the mistake, which in turn is likely to be a function of how likely the available cues were (as well as how significant the consequences of a mistake might be), and so the likelihood of representation.³⁴

She’s Got Game These remarks invite us to consider the roles of competence and skill. Both notions are relevant to a fuller discussion of agency,³⁵ but their connection to responsibility is less clear. Still, as many of the non-moral cases I’m examining involve performances that look like the display of skill, it’s worth addressing the topic directly.³⁶

³⁴ One might think that neither Calah nor the guitarist would be excused if they were careless in their conduct. If the guitarist was supposed to check the guitar beforehand to ensure it was in tune, then he is responsible for the resulting dissonance of the performance. See Section 3.2 below for more discussion. ³⁵ See e.g. Pacherie & Mylopoulos 2021; Shepherd 2021; Small 2021. ³⁶ Virtue ethicists may see more direct parallels between the moral and non-moral cases. I’m sympathetic.

54   The granularity of our representations can help us think about skilled versus unskilled performances. Consider athletic accomplishments. If I take a half-court shot in basketball, I’m aiming to make a basket, but I’m not equipped with sufficient skill to be confident that I’ll succeed in what I’ve set out to do. In contrast, we can have much more confidence that Steph Curry will make the same shot. After all, he’s a much better shooter than me. (You’ll have to take my word for it.) One way to capture this observation is in terms of the degree of control we each exercise over shooting. I can form reliable action plans, with adequate and accurate representations, but these will be fairly coarse-grained. Curry, by contrast, plausibly has much more detailed representations, which contribute to his ability to succeed in making a shot under many different sorts of conditions. So we might say that he has better control, or that he exercises more control over the sinking of the shot. Alternatively, we might instead say that he controls more things, more aspects of the shot. So not only does he control the making of the basket, but the arc of the ball, the position of his body, the release spin, etc. So, we can connect skill with competence. The skilled have competencies that the unskilled lack; experts have more developed competencies than novices. They better understand, and so better control, the various elements of their action plans, tend to be alive to a richer set of possibilities, and can respond more dynamically and flexibly (and quickly!) to changing circumstances in pursuit of their goals. (In the case of music and athletics, at least, they also have developed more reliable action schemes through hours and hours of practice.) Regardless, and while interesting in their own right, matters of skill are largely orthogonal to concerns about responsibility. An amateur hitman is still blameworthy for the kill, even if the shot was unlikely to succeed. The same goes for the fan who successfully kicks a field goal as part of the halftime festivities. They aim at a goal and succeed, and even if we shouldn’t expect them to do so on a regular basis (because they lack skill), they are no less responsible in the instance. After all, there’s a clear sense in which they do know what to do, even if their representations lack the richness of the skilled. (Thus, they may not be responsible for various features of their successful kick, like its spin, or in certain steps that we’d expect of an expert, like adjusting to the wind.) Thus, we might

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say that responsibility for some activity may require basic competence, but such competence is a quite minimal standard.³⁷

Conditions on the Basic Responsibility Relation The objective now is to connect the features of basic agency to the basic responsibility relation directly. To get there, we can begin with the set of considerations that undermined responsibility from Chapter 1. There we saw that things like spasms and reflexes, accidents, and mistakes affected blameworthiness and praiseworthiness symmetrically across both moral and non-moral cases. A plausible explanation for this fact was that each of these considerations affected something shared by all the cases. A conjecture emerged: there is a basic responsibility relation connecting doers to their doings such that the doers can be evaluated by the lights of those doings. We could then explain why things like spasms, accidents, and mistakes undermine blameworthiness and praiseworthiness by showing that those considerations disrupt the basic responsibility relation. If this is right, then we might expect each kind of consideration to point us toward a condition on that relation. Seizures and spasms are unguided movements, divorced from relevant representations. The doings of doers, in contrast, are guided by their representations and action plans, allowing them flexible and dynamic adjustments to their goal-directed conduct. Thus, there is a control condition. Though we will sometimes do things accidentally, where the relevant outcome or property was generated despite being unrepresented in action architecture, narrow views about our intentional states exclude too much. Doers are responsible only for those elements of their doings

³⁷ The thought here connects back to the discussion of accidentality above. Lacking basic competence would make success entirely accidental in a way that extremely unlikely successes are not. I allow that there may be marginal cases for which it is difficult to discern whether or not success was relevantly accidental. This makes no difference to the argument so long as the agent’s responsibility in such cases is also difficult to discern.

56   that are appropriately represented in the action architecture as at least foreseen possibilities. Thus, there is an intentionality condition. Finally, the contents of our action architecture are imperfectly sensitive to the world. We can be mistaken. The basic responsibility relation holds only for those aspects of our doings that are accurately represented in our action architecture. Thus, there is an accuracy condition. These conditions are decidedly minimal, but this is what we should expect given the nature and range of the non-moral data. If the basic responsibility relation holds across all the different evaluative domains, despite their differences, then we should predict that the conditions on that relation to be satisfiable despite all the differences. When we intentionally and accurately control our doings, we are basically responsible for them. And these are just the features of basic agency sketched above. Thus, basic agents are basically responsible. Of course, that’s the somewhat pithy (and potentially misleading) way of putting the point. The slightly more laborious, but more accurate, formulation is that basic agency makes possible being basically responsible for things in the sense that the conditions on basic responsibility are provided by the distinctive abilities of basic agents.³⁸ Because the conditions are so minimal, the natural worry is that they are too weak to suitably ground responsibility, perhaps especially for moral cases. This sort of worry will be a common refrain throughout the rest of the book. I’ve set out to defend a simple and minimal account of responsibility, and each of the elements of that account will be similarly modest. The most obvious challenge for such a view is that it won’t have sufficient resources to capture important elements of the target domain. But it’s worth remarking at the outset how robust the nonetheless minimal notion of basic agency is. At its heart, basic agency involves guiding our behavior in line with the full suite of our representations, including things like our evaluative assessments. These will vary in their strength and complexity, but for creatures like us, basic agency is compatible with guidance by deep values, commitments, principles, and the

³⁸ I thus depart from those who claim that responsible agency is narrower than (moral) agency (see e.g. McKenna 2012: 11–12). There is at least a sensible kind of responsible agency such that responsible agents are co-extensional with basic agents.

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like. It’s just that such things aren’t necessary. And for good reason: we are responsible for our conduct even when it isn’t particularly sophisticated or value-laden. Indeed, often our activities are much more pedestrian and basic.³⁹

Constraining the Control Condition The conditions on basic responsibility correspond to the core features of basic agency. The control condition simply constrains the sort of conduct for which we can be responsible. As I’ve sketched it, the relevant activities must be guided by our representations. Our conduct is shaped by the relevant representations. It is directed toward our aims (and away from failures), navigating around obstacles and making use of various affordances. Such guided activity is importantly different from mere reflex or relatively unthinking behavior. Admittedly, however, such a condition does not rule out that much that we do. For example, it plausibly excludes our digestion and autonomic functions and other lower-level biomechanics. To return to an earlier example, my sneezes are largely triggered without any control on my part, but even in such cases I can exert some control over directing, delaying, or otherwise muffling the sneeze.⁴⁰ There is not much of what we do that is outside our control in the relevant sense because there is little that we do that is outside the guidance of our representations. Even our mental activities involve such guidance. My deliberations, musings, mental processes, and imaginative acts are all activities of mine, regardless of whether they manifest in external behavior. How the precise boundaries of this line are drawn will depend on the best complete picture of our psychology, but it is reasonable to suppose that some thoughts may arise entirely independently and spontaneously and

³⁹ Because of this, I’m committed to rejecting basic responsibility as the province of humans alone. Indeed, I treat the class of creatures that can be basically responsible as, essentially, an empirical question. See the Conclusion for further discussion. ⁴⁰ When they were younger, my niece and nephew endorsed the strategy of yelling “banana” to prevent sneezing. It is unclear precisely how the strategy was meant to work (since the word yelled had to be “banana”), and its efficacy did not inspire confidence.

58   thus fall outside the bounds of responsible activity. They happen to us rather than being something we do. But it is just as reasonable to suppose that such fleeting thoughts can become objects of responsibility when entertained, considered, or otherwise attended to. Once I am, as it were, doing something with them, they fall under my control.⁴¹ Of course, I may not be able to manipulate my thoughts in just the same way or as easily as I manipulate the cup on my desk or my phone, but this does not imply that my control over them is any less real or robust.

Improving the Intentionality Condition The intentionality condition is broader than the narrow notion of intention. We are constantly alive to various possibilities, represented in our action architecture. We are basically responsible for those possibilities should they occur from the activities we engage in guided by those representations. That is, we are responsible only for those elements of our activities we foresee as possible. For example, when Fred shoots Barney in the eye accidentally, he doesn’t foresee that he might shoot him in the eye. If he did, he would have behaved differently, taking greater precautions or otherwise modulating his conduct.⁴² And if he does foresee that he might shoot Barney, then he no longer shoots him accidentally. Likewise, if the painter doesn’t realize his brush is dripping paint as he walks to his canvas, he doesn’t foresee the splotches that will end up on the floor, and so he drips paint accidentally. Again, had he foreseen such a possibility, he would have either adjusted his conduct accordingly to prevent it, or else proceeded as planned, and dripped paint knowingly.⁴³ ⁴¹ Compare Boyle 2011 on understanding belief as involving an ongoing activity, rather than as a passive state. (See also Paul 2015 for helpful discussion.) I elaborate on these ideas in Chapter 5, when I consider the question of responsibility for attitudes. ⁴² The counterfactual test here is merely to illustrate the point, rather than as specifying how the condition is satisfied. One could satisfy the condition even if, counterfactually, one would still have done the same thing. It’s just that, counterfactually, one would no longer have done it accidentally. ⁴³ In Chapter 1, I noted that Pollock wouldn’t be praiseworthy for the splatters on his drop cloth, but this is only partially true. It’s true when we assume, as we presumed when introducing the example, that he was engaged in the activity of painting and aiming at an artistic work. So

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There is a certain strictness about this condition, which may worry some. The concern is that surely the likelihood of the possibility matters for responsibility. For instance, the law generally holds people liable only for unreasonable risks of harm. Not every possibility is reasonable to take into consideration. But there are several reasons why we shouldn’t further restrict the intentionality condition. First, recall that in many cases of successful action, the likelihood of success looks irrelevant. As we noted above, the unskilled are still responsible for achieving their very improbable goals. If Leona wants to kill Lionel, and so tries to shoot him, from very far away, in wind and rain, having never fired a gun before, she is responsible for killing him if she shoots and kills him. The fact that it was terribly improbable is simply irrelevant. (Same goes for the buzzer beater shot from well beyond the half court line.)⁴⁴ We might instead consider cases involving possible side-effects of one’s action, rather than one’s actual goal. Suppose Henry wants to put down some herbicide today near the edge of his property (it’s his day off). He knows, however, that if it were to rain in the four hours after putting it down, some would wash into his neighbor’s prized petunia patch, killing them. Now suppose Henry knows that there’s an 80 percent chance of rain over that time span. If he puts down the herbicide, and it rains, he clearly kills his neighbor’s petunias knowingly and is blameworthy for doing so. Granted, an 80 percent chance of rain is quite high. But matters do not change if we lower it considerably. Suppose there is only a 5 percent chance of rain. If Henry knows this and nonetheless proceeds, he still kills the petunias knowingly should it rain. Notice that he couldn’t claim

the paint splatters don’t reflect on him as an artist, though they might as “guy flinging paint around.” Pollock was, of course, likely aware of the collateral damage of his painting, and so he is responsible for the splatters, just not their artistic properties. So he wouldn’t be artistically assessable for the splatters, though he could be assessed per the evaluations of other standards, such as the standards of propriety or moral standards, if, say, he was causing damage to a rented space or someone else’s home. ⁴⁴ Per Wikipedia, the odds of an NBA player making a half-court shot is around 1 in 100 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half_court). I place virtually no weight on the accuracy of this calculation.

60   it was accidental. All he could say in his defense was that he didn’t think it likely or that he thought it was safe to do so. Some resistance to this idea may come from the thought that it is reasonable for Henry to proceed on such a small probability.⁴⁵ But this is a different matter from whether or not he is responsible for killing the flowers. It is perfectly compatible with being responsible for the killing that the killing was acceptable. Justifications may be defenses against blameworthiness, but they in no way impugn responsibility. We can suppose that it is not bad to kill the petunias in the way that he did. The basic responsibility relation, however, is independent of the evaluations of our doings. When basically responsible for our doings, we are blameworthy if they’re bad and praiseworthy if they’re good. But I’ve left it entirely open how best to understand those evaluations, and the basic view can be developed in a number of ways depending on one’s preferred view. So, for example, we could hold that what Henry does is not morally bad at all (recall that by “bad” all I mean is “negatively evaluated by the relevant standards”). If that’s right, then plausibly the doing we’re considering is not “having killed the flowers,” but rather something more like “having killed the flowers by putting down herbicide with a 5 percent chance of rain that would lead it to kill the flowers.” Naturally, that activity may not be morally bad, but nothing about my view requires otherwise. (Relatedly, as we already noted, in creative endeavors we may only have a guess about how some pieces fit together, and so think there is, say, a 20 percent chance that things will work out as we planned. Nonetheless, we are responsible for the result.) Finally, one might worry that if the probability of the possibility is irrelevant to responsibility, this makes us responsible for too much. There are innumerable possible effects of our activities—it is implausible to suppose we’re responsible for all that end up obtaining. But the intentionality condition limits possibilities to those that are actually represented in the action architecture of the agent, and so actually guide their conduct. After all, it is surely possible that a champagne ⁴⁵ Technically, it would be the overall risk here that’s relevant. Risk, as I’m understanding it, is a function of both the magnitude of the outcome and the probability of its obtaining. A very small chance that something very bad will happen presents a larger risk than a similarly unlikely chance that something mildly bad will happen.

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cork could injure someone, and consequently we could calculate some risk of that happening. Fred is not responsible for injuring Barney, however, because, by hypothesis, that risk was not represented in his action architecture. If we examine the alternative scenario in which that possibility is represented, it becomes much more plausible that Fred is responsible for injuring Barney.⁴⁶ It’s important to note that foreseeing a possibility doesn’t require consciously attending to it. A remote possibility may be readily dismissed for relative irrelevance without rising to the level of conscious awareness. It will nonetheless be represented by the agent, even if briefly, for else it could not be dismissed. But this is as it should be. We adjust to anticipated changes all the time without any conscious attention to them, and not all the features of our activities for which we’re responsible are ones of which we are also consciously aware. For instance, an improviser’s melodic choices for their solo, composed, as it were, “on the spot” are not ones that are filtered through conscious awareness. Or consider many instances of praise and blame for verbal or linguistic performance, which target utterances in the moment that were spontaneous, yet for all that not unthinking. And, of course, for elements that are not represented at all, the intentionality condition is not satisfied with respect to that possibility. There is a difference between dismissing a consideration and a consideration never arising in the first place.⁴⁷ Thus, in an alternate version of the case, Fred could count as careless. He might neglect to consider a risk of hitting someone with the cork that he should have recognized and then curtailed his conduct accordingly. Similarly, perhaps the guitarist above neglected to check that their guitar was in tune and Calah neglected to ensure that she was adding paprika. Our verdicts in such cases will reflect a number of different considerations, including normative judgments regarding the seriousness of the risk and whether it was a possibility that the agent should have considered. In cases where the risk is trivial, there may be no carelessness regardless of what the agent thought or did. Such normative facts are ⁴⁶ Though, as above, it could still be that running a very low risk of harm is not bad when it obtains, and so the responsible party is not blameworthy. I leave such matters open. ⁴⁷ For more on the significance of informational awareness to responsibility, see King & Carruthers 2012, 2022.

62   orthogonal to issues of responsibility, however. (Note that whether I’m responsible for taking someone else’s suitcase is independent of whether taking it is wrong.) Nonetheless, verdicts of responsibility due to carelessness are compatible with the view on offer here, especially once we appreciate the fact that agents can fail to consciously consider a possibility precisely because they have (unconsciously) disregarded the risk.⁴⁸ So, Fred might have foreseen the risk of ricochet but not considered it important enough to warrant reflection. He thus represents the risk, but that possibility never enters conscious reflection. We plausibly consider many features of our circumstances while we navigate the world without consciously attending to them. A simple drive to the store involves responding to many different considerations though we are not consciously aware of all of them, never mind more complicated maneuvers like playing an instrument or hitting a curveball. Agents can satisfy the intentionality condition so long as they represented the relevant outcome as a possibility. This is compatible with carelessness.

Assessing the Accuracy Condition Basic responsibility is disrupted by mistakes. If I’m fundamentally mistaken about important elements of my circumstances, then my conduct does not reflect on me in the right way. Jan is blameworthy for taking Marsha’s jacket from the party only if she isn’t mistaking it for her own. But not all mistakes undermine responsibility. Suppose Amos hates the Amish.⁴⁹ Maybe he’s a technophile who resents what he perceives as Amish disdain for technology. While walking one day, he spots Hamish, whom he takes to be Amish and so he harangues and bullies him. But Amos is wrong. Hamish isn’t Amish; he’s a Mennonite. So, Amos has an inaccurate representation since he takes himself to be interacting with ⁴⁸ This is a sketch of how to handle carelessness and negligence on my view. Details can be found in King 2021, where I argue that negligence can be understood as a certain kind of disregarding of importance, and is thus generally contiguous with recklessness. See King & Carruthers 2022 for further relevant discussion. ⁴⁹ I borrow this sort of example from Pete Graham, though I’ve modified the details.

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someone who’s Amish. Nevertheless, this mistake doesn’t excuse Amos at all. He’s fully responsible for bullying Hamish if anyone is. Thus, inaccurately representing some element of one’s activity is not sufficient for undermining the basic responsibility relation. So far, we can see that some inaccurate representations matter for responsibility (Jan’s beliefs about the coat she’s taking), while others do not (Amos’s beliefs about the religion of the person he’s attacking). But there’s an important difference between these two kinds of mistake. One kind concerns considerations that matter morally, whereas the other does not. It matters morally whether the coat you’re taking from a party is yours or someone else’s. Indeed, in many cases, that may be all that will matter morally. In contrast, the religious affiliation of one’s assault victim, at least in most cases, does not matter morally. What makes taking the coat bad is that it’s the taking of someone else’s coat, whereas the explanation for what makes the treatment of Hamish bad has nothing to do with whether he’s Amish or a Mennonite (presumably, it’s because he’s a person). So if some feature is irrelevant to the relevant evaluative standards, then inaccurately representing that feature in one’s action architecture is similarly irrelevant for responsibility.⁵⁰ This distinction is not limited to moral matters, of course. Standard tuning for a guitar is E-A-D-G-B-E (low to high). If I’m playing unaccompanied and my guitar has been tuned down a whole step (D-G-C-F-A-D), I may not notice, since the guitar is in tune with itself (and my ear isn’t that good). My representations will still be inaccurate, since when I take myself to be playing a G chord, I’ll actually be playing an F chord. However, this might not matter musically. After all, most beautiful musical compositions will remain beautiful even when transposed (and this is a frequent enough alteration made for vocal arrangements). Similarly, while the shade of paint one is using will likely matter aesthetically to one’s painting, the manufacturer of said paint ⁵⁰ A different avenue to the same point is that among Amos’s doings are his bullying a person and bullying a Mennonite. He didn’t bully an Amish person because Hamish isn’t Amish. Even if he weren’t basically responsible for bullying an Amish person, however, because of the unmet accuracy condition, he would still be basically responsible for bullying a person. And, presumably, that’s the relevant bad doing in this instance (or at least a sufficiently bad doing).

64   likely will not. Different features will be relevant to different evaluative standards, and so different representations will be relevant to whether one satisfies the accuracy condition for a specific element of one’s activity. This refinement of the accuracy condition means that one can be responsible for one element of one’s activity but not for another because one’s mistake concerns a feature that only matters in one evaluative domain. For example, suppose using a particular bank of sounds on a track produces a remarkable aesthetic effect. But imagine the sounds are created in the following, unusual way: every time the musician presses a note on the keyboard, someone is tortured to produce that sound (and the technology means there’s no lag). Also suppose that the musician has no idea (and could not be expected to know) that this is how the sounds are produced. In such a case, it seems clear enough that the musician is responsible for the remarkable musical properties of the track, and so artistically praiseworthy, and yet is not responsible for the harm caused to those tortured, and so not morally blameworthy. And this is because while the musician accurately represents the musical elements of his activity, his representations are importantly inaccurate about how those sounds are produced (specifically, he isn’t at all guided by the possibility that they’re produced in the way described). This strikes me as the correct thing to say about such a (admittedly bizarre) case.

Diminishing Returns From the preceding, we can see that the three conditions on the basic responsibility relation increasingly restrict the scope of that relation. The control condition limits us to doings. The intentionality condition limits us to those elements of our doings we foresee as possible. And the accuracy condition limits us to those foreseen possible elements, relevant to the relevant evaluative standards, that we accurately represent. The restricted set of each condition is a subset of the previous condition’s restricted set. Thus, all doings that satisfy the intentionality condition satisfy the control condition, but only some will satisfy the accuracy condition.

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Why the Basic Responsibility Relation? We’re now in a position to say a bit more about the ways in which the basic responsibility relation is a genuine responsibility relation. I have so far been only suggestive regarding the ways in which basic agency, and correspondingly, basic responsibility, connects to familiar themes, capacities, or existing theories of responsibility. This is in part methodological. I’m aiming to get a positive view developed, along a certain axis of inquiry, and streamlining that project could be hampered by too much digression into certain details. I’ll return to these topics in Chapter 5 (and the Conclusion). For now, I hope it suffices to sketch how the features of basic agency and the nature of the basic responsibility relation connect to some common ideas regarding moral responsibility. I’ve indicated one kind of connection already: the notion of control over our activities. When I act through my controlled conduct, sensitive to my accurate representations, I am, in effect, having a say over what the world looks like. Naturally, my abilities in this respect are massively limited, both by time and circumstance, but also various physical constraints. Still, even these very basic structures of agency allow me to interact with the world, rather than as a passive observer or mechanistic cog. Basic agency gives us a say over what happens, and thus provides the foundation for the basic responsibility relation.⁵¹ One of the ways we have a say is by bringing the world into line with our aims or goals. When the artist crafts the painting, she controls the application of paint, the brushstrokes, decisions about what goes where.⁵² She brings it into being. This does not involve any metaphysical megalomania. The painting simply exists, in the way it does, due to her efforts. We could make similar claims about even more mundane activities. My lunch comes about because I made it. The house is tidied because

⁵¹ There is a similarity here to what John Martin Fischer calls “deep control” (2011). I am sympathetic to his general approach, but we differ in the details. What suffices for sufficiently deep control on my view is more minimal than on his (or, perhaps, I do not think such control needs to be particularly “deep”). My view of control also shares similarities with Dennett 1984. ⁵² Cf. Bob Ross, who exhorted his viewers to decide where each “happy little tree” lived in their world.

66   I tidied it. Importantly, these things don’t just happen. To repeat what I’ve already said, they are the products of my activities. So, too, are the moral matters, where one brings about a theft or deception.⁵³ A different way in which we have a say is by accepting a set of circumstances. As I’ve noted, we sometimes do things knowingly, despite the fact that it was not our aim in acting. These outcomes (or their features) were recognized as open possibilities as the agent acts, informing their activity. If the activity remains unchanged, if the agent proceeds as planned, we can say that they accept the totality of their doing (subject to the satisfied conditions on the basic responsibility relation). This needn’t imply that they are positively disposed to the outcome (or feature) in question. One might know that by leaving out most of the salt, one will make the dish less tasty. The cook may be dismayed or (anticipatorily) regret the effect, judging that, say, leaving out most of the salt is necessary to make the dish heart healthy. In a perfect world, perhaps, they could avoid the trade-off. But the bland dish is clearly their doing, and their wishes for the world to be ordered differently do nothing to reduce their responsibility for how the dish turned out.⁵⁴ In this way, the basic responsibility relation that connects us to our doings is more like a net than a rope. So, one important connection to responsibility lies in the control we have over what we do. A different sort of connection concerns the ways in which our responsible actions represent our evaluative stances. Plausibly, our goals represent things we find valuable. Such goals need not be the things we value most, even at a given moment. But the things ⁵³ Some readers may be troubled by my rather blithe proclamations here, given, for example, traditional worries regarding determinism and, more recently, so-called manipulation arguments. Recall that “having a say” can be given either a compatibilist or incompatibilist reading. That said, note that nothing I say in this paragraph is controversial. Even incompatabilists must acknowledge that the products of my activities wouldn’t have come about in the way they did but for my activity. The point of controversy is whether or not this sort of control is sufficient for responsibility or requires the falsity of determinism. Since I am being officially neutral here, there are two different ways to develop the point. The incompatibilist interpretation suggests that my interactions with the world are undetermined in the required way, but holds that such “freedom,” in whatever guise is needed, is provided by basic agency. The compatibilist interpretation holds that basic agency gives us an importantly different kind of control over what we do than what happens to a rock or the molecules of stars. I prefer the latter interpretation, but it doesn’t do any direct work in the argument of the book. See the Conclusion for a few additional remarks. ⁵⁴ I return to this theme in Chapter 5.

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we seek out, that we try to realize, are things we see something good about.⁵⁵ And, of course, our values and commitments and cares also reflect the things we value. Now, responsible conduct is plausibly conduct that reflects our evaluative stances.⁵⁶ And when we satisfy the conditions on the basic responsibility relation, our activities reflect our evaluative stances, our take on what matters and how. To the extent that our activities are shaped and directed by our goals and commitments, our preferences and values, then, the basic responsibility relation constitutes a connection between our assessment of the world and an assessment of us. As elsewhere, we should avoid treating these characterizations too robustly. To take something as mattering is for its value to influence your activity, regardless of whether or not you think such things ought to matter to you.⁵⁷ One might care about whether your book collection is alphabetized while nonetheless recognizing that you have little reason to care about the ordering technique, or even wishing you didn’t care.⁵⁸ The above is meant to be suggestive, not decisive. More needs to be said to fill the picture in. As I said, I take up that task in Chapter 5. My much more modest ambition here has been to provide an initial sketch of how to connect basic agency and basic responsibility together. Both the control we exercise and the relation to our evaluative stances are ways in which our responsible activities are importantly ours. They belong to us in a way that grounds evaluation of us through them. This is a straightforward and familiar aspect of responsibility.⁵⁹ ⁵⁵ While this resembles the so-called “guise of the good,” I’m not making a substantive assertion about the nature of desire (or any pro-attitude). I’m merely trying to capture the sense in which our goals attract us. For more on the “guise of the good,” see Tenenbaum 2007. ⁵⁶ Compare: Arpaly 2003; Dewey 1957; Frankfurt 1971; Smith 2005; Sripada 2016; Watson 1975. ⁵⁷ In this way, I’m appealing to the same idea emphasized by so-called “care”-based theories of responsibility, though I’m understanding the components of the view differently than most. For helpful discussion, see Brownstein 2018, ch. 4, and, relatedly, Sripada 2016. ⁵⁸ This means that I’ll eschew Frankfurt-type identificationist requirements on responsibility that might seek to delimit a special set of attitudes or qualities that are properly mine, either because of their structure or provenance. ⁵⁹ It is tempting to view this “kind” of responsibility along the familiar label “attributability” from the literature. I demur. Recall from the Introduction that I am investigating what it is to be responsible for things. In my view, the typical characterization of attributability is too limiting for this purpose, and, of course, allowing kinds of responsibility would frustrate the generalist ambitions of the current project. See Chapter 5 for discussion.

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Next Steps In this chapter, I’ve tried to do two main things. First, sketch an account of the core structures of our agency; those psychological mechanisms that underwrite the control we exercise over our behavior. Second, connect that notion of basic agency to the basic responsibility relation, to show how these very simple structures can nonetheless provide a foundation for the very relation I’ve suggested underlies blameworthy and praiseworthy activity across evaluative domains. While I often advertise the account’s minimalism as a strength, however, basic agency may seem to be too thin a reed on which to rest responsibility.⁶⁰ Many accounts seem to require a more robust set of abilities than the very modest mechanisms of basic agency I’ve claimed here are sufficient. On the contrary, basic agency is plenty sufficient to do the requisite work. But supporting that assertion involves getting the complete positive picture on the table. So far, I’ve outlined the structure for basic responsibility, including basic blameworthiness and basic praiseworthiness. To continue, we’ll need an account of the things the blameworthy and praiseworthy are worthy of, as well as an account of what makes them so worthy. In short, we need accounts of blame, praise, and the worthiness relation. Chapter 3 handles the responses (blame and praise); Chapter 4, the relation.

⁶⁰ To borrow (and repurpose) a phrase from John Martin Fischer.

3 Basic Blame and Basic Praise Blame is a curious thing. On the one hand, it seems it must be what the blameworthy are worthy of. On the other hand, when we look at what we do when we blame, we find a radically diverse set of behaviors, emotions, and attitudes, none of which stand out as obviously essential to blame as such. I think the right way of navigating these waters is a two-fold strategy. First, isolate a minimal core content that all instances of blame share.¹ Given the wide variety of experiences and expressions of blame, we are likely to require a rather minimal core. The second prong of the strategy is to sharply distinguish between blame itself (the thing the blameworthy are worthy of) and a fuller set of responses that often involve such blame. We can understand the diverse set of behaviors, emotions, and attitudes

¹ This approach shares similarities with Brink & Nelkin 2022 in that I, too, am providing a “core” component of blame, and distinguishing it from the broader class of activities in which such blame can be manifested. For them, the core of blame “is an aversive attitude toward the target that is predicated on the belief or judgment that the target is blameworthy” (178). I broadly agree, with caveats. First, I’m inclined to treat the relevant attitude here as a more motivationally neutral appraisal, rather than requiring that it be specifically aversive. Granted, most of us are likely aversive to things we negatively appraise, but I’m not as confident that this should be built into the notion of blame definitionally. (Though see n. 14.) Second, we should understand the predication here as the grounds for blame, rather than a precondition or causal notion. Finally, viewing the target as blameworthy should be understood in terms of responsibility for the bad thing, rather than explicitly “as blameworthy.” I also disagree with Brink & Nelkin that the relevant notion of blame is the one connected to concerns of fairness, at least insofar as, in my view, there is nothing inherently unfair (or fair!) about holding an aversive attitude toward someone, though particular treatments of or outward behaviors toward them certainly could be. Portmore 2022 also gives a general account of blame in terms of a “set of necessary and sufficient conditions that specifies blame’s extension in terms of its constitution” (49). While I’m sympathetic to his approach, I disagree that for A to blame B, A must represent B “as not having suffered all the guilt, regret, and remorse that she deserves to suffer in the recognition of having violated this legitimate demand” (50). For one thing, I think that basic blame is compatible with thinking that the blameworthy individual has “suffered enough.” For another, as we’ll see in Chapter 4, I reject the idea that it follows from our being responsible that we deserve to suffer at all. Simply Responsible: Basic Blame, Scant Praise, and Minimal Agency. Matt King, Oxford University Press. © Matt King 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192883599.003.0004

70   that often accompany blame as blaming behaviors: elements of our practices that orbit blame, manifesting, expressing, or otherwise involving blame, without being identical to blame itself. Such an account promises a unified view about blame across domains that won’t fall victim to the usual difficult cases. This chapter defends such a view. A cautionary note before we begin. Some readers may insist that blame and praise are not an opposing pair.² To some, “praise” may conjure up a notion that requires overt behavior, whereas blame can be done more or less internally. As before, however, I think it unwise to set the boundaries of our investigation so sharply prior to our examination. But for such readers, I invite you to treat the category names stipulatively at this juncture. I’ll aim to make good on those labels in the course of the chapter.

A Schematic Approach There is a tight conceptual connection between blame and blameworthiness. (Ditto for praise and praiseworthiness.) We should be highly confident that the right understanding of each term is in terms of the other. After all, no one should dispute that blame (whatever it is) is what the blameworthy (whoever they are) are worthy of. In the next chapter I’ll defend the worthiness relation at work here. This chapter concerns getting clearer about the relata. Like the conditions on responsibility, those relata will be similarly constrained by my methodology. The basic responsibility relation plausibly relates doers to their doings such that the former can be evaluated by the latter’s lights. It’s further plausible to categorize evaluations of those doings into roughly two flavors: good and bad. It is also natural to think that these two categories correspond, again roughly, to two kinds of response: praise and blame. As we saw in Chapter 1, we credit and criticize the good and bad performances of players and artists, cooks and odd-jobbers, students and scholars. ² One of the first to make such a claim explicit is Smart 1961, who argues that “discredit” and “dispraise” are the proper opposites of “blame” and “praise,” respectively.

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Finally, it is also natural to suppose that the forms these responses take are incredibly varied. Indeed, the various forms which our moral blaming takes has led to little consensus about its nature.³ This variation is certainly prevalent in non-moral forms as well, so the parallelism remains. We regard the performer positively in light of a good performance and we regard them negatively for a bad performance, and we tend to express these assessments in a variety of forms both to the performers and those around us. For all appearances, these practices sure look like blaming and praising. Just as with the underlying basic responsibility relation, then, we can conjecture a shared component across the various evaluative domains. What we’re after is what I call basic blame and basic praise. Basic blame and praise are the generic notions suitable to a general account of blame and praise, one that seeks to explain both moral and non-moral cases, just as with a general account of responsibility. This approach yields two immediate results. First, given the prevalence of non-moral blame and blameworthiness, it is clear that we cannot understand basic blame in moral terms.⁴ Our blame of Buckner or the baker with a collapsed soufflé or a banjo player’s sloppy picking is not moral at all.⁵ For one thing, the facts which ground our assessments of the activity don’t look like moral facts. Buckner is to blame because his fielding was bad; the baker is to blame because collapsed soufflés are bad; and the banjoist is to blame because sloppy picking is bad. But all three aren’t bad for the same reasons. The first has to do with athletic performance (or, more specifically, baseball play); the second with baking (or soufflés in particular); and the third with banjo

³ For useful reviews, see Tognazzini & Coates 2021; Shoemaker & Vargas 2021. ⁴ For the most part in this chapter, I will only speak about blame. Partly, this is to better connect the discussion to the contemporary literature. There are far more treatments of blame than of praise, so properly contextualizing my comments often privileges sticking to the negative side of things. When discussing my account, however, symmetry should always be implied, though for ease of exposition I’ll often forego explicitly adding “ditto for praise(-worthiness).” Near the end of the chapter I’ll revisit praise briefly. ⁵ Though see Matheson & Milam 2022 for an attempt to construe all non-moral blame as really being moral in nature. While their discussion raises important considerations, I disagree both with their understanding of what makes for a moral feature of a case, as well as the role that obligation plays in blame. Principally, I reject that blame must only attach to violations of obligation. See also n. 43.

72   playing (or picking technique). None of those things look to have much to do with the moral realm. Second, and relatedly, it would be surprising to find that any single normative domain lay behind all these assessments. Intuitively, there isn’t much about playing first base that is relevant to baking desserts or playing the banjo. None of those things look to have much to do with one another.⁶ If the basic responsibility relation relates agents to their doings in the world such that the former can be evaluated by the latter’s lights, and if basic blame and praise are the responses appropriate to agents for the doings they are responsible for, then the nature of basic blame and praise will have to be the sort of thing it is plausible to find across all those varied instances. We should thus expect not only that basic blame and praise are not to be understood in moral terms, but that their normative content, as such, will be exceedingly modest. I will argue that basic blame is the response merited by those responsible for “bad” doings and basic praise is the response merited by those responsible for “good” doings. Not very much should be read into these notions of good and bad, and I’ll develop the view while remaining fairly neutral on the standards by which we evaluate activities. So long as those activities are the proper objects of evaluation, subject to certain standards, the view can proceed. In order to keep the discussion manageable, I’ll thus present something of a schema regarding basic blame and praise, rather than the full digression into normative theory and axiology required of a more detailed account.

Basics of Blame (and Praise) One is blameworthy just in case one is responsible for something bad. And one is blameworthy just in case one is worthy of blame. Basic blame, then, is what those basically responsible for bad things are worthy of. As elsewhere in the theory, the sense in which the blameworthy are worthy ⁶ Of course, if I’m correct, one thing they will all have in common is that the same basic responsibility relation ties first basemen, bakers, and banjoists to their fieldings, bakings, and banjoings. Nonetheless, the idea here is that there is little overlap between what makes the three endeavors go well or poorly.

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of blame will also be rather minimal. A defense of that worthiness relation awaits us in the next chapter. For the purposes of this chapter, however, it will be useful to have a provisional characterization in hand. We know the relation will be normative: blame fits the blameworthy. We can also predict that, since moralized conceptions of the schematic pieces are unlikely to generalize in the right way to non-moral domains, the fittingness involved will also be non-moralized in nature, and likewise relatively minimal. These loose notions should suffice for present purposes. To some extent, the account of blame (and praise) on offer here will serve to partially constrain the worthiness relation and guide us toward a better understanding of it. When one is responsible for something bad, one is blameworthy, which means that the bad thing reflects negatively on them. Basic blame is the negative appraisal of the person in light of the bad thing done. Let’s take an example. Pavel writes some poetry. He crafts the word order, imagery, and meter, and it’s terrible. (It’s Vogon-bad.⁷) We need not dawdle over the details of why it’s bad. Whatever makes for bad poetry, Pavel’s poetry has it. Because he’s responsible for the bad poetry, he’s blameworthy, and so worthy of blame. Suppose Pavel has recited some of his poetry at a local bookshop. Because of the social taboo, no one is likely to outright boo. Instead, more politely, there is muted applause from the now sparse audience (many people got up and left in the middle of the performance). Everyone present knows he’s the poet, and they recognize that the poems were godawful. They are thus likely to put these two thoughts together, thinking badly of Pavel in light of the recent poetry. There are three elements involved here. The audience at the bookshop has appraised the poetry negatively. They’ve also judged that Pavel is responsible for it. Correspondingly, because he’s responsible for the poetry and the poetry is bad, they appraise Pavel as a poet. He’s bad. Naturally, he isn’t bad full stop or all things considered. He isn’t even necessarily a bad poet overall. But he is a bad poet as reflected in this instance.⁸ He has shown himself bad at rhyme, meter, and imagery; or,

⁷ See Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. ⁸ I discuss the relation between basic responsibility, basic blame and praise, and more generalized assessments (e.g. being a bad poet, or being lazy or cruel) in Chapter 5.

74   that is, whatever it is about his poems that were bad. To appraise him in this fashion is to blame him, and such blame is grounded on his responsibility for the bad thing. We can run examples in the other direction as well. If his poetry is delightful, wonderfully crafted and executed, we may praise him by appraising him positively in light of those qualities for which he’s responsible. He’s then a good poet as reflected in this instance. Good at rhyme, meter, and imagery (or whatever it is that makes his poems good). As in the case of basic blame, this is an appraisal reflecting only this particular performance. Pavel may be a terrible poet overall, and yet strike gold on this occasion. (The surprise we would feel in conjunction with basic praise would be evidence of how outside expectations such a performance from Pavel was, as when we have a delicious dinner made by a notoriously poor cook.) These appraisals of the person are what I shall call basic blame and basic praise, respectively.⁹ Basic blame is what Buckner, the baker, and the banjoist, being all blameworthy, are worthy of. Since they are all responsible for these bad doings in light of guiding their activities via their action architectures (as required by the basic responsibility relation), the negative evaluation of their performance reflects on each negatively. In virtue of being basically responsible for the bad thing, all three are blameworthy. The blame they are due is just the negative appraisal of the doer (in light of their bad doing). That is basic blame. Basic praise is structurally parallel, but with positive evaluations and appraisals. So when Ramona plays the cool riff and is responsible for it, the positive evaluation of her performance reflects on her positively. In virtue of being basically responsible for the good thing, she is praiseworthy, and the praise due to her is just the positive appraisal of her in light of the good doing. That is basic praise. We can make further progress on the nature of these appraisals by looking at a further conceptual connection between blameworthiness ⁹ The relevant idea here is close to the notion of appraisal respect (Darwall 1977). The differences are important, however. Appraisal respect is limited to character traits, which restricts the scope, and, as a kind of respect, is limited to positive appraisals only. In contrast, basic blame is an appraisal of the same kind as basic praise, thus together they encompass positive and negative appraisals, and for any object of basic responsibility.

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and blame. Just as responsibility is a relation between the one who is responsible and the thing they are responsible for, blame and praise are directed at individuals for the thing done. It would be odd to say to another that you blame them full stop. Unless implied by the context, the one blamed is apt to demand to know just what it is that you’re blaming them for. Thus, we don’t blame and praise the things people do; we blame and praise them, though we blame and praise them for the things they do. The key move in thinking about basic blame and praise, then, is the transposition of the evaluation of an activity via some standard to the evaluation of the agent. What makes them blameworthy is responsibility for the bad thing (as determined by the relevant standards). Basic blame is the relevant negative appraisal of the individual, determined by responsibility for the bad thing. Crudely put, basic blame involves thinking badly of someone.¹⁰ Many have thought it clear that thinking badly of someone is tantamount to blaming them. For example, Robert Adams writes, “To me it seems strange to say that I do not blame someone though I think poorly of him, believing that his motives are thoroughly selfish. Intuitively, I should have said that thinking poorly of a person in this way is a form of unspoken blame” (1985: 21). Likewise, Gary Watson allows that “to blame (morally) is to attribute something to a (moral) fault in the agent; therefore, to call conduct shoddy is to blame the agent” (2004: 266).¹¹ One who is basically blameworthy, then, was, as it were, bad at the relevant activity; the doing that was bad per the relevant standards. Buckner was bad at fielding that ball, the banjoist was bad at picking, and the baker was bad at making that soufflé. If you like, each did a bad ¹⁰ Compare Nelkin 2016, which characterizes a broad notion of blame in terms of “holding against.” To my mind, “holding” is suggestive of elements I’d eschew for basic blame, but I am sympathetic if we treat the idea sufficiently weakly—namely, as something like a negative appraisal of the person. ¹¹ Watson considers this to be only one form of blame (Adams’ comments suggest the same), whereas I’m suggesting that it is fairly close to basic blame, the thing the blameworthy are all worthy of, and which all forms of blaming share. The difference is that in both quotes, the suggestion seems to be that we’re identifying an independent flaw or trait of the individual, which I don’t think is necessary. Basic blame doesn’t identify something new nor does it locate the relevant object “inside” the person.

76   job. The moral realm need be no different. The person who disrespects another was bad at respecting them; they also did a bad job. Basic blame takes these assessments as grounding a negative appraisal of the doer, and so by that measure extend beyond the doing being bad. Again, these aren’t global assessments. Whether one is a good player, or baker, or person, depends on more than a single performance.¹² Instead, being blameworthy is being “bad at” the relevant activity under the appropriate standards in the case in question.

Blame by Any Other Name As advertised, basic blame and praise are much more minimal than typical treatments of blame, ones that tend to focus on emotional responses, reactive attitudes, or overt action.¹³ Instead, there is very little content required of basic blame. As a negative appraisal, its only content is the negatively valenced evaluation of the person, one grounded in the basic responsibility relation and the negative evaluation of the doing per the relevant standards.¹⁴ There is support for a minimal understanding of blame given the wide variety of responses that look to involve blame. Consider some common responses to a minor, but non-trivial moral wrong. Suppose A and B are friends, and A has betrayed B’s trust, and A is blameworthy for doing so. How might B appropriately respond? B might . . .

¹² Again, see Chapter 5 for how I square basic responsibility with such global assessments. ¹³ See Tognazzini & Coates 2021 for a good overview. It’s worth noting that most of the notions typically appealed to have a distinctively moral bent to them. Consider popular characterizations of blame in terms of resentment and indignation (Strawson 1962; Wallace 1994), righteous anger (Wolf 2011), or protest (Smith 2012b). These are not trivially translatable into non-moral terms. ¹⁴ My minimal view of blame is similar to Sher 2005, which takes blame to consist of a belief that what the person did was wrong, and a desire that the person had not acted as they did. If anything, however, my account is more minimal. The negative assessment of the doing need not involve wrongness, of course, and there need be no desire regarding the person not having done that. I can basically blame an opposing team’s player while being delighted that they performed so miserably, since it helped my team win. Nonetheless, the necessary negative appraisal of the person involved in basic blame has a similar aversive flavor to the role that desire plays in Sher’s account, insofar as negative evaluations are in some (minimal) sense “to be avoided.”

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feel hurt or disappointed in A; get angry with A; feel sad about this blow to their relationship; resent A for letting her down; be wearily resigned to another such transgression; give A the “cold shoulder,” withdrawing from the relationship to some extent; confront A and yell, indicate her displeasure, or otherwise give her some choice words; complain to their own spouse about A’s transgression. Obviously, this list is non-exhaustive. But it nonetheless gives a good indication of the significant variation in our responses to wrongdoing. All of the above seem, in broad strokes, to be appropriate ways for B to respond to A’s betrayal, and, for each member of the set, it makes sense to say of B that they are blaming A at least in part by responding in that fashion. A person might engage in some or all or most or just one of these responses, and yet none seems obviously required to count as part of blaming. One’s response is likely to be sensitive to a host of features, including the details of the particular circumstances or history of the relationship or even differences in individual temperament. It is difficult to see how one could characterize what is essential to blame out of the foregoing. For one thing, it isn’t obvious that any of the above responses are necessary for blaming. B can blame A without feeling anything in particular, or, indeed, doing anything much in particular. Jolene might blame Jeremy for several weeks after discovering some transgression, but she likely doesn’t feel or do anything that constitutes that blame for the whole duration. Moreover, her blame might take various forms throughout those weeks: she might angrily shout at him on Sunday, feel hurt and disappointed on Tuesday, and ignore his text messages on Thursday. If we’re investigating blame, we presumably want to target what is common to all these instances. While every item in the list above has the color of blame about them, none of them seem to capture the thing that blame is about, even if we may be inclined to treat certain items on the list as more

78   or less paradigmatic.¹⁵ And while we can stipulate or insist to the contrary, it strikes me that none of the responses in the above is exhaustively constitutive of blame. (We could perform the same exercise on praise, as well.) The disparate nature of blaming has not gone unnoticed. It has even led some to conclude that blame has no characteristic content.¹⁶ This strikes me as a bit defeatist, though. In particular, it suggests giving up the tight conceptual connection between blame and blameworthiness. Blame, whatever else it is, is whatever the blameworthy are worthy of (in virtue of being blameworthy). And we should hold out hope that there is some content to blame, however minimal, that illuminates this connection.¹⁷ One might think, however, that the situation is even more difficult for basic blame, since we must include not just the variation involved across moral blaming, but even further variation out of our responses to nonmoral performance. So, consider the potential responses an audience member might have to Pavel the poet. She might . . . be bemused about the failure; feel sad for his lack of talent; smirk at the embarrassment of such a display; comment in her internal monologue about how bad a poet Pavel is; share disbelief with her friend over it all; walk out of the reading to spare herself; refuse to applaud at the end;

¹⁵ Some theorists attempt to capture difficult cases by selecting a paradigmatic instance of blaming to analyze, and then explaining the difficult cases in terms of its relation to the paradigmatic case. (See e.g. McKenna 2012, and discussion in Shoemaker & Vargas 2021.) I’m skeptical that there is any instance of blaming that serves as such a paradigm, though I’m open to the idea that certain kinds of blaming are more central to our interests in responsibility than others. ¹⁶ Shoemaker & Vargas 2021 argue that blame is functional in nature—it plays a certain role in our normative practices. What makes something an instance of blame, on their view, is the role it plays, rather than having a type of content or being a kind of attitude or response. ¹⁷ For example, on Shoemaker & Vargas’s (2021) view, an essential element of blame is that it involves a costly signal of the blamer’s commitment to the relevant norm (the one violated by the target’s conduct). But it looks mysterious how it could be a part of what the transgressor is worthy of that a signal is costly to the blamer. That is, the effects of engaging in a bit of potential blame on a blamer look irrelevant to the worthiness of that blame to the one blamed.

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audibly boo or whistle at the end; applaud politely (but only politely) because “it’s the thing to do.” As with the moral case, none of the above appear to show anything necessary about blame, and yet each, at least in context, have the shape and color of blame about them. Naturally, feeling sad needn’t connote anything in the orbit of blame. One can feel sad about all manner of things. But in this context, experiencing a low state in response to such a dreadful performance is importantly different from being sad that it’s raining outside. One kind of response to a bad poetry reading is to bemoan one’s fate at having to sit through something unpleasant. That sort of response is much like being sad over the fact that it rains most days during one’s beach holiday (“What rotten luck!”). But to bemoan the badness of a poetry reading can also involve criticism of the poet. Just because sadness isn’t part and parcel of blame doesn’t mean sadness can’t be involved in blaming. These observations lead us to a helpful distinction between blame itself and what I’ll call blaming behavior.¹⁸ The former is what is necessarily due to the blameworthy; the latter are elements of our practices that are typically, though by no means always, triggered by or involve blame. As I noted at the outset, one advantage of theorizing via blaming behavior is that it is less restrictive. Giving someone the cold shoulder may amount to blaming them or it might be a consequence of blaming them. It’s unclear how to adjudicate the matter directly. Cold shoulders clearly aren’t necessary for blame—one can blame another precisely by actively engaging them—but that doesn’t show that they don’t count as one form of blame. Still, we needn’t settle the matter here if we treat all these responses

¹⁸ Compare Vargas 2013: 116–20, which distinguishes between two notions of blame. One concerns a cognitive judgment-like attitude, and the other richer emotional and behavioral responses. His distinction seems in the same spirit as mine, but we differ in the details. While basic blame looks like a more “cognitive judgment-like attitude,” I wouldn’t frame it in terms of “a pro tanto license to a class of characteristic interpersonal reactions” (116) or as a “judgment of blameworthiness” (117). Basic blame is a negative appraisal of the individual. In that sense, it is more than the thought that they are worthy of such an appraisal. Thus, as I discuss below, there is still some room on my view between the thought that someone is blameworthy (i.e. basically responsible for something bad) and basic blame. But there is still further room between that basic blame and the characteristic affective responses and additional behaviors that inhabit our blaming practices.

80   as existing within blame’s orbit, whatever blame turns out to be. This is compatible with either of the two interpretations of cold shouldering. I’m thus inclined to be quite capacious in what counts as blaming behavior. That which serves as a vehicle for, manifestation of, way of expressing, or otherwise substantially involves blame can be included. Importantly, however, blaming behavior is not identical to blame. Blame can instead be the common kernel in all the above that can help us make sense of what ties together the various feelings, attitudes, expressions, and actions involved. Recall that basic blame is quite minimal. It is a negative appraisal of the doer in light of their negative doing. To blame Buckner is to think badly of him for the missed ball. Likewise, to blame the banjoist is to think badly of him for the sloppy picking and to blame Trump is to think badly of him for his widespread lies regarding election fraud.¹⁹ To think badly of someone in this way is to treat their blameworthiness negatively, so to speak. Often, though not always, this involves taking the negative appraisal as significant. But how significant we take these appraisals to be can vary widely. Indeed, the significance of another’s blameworthiness is apt to be revealed in the blaming behaviors one adopts. This goes some way toward explaining both why there is such variance in our blaming behaviors and why such behaviors (or extremely close analogues) are compatible with the absence of blame. Let’s walk through an example. Suppose my spouse and I are watching hockey and a member of the Washington Capitals misses a wide-open net.²⁰ I’m flummoxed and angry, standing up and shouting at the TV. My wife, entirely non-plussed, remains seated and seemingly unaffected. She saw the same passage of play and came to the same assessments. She doesn’t think the player has an excuse, or that he is in some way not responsible for the miss. She agrees that the miss was bad form. I clearly blame the player. She does, too, it seems.²¹ If this is right, we

¹⁹ Or for plausibly sexually assaulting women, or bragging about doing so, or his policies of separating and detaining children at the U.S.-Mexican border, or mocking the disabled, or instigating an insurrection, or . . . . ²⁰ Esa Tikkanen, I’m looking in your direction. ²¹ For what it’s worth, I can attest that she at least self-reports blaming the player, though no blaming behaviors ensue.

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want to account for the fact that we’re both blaming even though our overt responses are quite different. Here’s how we might do so. Since basic blame involves a judgment of basic responsibility for the thing done, an assessment of the doing as bad, and the subsequent negative appraisal of the person (grounded in that judgment and assessment), my wife basically blames the player.²² So do I. But I have additional responses: anger and frustration at the player, manifested in literally shouting at him. These responses are plausibly triggered by the significance of the player’s blameworthiness. If I didn’t care about his play, I wouldn’t be so upset. Plausibly, this is why my wife is relatively untroubled. Her blame isn’t milder; it’s just that, as she doesn’t particularly care about hockey, or the performance of the Washington Capitals in particular, she remains unanimated by the player’s blameworthiness.²³ We can connect these points to the difference between blame itself and blaming behavior. Only I engage in blaming behavior, which makes it tempting to say that only I am really blaming the player. But this strikes me as a mistake. My wife, just as I do, thinks less of the player as a result of the miss. If she were asked to evaluate him for his performance in the game, it would be negatively impacted by this horrendous miss. She can well understand my reactions to what has transpired, for she, too, thinks badly of the player. The difference is that whereas I care about the negative appraisal of the player, inasmuch as I’m invested in the team’s performance and have a pervading interest in hockey play generally, she doesn’t care about that negative appraisal, and so she doesn’t concern herself with it much or respond in more pronounced ways. Our blaming behaviors can thus manifest our concern with the evaluative domain in question. I shout at the television because I take hockey ²² It’s worth noting that basic blame will require some evaluative competency. If one is not versed in the relevant evaluative standards, one may be unable to evaluate the doings positively or negatively. This isn’t surprising. Often novices to viewing a new sport simply can’t assess the play and so can’t blame or praise the players. At least, not directly—they may infer based on the blaming or praising behaviors of those around them, or they may guess given what they think the standards are. ²³ Of course, she can be derivatively interested because of its effects on me. We often take an interest in the things that those we care about care about. Nonetheless, it is often very difficult to generate genuine enthusiasm on the matter, and its character is often highly attenuated as a result.

82   to be important (at least as judged by my immediate concerns). Blaming is, in this way, attentional. When we take up blaming behavior, we tend to focus on the blameworthy individual in light of the negative appraisal (blame). In so doing, we also tend to ignore their other positive qualities. Think of how natural it is when blaming someone to also complain about their other vices, flaws, or just things one doesn’t like about them, even when clearly irrelevant to the matter at hand.²⁴ Thus, there are (at least) three different ways in which two people can disagree over a purported incident of blameworthiness. First, they can differ in their judgment of responsibility. One thinks the doer is responsible whereas the other doesn’t (or, perhaps, thinks they are less responsible). Here there is a dispute over the responsibility facts. Second, they can differ in their evaluations of the thing done. One thinks it bad and the other thinks it good (or, at least, not bad). Here the dispute is over the evaluative facts of the thing done. In both cases, the dispute is over whether the target is in fact blameworthy. However, even when two people agree that the target is blameworthy, they can differ over the significance of that fact. One can be angry and upset, while the other is nonplussed. Here, the dispute is over the relative importance of the evaluative domain or the significance of the person. A non-sports-lover could think that hockey just doesn’t matter, and so great (and not-so-great) performances in hockey also don’t matter. Alternatively, one could fail to care about the negative appraisal of a given person because one is unconcerned with that person. One is more likely to engage in certain blameworthy behavior toward one’s friends than toward a stranger.²⁵ And one could be unmoved by the blameworthiness of another because one has other more pressing concerns, and so, though they blame the offender, nothing further comes of it in the way of blaming behaviors. Of course, many other factors will contribute to the blaming behaviors we adopt. Some people are prone to shouting whereas others are more ²⁴ For more on the attentional nature of blaming, see King 2020. ²⁵ This is complicated by the fact that we also often have more reason to tolerate or be sympathetic or kind to those closer to us. Thus, overall, we tend to have our reactions to our intimates both exacerbated and mitigated at the same time. One’s own personal disposition no doubt plays a large role in the particulars.

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taciturn, where this needn’t imply anything about how significant each takes the incident to be. That’s all to the better, on my account, for the particular blaming behaviors we adopt in particular cases will be sensitive to a potentially enormous range of factors, many of which may be largely idiosyncratic to the blamer or circumstance. Such considerations are appropriately excluded from an account of the nature blame, however. The difference between blame and blaming behaviors can be more difficult to notice in the case of moral blame. But this is to be expected. Unlike hockey, or pottery, or programming, we tend to think moral matters are seriously important. Moreover, we tend to think that moral matters are, if not most important, generally more important than other things. Of course, this supposed superiority of the moral isn’t always evident in our practices, where we may be prone to exclude moral matters from the responsibility-related elements in non-moral domains. Consider the ways in which moral faults of star athletes are often elided or the morally dubious qualities of artists dismissed as irrelevant (or, worse, worth the benefit of their genius). But our practices are only imperfect guides to the underlying facts. Our reactions to sports infractions are quite clearly often largely out of proportion, given the relative importance of the domain in question.²⁶ Nonetheless, we often have good reasons to modulate our behaviors toward the blameworthy. To take a simple (moral) example, that my spouse has had an especially difficult day is reason to soften my responses to her recent wrong. The shape and substance of my blaming her plausibly ought to be adjusted in light of her present circumstances. It might be that chastising her would be piling on, or unkind, or whatever—I don’t think the details matter for our purposes here. Instead, it seems clear that how we respond to the blameworthy is governed by a large and diverse set of reasons.

²⁶ As the treatment of Buckner illustrates quite clearly. It would be a mistake, however, to think this tells against non-moral blame (see Matheson & Milam 2022). That a response is disproportionate in severity does not show that it is mistaken in kind. Compare Russell 2008: “The relative importance and value that we attach to the activity is not a relevant basis on which to rest the relevance or boundary of free will” (315).

84   Importantly, by distinguishing blame from blaming behaviors we can allow for these reasons to be relevant to our broader responses without bearing on the appropriateness of blame at all. So, for example, we may have reasons to “turn the other cheek,”²⁷ or to ignore them,²⁸ or it may make sense for us to simply “shake off ”²⁹ that someone has wronged us, paying it little mind. These responses don’t imply that we don’t blame them. Even if I fail to resent the encroachment or disrespect, I can still think badly of them in light of the wrongdoing (i.e. basically blame them). Many such reasons are moral in nature, but others may be pragmatic. Perhaps certain blaming behaviors would distract the one blamed, making it more difficult for them to succeed in future performance. Instead of a coach throwing chairs across the basketball court in response to a missed pass,³⁰ he might instead clap his hands in support of the player making the right decision about where the ball should go. Encouraging one’s players like this needn’t imply that one also does not blame them for the bad pass. We can attenuate our responses to a variety of concerns or cares we might have about what to (de-)emphasize.³¹ Just as there are reasons to mitigate our blaming behaviors, however, there can also be reasons in favor of particular responses, either because of who the wrongdoer is or the particular circumstances. Sometimes the blameworthy really need to hear from the aggrieved party, or there could be special reasons in favor of distancing oneself in the relationship or simply feeling sad. Thus, the distinction between blame and blaming behaviors can help explain the great variety we see in blaming responses. It thereby captures much of what might be thought distinctive about our practices of moral blaming (and praising) downstream of our being blameworthy

²⁷ Matthew 5:38–42. ²⁸ See King 2020 for relevant discussion. ²⁹ Cf. Taylor Swift. ³⁰ Cf. Bobby Knight. ³¹ Compare the discussion in Shoemaker 2022 on self-blame in sports. He argues that such anger in response to one’s own sports performance has a different function—its purpose is to encourage better performance in the future—than in moral contexts, which is backwardlooking. Even if this is correct, however, the fact that certain responses are effective proleptically does not suffice to show that they are the only game in town. Other behaviors might be even more effective proleptically, and, in any case, anger’s effectiveness in this regard doesn’t settle how we should understand the nature of self-blame.

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(praiseworthy) and of blame (and praise) itself. While basic blame is the negative appraisal the blameworthy are worthy of, in blaming, we typically actively attend to that appraisal (and thus the bad performance), and this can lead to further blame-related responses: resentment and cold shoulders, expressive gestures, emotional (dis-)engagement, etc. These behaviors and reactions belong to our broader practices of holding each other responsible, and are sensitive to our further commitments. In particular, they are influenced by how much we care about the relevant evaluative domain and by background reasons, moral and non-moral, shaping and modulating the form our blaming and praising take.³²

Mere Grading and the Force of Blame Some might complain that, on this view, basic blame and praise turn out to be little more than judgments of blameworthiness and praiseworthiness. There is a worry that such appraisals will amount to no more than mere grading;³³ that they won’t have the special force or character we expect from moral blame.³⁴ As I’ve articulated the account, basic blame is a negative appraisal of the doer in light of the negative assessment of their doing. Such blame might appear too superficial. Here’s a statement from Susan Wolf (1990): [W]hen we hold an agent morally responsible for some event . . . we are not merely judging the moral quality of the event with which the individual is so intimately associated; we are judging the moral quality of the individual herself in some focused, noninstrumental, and seemingly more serious way. We may refer to the latter sense of responsibility as deep responsibility, and we may speak in connection with this of deep praise and blame. (41) ³² As elsewhere in this chapter, I’ve focused on blame. But the points above work for praise as well. We might have less moral caution about praising openly, but there certainly seem to be reasons both in favor of and against praising behaviors, like expressing acclaim, applauding, giving out awards, feeling gratitude, etc. ³³ See Watson 2004: 260–88 for discussion of a worry along these lines. ³⁴ Hieronymi 2004 considers the special force of blame, though her focus is on how that force could render it unfair in certain circumstances. Nonetheless, I’ve been influenced by her discussion.

86   Similarly, Pamela Hieronymi (2004) writes that, “[B]eing morally blamed involves a more serious sort of criticism than being told your vocal performance was flat, your cooking bland, your conversation dull, or your sentences opaque. Blame, unlike mere description, carries a characteristic depth, force, or sting” (117). Since I have been at pains to equate basic blame for both one’s moral and non-moral transgressions, it would seem as though my account ought to be particularly sensitive to this worry about the distinctive force of (moral) blame. To some extent, the substance of the worry is correct. Basic blame will indeed lack some of the so-called “force” associated with blame in moral cases. Naturally, if basic blame and basic praise are to cover both moral and non-moral cases, then neither can be framed in distinctively moral terms. Consequently, we should expect basic blame and praise to lack features that might be distinctive of the moral domain. Consider some non-moral instances of evaluation. NBA star Steph Curry is rightly regarded as a dynamo three-point shooter with astonishing range. On the other side of the spectrum, for years, despite his other talents, Shaquille O’Neal was widely lambasted for his poor free throw shooting—indeed, other teams would adopt a strategy to purposely foul him to force him to shoot free throws.³⁵ Curry is praised for his shooting, whereas Shaq was (and is!) blamed for his. But both instances are rather unserious matters, and surely don’t call for much in the way of further responses (even if, in the course of a particular game, we might react more strongly). We should thus expect that such praise or blame should involve little more than positively or negatively regarding the relevant person in light of the relevant standards. Nonetheless, it is unclear just how such assessment fails to be deep. Indeed, it’s worth examining more closely the idea that non-moral assessment, like the kind we receive for our cooking and vocal performances, is less deep, serious, or forceful than moral blame.³⁶

³⁵ For the relevant stats, see: https://www.basketball-reference.com/leaders/ft_pct_career. html. Incidentally, Steph Curry also currently holds the best lifetime free throw shooting percentage. (Shout out to my colleague and Curry fan, Brynn Welch!) ³⁶ Recall Wolf ’s (2015) contention that “the most important and deep kind of responsibility that distinguishes us as human is not limited to the moral” (141).

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One unpromising strategy for characterizing the supposed depth of blame is to unfairly label alternative notions. If we distinguish blame from “mere description” or “mere grading,” then it may appear that these alternatives simply don’t have the kind of substance required of proper blame. But this tactic is, so far as I can tell, largely rhetorical. One can diminish any category by amending it with the pejorative “mere.” If I complain about an account that it only secures “mere human rights,” or if I defend some public policy as “merely wrong,” I’ve successfully indicated that I find the category insufficient, but it is unclear precisely why such diminishment is justified.³⁷ After all, a belief can be more than mere belief simply by dropping the “mere”; robust belief surely isn’t mere belief. Relatedly, a description’s depth, as it were, is at least partially determined by the content of that particular description, not the nature of descriptions itself. To describe someone as cruel is to say something important (and morally relevant) about them. It strikes me as surely “deep” enough.³⁸ So one problem with contrasting moral blame with mere description is that there are instances of moral blame that look perfectly parallel as descriptions, but don’t for that reason lack depth or force. But then it couldn’t be the fact that basic blame is akin to a description that makes it lack the requisite depth or force. Nor is grading particularly superficial. It certainly can be. We can measure and sort in shallow ways, by height or mass or hue, say, without getting at anything significant. But the best explanation for why these forms of grading fail to be deep has to do with the dimension we’re grading, rather than grading itself. Height and hue have little to do directly with anything about which we might care deeply, and they reflect features of individuals or objects that we take to be shallow. It should

³⁷ Alternatively, compare with “that’s merely gold” or “she was merely the best women’s swimmer.” ³⁸ Compare Scanlon 1988: “What is essential, on this account, is that a judgment of moral blame asserts that the way in which an agent decided what to do was not in accord with standards which that agent either accepts or should accept insofar as he or she is concerned to justify his or her actions to others on grounds that they could not reasonably reject. This is description, but given that most people care about the justifiability of their actions to others, it is not mere description” (170, his italics).

88   come as no surprise that grading over the superficial would yield superficial grading. However, we also grade substantial features. Consider a paradigm: grading assignments in a course. A good paper is clear and wellstructured with compelling arguments. These elements are not superficial features but ones integral to argumentative papers. And when we grade papers, we thereby imply criticism or acclaim of the author. Assessing a paper as a “B” places it in a certain position, contrasting with those above and below it. To rank higher on the scale is to be a better paper, and below, worse. Whether being a good paper is itself significant may of course depend on the significance of the paper itself, or the act of writing a good paper, or perhaps the paper’s topic. Sometimes—maybe often!—being a good paper is rather inconsequential. But, for all that, it isn’t insignificant. There is something to be said for doing something well, and so something to be said for a well-written paper, regardless of how it may be situated in our broader cares and concerns. Some grading (perhaps “mere”!) might appear thin, then, in part because there is no implied evaluation. Placing things in order of height or hue doesn’t involve much in the way of evaluation. It isn’t a good thing to be taller or bluer, other things equal.³⁹ There is another important difference between blueness and height, on the one hand, and one’s written work, on the other. The latter is a product of one’s agency, something one can be responsible for, in a way that one is not responsible for one’s height or color.⁴⁰ Per the theory ³⁹ There may of course be instrumental goods involved, though these often come with corresponding instrumental bads. Because of my height, I can generally reach things on top shelves easily. But I also struggle to be comfortable on airplanes (and the backseat of most cars) and have to watch my head down many a staircase. ⁴⁰ Why do I qualify with “in a way”? Because one could be responsible for one’s eye color or height in the way that one could be responsible for having hair. It is under my control to have hair, since I could shave my head bald (regardless, time is slowly doing it for me). So, provided I could take steps to change my height or eye color, the fact that I am the height I am or have the eye color I have is similarly under my control. Whatever our tendency to reject such things as being beyond responsibility strikes me as a by-product of quite rightly thinking one’s height or hair color is not the sort of thing one ought to have reason to change (at least usually), or that those features are not ones that ought to be relevant to a person’s, say, moral qualities. But I see no reason to think it would be wrong for someone to take steps to make themselves taller. That would surely depend, if on anything, on the reasons for which they were making the change or how they went about doing so.

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on offer here, a student’s paper reflects their take on things, and, when responsible for its writing, reflects their having a say over its construction and features. To the extent that my basic agency is a non-superficial aspect of myself, basic blame and basic praise are likewise be nonsuperficial. Even if basic blame were a form of grading or description, then, it does not follow that it lacks blame’s characteristic depth (whatever that may be). The negative appraisals which constitute basic blame, despite their minimalism, go “beyond simple description or mere grading” (Hieronymi 2004: 116). Might basic blame nevertheless lack a distinctive kind of “force”? Just as we sought out a better understanding of what kind of depth might be involved in blame, we must do some work to better understand its supposed force. One challenge to such a project, however, is that much of what might contribute to the force or sting of blame looks to be associated with particular elements of our blaming behaviors. To be publicly rebuked, for instance, typically feels bad. To have the associated guilt arise, to feel the steely glare of others’ admonition, can hurt. Being yelled at is, generally, a fairly unpleasant experience. So, one way to understand the force of blame might fall out of the force of the corresponding blaming behaviors. They are apt to inflict harms on the receivers in virtue of how badly it feels to be subject to their sting, such as it is. To observe an oft-cited point, we care about what others think about us.⁴¹ But this observation extends to all manner of appraisals. It can feel bad to realize another thinks your singing is flat or your cooking bland, and it isn’t at all clear that such appraisals will sting any less than ordinary moral blame. My hypothesis is that whether these appraisals feel bad is likely to depend on a number of different factors that have nothing to do with how we should understand the nature of blame. For example, one is likely to feel badly to the extent that one has invested in those endeavors, that one cares about one’s proficiency. If one cares deeply about being a ⁴¹ Compare Strawson 1962: “These simplifications are of use to me only if they help to emphasize how much we actually mind, how much it matters to us, whether the actions of other people . . . reflect attitudes towards us of goodwill, affection, or esteem on the one hand or contempt, indifference, or malevolence on the other” (76). See also Shoemaker 2019.

90   good singer, if one has devoted considerable time and energy in pursuit of singing well, then being told that your performance was flat could be devastating. It is no trivial failure to perform badly at something one takes to be important. Relatedly, how much stock we put in the assessments of others can depend heavily on who is making it, whether we like (or dislike) them or they are a member of our in-group. If I don’t value another’s opinion, their blame is unlikely to sting at all, whether moral or non-moral. This is more likely still if I disagree with their assessment. If I’m confident that your assessment is incorrect, I’m far less susceptible to your blame.⁴² (Perhaps less obviously, if I think someone else is a poor appraiser, their praise could actually sting. Think of cases in which someone who has poor taste compliments your outfit or interior design.) In a slightly different vein, to the extent that we value the opinions of others, we may be led into valuing their valuations of us across various domains. Whether this is a good or bad thing is an open question, and one I don’t plan to resolve. Importantly, however, the view on offer here allows us to clearly separate the value of the appraisals from the nature of those appraisals. There is nothing inherent in a negative assessment of a performance that has to sting or make one feel badly. Those further reactions will plausibly depend on our broader practices, beliefs, and values. And we have some say over those things. I hasten to point out that the quality of these interactions or feelings will plausibly be affected by an individual’s own temperament. There are plenty of folks who apparently don’t mind being subjected to harsh words very much. That such variation exists seems to support the idea that it is features extraneous to blame that contribute most to producing its force, rather than any feature of blame itself. Finally, it’s worth noting that the supposed “force” of blame is not univocal in moral matters. Consider someone who is habitually late, often delaying start times or frustrating coordination. It is no doubt an inconvenience to others, and it clearly involves a lack of consideration, and so represents morally blameworthy conduct. But it is also not a terribly serious moral matter, and so the supposed force of our blame will ⁴² Haters gonna hate.

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plausibly be rather suppressed when compared to the favorite examples of high crimes in the literature. The point here is that we have moral cases in which the blame is not particularly forceful, so long as the moral matter in question is rather pedestrian or minor. Indeed, such blame is not obviously of a different kind, in terms of its force, than the blame involved in more serious non-moral cases.⁴³ Of course, some might think that moral matters, by the nature of morality, are always more serious than non-moral matters. If that’s right, then my explanation that the force of blame is generated by the relative importance of the domain will secure the conclusion that moral blame has a distinctive force by dint of the distinctive seriousness of the domain. So, once again, it is plausible to say that the force of blame is derived not from the nature of blame, but from the importance of moral matters. Thus, basic blame will indeed lack the relative importance of moral matters in at least some non-moral matters, but, arguably, this is exactly as it should be. Those matters will in fact not be as important, and so being negatively appraised along those trivial or less significant dimensions may strike us as, in turn, trivial or insignificant.⁴⁴

Testing the Account As I previously indicated, there is no consensus view regarding moral blame, and there are plenty of difficulties regarding contemporary accounts even ignoring the non-moral cases. Still, one feature my view ⁴³ Cf. Buckner’s error or Chris Webber calling time out when none remained in the 1993 NCAA Championship Game, earning a technical foul, and effectively killing Michigan’s chances to win. Matheson & Milam (2022) argue that when cases such as these generate strong reactions, it is likely moral factors that are in play. But it is opaque to me just how they are discriminating between the moral and non-moral. Being accountable to one’s teammates strikes me as a significant consideration for those playing sports, but it equally strikes me as decidedly nonmoral (at least if there’s any meaningful distinction to preserve). Regardless, I think strong reactions can depend here on the significance of the bad performance to the appraiser, independent of whether that significance is in fact justified. People care deeply about weird things. ⁴⁴ Compare Hieronymi 2004: “Quite standardly, then, a judgment gains force from the importance of its content and the importance of the opinions of others on that topic. Whether a judgment of disregard or ill will can carry the characteristic force of blame will depend on whether that force is well-captured by the importance of the quality of one’s will towards others and their opinions about it” (122). While basic blame is necessarily broader than the distinctively moral notions of disregard or ill will, I’m clearly sympathetic to the general observation.

92   shares with most approaches is that it characterizes blame according to its content: basic blame is a negative appraisal of the individual in light of the bad doing. Recently, this general approach has come under criticism. David Shoemaker and Manuel Vargas, having compiled a number of explanatory desiderata for any account of blame, argue that no account that construes blame in terms of a distinct content can straightforwardly handle all of the following “data points” . . .⁴⁵ Blame involves more than mere belief that one has acted wrongly: Believing that you slighted me is not yet blame; Directed, overt blame: The offender blames the offender directly and openly; Non-directed overt blame: Blaming the offender to others (e.g. friends, family, co-workers, or bystanders); Private blame: Blaming an offender only to myself, without expressing it in any way to anyone else; Blaming the dead: Blaming those even when communication is impossible; Self-blame: Where the blamer and one blamed are the same; Dispassionate blame: Blaming utterly without emotion; Hypocritical blame: There is something “off ” about blaming someone for something one regularly does oneself; Hypothetical blame: Blaming someone for something they would do. Now, I don’t think that my account of basic blame has to deliver on every element here. While perhaps a complete account of blame will have to say something about hypocritical blame, it’s not obvious that the problem with such blame is, as it were, internal to blame. There are lots of ways our blame can be “off,” and we could have sound moral reasons against hypocritical blame without such explanations falling out of the nature of blame itself.⁴⁶ ⁴⁵ Shoemaker & Vargas 2021: 582–3. See also Shoemaker 2013: 101. ⁴⁶ As I’ve argued in King 2019 and 2020. In brief, I claim that the specifically moral problem with hypocritical blame concerns such blamers attending to the wrong sorts of things. The hypocritical complaint (e.g. “you’re one to talk!”) thereby serves to reorient their focus to their own faulty behavior, which is where their attention ought to be. Similarly, the problem

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Likewise, the case of hypothetical blame is interesting, but I’m apt to think that the issues here have more to do with hypothetical thought in general than blame in particular. Consequently, my default response is that we shouldn’t expect any account of blame to have special difficulties in accounting for hypothetical blame. Whatever puzzle the latter may pose is likely to result from general features of imaginatively considering counterfactuals. Still, it strikes me that there is nothing terribly odd about hypothetical basic blame. I see no reason to think one couldn’t negatively appraise someone in light of something they judge that person would do under the circumstances. If hypothetical blame is supposed to capture something stronger than this, then it seems a contentious “data point” for blame. Nevertheless, it would be useful to briefly demonstrate how my account of basic blame handles the remainder of the set. In short, there is nothing troublesome about the remaining members, and the view of basic blame I’ve outlined in this chapter handles them all straightforwardly. To do so, one need only remember the distinction between basic blame and broader blaming behaviors. To begin, I’ve already complained about the strategy of relying on the pejorative “mere,” and I’ve argued that basic blame does involve more than mere belief. There is nothing particularly slight or insignificant about the negative appraisal that constitutes basic blame (or, at least, there need not be). Moreover, as basic blame takes as its object the wrongdoer and not the wrong done, it simply isn’t equivalent to a determination of wrongdoing (or norm violation). Admittedly, there is not much distance between basic blame and a judgment of blameworthiness, but there is nonetheless some space. Basic blame is more than an assessment of responsibility for something bad. To judge someone as responsible for something bad is to judge them as worthy of blame; it is not yet to blame them. To basically blame them, on my view, is to

with so-called “meddling” blame, where one blames another for something that is none of their business, can be explained by the blamer attending to things that ought not occupy their attention. In both sorts of cases, however, it is a fault of attention realized in blaming behavior that grounds the problem, not something about the nature of blame itself (and this is true independent of my account of basic blame here). It’s interesting that “meddling” blame doesn’t show up on Shoemaker and Vargas’s list.

94   negatively appraise them in light of their responsibility and the bad thing. It is to lower one’s estimation of that person along the relevant dimension. The tightness of this connection between blameworthiness and basic blame is important, I think, and one which I’ll give further attention to in Chapter 4. Once we look at the significance of being worthy of blame, we will find reasons to think that blame cannot be far removed from determinations of blameworthiness. Beyond the negative appraisal that constitutes basic blame, the view places no strong limitations on what can be done with that appraisal, how (and to whom) it may be communicated, what sorts of further responses it may trigger or be a part of, or the ways it can figure into broader behavior or practices. As such, there is no special difficulty for the view to account for private, dispassionate, direct, indirect, or selfblame, or for blame of the dead, removed, or fictional. One can negatively appraise oneself or others, and those others needn’t still be alive. (There is nothing awkward about having a negative appraisal of Genghis Khan.) I can clearly communicate a negative appraisal to that person or to others; all that changes is the formatting of my response, the words I might use or the actions I might perform. The underlying appraisal remains unchanged. As I showed earlier, the vast range of blaming behaviors means that blaming can sometimes involve emotion and at other times be dispassionate, and which emotions are involved can similarly vary. Thus, there are no real challenges here for my account of basic blame.

Scant Praise A few years ago, I taught a senior seminar I titled, “Praising and Blaming.” Given my penchant for symmetry, my plan was to start off on the right foot, looking at the full array of instances of holding each other responsible, both morally and non-morally. Though I held true to that plan, you wouldn’t be able to tell from the reading list. As it stands, praise and praiseworthiness are massively underdiscussed in the literature. The focus is invariably on blame, even when the parallel is acknowledged. The result was that we developed a running joke in the course,

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based around the new name we had given it: “Blaming and (to a lesser extent) Praising.” It might seem as though I’m similarly guilty for giving short shrift to the positive side of things. Partly, this is due to having less material to compare my account to or contrast it with. Moreover, many of the concerns that might naturally arise in response to my account are stirred by competing views of blame or otherwise seem to have more traction with the negative side of responsibility. To my knowledge, for example, no one is particularly concerned with the supposed force of praise. Indeed, historically, I’d venture that theorists have been in general less concerned with the implications of various challenges to free will and responsibility when praiseworthiness is at stake. The other reason praise has been less explicitly discussed in this chapter, however, is more stylistic. It would have been unwieldy to constantly repeat the constructions and claims but with “praise” replacing “blame” and “positive” for “negative.” The simple fact is that the account of basic praise is perfectly parallel to the account of basic blame. Basic praise is a positive appraisal of the doer in light of basic responsibility for the positively evaluated doing. That’s it. And since it’s perfectly parallel, one need only discuss one side of the pair in order to outline the other. Just as there are blaming behaviors, there are praising behaviors. For instance, suppose that Petra’s poetry reading is exquisite. A member of the audience might . . . be delighted at the performance; feel admiration for the display of talent; smile broadly at Petra’s appropriate pride; comment in her internal monologue about how good a poet Petra is; share her complimentary attitudes with a friend; seek out a book of Petra’s poetry; applaud loudly; recommend Petra for a poetry award; refuse to applaud because, as a rival, they are annoyed by her wonderful reading. More generally, praising behaviors include responses traditionally categorized as positive reactive attitudes, like gratitude and esteem, but

96   also practices of reward and acclaim, actions like cheering and fêting, and private responses, like moral satisfaction for a good deed done or inner pride for a personal accomplishment. I consider it a strength of the view that the extension to praise is so straightforward.⁴⁷ Indeed, the account of basic praise falls out of the general structure of the view in precisely the same way as basic blame. This should be unsurprising. The mechanics of the basic responsibility relation are independent of the evaluative status of those things we are responsible for, and we began by noting how the things we can be responsible for naturally sort into positive and negative groups. The parallelism with which the view began continues through to an account of the responses involved: basic blame for bad doings; basic praise for good ones.

The Story So Far Now, we have a basic responsibility relation, tying doers to their doings. These doings are the products of their activities as agents, representing and evaluating the world around them so as to navigate it in line with their goals, values, and cares. Their doings can be evaluated positively or negatively, along various evaluative dimensions. In each instance, when responsible for those doings, they are themselves appraisable in light of that evaluation and their relation to it. The positive appraisal of the doers for a positive doing is basic praise, and the negative one for a negative doing is basic blame. The appraisals represent the core content shared by blame and praise wherever one finds them. Importantly, basic blame and praise can serve as the common core across the wide variety of blaming and praising behaviors, those further responses and actions we take, but predicated on the negative and positive appraisals.

⁴⁷ This advantage is compatible with their being important differences between various blaming behaviors (or praising behaviors) so long as there is suitable symmetry between blaming and praising.

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At the start of the chapter, I said that basic blame and praise are what the blameworthy and praiseworthy are worthy of, respectively. I stipulated that the worthiness relation involved was best understood in terms of a kind of normative fit, but the notion was left unanalyzed and undefended. I turn to that task next.

4 Basic Desert In the last chapter, I began with the tight conceptual connection between blameworthiness and blame (and, parallelly, praiseworthiness and praise). Blame is that which the blameworthy are worthy of. My aim in that chapter was to better understand the relata, deferring treatment of the relation itself until later. It’s now time to take up that task. I argue that a natural candidate for the worthiness relation is desert. Drawing on some familiar themes from the literature on fitting attitudes, I suggest that we understand the desert in question in terms of a kind of fittingness, wherein blame and praise fit the blameworthy and praiseworthy, respectively, by being accurate in their appraisals. I then argue that this relation is non-trivial. When the basic responsibility relation holds, we merit the evaluative responses (basic blame and basic praise) we do in light of our evaluative properties (basic blameworthiness and praiseworthiness), which we have in virtue of the basic responsibility relation. The good and bad we do, across evaluative domains, are credits or demerits to us. Praising and blaming us for them is to regard us as we are. Naturally, as elsewhere, my approach won’t necessarily capture all that one might want regarding deserved blame and praise. In particular, some who are interested in responsibility and desert are particularly concerned with justifying hard treatment. I argue against this association, in part by making use of the distinction between blame and blaming behaviors. Before we proceed, however, a quick clarificatory note. The astute reader will no doubt have noticed a running theme in my naming conventions for the components of my view. There is the basic responsibility relation, basic blameworthiness and praiseworthiness, basic blame and praise, and, now, basic desert. I trust the rationale behind these conventions is obvious enough: in keeping with my generalist ambitions and minimalist methodology, framing these notions in Simply Responsible: Basic Blame, Scant Praise, and Minimal Agency. Matt King, Oxford University Press. © Matt King 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192883599.003.0005

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terms of their basicness is quite apt. Unfortunately, the label “basic desert,” which serves as this chapter’s title, has been previously pressed into service to denote a particular understanding of the relationship between desert and responsibility. As it happens, I intend my account of basic desert to recognizably speak to important elements of this other understanding, despite not taking my overall view to be beholden to it (nor targeting it directly). Nonetheless, because others have written about basic desert, meaning to address this alternative understanding, there is potential for confusion. I apologize for this risk, while at the same time being unwilling to trade out the parallelism of my naming convention to avoid it. As a compromise, I’ll endeavor to make clear how my use of the term compares—and just as importantly, contrasts—with its use elsewhere in the moral responsibility literature.

Are Ye Worthy? On my view, the blameworthy and praiseworthy are worthy of basic blame and basic praise, respectively. So far, all I’ve said about that relation is that we know it will be normative; that blame in some way fits the blameworthy. And we can confidently predict that since moralized conceptions of the schematic pieces are unlikely to generalize in the right way to non-moral domains, that the fittingness involved will also be non-moralized in nature, and likewise relatively minimal. We should also hope, I think, that the worthiness relation will help inform our understanding of both blameworthiness and blame (ditto for praiseworthiness and praise). That is, an account of the relation should mutually illuminate the two relata, explicating just why blame is related to the blameworthy in the way that it is. A natural idea suggests itself. A common, though not uncontested, refrain among theorists about moral responsibility is that the relevant concept is tightly connected to desert. For instance, Galen Strawson (2002) writes that being responsible involves being “truly and without qualification deserving of praise or blame or reward or punishment” (442). According to Neil Levy’s (2011) “hard luck” view, “agents are not morally responsible for their actions because luck ensures there are no

100   desert-entailing differences between moral agents” (10). He agrees with Strawson that “moral responsibility has a constitutive link to desert” (3). Granted, most references to the desert connection are specifically about responsibility in the moral domain, and since I’ve abandoned that restriction (for good reason) in explicating the basic responsibility relation, it’s open to me to simply jettison desert-talk as another casualty of broadening our theoretic focus. Some theorists have done just this, finding the desert connection to be morally worrisome.¹ Still, it’s hard to shake the idea that responsibility has something to do with desert. After all, in introducing the parallels between moral and non-moral cases of holding each other responsible, I appealed loosely to desert claims. We debate just who deserved to win the Oscar or Razzie, or who was snubbed from inclusion on the all-star team (i.e. who deserved it but was denied). It thus seems accurate to say that “most people seem to assume there is at least a crucial link between responsibility and desert” (Shoemaker 2015: 221). The precise nature of that link, however, is an open question, one not well explored in the responsibility literature.² And “desert” is no less complicated a concept than “responsibility.”³ There is thus little consensus regarding precisely what sort of connection to desert is involved, or the exact nature of that desert. Still, a worthy starting point is Derk Pereboom’s (2014) own notion of “basic desert”: For an agent to be morally responsible for an action in this sense is for it to be hers in such a way that she would deserve to be blamed if she understood that it was morally wrong, and she would deserve to be praised if she understood that it was morally exemplary. The desert at issue here is basic in the sense that the agent would deserve to be blamed or praised just because she has performed the action, given an understanding of its moral status, and not, for example, merely by virtue of consequentialist or contractualist considerations. (2)

¹ See e.g. Scanlon 1998: 274. ² Notable exceptions include Haas 2013; McKenna 2012, by which I’ve been much influenced (see esp. 114–46), and 2022; Shoemaker 2015: 220–3; as well as Vargas 2013 (esp. 114–16, and ch. 8). ³ For a helpful overview, see Feldman & Skow 2020.

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With some minor tweaks to the formulation, the basic responsibility relation satisfies these requirements. When the basic responsibility relation holds, we merit certain evaluative responses (basic blame and basic praise) in light of our evaluative properties, those we have in virtue of the evaluative properties of our doings for which we are basically responsible. The good and bad we do, across evaluative domains, are credits or demerits to us.⁴ Given my theory so far, I would quibble with certain elements of Pereboom’s characterization. First, of course, we must drop the restriction to moral responsibility. Second, as we saw in Chapter 2, I don’t think one needs an understanding of the evaluative facts to be blameworthy or praiseworthy, only the non-evaluative facts on which those evaluative facts depend. Finally, given the nature of basic blame and praise developed in Chapter 3, we must avoid interpreting the deserved responses as something we do to the blameworthy and praiseworthy. Basic blame and praise are fundamentally appraisals of the doer—ways of regarding them—rather than direct treatments of them. This last point is compatible with the language of Pereboom’s characterization, though it likely runs counter to his intentions.⁵ In any event, I don’t mean to rest too much on Pereboom’s particular formulation, which we aren’t required to accept anyhow. I’m instead interested in the generic requirement the formulation suggests, reflected in the general idea that the kind of responsibility we’re interested in is responsibility “in the desert-entailing sense.” I’ll call this the desert requirement.⁶ The next step, then, is to show that the basic responsibility relation can ground desert claims. ⁴ Some readers will note the similarity here to so-called “ledger views” of responsibility. Compare Zimmerman 1988: “Someone is blameworthy if . . . it is correct, or true to the facts, to judge that there is a ‘debit’ in his ‘ledger’ ” (38). He says the same thing about praiseworthiness, but in terms of a “credit.” (See also McKenna 2012: 43–5 for discussion). The metaphor of a ledger that records the positive and negative entries finds natural application to my theory here, though I understand it purely as a metaphor, and one of limited usefulness. In part, calling it a ledger implies that it would follow the rules of bookkeeping, which would imply that a sufficient “credit” could cancel out a “debit.” I think this would get things very wrong; our responsible doings are not fungible like this. ⁵ I take no stand on that matter here, though, as we’ll see below, certainly many who worry about desert often seem to have something more directional and treatment-oriented in mind. ⁶ This is not to say that a conceptual connection between responsibility and desert is entirely uncontroversial. But since I’m taking as given that a challenge for my view is whether it can make good on desert, if it turns out that responsibility entails nothing about desert, my view is no worse for the wear.

102   Before we continue, however, a terminological note of caution. To some, “desert” may require overt treatment. As we’ll see, insistence on a desert requirement may be linked to worries about justifying forms of hard treatment, like punishment or the supposed “sting” of reactive attitudes. If desert is conceptually limited to overt treatment, if the only things we can deserve are ways of being treated, then I would reject such a desert requirement. Responsibility doesn’t entail desert of any overt treatment. At most, it entails worthiness of blame or praise under certain further conditions (like that the thing one is responsible for was wrong or bad), but as blame and praise are not themselves overt treatments, nothing follows about desert in that particular sense.⁷ The upshot is that I don’t much care about “desert” as such, and the objective of this chapter is not to contribute to a theory of desert, nor convince those that have more robust accounts of desert to revise their views. Instead, I mean to develop an account of the worthiness relation involved in blameworthiness and praiseworthiness, as part of my overall account of the basic responsibility relation. To that end, I’ll talk of “deserving,” “being worthy of,” and “meriting,” interchangeably. If any particular use offends one’s linguistic sensibilities, feel free to replace it with a less offensive member of that set. In any case, to the extent that there is some kind of normative link between the blameworthy (and praiseworthy), on the one hand, and blame (and praise), on the other, it is that link I’m exploring here.⁸ (As before, in keeping with contemporary fashions, I’ll be concentrating on the negative side of things throughout, but will return to praiseworthiness toward the end of the chapter.) In the minor key of the book, then, I need not take any particular stand on desert itself, instead retreating to the more restricted notion of the ⁷ Again, some may have contrary intuitions, especially regarding praise. But, recall, that at least basic blame and basic praise are not forms of treating another. ⁸ Thus, there are certain views I take to be non-starters: e.g. a fully (and simple) consequentialist account. On such an account, one merits blame so long as blaming you would produce the best consequences. I think there is a more particular normative relation between blameworthiness and blame than the universal one such a thoroughgoing consequentialism provides (i.e. the same governing normative requirement as everywhere else: produce the best consequences). Technically, if one were to adopt my view about basic blame, then such a consequentialist approach is ruled out because the negative appraisal itself is what is deserved, and, as such, the appraisal itself cannot figure into any consequences, at least not in the usual sense. But this observation just further supports why I won’t take such accounts seriously here.

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worthiness relation involved in blame- and praiseworthiness. Nonetheless, given the popularity of connecting responsibility to desert, and since one might think that the desert requirement is one my minimalist account would have special difficulty satisfying, I am interested in showing how that theory can make good on desert talk, even if the details may depart from what others may want from a notion of desert here or, especially, in other contexts. So, in the major key, this chapter serves to explicate how the basic responsibility relation justifies desert of blame and praise.

Deserving Blame (and Praise) On my view, when a doer is related to a doing by the basic responsibility relation, they are blameworthy if it’s bad and praiseworthy if it’s good. To be blameworthy and praiseworthy is to be worthy of blame and praise, respectively. To meet the shape of the desert requirement, we need only replace “worthy of” with “deserves” to get: a doer deserves blame when responsible for some bad doing and they deserve praise when responsible for some good doing. This is the central claim I’ll explicate and defend in this chapter. (The expectation should be set by now for that defense to be of an admittedly minimal notion of desert. As elsewhere, I hope to show that it is nonetheless well motivated and robust enough to do real work.) In the previous chapter, I distinguished between basic blame and our blaming behaviors, those things we do to and around the blameworthy, and which involve a wide variety of actions, emotional responses, and expressions. If the blameworthy are worthy of blame, then what they deserve is not necessarily this broader set of responses. Instead, they deserve the negative appraisal of basic blame. My proposal is to appeal to a normative relation that can connect attitudes to their objects generally. On this account, the blameworthy are worthy of blame in the same way that the admirable deserve admiration and the fearsome merit fear.⁹ As is my wont, let’s start with something non-moral. Under many conditions, it’s appropriate to fear a hippo. One way of putting the point ⁹ The account that follows is developed from ideas first presented in King 2012, 2014.

104   is that fear is fitting of hippos (at least under the relevant circumstances); they are fearsome. This looks schematically parallel to what we might say of blame: blame fits the blameworthy. “Fittingness,” however, is a flexible normative notion, implying a standard of appropriateness without specifying the particulars much. Thus, the parallelism alone doesn’t show that the same worthiness relation is at work. Still, there is reason to favor a unified view here. There is a range of evaluative properties that seemingly—pardon the pun—fits this same schema. In addition to the admirable, the envy fits the enviable and contempt fits the contemptible. Along similar lines as the fearsome, awe fits the awesome, but also amusement fits the amusing. The terms are wide-ranging but all naturally call for an attitude that seems fitting or appropriate to hold toward the object that possesses that property. Thus, the name for this strategy of explanation: fittingattitude analyses.¹⁰ Plausibly, desert also concerns a kind of fit. Consider retributive theories of punishment, wherein desert plays a defining role. The punishment deserved is the one that “fits” the crime.¹¹ The phrase “getting one’s just deserts” also suggests such fittingness; indeed, in particular circumstances, such as when the scheming antagonist is hoist by his own petard, we recognize a definite degree of fit. A natural suggestion, then, is that part of the core of desert, in its widespread applications, involves achieving a certain arrangement that is most appropriate to the circumstances. Oftentimes this may suggest particular forms of treatment or receipt, as in the case of punishment or prizes. But it needn’t be. We also talk of people deserving each other. While this can signal either a tribute to a relationship or an insult, in both cases we are appealing at least in part to a certain sort of fit of relationship rather than forms of treatment. The individuals involved fit together, and their being so related is a most fitting arrangement. Similarly, we often note how fitting an end was,

¹⁰ See Schroeder 2010 for more on why we should have optimism in the approach. See also D’Arms & Jacobson 2000. It is common to adopt the language of fittingness for blame of the blameworthy regardless of whether one connects it to fitting-attitudes analyses in general (see e.g. McKenna 2022; Shoemaker 2015). ¹¹ As enshrined in the notion of lex talionis. Though I’ll discuss retributivism directly later, here it plays only an illustrative role.

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typically in the context of a narrative, where the juxtaposition of the ending to the rest of the story strikes us in a noteworthy way. So, on my view, desert can be understood as a kind of fittingness,¹² and it can therefore be modeled on the broader fitting-attitude program. Let’s see how it works with the trio of fearsomeness, admirability, and blameworthiness. Fear fits a hippo, as does admiration of Malala or Beethoven, or blame of Buckner or Trump. In each case, there is an appraisal that takes the form of valenced representational (descriptive) content. Commonly, fear is taken to represent its object as dangerous.¹³ So, fear involves a negative appraisal of something’s dangerousness (instantiated either in current circumstances, a particular object, or future possibilities). Admiration represents its object as excellent in some way. (Malala displays moral excellences, whereas Beethoven’s are musical.) So, admiration involves a positive appraisal of another in light of their excellence. Finally, basic blame represents its object as basically responsible for something bad. So, blame involves a negative appraisal of another in light of their responsibility for a bad doing. For each, there is a positive or negative appraisal included in the content of that attitude. Rather than identifying fear with a negative appraisal of dangerousness, I’ve opted for the weaker claim that the appraisal is included in its content. I don’t need the identity claim, since I’m not trying to give a complete theory of emotion, nor am I trying to fully analyze the concepts of fear, admiration, or blame. I’m defending an account of “basic blame,” which I think earns a place as blame proper, but which may not fully capture all linguistically appropriate uses. If one prefers, then, I’m happy to exchange “fear” in the discussion with “basic fear,” and make similar substitutions throughout. Full fear could then be a complex emotion ¹² See Zaibert 2006 for a separate (and mostly unrelated) discussion of fittingness and desert. First, his attention is focused on theories of punishment, and he employs a different notion of “fittingness” concerned only with aesthetic normativity. Second, he wants to distinguish desert and fittingness, in sharp contrast to my aim here. See McKenna 2022 for an extended discussion of the relationship between desert and fittingness, especially in the context of moral responsibility. ¹³ Perhaps in addition to other things. I’m not committed to any details here, though I remain confident in the general structure. For emotions like fear, there is widespread consensus that they have some descriptive content. The same holds true for the other relevant attitudes, like admiration or contempt, regardless of whether they count as emotions proper or whether we wish to categorize them differently. For some relevant discussion, see D’Arms & Jacobson 2000; Scarantino & de Sousa 2021; Shoemaker 2015: 39–42. See n. 14 below as well.

106   which has “basic fear” as one of its parts, or else there could be fearing behaviors that involve “basic fear,” mimicking the distinction between basic blame and blaming behaviors. For example, an animal trainer might have a healthy fear of their charge, for the animal is dangerous. And, yet, they may have excellent reason to modulate all fearing behavior, so as not to invite undesirable behavior from the animal. Nonetheless, it is plausible that they still fear the animal, insofar as they appraise the dangerousness negatively. One virtue of the view is that we can easily distinguish between having the attitude, on the one hand, and judging something to have the associated property. I might judge something admirable without admiring it, because while my judgment represents the descriptive content accurately, the further appraisal is absent. Perhaps I trust the testimony of an expert, who waxes on about the many virtues of an Olympic curler. In virtue of their expert testimony, I may come to judge them as possessing the relevant excellences and so admirable. But if I don’t care at all about those excellences, I may not appraise her positively at all, rather than her performance, and so fail to actually admire her. Indeed, in a variation of the case, I may resent her for her excellences and so appraise her negatively. Likewise, as we’ve seen, I may judge another is blameworthy, and so that they are worthy of blame, and yet not blame them myself.¹⁴ Despite this open possibility, because the blameworthy are worthy of blame, because that’s the appraisal that fits, to fail to blame them is to make an error. It is to fail to appraise them as they are. The same is true

¹⁴ Additionally, emotions may have necessary feelings involved, such that if one doesn’t have a particular phenomenology one doesn’t count as having that emotion. I take no stand on the matter here. I’m interested in the evaluative properties, rather than theorizing about emotion generally. To cherry pick an example, “panic” might very well pick out an emotion, but it doesn’t follow that there is any such evaluative property as “panic-worthy” (or variant). In fact, we should expect that fitting-attitude analyses of evaluative properties won’t pair the property with a fully phenomenological emotional response, in large part because those responses are apt to be so variable, and thus have an extension too broad and diffuse to be sensitive in the appropriate way to the normative requirement (though see Shoemaker 2015 for a more sanguine take). In any case, my remarks about the importance of distinguishing between blame itself and blaming behaviors needn’t be limited to the case of blame. The same strategy could be extended to apply to all those attitudes seemingly implicated by the relevant set of evaluative properties (i.e. those that bear the relevant similarity of structure, like fear and fearsomeness). See below for further discussion.

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for fear and admiration, however. To fail to fear the fearsome would be to make a kind of mistake, just as it would be to fail to admire the admirable. Granted, we should not interpret this mistake as implying a requirement that we seek out the blameworthy, fearsome, and admirable. We are under no more of an obligation to go and find blameworthy objects than we are to go and find the fearsome or enviable.¹⁵ The idea here is merely that, when faced with the blameworthy, fearsome, and admirable, it would be a mistake not to blame, fear, and admire them. This is a consequence of any fitting-attitude approach, though the nature of the mistake involved will vary depending on the details of the particular account. Because there is a normative link between these evaluative properties and the corresponding attitudes, where the property is present without the attitude, we have a failure of that link. Such failures are consequently normative failures. We ought to have the attitude that fits toward the objects with the associated property, and only those objects that have that property. The blameworthy are worthy of blame, so we ought to basically blame them. In this respect, the link between blame and blameworthiness mirrors that between belief and truth. To fail to believe truths involves a normative failure. Truth grounds the fittingness of belief in the same way blameworthiness (i.e. basic responsibility for something bad) grounds the fittingness of basic blame. Still, just as above, it doesn’t follow that we are thereby obligated to seek out all true claims. Typically, such mistakes are made in the opposite direction. The irrationality of, say, phobias, is partially explainable in terms of having an attitude with inaccurate representational content. One views the spider as dangerous when one fears it, despite its being harmless.¹⁶ But it is no less a mistake to, say, fail to fear something truly dangerous. It’s certainly possible to lack the corresponding attitude even when the ¹⁵ I leave open precisely what the nature of such obligations might be. For instance, there could be obligations we have to determine if the people we regularly interact with are morally decent, say, and it would not absolve us to claim ignorance about their moral deficiencies or serious blameworthiness. Such obligations would be entirely independent of my view, however, so I won’t pursue the matter here. ¹⁶ Not only that, but the assessment of dangerousness itself is often disproportionate. The fear response of the arachnophobe is typically quite excessive for the circumstances even were the spider, say, toxic to humans, and thus actually posed some danger. (In fact, most spiders are venomous though not terribly dangerous to humans, and even those that are toxic rarely produce significant injuries.)

108   evaluative property is present. This could be because one lacks the descriptive judgment (e.g. one thinks the admirable in fact has no relevant excellence) or because one fails to have the associated appraisal despite the corresponding judgment (e.g. the thrill-seeker is excited by the danger, and so appraises it positively). Indeed, because there is normative pressure to fear the fearsome, admire the admirable, and blame the blameworthy, for instance, where there is motivational pressure to avoid the attitude, one will typically seek to challenge the descriptive content. One will make excuses or downplay the wrong so as to avoid blaming the blameworthy (or seek to mitigate the suggested excellence to avoid admiring the admirable or mischaracterize the danger to avoid fearing the fearsome). Contrast this with motivational pressure to avoid an action, like going to a particular restaurant. One feels comparably little pressure to argue against its being a fine purveyor of Indian cuisine with outstanding reviews. One need only note that one doesn’t feel like Indian food, and those reasons lose their normative force, at least for one’s own deliberations. But once one judges another is responsible for some bad doing, there is normative pressure to blame them. It’s important to bear in mind that this pressure doesn’t extend to blaming behaviors. If one fails to be stirred to anger or rebuke in the face of another’s wrongdoing, it is not obvious that one makes any kind of mistake.¹⁷ Similarly, what we might call fearing behaviors, the broader set of responses and actions associated with being afraid, may also be appropriate to resist, though one is still negatively appraising the danger. For instance, a firefighter may seek to numb himself to the danger of the burning building, so as to better engage in fighting the fire and saving lives. Accelerated heartrates and aversion behavior will be extremely counterproductive to what he judges to be most important in the circumstances. But note that at least some of these other elements of felt emotion are also unlikely to be related to the evaluative properties in terms of fit. As a normative relation, fit is the sort of thing on which

¹⁷ Contra Wolf 2011, who finds that her notion of blame necessarily involves something like anger. It is unclear what Wolf would make of my arguments for not blaming the blameworthy representing a kind of normative mistake.

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reasons bear. Biological responses like increased heartrate don’t have supporting, rationalizing reasons of this sort. So, basic blame is in some sense required of the blameworthy. This should be unsurprising, however. Desert claims often express requirements rather than options. If the blameworthy deserve blame, then blame is called for in the same compulsory way. This doesn’t mean that we cannot opt to not blame them. So long as there is space between judgments of blameworthiness and the negative appraisal of basic blame, we can refuse to blame even those we think blameworthy.¹⁸ All this would involve is not extending a negative appraisal of the person in light of their basic responsibility for a negatively assessed thing. Requirements of reason or morality or proper shipbuilding don’t necessitate that our inferences are valid, or that our actions are right, or that our ships stay afloat. But we have gone wrong in some way when we don’t follow them. Similarly, when we fail to give the deserving that which they deserve, we also go wrong in some way.¹⁹ Here’s how we might put all these thoughts together. The basic responsibility relation connects doers to their doings, such that the former are evaluable by the latter’s lights. Basic blame is a negative appraisal of the doer in light of responsibility for a bad doing. (Basic praise is a positive appraisal in light of a good doing.) Basic blame, then, includes a representation of its object as being basically responsible for something bad. Being responsible for something bad is sufficient for blameworthiness. Basic blame thereby fits the blameworthy by being, as it were, accurate in its appraisal. There is a clear sense, then, in which the blameworthy are worthy of basic blame. It also strikes me as a perfectly sensible way to say they deserve blame. The negative appraisal of those that are responsible for doing bad things is simply to appraise them as they are. Recall that the

¹⁸ Though compare Strawson (1962), who claims that responding to the ill will of others with resentment and indignation is a natural human perspective, one we could not easily give up in our interpersonal relations. ¹⁹ Compare Murphy 1982: “the person who feels no indignation or resentment [may] be said to lack a true appreciation of morality” (505). At least sometimes, a failure to blame the blameworthy can signal a failure to care about the moral status of oneself or others. I’m here treating “appreciation of morality” as importantly related to “normative force of moral reasons” or something like that.

110   basic responsibility relation ties a doer to their doing via their guided activity. This grounds assessment of the doer in light of the qualitymaking features of the doing. When the doing is bad, those bad-making features figure in the guided activity, grounding their blameworthiness. Their desert of blame is simply to be worthy of that negative appraisal.

Hard Treatment and Sanction Despite its perhaps unorthodox features, I think basic desert supplies a robust and familiar notion of the worthiness relation to the theory of basic responsibility. To illustrate, I want to take a moment to connect basic desert back to the characterization I gave of the basic responsibility relation in Chapter 2. Recall that I developed the basic responsibility relation in terms of control, having drawn out the parallels between cases of holding others responsible across a variety of evaluative domains. I noted there that basic responsibility captured a, well, basic sense of control in which we have a say over what happens around us. Additionally, I claimed that when the basic responsibility relation holds, what we do is partially constitutive of our evaluative stances, and thus reflective of our assessments regarding what matters. The account of basic desert I’m offering here is a generic view about the fittingness of certain appraisals.²⁰ Basic desert captures the way in which the blameworthy are worthy of blame, as a fitting negative appraisal of a doer in light of responsibility for a bad doing. That’s the schematic presentation. In a more informal form, the positive and negative appraisals of individuals are apt because they are accurate; those individuals merit them in virtue of the basic responsibility relation. It is through having had the say over one’s doings one had that the assessments of those doings redound to the doer’s credit or discredit. Recall Pereboom’s (2014) characterization of “basic desert.” The core feature of his characterization is that the desert involved in moral ²⁰ I thus remain somewhat agnostic about whether it can suffice for all fitting attitude analyses, or just one’s that involve appraisals of the form basic blame takes. I’m optimistic that it could be developed to be fully general, but full consideration of the matter would take us too far afield.

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responsibility is “basic in the sense that the agent would deserve to be blamed or praised just because she has performed the action” (2). The basicness at issue, it seems, is one that has to do with the features of the agent alone, rather than some external justifying framework, as it would if justified “merely by virtue of consequentialist or contractualist considerations” (2).²¹ The basic responsibility relation connects doers to their doings in virtue of the control they exercise through their agential activities, featuring flexible and dynamic guidance via accurate representative structures reflecting the agent’s take on what matters. There are no appeals to rules or the value of consequences here. Ramona deserves praise for her sick riff because of her contributions to making it sound that way, guiding her activity to achieve that sound. And Tommy Wiseau deserves blame for the disaster that was The Room since the movie is the way it is due to his guided activity. What each deserves is to be appraised well and badly, respectively, in light of their responsible doings.²² Consequently, I conclude that my account of basic desert satisfies the desert requirement. Nevertheless, there are further ideas one might have about the precise role that desert ought to play in a theory of responsibility. One particular concern is that the desert involved will have to have certain features in order to justify forms of overt treatment or “hard feelings” directed at the ²¹ Compare Michael McKenna’s (2012) assessment of Pereboom’s claim: “No consideration external to her freely performing such an act can have any bearing on what she deserves. The pertinent justification begins and ends there for Pereboom; the relation is basic” (121). Notice, however, the pejorative “merely” rearing its head again! I happen to agree that the worthiness relation ought not be justified in consequentialist or contractualist terms, but I’m not at all sure why such justifications would be insubstantial. Also relevant here is Feinberg’s (1970) discussion of “personal desert” as a “ ‘natural’ moral notion,” by which he means “one which is not logically tied to institutions, practices, and rules” (56). While I clearly disagree with the moral qualifier, I’m otherwise sympathetic. ²² Levy 2005 argues that we must preserve a strong distinction between bad agents and blameworthy agents. I explicitly deny this, as discussed in Chapter 3. To blame another is to think badly of them; the blameworthy did a bad job, as it were. A blameworthy agent is a bad agent insofar as they performed badly relative to the relevant standards. Levy finds the distinction intuitive. I do not. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ His diagnosis is that a bad agent would be like a bad dog: vicious, perhaps, but not blameworthy if not at fault for his viciousness. However, I can accommodate that distinction so long as we allow that one is at fault for one’s viciousness by making it the case that one is vicious. Requiring one to be blameworthy for one’s viciousness in order to be responsible for one’s vicious acts is unnecessary. I elaborate on this claim in Chapter 5.

112   blameworthy.²³ We impose a variety of losses on those who do wrong, like harsh treatment and sanction, and such losses must be justified. A standard way to justify them is to suppose that they are deserved by the blameworthy. If that’s what’s important about the normative link between responsibility and desert, then my minimal notion of basic desert might be inadequate to justify the relevant forms of treatment. Of course, if I’m right about the basic responsibility relation, this is the wrong way to think about deserved blame. One who is blameworthy for their bad poetry, say, doesn’t deserve anything like hard treatment or sanction. They may deserve criticism of some sort, and such criticism may affect them negatively, but whatever they deserve in light of their responsibility for their performance falls well short of anything like a sanction. As the saying goes, however, one philosopher’s modus ponens is another’s modus tollens. Perhaps the need to justify hard treatment is a reason to think I’m wrong about the basic responsibility relation. Alternatively, one might think that even if I’m right about basic responsibility, the significance of the desert requirement concerns a stronger or more robust notion of responsibility, one connected to these harsher responses. Such an opponent might complain that rather than engaging with the important role of desert, I’m changing the subject. They might insist: Our main concern with moral responsibility, after all, has been to justify certain practices in the face of potential threats. Consider the traditional worries about the compatibility of responsibility with determinism or the threat of forms of moral luck.²⁴ Both worries are motivated by the thought that we can only justify particular reactions, like strong emotions of anger or resentment, or retributive practices, if they are properly deserved. So, even if the basically blameworthy merit

²³ Compare Shoemaker 2015: “My hunch is that desert has been thought to be crucial for responsibility primarily because of the close and necessary association that has been thought to obtain between responsibility and harsh treatment” (222). ²⁴ For two prominent examples, see Pereboom 2014 and Levy 2011. As a reminder, I continue to remain neutral regarding the compatibility question here, but I return to consider it directly in the Conclusion.

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a certain sort of negative appraisal, this just doesn’t address the central concern of showing our anger or punishment to be deserved by the blameworthy.

I can only partially address this objection. I’m not interested in justifying our practices of punishment and I’ve argued that certain emotional responses like anger or resentment should not be equated with blame. So, if one demands that a satisfactory account of responsibility must do one or the other, I’ll simply disagree. To my mind, both are separate theoretical ambitions, whatever their virtues. That said, I do think the objection is mistaken, even on its own terms. Justifying hard treatment is not what’s important about the normative link between the blameworthy and blame, even restricted to the moral domain. First, hard treatment is not a necessary (nor desirable) part of blame. Second, hard treatment is not necessarily deserved by the (morally) blameworthy.

Blame as Sanction Many have thought that the right way to think about deserved blame is roughly on analogy with punishment. The thought is that to be blameworthy is to deserve a certain form of hard treatment, one that involves suffering or otherwise feels bad. To be fair, as we’ve noted previously, being blamed, at least in the form of many blaming behaviors, is often unpleasant. Feeling guilty is a condition one seeks to avoid. Given the tendency to equate blame with the broader blaming behaviors, it’s no surprise that many have thus equated blame with a form of suffering. For instance, Gary Watson (1996) observes that blame involves “the idea that agents deserve adverse treatment or ‘negative attitudes’ in response to their faulty conduct” (231).²⁵ Similarly, R. Jay Wallace (1994) organizes his approach around the central importance of the reactive attitudes as negative, punitive affects. And Christopher Bennett (2002) defends the idea that “it is non-contingently a good

²⁵ Watson cites Brandt 1958 and Glover 1970 as defending similar claims.

114   thing that those who have done wrong should undergo certain forms of suffering” (147).²⁶ There are various reasons to resist pictures like these. The first would be to remind ourselves of the diversity of blaming behaviors, none of which looks to be an essential or necessary form of blame. So even if blame sometimes involves adverse treatment of the blameworthy, it would be a mistake to equate blame with that treatment. But there are additional reasons to resist understanding blame as a sanction. One particularly striking difference between blame and punishment is that only the latter is measured in terms of receipts. If someone deserves punishment, the amount of punishment they deserve is sensitive to the amount they have received. If Amir deserves forty lashes for some transgression, and has already received ten, then the most he now deserves is thirty lashes.²⁷ In contrast, blame isn’t measured by what’s received by the blameworthy. In the first case, blame doesn’t typically come in discrete instances. Our blaming behaviors might be so discernible, but blame itself just isn’t the sort of thing that comes in particular episodes. We can certainly point to expressions of blame or special cases of censure as constituting instances of blame, but in most ordinary cases, whether as resentment or indignation, basic blame or whatever, these are attitudes that by their nature persist with vague boundaries and dimensions. If the blameworthy deserve, say, resentment, it would be implausible to suppose that they deserve a particular instance of resentment or even resentment of a particular strength and duration. Our ordinary practices reflect this. We often adopt the past tense only when the attitude is no longer held: “I really blamed you in high school for embarrassing me at ²⁶ See also O’Connor & Franklin 2021: “When an agent is morally responsible for doing something wrong, he is blameworthy: he deserves hard treatment marked by resentment and indignation and the actions these emotions dispose us toward, such as censure, rebuke, and ostracism.” Galen Strawson (1994) might take the strongest view: “true moral responsibility is responsibility of such a kind that, if we have it, then it makes sense . . . to suppose that it could be just to punish some of us with (eternal) torment in hell and reward others with (eternal) bliss in heaven” (9). ²⁷ I am here assuming that the ten lashes were delivered in such a way so as to count as punishment. Not all the ills that befall us necessary count as harsh treatment, which I take to imply action by another. To count as punishment, I take it that at a minimum the harsh treatment must be in response to the offense. I’m not here taking any substantive stand on the nature of punishment, but intend my remarks to concern very basic features of sanction as such.

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prom.” Contrast this with, “Yesterday, I blamed you for snubbing me at the party, and then this morning I blamed you for it again.” This just sounds wrong. One might insist that there are nonetheless certain limits to individual blame. At some point we can imagine someone demanding that a blamer “let it go” because they have “blamed too much.” But this won’t solve the problem. If blame were measured in terms of receipts, then another’s blame of the blameworthy would limit our license to blame them. If Amir is blameworthy, then he is worthy of blame. And not just from some people, but from all.²⁸ And not only is he worthy of blame from all current persons, but he would be worthy of blame from all persons which could exist in the universe, counterfactually. So imagine the world is just as it is except there are a billion more persons in it. Amir would be worthy of blame from each of them. But each’s share of the blame due, whatever that might be, would not be reduced proportionally. Now, we might think that the more people who can blame means that each individual is obligated to blame less. But this just isn’t plausible. If seven people are going to blame Amir, this doesn’t mean they get to blame him more than if twenty people are poised to blame. What is fitting of Amir’s transgression is determined by the nature of what he did and affects the attitudes held by those who would blame him for it. What Amir experiences himself, what he “receives,” may be relevant as a moral consideration bearing on our broader treatment of him, but it is not relevant to his blameworthiness. In other words, it is not relevant to whether and what he is worthy of.²⁹ (Consider the parallel here to fear: ²⁸ Some have argued that the blameworthy are worthy of blame from only some people, those with the “standing” to blame. I disagree (see King 2019, 2020). But even if the standing to blame were so restrictive, we could imagine cases in which more or fewer people with such standing were available, and yet, playing with the numbers wouldn’t affect the appropriateness of any individual’s blame. ²⁹ Andrew Khoury (2013) argues that blameworthiness can expire. Distinguishing between “synchronic” and “diachronic” blameworthiness, he holds that the conditions on whether one is still blameworthy for some past transgression are different from those that establish one’s blameworthiness for that transgression initially. To remain blameworthy, on his view, one must still have the objectionable quality of will that issued in the original wrongdoing. There are a number of reasons to reject Khoury’s view. Notice, first, that it won’t obviously apply to nonmoral cases (where there is no clear analogue for quality of will), and so it is ill-suited to the sort of explanatory project I’m concerned with. That aside, Khoury’s account (a) requires perdurable states to count as the relevant qualities of will over time, which is a controversial commitment; (b) seems better understood as tying blameworthiness to those qualities of will themselves, such

116   the hippo merits fear, but the fear so deserved is due to its dangerousness, and not dependent on who and how many are fearing it already.) More generally, appropriate suffering is also typically measured in terms of receipts. Recently, there have been a number of treatments of blameworthiness in terms of deserved guilt.³⁰ At least part of the motivation for such accounts seems to be the idea of justifying deserved suffering on the part of wrongdoers. And this might lead us to conclude that there are still some collective limits on deserved blame simply in virtue of its adverse effects. We sometimes say of the blameworthy that “they’ve suffered enough,” and this is given as some reason for us to withhold our blame or for them to stop feeling guilty. But it strikes me as far more sensible to understand such reasons as independent of one’s blameworthiness rather than as conditions on that very blameworthiness.³¹ Our reasons to be kinder or more understanding or more compassionate to one another need not constitute reasons to think they are any less deserving of blame, especially because such reasons are relevant to a much broader set of circumstances than those surrounding deserved blame. Our reasons to be kinder might apply to

that there is no blameworthiness for the wrongdoing per se; and, (c) generates numerous counterintuitive results, such as no blameworthiness for a wrong, even immediately, if one eliminated the relevant quality of will immediately, and that we should not blame those who have committed horrendous actions (e.g. genocide) for which they have not been held responsible so long as (for whatever reason) they no long harbor the offending quality of will. For these reasons, Khoury’s view seems to me mistaken. ³⁰ See e.g. Carlsson 2017; Clarke 2013, 2016; Portmore 2022; Tierney 2020. However, I don’t think that guilt is sufficiently general to help us understand basic blame. Though guilt may necessarily feel bad, not all instances in which self-blame is appropriate are instances in which guilt is appropriate. While perhaps Buckner may have appropriately felt guilty for losing the game, it strikes me as a stretch to say Tommy Wiseau ought to feel guilty for The Room. (See Shoemaker 2022 for further discussion on athletic self-blame.) I’m even tempted to think that there are cases of moral blameworthiness for which guilt is too strong a form of self-blame to take, but I won’t argue for that claim here. (Portmore 2022 appeals to a wider set of negative responses, including remorse and regret. Like guilt, I find these to be plausible further responses involving basic blame, and so part of what I’m calling our blaming behaviors. My reasons are in the text.) ³¹ As an alternative, Andreas Brekke Carlsson (2017) argues that a theory of blameworthiness should satisfy what he calls the practicality requirement: it should explain why it is that if someone is blameworthy then “it is pro tanto permissible to express blame” (95). I disagree. Frankly, it seems to me an open possibility that we are usually unjustified in expressing blame to others for independent moral reasons. Carlsson argues that without such a requirement, we lose the “moral urgency” of the debate on blameworthiness. But since any debate around basic blameworthiness is apt to be missing moral urgency in some instances (i.e. low stakes cases), I find the practicality requirement undermotivated.

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how we ought to treat those who have had a series of misfortunes befall them in just the same way as those who have made a mess of their artistic performance or those who have behaved rudely.³² Whatever the attractions, then, of connecting responsibility to sanctioning practices, it is noteworthy that blaming doesn’t really behave like a sanction. Blame may involve a certain amount of unpleasantness. After all, it may pain us to realize that others negatively appraise us in various ways, and it can certainly be painful to be subjected to another’s resentment or dissatisfaction. But being an unpleasant consequence, even one regularly connected to a kind of conduct, does not make it a sanction.³³ Consequently, that basic desert of basic blame is insufficient to justify leveling a kind of sanction on the blameworthy is hardly surprising, since blame is not a kind of sanction.

Reflections on Retributivism So far, I’ve argued that not only is hard treatment not a necessary feature of blame, conceiving of blame as a sanction gets something about blame importantly wrong. Still, there is a nagging thought that part of what was important about moral responsibility’s relation to desert in the first place was a connection to justifying certain forms of hard treatment. Thus, even if we shouldn’t consider blame as necessarily involving sanction, nonetheless justified sanction requires responsibility. Call this the retributive thought. Whatever blame’s nature, then, we might expect that responsibility will be of a sort that would be necessary to justifying hard treatment or punishment. However, I’m skeptical. We might begin by distinguishing two ways in which retributivism might characterize the relationship between responsibility and punishment. On what I’ll call weak retributivism, just punishment requires responsibility. For a person to deserve punishment for some wrongdoing, they must be ³² Compare Adams 1985: “We ought in general to be treated better than we deserve” (24). (My thanks to Rob Hughes for the pointer.) ³³ To borrow an apt example from Pamela Hieronymi (2018), a hangover is not a sanction for drinking too much.

118   blameworthy for that transgression. This is of course compatible with it turning out that no one in fact deserves punishment, even though they can be blameworthy for things. (Despite its modesty, weak retributivism is not trivial. It rules out possible consequentialist understandings of desert which might justify punishing the nonblameworthy under particular circumstances.) So, weak retributivism merely sets a constraint on just punishment. Punishment of those that aren’t morally responsible will never be deserved, but targeting only the morally responsible doesn’t guarantee that punishment will in fact be deserved. I call it “weak” because I take it to be as weak a retributivist commitment as is possible. Since all it does is state a necessary condition on deserved punishment but no more, it should be acceptable to virtually any form of retributivism. A stronger proposal, which I’ll (uncreatively) call strong retributivism, has it that blameworthiness is sufficient for deserving punishment. If someone is blameworthy for some wrongdoing, then they deserve punishment for it. Strong and weak retributivism obviously carry different commitments. Weak retributivism does not suggest there is any reason in favor of punishing the blameworthy, even pro tanto. It only gives a reason not to punish those that aren’t responsible: they don’t deserve it. Strong retributivism, by contrast, is meant to imply that we have a positive reason in favor of punishing the blameworthy because they are blameworthy. One might put the point by saying that according to strong retributivism, blameworthiness tells us something about deserved punishment, whereas on weak retributivism it does not.³⁴ Given these different commitments, a defender of strong retributivism incurs a burden not shared by those who accept only weak retributivism. To make strong retributivism compelling, a case must be made for why

³⁴ McKenna (2012) distinguishes between axiological and deontological interpretations of a desert requirement. On the axiological interpretation, desert means it would be good for the blameworthy to be punished; on the deontological, that the blameworthy ought to be punished. On either interpretation, however, being blameworthy generates a reason to punish, so both are stronger than what I’m calling weak retributivism, where not being blameworthy gives us reason not to punish, but being blameworthy gives us no reason to punish.

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blameworthiness alone is sufficient. To my knowledge, no such case has been made.³⁵ Moreover, I join others in thinking that strong retributivism is morally worrisome.³⁶ Looking at the long history of punishment, of the various forms of terrible treatment directed at those found guilty, it seems incredible that such treatment should turn out as deserved in view of any leading account of moral responsibility. The ills of incarceration, the paradigm of contemporary punishment, are all too well-documented at this point. So, quite apart from my defense of the basic responsibility relation, the case for thinking that deserving punishment follows from satisfaction of the conditions given by any of the leading theories in the literature looks undermotivated. In the end, I’m inclined to take seriously no more than weak retributivism, and weak retributivism does not commit us to the claim that the blameworthy deserve hard treatment. It only requires that those who do deserve hard treatment are in fact blameworthy, which is perfectly compatible with no one in fact deserving hard treatment at all. More importantly for my purposes, however, is the following lesson: nothing about desert of hard treatment follows from blameworthiness. While the blameworthy are obviously worthy of blame, and so, by my reckoning, basically deserve basic blame, hard treatment is not a necessary component of blame, and so being blameworthy does not render one deserving of hard treatment. There may still be things to say in support of the view that the blameworthy deserve hard treatment. Indeed, I’ve done little in this section to show that they do not. There may be all sorts of justified views about punishment that result in the conclusion that some blameworthy individuals deserve punishment. My contention remains, however, that their desert of hard treatment will not follow from their ³⁵ Karin Boxer (2013) claims that it seems “built into our ordinary understanding of moral responsibility that those who culpably engage in more serious forms of moral wrongdoing morally deserve not just blame, but punishment” (91). I concede that ordinary thinking involves retributive commitments, at least by some measure of “ordinary thinking.” But that doesn’t establish the retributive thought; that is, it doesn’t establish that it follows from being blameworthy that one deserves punishment. Moreover, even if it were part of our ordinary thinking, it isn’t clear that it is one that we should retain. As far as I can tell, those who are interested in the relation between desert and responsibility because of the role it plays in retributivist thinking also don’t argue for it directly. See e.g. Pereboom 2014; Caruso 2021; Strawson 2002. ³⁶ See e.g. McKenna 2012; Pereboom 2014; Scanlon 1998.

120   blameworthiness alone, but will run through punishment-specific (and likely contentious) principles, themselves constrained by additional moral principles concerning the respect owed to persons, considerations of dignity, the limits of intentional harming, etc. The upshot is that the question of how we should treat the blameworthy is a further, substantive matter. Their blameworthiness settles very little. And this result is indicative of a much broader truth. How we ought to treat anyone will be sensitive to a host of further considerations, doubly so when that treatment involves hostile or potentially harmful responses. Indeed, sometimes the best way to respond to the blameworthy will be decidedly non-harsh, even limited to cases of moral blameworthiness. As discussed previously, we may have greater reason to be kind or understanding in the face of wrongdoing, or the wrongs in question may be too minor to warrant any sort of harsh treatment. One reason, therefore, to keep hard treatment out of blame is that it allows us to fully embrace a range of potential duties we have to others without generating any commitments with respect to responsibility or blameworthiness. Such a position seems to me advantageous, and independently motivated.

What’s So Bad about Being Blameworthy? At least some of the insistence on a robust conception of desert seems to turn on views of blame that cast it in rather severe terms. If blame were a rather severe sort of response, then being blameworthy would be a rather bad thing, for it would make one worthy of this rather severe sort of response. In the preceding sections, I cast doubt on blame being such a bad response. Here I want to cast doubt on blameworthiness being such a bad thing. Ordinary experience reveals that everyone is blameworthy some of the time. And while there is certainly a temptation to disavow, disclaim, or deny our blameworthiness, such maneuvers are often otiose, as the stakes are simply not so severe. This is true even restricted to the moral domain. Someone disappoints their spouse, or hurt’s a friend’s feelings, or deceives someone for their own convenience. Such wrongs aren’t trivial,

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of course, but they also aren’t atrocities. They call for apologies and amends, to be sure, but to be blameworthy for such things does not make one a terrible person or some sort of moral monster. It doesn’t even make one a particularly bad person, so much as an ordinary person. This observation, though banal, is nonetheless significant for two reasons. First, the greater the stakes attached to being blameworthy, the more incentive we have to look for ways to deny being blameworthy. Most of us are motivated to avoid anticipated bad consequences, and the worse the consequences we anticipate, the greater the motivation. Of course, we do often try to excuse our bad behavior, or offer explanations, or deny, distract, or otherwise deflect. But arguably we shouldn’t. Most often, we should “take the hit,” and acknowledge our failings, our wrongdoing, our imperfections. This is a more manageable—and less personally disruptive—exercise the less pejorative being blameworthy is. Whether being blameworthy for something is itself a bad thing will depend largely on how significant the thing for which one is blameworthy is.³⁷ Second, the greater the stakes attached to being blameworthy, the more likely something exceedingly robust must be true of us in order to qualify as blameworthy. That is, if being blameworthy were a terrible thing, we might then expect that we ought to satisfy some particularly rigorous conditions in order to count; that it should be relatively easy, as it were, to avoid it. After all, it wouldn’t be fair to be eternally damned unless one satisfied some pretty robust conditions on one’s choice or action.³⁸ Moreover, taking the desert of blame to be particularly robust is also apt to increase the tendency to make blameworthiness count for far too much. We risk writing people off, condemning them, casting them into the category of “the blameworthy.” To the extent that we are prone to such generics and categorizations, we will be encouraged to use them in problematic ways. Doing so cuts us off from potentially productive ³⁷ We might also distinguish between how bad it is in fact and how bad one takes it to be. An individual may be devastated to be basically blameworthy for their chess error or flat singing or missed appointment; it is separate matter whether they ought to feel that way. ³⁸ Although see Clarke 2005 for the quite sensible point that even if we did satisfy such robust conditions, it doesn’t follow that we would deserve such extreme punishment.

122   exchanges with those who have wronged us, or failed in their duties, or even acted egregiously, in ways we are familiar with from our interactions with intimates.³⁹ What is the significance of being blameworthy? In my view, only that one merits the negative appraisal of basic blame. This is a meaningful fact about a person, and consequently non-trivial, but it needn’t involve further commitments regarding treatment or sanction or suffering. These further questions about desert are downstream of this simple fact, and their answers will have to be justified separately.

Going without Desert The foregoing might lead one to question the wisdom of the desert requirement with which we began. Given the objections and criticisms I’ve defended regarding its various permutations, one might wonder why we shouldn’t just abandon the desert requirement altogether.⁴⁰ Indeed, as I might reasonably be interpreted as providing a rather revisionary account of the desert involved in blameworthiness and praiseworthiness, even a sympathetic reader would be forgiven for questioning my desire to reconcile the minimalist elements of my theory with a commitment to desert. It’s worth remembering, however, that I take it as a basic dictum that the blameworthy are those worthy of blame (and, with the necessary substitutions, so too for praiseworthiness). It is that worthiness relation that will have to be explained by any suitable account. So, there’s no shaking some kind of normative requirement, and, to my mind, desert is the natural candidate. That said, desert is no less a complicated affair than blame (or responsibility), so I don’t suppose that the account I’ve offered here in addressing the desert requirement suffices as a comprehensive account of desert. I’ve just tried to make good on the suggestion that basic responsibility is responsibility “in the desert-entailing sense.”

³⁹ A commitment to fostering a relationship between the perpetrator and victim lies at the heart of restorative justice proposals. See Radzik & Murphy 2020 for discussion. ⁴⁰ As McKenna 2012 considers and Scanlon 1998 endorses.

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It strikes me as advantageous to do so, since many have thought desert lies at the heart of basic worries about the very possibility of responsibility in a world like ours. Taking those concerns seriously involves taking desert seriously, even if, in the final analysis, I don’t subscribe to every element of those concerns. Indeed, my aim here has been to levy independent objections against treating the desert involved too robustly or assuming a particular connection between blameworthiness and, say, sanction, rather than eliminate desert from responsibility altogether. Dissatisfied readers are nonetheless reminded that the account on offer here can always be interpreted in the minor mood, as a way of connecting basic responsibility to a notion of deservingness or merit, one that makes sense of how the basically blameworthy are worthy of basic blame. Of course, if one is insistent both that (a) desert is more robust than my proposal achieves and (b) isn’t necessary to an account of responsibility, then I’m happy to drop desert talk in favor of some other normative relation, to be suitably separated from desert. Nonetheless, that concession would be for the sake of argument, since I have argued here that the worthiness relation involved between those basically responsible and basic blame and praise is worthy of the name “desert.”⁴¹

Basic Desert and Praise Here I’m obliged to note the simplicity with which the view extends to deserved praise. The formula ought to be familiar by now. As basic praise is perfectly parallel to basic blame, it is deserved by the praiseworthy in just the same way. Basic praise represents its object as being responsible for something good. Basic praise fits the praiseworthy by being accurate in its appraisal. The positive appraisal of those that are responsible for ⁴¹ Some take the role of desert to be necessarily connected to justice. (See Clarke 2013; Macnamara 2020; and McKenna 2022 for discussion.) Depending on how we interpret the details, such a connection, if true, might force me to abandon developing the worthiness relation in terms of desert. If matters of justice can include the ways we regard others, however, then I see no reason not to take basic blameworthiness and praiseworthiness to be appropriately related to justice. I take no stand on the matter here, as I’ve no strong intuitions on how to best delimit the boundaries of justice. At least, no intuitions that are sufficiently uncorrupted by my thinking on responsibility, blameworthiness, and praiseworthiness!

124   doing good things is simply to appraise them as they are. The basic responsibility relation grounds assessment of the doer in light of the quality-making features of the doing. When the doing is good, those good-making features figure in their guided activity, grounding their praiseworthiness. Their desert of praise is simply being worthy of that positive appraisal. As I’ve noted, the overarching concern for deserved blame has often been connected to its perceived harmful effects, to justifying certain treatments. This is less obvious in the case of deserved praise, where the chief concern is often about identifying the right person, and so in getting things correct. One might express appreciation for the dish someone brought to a potluck only to be told, “It’s my spouse who deserves the credit. They made it.” Of course, part of our concern here may be in ensuring that the goods of praise, whatever they are, are not denied to those who deserve them. Now, as I’ve argued, the bulk of these goods should be attributed to praising behaviors rather than to praise itself. Likewise, whatever ills concern us about undeserved praise are likely to be similarly attached to our outward treatments, at least beyond the basic mistake of misappraisal. While there may be more to say about desert and praise, it tends to get short shrift in the responsibility literature. And as my view treats blameworthiness and praiseworthiness symmetrically, there isn’t much for me to say in further explicating the positive side of things.

Summing Up I take the putative connection between responsibility and desert seriously. But we should resist certain ways of understanding that relation. If all that is required is that the responsible deserve—in some basic sense— blame and praise, then I contend my notion of basic desert suffices. If one has something stronger in mind, then I contend that desert exceeds what the worthiness relation requires.

5 Beyond Basic Responsibility The basic account I’ve been defending is organized around the idea that human activity is fundamentally unified. We interact with the world, using our quite general mechanisms of agency, to bring things about. These are our doings. Our responsibility for them is grounded, first and foremost, in a kind control we exercise over our activities. That control, however, is had quite cheaply. We represent our situation, assess it against a backdrop of our goals and standing plans, initiate action schemes for the pursuit of those goals, all while monitoring our environment and courses of action, adjusting our conduct accordingly. Our control results from the interaction of these elements in dynamic and flexible activity. I’ve also argued that the mechanisms of basic agency are sufficient for basic responsibility. The parallelism between moral and non-moral cases of responsibility (and undermined responsibility) supports a basic responsibility relation, tying doers to their doings, such that the former can be evaluated by the latter’s lights. We do things, those performances are subject to evaluation by certain standards, and those standards yield positive and negative verdicts of our performances. When we are responsible for them, those verdicts ground positive and negative evaluations of the performer. Thus, we evaluate agents in light of the positive and negative qualities of their doings across a wide range of human activities, and the positive evaluations reflect positively, while the negative evaluations reflect negatively. Toward the end of Chapter 2, I introduced some ideas regarding the ways in which basic responsibility connects to familiar themes regarding responsibility. I left those ideas rather unspecified, however, promising to return to particular elements and potential worries later on. The primary aim of this chapter is to develop those ideas and speak more directly in defense of the rather blithe assertions I made regarding the ways in Simply Responsible: Basic Blame, Scant Praise, and Minimal Agency. Matt King, Oxford University Press. © Matt King 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192883599.003.0006

126   which our responsible doings are up to us and indicative of our evaluative stances. Before proceeding, however, I want to revisit a distinction I set aside in the Introduction, and say something about how my approach to responsibility contrasts with the popular landscape of extant views.

Accounting for Different Types of Responsibility Many, perhaps most, treatments of responsibility begin by identifying their target notion of responsibility. I’ve been operating somewhat in reverse, allowing the notion of responsibility to emerge out of the phenomena. I gave a methodological justification for this approach in the Introduction, arguing that I didn’t want to presume there were multiple kinds or senses of responsibility, as is fashionable these days.¹ Now that the basic theory has been laid out, however, it’s worth returning to the question of just what it is a theory of, especially as it may be prone to misinterpretation. To explain, we must first begin with the common distinction drawn in the literature between attributability and accountability. The source of this oft-cited distinction is Gary Watson’s discussion in “Two Faces of Responsibility” (1996/2004). There, he notes that one idea of responsibility concerns whether or not some bit of behavior is properly yours, what he calls responsibility as attributability.² As Dana Nelkin (2020) helpfully summarizes, “one is responsible in the attributability sense if one’s actions reflect one’s having adopted an end, one’s having committed oneself to a certain conception of value. To blame someone in this sense is to attribute a moral fault to an agent” (206; citing Watson 2004: 266). This sort of responsibility has to do with our relation to our conduct, and, perhaps, what it reveals about our values or character. In contrast, a different face of responsibility has to do with holding each other to account, where we “demand (require) certain conduct from ¹ See especially discussions in Fischer & Tognazzini 2011; Shoemaker 2011, 2015; Smith 2012a; Talbert 2019; Tognazzini & Coates 2021; and, importantly, Watson 1996/2004. ² My aim, however, is not Watson interpretation. I’m less concerned with interpreting the distinction as I am explaining why my view ignores it.

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one another and respond adversely to one another’s failures to comply with these demands” (Watson 2004: 262). This he calls responsibility as accountability. This distinction is so commonly appealed to by theorists working on moral responsibility that it has become almost a dogma.³ It is usually drawn with two effects. First, to signal the author’s targeted interest in addressing accountability. Second, to diminish attributability as less central, serious, or demanding.⁴ It is tempting to treat the theory of basic responsibility I’ve offered as concerning attributability. It links agents to things they’ve done such that they can be appraised by the lights of that thing. It would be natural to say that the basic responsibility relation concerns attributing objects to agents for the purposes of evaluation. If that description is all mere words, then no harm, no foul. But I think it is a mistake to label my theory as one of attributability in contrast to accountability.⁵ To see why, we need to consider the proposed distinction more carefully. To begin, it is not at all clear just why the supposed distinction holds. For example, it remains opaque just why accountability doesn’t also involve “attributing a moral fault to an agent.” After all, it appears to be a moral fault to, say, freely violate a moral obligation. Often those contrasting accountability from attributability imply that attributability primarily concerns aretaic assessments: attributing virtues or vices to the agent. But this surely over-denotes. The view of basic responsibility I have defended here is certainly concerned with attributing faults and excellences to agents, but it doesn’t target assessments of character. It is concerned with the doings that are attributable to an agent.⁶ Nor does accountability avoid aretaic attributions. One who is accountable for ³ Autobiographically, I’ve had papers rejected on the basis that they “ignore” Watson’s distinction in the sense of not taking it as true. ⁴ To be fair, this is not univocally the case. But the relative popularity of accounts of accountability over attributability suggests at least a sociological conclusion regarding their apparent relative centrality. A notable exception is Shoemaker 2015, who takes both faces (and a third one, answerability) to be distinct and, as far as I can tell, equally central. See also Smith 2012a and 2015, who, like me, rejects pluralism regarding responsibility, though our own views otherwise diverge. Nonetheless, the similarity in what follows should be evident. ⁵ Some theorists who have been described as “attributionists” explicitly reject that they are giving theories of “responsibility-as-attributability.” See Talbert 2019 for discussion. ⁶ See below for discussion of character.

128   disrespecting another has shown themselves to be disrespectful (in that instance). That looks like a moral fault to me. We might allow for such overlap but think accountability goes further or requires more than attributability. As in the quoted passage from Watson, theorists often pair accountability with the notion of demands. But this doesn’t seem to draw the needed distinction either. At least, when we attribute a fault to another it doesn’t stretch usage to imagine we are requiring something. Anytime one’s conduct is subject to evaluative standards there is a sensible notion of requirement in play such that should you fail to meet the standards you will be appropriately—that is to say, negatively—evaluated. To play chess well requires certain moves; to paint a beautiful picture requires certain brushstrokes; to be kind requires certain choices. So the notion of a demand or requirement, as such, doesn’t cleave the two apart.⁷ Connecting those requirements to adverse treatment also won’t give us greater separation. One who has a moral fault attributed to them can surely be liable to certain adverse treatment. While I have been critical of tying any notion of blameworthiness specifically to treatment, those arguments were independent of categorizing kinds of responsibility. Indeed, it seems to me that an unkind person is as liable to harsh treatment as one who has failed to accord another the respect that is due to them. Moreover, if liability to hard treatment is required of accountability alone, then a view of responsibility that was framed in terms of the demands we make of each other, but eschewed liability to hard treatment, would thereby not qualify as an account of accountability. But it would certainly be an account of responsibility. So certain interpretations of the proposed distinction risk ignoring viable theoretical options.

⁷ We might note a difference in moral requirements: we require people to be kind, but we aren’t required to play chess well or paint beautifully. But it isn’t clear precisely how moral norms differ from non-moral ones, and both may be equally inescapable (cf. Foot 1972). It is no doubt true that, if you don’t care about being a good painter, the norms of good painting need not have much practical significance for you. But likewise, if you don’t care about being a good person, it isn’t clear why those norms will have much practical significance for you either. I take no stand on questions of normative motivation here. I’ll simply note that on my view, whether or not you care about the relevant norms, their application, and their verdicts, remain. For an interesting discussion of aesthetic obligation generally, see Kubala 2020.

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There may be ways to massage the elements of the distinction to mitigate the overlap. For instance, we might say that at most attributability cases involve the standards making the demands rather than us. We might reinforce the details of accountability with elements of a contractualist ethical framework, to give us a more particularized notion of the relevant demands.⁸ But notice now that this way of drawing out the distinction is by no means theory neutral. It is somewhat methodologically suspect to identify your targeted notion of responsibility by appeal to a well-worked (and controversial) moral theory. At the very least, a view that doesn’t invoke the vaunted distinction between attributability and accountability does not seem any worse the wear for the omission. Naturally, the above cannot serve as an objection to any independent theory of responsibility that implies, as a consequence of its structure, a distinction between attributability and accountability. And while I’m questioning the exhaustiveness of the proposed distinction, I’m not even objecting to a theory of responsibility pretheoretically selecting which of the two “faces” to theorize about. All I’m really proposing is that ignoring the distinction, as I have, is no drawback to the theory of basic responsibility. To my way of thinking, the most neutral way to draw the relevant distinction is as follows. Attributability gives us a responsibility relation with two places: A is responsible for x = x is attributable to A. The relevant object belongs to A in some sense. In this way, attributability implies a kind of relation between the agent and the object. In contrast, accountability gives us a three-place responsibility relation: A is responsible for x = A is accountable (to Y) for x. Accountability implies being held responsible by others, indicating an interpersonal dimension.⁹

⁸ Darwall (2006) and Scanlon (1998, 2008) make this explicit, but contractualist elements also appear in Wallace 1994. I’ll say a bit more about the interplay between my theory here and ethical theories in the Conclusion. ⁹ Though, of course, nothing in the schema rules out holding oneself accountable. These schemas are implied by Watson 1996/2004, though he develops the distinction beyond this meager schematic form. Notice, however, that the schema alone doesn’t come close to an intuitive picture connoted by the term “accountability.”

130   If we draw the distinction this way, however, it simply mirrors the distinction I drew in the Introduction between being responsible and being held responsible. I stated there that my interest was in examining what it is and what it takes to be responsible for the things we do. But that doesn’t mean that I’ve ignored the elements of holding others responsible. Indeed, it strikes me that one clear way of holding another responsible is by blaming them by means of blaming behaviors. By that measure, I’ve defended an account of being responsible that bears on at least certain elements of holding others responsible.¹⁰ Indeed, I take the most fundamental element of justifying instances of holding others responsible to be that they are, in fact, responsible for the relevant object (as a two-place relation). That is to say, the most basic objection one can have to being appropriately held responsible for something is that one is not in fact responsible for that thing. Importantly, however, it isn’t the only objection. As I noted in the Introduction, there are legitimate reasons against holding someone responsible that plausibly have nothing at all to do with whether the agent is in fact responsible. In contrast, it seems that any reason that bears on whether an agent is responsible consequently bears on the appropriateness of holding her responsible. This way of understanding the principal distinction has important implications. It is tempting to think that, if there are different faces of responsibility, there are multiple kinds of blame corresponding to each face: so, for instance, there is attributability-blame and accountabilityblame.¹¹ But this won’t do on my neutral interpretation of the distinction. Attributability-blame couldn’t then be a way of holding another responsible, for that would make it a part of accountability, by way of the

¹⁰ Whether or not basic blame by itself is a way of holding another responsible is less clear to me, since, principally, our interest in holding others responsible typically extends toward overt treatment, rather than adopting a particular stance toward them. The only thing that hangs on this question here is the degree to which my theory of basic responsibility addresses the notion of holding responsible directly. ¹¹ And, perhaps, likewise for praise. Shoemaker 2015 argues that different responses are appropriate to different elements of responsible agency (character, judgment, and regard), which each correspond to a different type of responsibility (attributability, answerability, and accountability). While he never claims that the negative responses are forms of blame, it would be natural to treat them as such, as they involve things like disdain, disapproval, and resentment. The general point holds regardless of whether Shoemaker’s view exemplifies is.

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schematic distinction above (i.e. in virtue of requiring a three-place relation). And if one insisted that accountability is just one way of holding others responsible (in order to accommodate attributabilityblame), contrary to the schematic, then more needs to be said in defense of accountability as a kind of responsibility, rather than a consequence of it.¹² Moreover, as I indicated previously, holding responsible is at best an imperfect designation, for it tends to connote the negative side of things (much as the term “accountability” does). Recall the strangeness of saying that by commending someone we are thereby holding them responsible (much less accountable). Of course, in commending them we are surely taking them to be responsible, so we could simply stipulate that this is all we mean by “holding responsible.” This strikes me as a more acceptable stipulation, however, than making the same move with “accountable.” Notice, as well, that a perfectly legitimate sense of accountability seems compatible with the absence of basic desert. A parent can be accountable for the actions of their child, or a superior for the actions of their subordinates, even if, by hypothesis, they do not satisfy any ordinary conditions on (moral) responsibility for that conduct. Obviously, we could restrict the relevant theoretical notion of accountability to avoid this result, but that would seemingly only reinforce its stipulative nature. For these reasons, I prefer the distinction between being responsible and being held responsible.¹³ The former has to do with being related to an object such that you are evaluable per the qualities of that object. The latter has to do with further responses that depend on being so ¹² Two further clarificatory comments. First, some might think that Watson already argued for the two faces of responsibility. But my reading of the paper suggests he’s more interested in articulating the two faces than arguing for their grounds. If I’m right, then my comments here can be taken as indicating that I simply reject the two faces as undermotivated. See Smith 2015 for an excellent discussion of the two cases Watson takes to support the distinction (110–16). I broadly agree with her assessments. A second widely cited potential source of such an argument is Shoemaker 2011 and 2015. But, so far as I can tell, Shoemaker’s methodology relies more on the characteristic responses with which he’s interested, and the categories he appeals to could be treated entirely provisionally without his overall theory changing. I’m not familiar with any sustained argument justifying the faces as such, or as most central or exhaustive. It is far more common to see the distinction invoked as a way of setting sights. ¹³ As a reminder, compare Smith 2007.

132   responsible. This won’t satisfy every reader, but it remains to my mind the most natural and neutral starting point. To be clear, I don’t fault anyone who wants to explore the notions associated with either “face” of responsibility, my critical commentary notwithstanding. I just think neither face has been sufficiently precisified, there are definite hurdles to doing so, and nothing significant is lost by proceeding with my simpler distinction. Indeed, precision on this score may not always be preferable, for it may undercut the grounds for treating potential responses as hanging together as a class.¹⁴ Despite some surface similarities, then, I resist the label “attributability theorist” because it misidentifies my project and its commitments.¹⁵ I’m a responsibility theorist, full stop. Nevertheless, for all I’ve said here, if my view fits into some other taxonomy under a different label without modifying the components or implying additional commitments, then I’ve no substantive objection.

The Really Real Self There is a long tradition that seeks to isolate the responsibility-grounding elements of a person. Call members of this broad approach real self views.¹⁶ The mechanism for isolating these elements varies among views, though typically it is framed in terms of a condition the motive

¹⁴ See Smith 2015: 104–5. ¹⁵ On the difficulties of characterizing the “attributionist” approach, see Talbert 2022. His discussion suggests an alternative way to understand the proposed distinction, which is to treat it as capturing a disagreement about what moral responsibility requires. He proposes understanding attributionism as an “austere” theory, in that it “gets by without positing much in the way of necessary conditions on moral responsibility” (54). By that measure, my minimalist view might seem similar. But Talbert goes on to note that attributionists tend to reject that responsibility requires control in contrast to how I framed the relevance of basic agency. It is situations like this that make providing taxonomies of theories of responsibility so taxing, and at least part of the reason I avoided the issue. Note, however, that on this alternative interpretation, we still don’t end up with different kinds or senses or faces of responsibility. ¹⁶ There is no simple way of sorting the literature. Plausible candidates include Arpaly 2003; Arpaly & Schroeder 1999; Frankfurt 1971; Watson 1975. For a helpful discussion of the history of so-called real (or deep) self views, as well as the difficulties of taxonomy, see Sripada 2016. The initial characterization of the view is likely due to Wolf 1990. In any case, I’m not interested in the label, only the structure of the approach. As I’m not objecting to any particular accounts, there is little risk in being capacious in my classification.

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of one’s action must meet. Classically, philosophers have argued for a kind of identification of one’s motive, whether by a separate attitude or process constituting endorsement, or because of its relation to one’s value judgments.¹⁷ Others have appealed to the degree to which a motive is well-integrated in one’s overall psychology.¹⁸ Alternatively, one might go further, requiring a more agentially demanding process, like rational deliberation. What unifies the overall approach is the idea that there is some subset of an agent’s psychological features that represent the person’s “real” self and that one’s responsibility is limited to those actions that express or reveal that real self. I have followed in a similar vein, speaking of the connection between those doings we are basically responsible for and our evaluative stances. Our action architectures reflect our take on what matters, through the considerations that shape our plans and around which we direct and adjust our activities. For example, suppose Antoine is part of a recently formed study group for his philosophy class. He finds that he enjoys spending time with another group member, Omar.¹⁹ Study group is more fun when Omar is there. Antoine finds options that will involve Omar more attractive, and he is led to inviting Omar to hang out in other contexts. Antoine likes spending time with Omar, wants things to go well for Omar, and tends toward thinking about Omar and orienting at least part of his actions with Omar in mind. Whether the caring here is friendly or romantic will depend on further details, but the important idea is that Antoine’s activities, including not just what choices he considers or actions he performs, but also how he assesses certain arrangements, what features and thoughts he attends to, and the general shape of his deliberations, now reflect a pattern in relation to Omar. Omar (and, by extension, features associated with Omar) figures into Antoine’s activities in distinctive ways.

¹⁷ See Frankfurt 1971 for the former and Watson 1975 for the latter. ¹⁸ See Arpaly & Schroeder 1999. Holly Smith (2011) opts for a similar tack, in which “[t]o blame someone is to negatively evaluate that person’s whole motivational structure insofar as it bears on the choice” (134) and that our degree of responsibility from some action or choice is a function of how well it reflects our “full moral personality” (145). ¹⁹ Example adapted from Sripada 2016. He defends what he calls a “care”-based approach, to which I’m sympathetic, though the details here are quite different than what he develops. For further helpful discussion, see also Brownstein 2018, ch. 4; Shoemaker 2003.

134   It is quite plausible to say that Antoine cares about Omar—that he matters to him. In this summary of the situation, my view is compatible with standard real self and care-based approaches. Where I differ is in how I understand the relevant nature of the care involved. Typically, real self views take the self to be explanatorily prior to one’s responsible actions. In my view, our real self is not revealed in responsible action, but constructed out of it. Consequently, the way in which responsible action expresses the real self is through a kind of determinative or constitutive mechanism.²⁰ What’s interesting about most discussions of real self views is the confidence with which the agent’s cares and motivations are described. While there can be no objections to stipulated cases as such, I find the surety psychologically dubious. A more plausible picture has us as a whir of psychological processes involving a cocktail of motivations, cares, values, beliefs, etc., all interacting in various ways as we navigate the world.²¹ When Antoine decides to purchase tickets for Omar’s acapella group’s performance, it is easy to explain that decision in terms of Antoine’s care for Omar.²² After all, he doesn’t particularly like acapella, the show conflicts with a basketball game he would normally watch, and he’s now out $10. Given these costs, surely it is the fact that Antoine likes Omar that explains his decision.²³ Granted. But this doesn’t establish that his care for Omar is doing independent work in explaining his decision. It is true that our responsible activities reflect our take on what matters, what we could call our cares. The relevant notion of care here, however, is extraordinarily ²⁰ I find the language of the “real self” to be unfortunately metaphorical, as it might suggest a kind of homuncular self “inside” my person, the thing which is the proper source of my actions and agency. This is not a necessary feature of a real self view, of course. But recall that a guiding idea of my project is that we blame and praise each other as biological humans with minds of a certain sort, who are things in the world. ²¹ To some extent, this is in line with Chandra Sripada’s (2016) presentation of the real self, especially his mosaic, impure, and narrow refinements (1225–7). I’ve been influenced by his discussion. We seem to disagree chiefly about the explanatory priority of cares and the real self. He appeals to them in order to explain action, whereas I understand them as by-products of action. My reasons are in the text. ²² I went to the University of Virginia, which had an outsized acapella presence (and, by all accounts, still does). My experience, which was only slightly scarring, suggests that caring about a group member best explains purchasing a ticket to a performance. ²³ In the language of action theorists, his care for Omar can rationalize his decision by providing both justified support and an explanation.

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permissive. Taking something as mattering need not be some separate attitude or stance we uncover, but rather can be reflected in the very structure of the activities we undertake. Thus, I don’t embrace every technical use of care in the literature. For instance, Chandra Sripada (2016) characterizes cares as involving “a complex syndrome of motivational, commitmental, evaluative, and affective dispositions” (1211). Among other things, this requires cares to be root motivations, helping to explain other motivations a person has. In contrast, I’m suggesting here that our cares are instantiated occurrently in the structure of our activities. Our goals clearly reflect something we care about, as we’re targeting some state of affairs or object with our action. But when we aim at some goal, we not only initiate an action scheme to move us towards achieving that aim, we also have to sustain that activity in the face of competing pressures for our attention.²⁴ Our degree of care, its magnitude and shape, comes from how our activities are structured and unfold. Thus, our actions aren’t just evidence for what matters to us; they partially constitute it. It is through our activities, the selection of options, the direction of our attention, and the guidance we exhibit that our preferences, priorities, and cares are composed. Thus, our basically responsible action is, arguably, indirectly determinative of what we care about and how. Nothing so far is meant to object to established views. For all I’ve said, there could be independent attitudes answering to the name “cares.” My point is that there needn’t be. Indeed, my view is ecumenical in the sense that it does not require such independent states. Caring about hockey involves nothing more than having considerations relevant to hockey play particular roles in how one organizes their activities. Thus, my view is that the real self just is the self. There is no privileged subset of psychological states. In short, we are what we do.²⁵ ²⁴ Those in successful long-term partnerships may find familiar the idea that sustaining the relationship is an activity, one that benefits from (if not requires) constant recommitment. ²⁵ Shoemaker 2015 defends what he calls the “Ecumenical Deep Self” (47–50), which holds that the deep self is reflected by both non-cognitive cares and cognitive evaluative judgments. His view is thus ecumenical with respect to the two most popular strands of theorizing about the deep self. Though I have adopted the language of cares, I remain monistic about the relevant psychological elements, insofar as there is no need to distinguish them for the purposes of responsibility. See below for additional discussion on evaluating attitudes.

136   This position is in one sense rather permissive, and in another sense quite strict. It is permissive in that no psychological element needs to pass any special test to be legitimately included in the real self. But it is also strict, since no psychological element escapes being included, and so one is, as it were, vulnerable to having elements included that one rejects or otherwise wishes weren’t operative. This strictness means that there are no motivations that are inappropriate for grounding responsibility. This might raise some concerns. One concern is weak-willed actions, in which one acts on a motivation that one deems ought not to move one. In such cases, it is natural to suppose that what I do akratically²⁶ does not really reflect my take on what matters, that my evaluative stance is better captured by my reflective judgments, endorsements, or those elements better integrated within my psychology. Relatedly, so-called “out of character” actions, in which one acts on a motivation that stands in sharp contrast to their usual tendencies or traits, seemingly stand in contrast to my considered judgments about what matters. After all, in many such cases I immediately retract the action or otherwise seek to distance myself from it. (Think of the case where, tired after a long day at work, I snap at my spouse.)²⁷ Neither sort of case, however, is a clear-cut case of non-responsibility, of course. So I am not alone in thinking that we can still be responsible for akratic and out-of-character action. For instance, real self views that focus on an integrative mechanism often stress that such actions reveal something about our real selves, even if they are only partially revelatory.²⁸ Moreover, even on simple reflection it is far from obvious that an action’s being weak-willed or out of character counts as an excuse. Should I snap at my spouse, my reaction is to apologize. While I might cite my unusually stressful day as an explanation for my frustration, this is more to signal that I am not otherwise angry or upset with her, and to ²⁶ Some might wish to distinguish weak-willed action from akratic action. I have no stake in such disputes, and so use the terms interchangeably. Readers for whom this convention offends are invited to make the relevant substitution to fit their preferences. ²⁷ You’ll have to take my word that such an action would be out of character for me. ²⁸ See e.g. Sripada 2016 for further discussion.

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clearly characterize the outburst as abnormal. Similarly, many an akratic action produces legitimate guilt rather than regret.²⁹ If I fail to show up for an important meeting because I was akratically down a YouTube rabbit hole, I owe those I’ve inconvenienced an apology. I can hardly claim my own motivational weakness was a mitigating factor. Consequently, I conclude that we are responsible for our activities regardless of the motivations that figure into them. To some, this may sound absurd. I’m nevertheless confident of this conclusion because of how little motivation matters for non-moral doings. It doesn’t matter why Ramona wants to compose a riff that sounds a particular way. All that is relevant is whether it turned out the way it did thanks to her appropriately guided activities. That she wants the riff to sound good won’t affect whether it is good, and thus whether she is praiseworthy for it. At least, her motivations won’t matter to her responsibility for the riff. They could, of course, be relevant in other ways (e.g. if she’s motivated to construct a cool riff to embarrass a rival). Naturally, to the extent that our motivations are relevant to our goals they will be relevant to what we are responsible for. But as our goals do not themselves determine what we are responsible for, motivational relevance is severely limited. Similarly, akratic and out-of-character performances in athletic or scholastic settings don’t strike me as in the least bit exculpatory.³⁰ A stalwart defender who puts in an uncharacteristically lazy shift is still rightfully appraised accordingly. That it was an uncommon showing is relevant perhaps to our long-term or full range assessments of the player,³¹ but that need not mitigate the coach’s ire (or disappointment) on the bench. That an otherwise exemplary student performs poorly on an exam might lead us to inquire about their well-being, to look for

²⁹ I’m using these labels loosely to indicate stances we might take to the unfortunate outcomes of our activities. I’m treating “guilt” as implying culpability in a way that “regret” does not. ³⁰ It could be that weakness of will is always seen as something of a moral failing, but I’m not sure. One who doesn’t practice their instrument despite thinking that it would be best to do so suffers a kind of weakness of will, but I see no moral criticism here. ³¹ See my discussion of character below for related comments.

138   special explanations for such an aberrant display, without thereby leading us to except the grade.³² These initial comments are unlikely to impress on their own. If I’ve been successful elsewhere in developing my general view of responsibility, then the diminished relevance of motivation in non-moral matters can be viewed as evidence in support of its diminished relevance to basic responsibility generally. The same constraints we found in delineating the conditions on basic blame and basic desert apply here as well. But I recognize that if one is seeking places in which we might find a wedge between moral and non-moral responsibility, the idea that motivation has diminished relevance in non-moral cases will arguably carry little comparative weight. So, let’s examine a moral example as well. Suppose a Calculating Benefactor donates a large sum of money to a local charitable organization, allowing them to help many people in significant ways. This is a good thing, to be sure. But suppose that his goal in donating the money was principally to garner some positive press coverage and media exposure to aid his forthcoming business venture. Since he gave the aid in service of selfish goals, it might seem as though he’s not praiseworthy for doing so. Indeed, we might think that all that matters in such a case is the agent’s reasons for lending aid.³³ But notice that I’ve restricted my view here to responsibility, and not praiseworthiness. Even those who think we are only praiseworthy when we are motivated in the right ways must concede that we are still responsible when we act on corrupted motivation. So, the first point to observe is that the Calculating Benefactor is surely responsible for donating the money, regardless of his motivation for doing so.

³² Of course, we might discount the grade if we determine that it will have an outsized effect on the student’s final grade, thus distorting the function the final grade is to play as an overall assessment of the student’s performance in class. But such an exception has more to do with the way in which final grades function than the student’s responsibility for their performance on the exam. ³³ This idea is usually traced back to Kant’s discussion of the honest shopkeeper, and recent discussions are usually framed around the “moral worth” of one’s action: one is only praiseworthy for doing the right thing if done for the right reason. For discussion, see Arpaly 2002; Johnson King 2020; Markovits 2010; Singh 2020.

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Still, there is the nagging suspicion that he is to be criticized for his donation, rather than lauded. Recall that the basic responsibility relation is relatively promiscuous. We are basically responsible for all those doings (and their elements) that we foresee as (accurately represented) potential outcomes. So, whenever someone acts, there are plausibly lots of things they are basically responsible for.³⁴ Ramona can be basically responsible for the riff ’s sonic structure, its interesting sliding moves, and her sloppy picking, all at the same time. As described, there are at least a few things that Calculating Benefactor is basically responsible for. First, he acted in pursuit of the goal of supporting his business venture. So, one of the things he’s responsible for is working toward the success of a private enterprise that would, he hopes, make him money. That’s his primary goal, since it organizes his various actions, including making the donation. But that means that the second thing he’s basically responsible for is the donation. After all, it isn’t just that he foresees that supporting the business venture will help other people, he believes that the donation’s helpfulness will assist in getting positive press coverage. Indeed, he selects the specific strategy he does in part precisely because of its helpfulness. He helps them knowingly. It is also plausible, however, that the Calculating Benefactor is basically responsible for more. For instance, it is plausible that he is responsible for deceiving others about his donation. If he were transparent about his principal goal, the press coverage would no longer be good. And this feature isn’t particularly distinctive of his situation. In cases where our motivations for doing good things are less than forthright it is often also the case that we are keen to keep those motivations secret. My view leaves unspecified how the relevant moral standards evaluate all of these doings, but a plausible account would have the donation turn out positive but the deception turn out negative. It follows from the structure of my view, on such a reading of the case, that Calculating Benefactor is basically praiseworthy for helping others, but basically

³⁴ I hasten to note that arguably this result is not limited to my view of responsibility. Intuitively, we are plausibly responsible for a great many things each time we are responsible for some particular action. I simply make this commonplace an explicit feature of my view.

140   blameworthy for his deceit (and, possibly, for his purely profit-driven ventures). This strikes me as correct. Consider the difference between Calculating Benefactor and Calculating Non-Benefactor. The latter calculates that the better route to supporting his upcoming venture is to leak some information about his competitors (even though collecting that information requires funds roughly equivalent to what Calculating Benefactor donated). Consequently, Calculating Non-Benefactor (as his title creatively implies) does not help anyone.³⁵ Surely, we ought to think slightly better of Calculating Benefactor than Calculating NonBenefactor. The former at least knowingly helped people. On some views, of course, Calculating Benefactor deserves no credit whatsoever for the donation, because they acted for the wrong reason.³⁶ It is difficult to adjudicate between this position and mine, in which they deserve some credit, but that credit might be outbalanced by their blameworthiness for other things. The matter is further complicated when we remember that on my view nothing about the responsibilityfacts (even the praiseworthy- and blameworthy-facts) settles how we ought to fully respond to Calculating Benefactor, apart from appraising him positively in light of the donation. This is compatible with our reasons favoring denouncing him for his conduct overall, and, indeed, downplaying whatever credit the donation ought to garner him. Intuitions that he doesn’t deserve credit because of his motivation could simply reflect a commitment to denying him credit for all practical purposes (e.g. that no further praising behaviors are warranted). In this way, thoughts that Calculating Benefactor “deserves no praise whatsoever” may function similar to claims like “there is no reason to go to the cinema tonight” because it is closed. If walking to the cinema would give us much needed exercise, then there is some reason to go, it is just that such reason is massively outweighed or otherwise excluded given our implicit practical interests.³⁷ I conclude these brief remarks on motivation with two points. First, as I noted above, human psychology is complicated, but I think that the

³⁵ Except perhaps the shareholders. ³⁶ See especially Arpaly 2002 and Markovits 2010. ³⁷ See Schroeder 2008 and Snedgar 2013 for discussion.

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self-determinative approach to the real self can accommodate this complexity in straightforward ways. It is easy enough to stipulate that the Calculating Benefactor only cares about profit, without caring at all about helping people. He nonetheless helps them knowingly. And helping them knowingly is enough, in my view, to be basically praiseworthy for doing so. This strikes me as a plausible, if not uncontestable, verdict to reach. Second, whatever may remain jarring about such a verdict can be smoothed somewhat by focusing on the distinction between being responsible and holding responsible. We no doubt have very good reasons to prioritize our critical reactions to Calculating Benefactor rather than our broader praising behaviors. Ethics, especially the interpersonal dynamics of our relations to others, is also a complicated affair. We should be wary of tidy verdicts with respect to how we ought to treat others. I stated at the outset that I would leave much of what complicates these interpersonal dynamics to separate theorizing. I remain committed to that exclusion here.

Building Character The self-determinative approach to the real self has other applications as well. In fact, it can help show how my theory of basic responsibility can explain our moral assessments of character, which isn’t obvious from the structure of the theory alone. Suppose I think you cruel. I am, seemingly, appraising you for your cruelty. It’d be natural as well to say that I’m holding you responsible for your cruelty. However, I think this is subtly mistaken. Consider a parallel case. Suppose I’m blameworthy for something I’ve done. Suppose I deceived someone else. Others might rightly hold me responsible for having done so. In such a case, I’m blameworthy for the deception, on my view, because I’m basically responsible for it and it is bad (i.e. negatively assessed by the relevant standards). Those who consider the case may also think me deceptive. There are two ways to understand such a thought. The first is in line with my selfdeterminative approach to the real self. It treats my deceptiveness as a

142   consequence of my being responsible for the deception. One who deceives is deceptive (in that instance). The other way to understand the thought is as imputing some more persisting property of me. We might develop the idea in different ways, but a common enough characterization would be to say that my being deceptive means that I’m disposed to deception or motivated towards it under a variety of circumstances. Thus, the second interpretation is stronger than the first, in that it suggests there’s something over and above my responsibility for the deceptive act involved: there’s a deeper deceptiveness. The parallel between underlying character traits and deeper selves is hopefully apparent. Just as I argued it is unnecessary to appeal to independent cares to explain action, I think it is unnecessary to commit to persisting traits, like deceptiveness and cruelty, that stand independent of our responsibility for particular deceptive and cruel doings. And if no such independent trait is imputed, then it is no longer clear what else we mean by imputing deceptiveness to a person over and above a claim of responsibility for deceptive things. So, here’s how I think we should understand these supposed aretaic appraisals.³⁸ To say that someone is deceptive or cruel is just to say they are responsible for deceptive or cruel things. On this understanding, one’s cruelty is not a separate object of responsibility, but rather a way of packaging a set of appraisals together. Nonetheless, it can make sense to say one is responsible for one’s character by making it the case that one has the character one has, by being responsible for acts of that type. I leave open just how many deceptive or cruel things are required before someone ought to be considered deceptive or cruel, respectively. One sensible option, to which I’m attracted, is that doing a deceptive or cruel thing makes one a bit deceptive or somewhat cruel, and whether we apply the thick term will depend on pragmatic factors like relevance. (It would also presumably matter just how deceptive or cruel that doing was.) A different option would be to require some sort of threshold be ³⁸ I say “supposed” since one interpretation of “aretaic” would make an appeal to existing character traits definitional of the term.

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reached before the label is satisfied. I leave open the details, as no doubt there are many other alternatives consistent with the general approach I’m outlining here. Granted, we might wonder what distinguishes the obviously cruel person from one who has acted cruelly only in this instance. We might suspect that it must be something about them, about their motivations or values, about the reasons they recognize or the way they respond to them, that explains why a given instance of cruelty can be considered a one-off for one individual but part of a pattern for another. If there’s a pattern of cruelty, after all, we should expect something to explain it. I agree that we will have to explain the regularity, but we needn’t postulate a separate object of responsibility in order to do so. The functioning of a system can be regular because of the regularity of its effects, without thereby imputing a further property, “regularity,” into the system. The description as “regular” just is shorthand for the regularity of effects.³⁹ Likewise, a person’s cruelty need not be a separate property of the person, existing independently, and manifested in particular actions. It is instead a reflection of having controlled their activities in ways that were cruel. In this way, character traits, like cruelty, should be understood as downstream of our activities of agents, as a kind of summary appraisal. An objector might point to what they perceive as a difference between assessing someone for their cruel action and assessing them for their cruelty itself. They may suggest that one who repeatedly acts cruelly demonstrates that they fail to have the proper regard for the pain of others (or whatever one takes to be characteristic of cruelty). But such observations are perfectly compatible with the interpretation I’m offering here. One who acts cruelly has demonstrated in so acting that they fail to have the proper regard for the pain of others. The cruelty can be, as it were, a feature of that action. We can retain the commonsense idea that there are cruel people without supposing that their cruelty is at all independent of their acting cruelly. Indeed, we can retain that ³⁹ For example, a well-running clock keeps regular time due to the interaction of its parts and their properties, but there need be no further property of regularity that is realized.

144   commonsense thought even while insisting that their cruelty is constituted by their activities. The objector may persist that the trait of cruelty must be independent of acting cruelly, because we can imagine a cruel person who nonetheless hasn’t ever acted cruelly. There are two things to say about such an invented case (as I suspect there are no actual persons like this). First, recall that I’ve characterized our activities rather broadly, to extend to quite a bit of mental management. So, the relevant example here would have to be a cruel person who nonetheless hasn’t engaged in any cruel doings—i.e. activities in which they do not give the pain of others its proper weight. This might not involve any outward treatments or outright actions, instead obtaining through, say, the way they take delight in the suffering of others or their apathy at another’s plight. As my view treats such activities in the same way as outward action, they would not support the objection. So, what is needed is someone who is supposedly cruel, despite the fact that they have never acted cruelly or engaged in any cruel activities. The second thing to say, then, is that once we have properly restricted the example in this way it strikes me as utterly mysterious just what such a person would even look like. We’d have to simply stipulate that they are disposed to such activities despite circumstances having never aligned to produce them. It seems to me sensible at this point to simply deny the case. There are no such individuals. More diplomatically, I’d contend that we should have greater confidence in my explanation that character appraisals are to be understood downstream of action than in the possibility that individuals such as these exist. After all, we first characterized the relevant disposition (or motivation) as being triggered under a variety of circumstances, so on the view that there is an independent trait involved, the fewer cruel things a person has done, the less likely it is that they are in fact cruel. And this is arguably what my interpretation predicts; one’s cruelty will be a function of one’s cruel acts, so the fewer cruel acts (or, more cumbersomely, the less cruel the responsible doings), the less cruel the individual is. It’s worth noting here that our characterological assessments do not appear restricted to the moral domain. When we generalize about a

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musical performer’s dull, insipid songs that nonetheless sell, we challenge their artistic integrity.⁴⁰ Being called a “sellout” might constitute a challenge to one’s artistic character and, yet, this does not seem a moral matter. Relatedly, discussions of athletes often appeal to the “intangibles” of their temperament: being “clutch,” having excessive “fortitude,” or bringing the best out of their teammates.⁴¹ As with the moral examples, it makes sense to say of these cases that the assessments can reflect a summary judgment about a range of responsible doings. A player is clutch because they have performed so well at important junctures. A sellout is such because of the instances in which they’ve acted contrary to the supposed ideals of their art. While I don’t presume that this ease of generalization is exclusive to my proposal here, it is achieved simply and straightforwardly. Importantly for my purposes, however, I do not need to fully defend my proposal to vindicate the basic responsibility relation. All I need is for this account of character to be compatible with our assessments of character. That is, the fact that we make appeals to character does not require us to endorse being independently responsible for character traits.⁴² Thus, the basic responsibility relation, relating doers to doings, remains the only relation needed. Just as the real self is constructed out of our responsible activities, so too is our character. We are, then, indirectly responsible for our characters (since character is a function of our responsible doings), even though we are not responsible for our character traits (since these are not independent objects). At least, this is a defensible view about character assessment, compatible with basic responsibility. ⁴⁰ Compare Dale Dorsey (2020) on the standards internal to baseball and the punk music scene. Nelkin 2020 quotes a review of the painting Tomorrow Forever, commissioned for the 1964 World’s Fair, and for years wrongly attributed to the painter Margaret Keane’s husband, Walter: “Mr Keane is the painter who enjoys international celebration for grinding out formula pictures of wide-eyed children of such appalling sentimentality that his product has become synonymous among critics with the very definition of tasteless hack work” (Canady 1964). ⁴¹ “Intangibles” designates a category of virtues players purportedly have that aren’t directly reflected in sport statistics. They are nonetheless often attributed of players. (Indeed, sport video games often score players on a range of such intangibles.) ⁴² A separate reason to favor my quasi-reductionist interpretation of character is that skeptical challenges to character traits get no foothold. See e.g. Doris 2002; Harman 2009. On my view, we can preserve character assessment even in the face of such challenges as they don’t depend on properties that might turn out to not exist.

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Check Your Attitude In the previous section, I argued that despite organizing my account primarily around doings, the basic responsibility relation can make good on assessments of character. I did so by proposing an alternative interpretation of such assessments. In this section, I propose a similar approach to assessing attitudes.⁴³ Upon inspection, it’s not obvious how to best characterize responsibility for our attitudes. Consider a possible paradigm: derogatory beliefs. A sexist or racist doesn’t just do sexist or racist things, they hold sexists and racist attitudes. To fix ideas, let’s consider the 1950s father who doesn’t afford his daughter the same opportunities or advantages that he does his son.⁴⁴ The thought here is that it is not just the unfair treatment for which he’s blameworthy, but the beliefs which figure in such treatment. His daughter might reasonably object to both his treatment of her and the lack of respect such treatment reflects. Indeed, the father might explain his decisions in terms of his sexist judgments, appealing to them as justificatory. To her friends, her mother, or just privately to herself, the daughter surely thinks badly of her father for his sexist attitudes (and so basically blames him). Much as with appraisal of character, I confess that I find it difficult to evaluate the claim that she holds him responsible for his sexist attitudes entirely divorced from any responsible doings. Consider, first, that independent of his attitudes, disrespecting his daughter is something he plausibly does. It seems to me to suffice to say that he’s blameworthy for that. I’m not sure what being blameworthy for the attitude of disrespect adds. Indeed, though it may seem a rather naïve observation, our principal data for his sexist attitudes comes from his doings, whether in thought or ⁴³ Shoemaker 2015 builds his view around attitude and character being two central categories of objects of responsibility. While I agree that there is a sense in which we assess others for their attitudes and characters, I deny that agents stand in the basic responsibility relation to such objects. ⁴⁴ An example borrowed from Rosen 2003. For related discussion on the wrongs of belief, see Basu 2019, which argues that “people wrong others in virtue of what they believe about them, and not just in virtue of what they do” (2498). My view here suggests that when we wrong others in virtue of what we believe about them this is in virtue of what we do.

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deed. We come to the conclusion that he disrespects his daughter, that he thinks she deserves differential treatment, based upon the things he says and does. It is because he appeals to certain claims in arguments with her, or denies her (but not her brother) certain benefits, or imposes special restrictions on her (but not her brother), that we infer he holds sexist attitudes. In short, we take him to have sexist attitudes because he does sexist things. (Additionally, though less observable, it is because he does things like consider her brother’s welfare in his decisions but not hers.) This is, in fact, the universal condition. We impute attitudes to agents, first and foremost, to explain what they do. If that’s right, then it strikes me as straightforwardly simpler to give priority to those doings—broadly construed as activities—rather than independently seek out and assess the attitudes.⁴⁵ After all, where is the sexist without sexist behavior? If we suspected that someone is sexist, but found no discriminatory or otherwise sexist conduct (broadly construed to include mental activities), we would have no grounds for retaining our suspicion.⁴⁶ Conversely, when we have lots of behavioral evidence of discriminatory practices, we often discount professions of innocence. At least sometimes, actions do speak louder than words, in that we take the non-verbal doings of others to be more telling than what they say they believe. Sometimes, it can even be more telling than what the agent themselves believes they believe. As I’ve argued above, when we are responsible, we illustrate through our activity those things we take to be important through the role the relevant considerations actually play in our activities. So, when the sexist father denies his daughter a benefit, or defends his decision by noting that she’s a girl, he is plausibly blameworthy for those doings. Moreover, once we bear in mind that our activities include mental activities like considering, endorsing, deliberating over, attending to, and the like, the question of whether he is separately responsible for sexist attitudes begins to look even more superfluous.⁴⁷

⁴⁵ This is in sharp contrast to Shoemaker 2015: esp. 47–9. ⁴⁶ Granted, we might have other reasons for our suspicion, like the fact that he seems to be especially guarded in his actions, or that he was raised in a community that is organized around sexist principles. ⁴⁷ To clarify, I’m not defending eliminativism about belief (though that’s compatible with what I say here). I’m only defending a kind of eliminativism about responsibility for attitudes.

148   Consequently, I propose that we are not separately responsible for our attitudes. At a minimum, we need not stand in the basic responsibility relation with respect to our attitudes to provide a perfectly adequate explanation of assessing people for their attitudes via their broader activities. Indeed, there is what I’d call a mechanical advantage to this occurrent approach. Much as with talk of real selves, searching for responsibility for a person’s attitudes requires fixing what their attitudes really are. In contrast, examining their doings privileges those representations that figured into their activity. This makes plain and entirely unpuzzling how a committed feminist could act misogynistically or a loving parent could neglect their child. It isn’t that they no longer believe in gender equality or their kid’s importance. We may have almost no reason to even reduce our confidence in those attributions. Instead, it reflects the simple fact that what actually guides our conduct can be misaligned with what we would like to have guide it.

The Limits of Authorship A theme has emerged in this chapter. I have been emphasizing the ways in which certain things are up to us, like the determination of our selves, but also the ways in which we are severely constrained. Though I suggested in the Introduction that agency and responsibility are associated with being the author of our stories, that was a rather crude metaphor. Authors can construct whatever worlds they like and have something close to unfettered control of the environment and circumstances. Our control is utterly fettered, limited and circumscribed in all manner of ways. The reality of these limitations is one element of what we might call our predicament of agency. Upon recognizing our situation, we can all too clearly see the ways in which we are hampered and constrained. Indeed, the classic problem of free will is a reflection of at least part of this predicament. We might yearn for a greater say over our situation, for more to be up to us, only to confront the given, that which lies outside of our control. A further element of this predicament concerns the ways in which our evaluative stances may diverge from our considered judgments about

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what they ought to be. What matters is not how we wish to be but how we are. Where these pictures differ may reveal additional points of disappointment or concern.⁴⁸ We may think less of ourselves for things we do precisely because of how being responsible for such things reflects on us. In other words, we may basically blame ourselves, funding additional blaming behaviors and negative emotional responses. Indeed, at the extreme, it remains possible that others could dictate just what it is that we’re responsible for, and, to that end, make it such that we come to merit the basic blame or praise that we do. Whether by incentive or more nefarious and invasive means, our real self, our moral (and non-moral) profile, is vulnerable to abuses by others. Severe manipulation and its ilk reflect the ability of others to make us do certain things, and thus, to be a certain way. Our predicament lies in the ways in which our powers of self-determination are fundamentally limited.⁴⁹ Nevertheless, our predicament is not hopeless. On the one hand, we can work toward being the way we wish to be. Recognizing that we aren’t as we would like to be can serve as the impetus for change, for us to adopt different goals, to enlist new forms of support, equipping additional apparatus to defend against various incursions, whether from within or without. What we succeed and fail in doing, how easily it is to meet our goals (whether moral or not), the degree to which we are able to develop our talents, these are not solely a function of our natural abilities or purely “internal” characteristics. They depend, crucially, on external affordances and constraints, on the ways in which our environment is structured. We have some control over that environment, and so we can amend that structure in advantageous ways. Nevertheless, as elsewhere this control is limited. Our agency is both empowered and restricted by our ecology.⁵⁰ ⁴⁸ Compare Arpaly & Schroeder 1999: “We agents are not our judgments, we are not our ideals for ourselves, we are not our values, we are not our univocal wishes; we are complex, divided, imperfectly rational creatures, and when we act, it is as complex, divided, imperfectly rational creatures that we do so. We are fragmented, perhaps, but we are not some one fragment. We are whole” (184–5; also quoted in Brownstein 2018: 134 n. 18). I broadly agree with (and am slightly jealous of) this wonderfully crafted passage. ⁴⁹ There are some who take the possibility of such manipulation to be a major threat to responsibility. I disagree. For my reasons, see King 2013 as well as some further discussion in the concluding chapter. ⁵⁰ See Vargas 2013 for especially relevant discussion.

150   On the other hand, to the extent that the predicament arises out of a tension between our selves and our view of our selves, we can work to ameliorate that tension through adjustments to how we view our selves. We can learn to accept our features, even negative features. We can respond with compassion and understanding to the frailties of others or to the ways in which they have themselves been victimized. We can note that, as it is a general predicament of agency, we are all in this together. As I’ve repeatedly emphasized, thinking badly of someone, in the sense of basic blame, does not settle how we ought to treat them, and it should not, therefore, be equated with thinking less of someone if that involves a diminishment of something like respect or regard. It may be that the typical response to the blameworthy, even the morally blameworthy, ought to come from a place of kindness. It might even be that we have good reason to forego blaming behaviors altogether. I take no stand on the details of these two self-improvement projects, or the extent to which each is warranted or advisable. The two paths I’ve sketched here point toward avenues of amelioration without promising full, or even partial, resolution. But I remain optimistic. Our predicament, while pervasive, is not beyond our reach to address, even if it remains in an important sense ineliminable.

What Lies Beyond There is much relevant to our responsibility practices that lies beyond my theory of basic responsibility. In particular, how we hold each other responsible is not settled by the facts that make us responsible, nor do our evaluative profiles exhaust the reasons bearing on how we ought to be treated. I’ve argued that some considerations make our blame or praise inappropriate by undermining an agent’s blameworthiness or praiseworthiness by disrupting the agent’s responsibility. Since the basic responsibility relation is severed in such cases, those agents cannot be worthy of blame or praise. Blaming or praising them, then, would get something importantly wrong. Such considerations are relevant to our practices of holding responsible because they bear directly on being responsible.

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However, there are also considerations relevant to our practices of holding others responsible that do not bear on being responsible. To take a simple example, that I am an unrepentant liar may affect my holding you responsible for lying, but it is entirely irrelevant to whether you are in fact responsible for lying.⁵¹ I have claimed that the only thing settled by an agent’s blameworthiness (or praiseworthiness) is that they basically deserve basic blame (or basic praise).⁵² I also suggested that to not basically blame the blameworthy involves a kind of error; a failure to appraise the person as they are. Nevertheless, this leaves open and indeterminate what additional responses may be warranted in the situation. A person’s blameworthiness does not settle, for instance, whether we ought to get angry with her, yell at her, deny her some good, inflict a harm on her, or even attend to her transgression. Indeed, many mitigations plausibly bear on our complicated practices of holding each other responsible without involving any amendment to the structure of responsibility. As I discussed in Chapters 3 and 4, what further responses are appropriate will depend on a much wider set of considerations than those relevant to her responsibility. Consider the question: Who should win the Grammy for album of the year? Let us suppose that the Grammys ought to be sensitive to something like artistic praiseworthiness.⁵³ It could be that there is an obvious best album from the year, and those who are basically responsible for it ⁵¹ For more on the appropriateness of hypocritical blame, see King 2019 and 2020, as well as Cohen 2006; Fritz & Miller 2018; Herstein 2017; Rossi 2018; Todd 2019; Wallace 2010. ⁵² In the remainder of the section, I’ll drop the constant parenthetical parallelisms, for ease of exposition. As elsewhere, my comments are intended to apply symmetrically with respect to both the negative and positive side of things, regardless of the valence of the particular claim or example. ⁵³ By one measure, this is not a trivial assumption, as arguably the Grammys exist not to reward merit but to promote the music industry. Any discussion of public awards or commendation is liable to run into complexities regarding the degree to which its domain is properly oriented toward praiseworthiness, and so whether the award measures merit or represents some other sort of claim (as when a plaintiff is awarded judgment in a tort suit). This complication arises not just for the Grammys, but for all awards bestowed by organizations, especially those that have financial stakes in the success of the industry with which they’re involved. Consider the following exchange from The Simpsons (“The Mansion Family,” Season 11, Episode 12): Homer: Oh, why won’t anyone give me an award? Lisa: You won a Grammy. Homer: I mean an award that’s worth something.

152   ought to win. But further factors could be relevant to the award beyond the responsibility-facts. Perhaps the artist with the best album won the award last year, or has been winning it a lot, and we want to promote better diversity among the winners. Perhaps an album had a particularly relevant and important message, so, despite being in some ways aesthetically inferior to other candidates, there are significant reasons to recognize it in this way publicly. How we settle these questions is independent of who is most praiseworthy for their musical album.⁵⁴ Because the question of recognizing individuals with Grammys is sensitive to a larger set of considerations, its correct answer is more complicated. I think there are instructive lessons to be found here. The more complicated the practice which we examine and the more it intersects with broader moral themes, the more complicated the set of relevant considerations we’re apt to find. Consider the mitigating force of duress. Our responses will plausibly depend on a range of factors: Did they pick the least bad option? Were they to some extent overwhelmed by the threat? Did they have any reasonable alternatives to compliance? Did they resist? How serious was the threat? These questions pick out a set of possible considerations that can provide good reasons not to target a coerced agent with certain responses without concluding that they are less responsible (or even less basically blameworthy) as a result. For instance, we might conclude in a given case that it would be unfair to get angry at a coerced agent given that it would be unreasonable to expect them to have refused. Such a result is perfectly compatible with basic responsibility. It answers a question about how we wish to live with one another. Basic responsibility does not address, much less settle, those questions. But we shouldn’t expect it to. In developing my general theory, I’ve been aiming at, as it were, the lowest common denominator; looking for those basic elements needed to establish particular evaluative properties

[announcement on the bottom of the screen]: Legal Disclaimer: Mr. Simpson’s opinions do not reflect those of the producers, who don’t consider the Grammy an award at all. But we need a placeholder award for the example, so Grammy it is. ⁵⁴ It’s perhaps worth mentioning the obvious fact that to be even considered for a Grammy one’s album must have adequate sales or public reception, which excludes possible albums that, for various reasons, weren’t as marketable.

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of individuals (i.e. blameworthiness and praiseworthiness). This has invited a rather radical minimalism, at least insofar as we need those elements to be easily realized across the whole of human activity, in many seemingly disparate evaluative domains. As such, basic responsibility leaves unaddressed large swaths of our interpersonal practices, of how we should feel about others and their transgressions, what role forgiveness and apology ought to play, how we should dole out awards and punishments, etc. These questions are important and worth addressing, but they appropriately lie beyond basic responsibility.

Conclusion Odds and Ends

In the preceding pages, I have developed a general theory of responsibility out of some minimal building blocks. There was an account of control rooted in our basic agency, sufficient for vindicating a basic responsibility relation connecting individuals to the things they do. Next, an account of the appraisals grounded in that relation, what I’ve called basic blame and basic praise. And, finally, an account of that grounding, the worthiness relation, which I’ve called basic desert. The result is a radical view about responsibility.¹ Despite its rather unorthodox features, however, the theory does not require a burdensome or complicated architecture. It is a stripped down, streamlined account of what it is to be related to our doings in a particular way. Indeed, its minimalism is one of its essential, and, I think, most attractive features. My goal has been to motivate this theory as a live competitor, to advertise its strengths, and to suggest an attractive background picture of the relevant theoretical topography. Taking a broader view of the territory informs a more general approach than has typically figured into the literature. This general scope and minimal architecture, however, doesn’t limit our explanatory power. We can still give satisfying accounts of what it is to be responsible for things, to deserve blame and praise, and when we are so responsible. ¹ This is an apt term in multiple senses. Per Merriam Webster, here are the principal definitions for “radical”: (1) of, relating to, or proceeding from a root; (2) of or relating to the origin (fundamental); (3) very different from the usual or traditional (extreme); (4) excellent or cool (slang). It is a fitting label, I think, insofar as my view: (1) analyzes the root notion of responsibility, (2) common across all domains; (3) is rather unorthodox, as well as extremely minimal in its theoretical architecture; and, (4) it naturally frames our doings in terms of excellence and poorness. Besides, I think it is super cool. Simply Responsible: Basic Blame, Scant Praise, and Minimal Agency. Matt King, Oxford University Press. © Matt King 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192883599.003.0007

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In this concluding chapter, I consider some larger lessons from the preceding discussion, as well as some more speculative developments of the account. These “odds and ends” are not essential to my minimal account of responsibility. Instead, they indicate possible extensions of the view or directions in which further fruitful work could be done. But first, I’d like to take step back and return to the general ambition of the project to consider some aspects of the view that those readers unconvinced by my arguments can nonetheless take with them.

Signposts and Exit Ramps At the outset, I suggested two different ways to interpret the project of this book. In the major key, my overarching aim has been to reorient analyses of responsibility, adopting a thoroughly general perspective, one which emphasizes the significance of non-moral cases. I’ve touted the theoretical virtue of simplicity, developing the elements of the view with as minimal conditions as possible. On this interpretation, I’ve argued that the basic responsibility relation is the responsibility relation with which we should be concerned and that my conditions on it thus are the conditions on responsibility full stop, that my account of basic blame and basic praise gives us the right account of blame and praise generally, and that my defense of basic desert not only preserves something important about what is significant about responsibility, but it exhausts what’s essential to the worthiness relation involved in blameworthiness and praiseworthiness. In its ambition, the project as read in the major key departs from many orthodox positions in the (moral) responsibility literature, and there is much in it, consequently, to contest. I’ve tried meet at least some of these potential concerns head on, and to make the best case I can for the positive view. It would be foolhardy, however, to suppose that I’ve unquestionably succeeded. And because I so often zag where others zig, there is greater risk that readers with different starting points or commitments might be tempted to abandon the project at (or near) its inception. So, I offered a more conciliatory alternative interpretation. In the minor key, my project involved demonstrating the surprising resources available to a theory

156   built on the conjecture that a single responsibility relation underpins assessments across all our activity. On this interpretation, there is room to treat the basic responsibility relation, and the other basic elements of the view, as foundational to more demanding or otherwise restrictive understandings of moral responsibility, blame and praise, and responsible agency. It is in that same conciliatory spirit that I want to pause here to highlight some of the elements of my view that can be adopted—or at least entertained—under alternative theoretical schemes. As I intended there to be additional value in my account even for those who might ultimately reject it, I hope to indicate some of what can be taken on board no matter one’s background view of responsibility. It might be useful to work backwards. Little of what I argued for in Chapter 5 depends on my minimal view of responsibility. Though my take on responsibility for attitudes and character assessment has much in common with my general approach, it was not committed to any elements from the theory of responsibility I have defended in the book. Consequently, to the extent that those arguments are independent, they can be accepted without endorsing the rest of the theory. It strikes me that many theories can take on my account of basic desert, regardless of how they understand the responsibility relation or its components and conditions. Despite plenty of other differences, many theories of responsibility understand blame as a fitting response to the blameworthy. Basic desert may very well be compatible with such views. Obviously, some accounts of moral responsibility understand desert much differently, but those were the accounts I specifically targeted in Chapter 4, questioning both their rationales and the assumptions from which they were built. Outside of those, however, my notion of basic desert could be put into service to account for deserved blame under many different characterizations, whether that be as resentment and indignation, anger, or even protest.² Moreover, and importantly, one can reject blame as a sanction, as that argument is also independent of the machinery of my view, and can thus be taken on its own terms. ² I leave the details for the interested reader, but any view of blame (or praise) in which that response has representational content could make use of the basic desert schema.

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Indeed, any view of blame that doesn’t require that it count as a sanction can make use of those insights, such as they are. For those apt to reject my account of basic blame and praise as too minimal (or otherwise wrongheaded), I nonetheless invite you to take seriously the distinction between blame and blaming behaviors (and the parallel distinction with praise). Current discussions of blame can trade fairly loosely between attitudes, felt emotions, and their expressions, failing to note the different ways in which, and differing extents to which, we engage with the blameworthy. A view that takes blame to be constituted by the reactive attitudes like resentment and indignation must still reckon with the difference between resenting another via holding the attitude and feeling resentment occurrently. More attention to these differences, even if one ultimately finds the distinction makes no different to one’s overarching theory, can only shed sharper light on the relevant terrain. Others may find the general schema for basic blame and basic praise attractive, even though they differ with respect to what each involves. My proposal is not the only way to cash out how we should understand the core elements of our merited responses to the blameworthy and praiseworthy. No doubt there is at least some room for developing the details in different directions, whether this is to require more representational content, additional elements to the response, or an alternative assessment of what unifies the cases. I’ve already noted that there has been increased attention on responsibility in non-moral cases of late. Some with otherwise very different approaches to responsibility can nonetheless accept that there is more symmetry than has been historically acknowledged, incorporating some of the data for the basic responsibility relation into their own views. One could even go further and accept the orientation of the project but develop its details differently. My proposal for the basic responsibility relation is just one possible account, so there is certainly space available for other minimal theories of general responsibility. Alternatively, even if, contrary to my arguments here, moral responsibility is a distinctive relation, there may still be value in examining the parallels across evaluative domains. At the limit, perhaps, those with very different accounts of what responsibility requires or involves may still

158   profit from looking more closely at basic agency, which, in my view, promises greater resources than are routinely exploited. Any appearances to the contrary aside, I haven’t invented the basic responsibility relation out of whole cloth.³ So there ought to be something recognizable in that relation; something that seems appropriate for talk of responsibility. There may be value in better understanding that relation, even if one is inclined to think we need a distinctive moral responsibility relation to capture important elements of the moral phenomena. One way of getting something out of my project in the minor mood is to simply accept the basic responsibility relation as something one could build onto; a minimal, but foundational element in a larger theory of agency and responsibility, rather than as the primary responsibility relation. Finally, and in a slightly different vein, there are ways of preserving many central elements of the theory even if one jumps ship, methodologically, very early on in the project. While I have made much hay of various forms of symmetry throughout the book, and defended an argument for its significance, the actual elements of the view could be retained only for blame. So, if one thought that praise and praiseworthiness really were fundamentally different, one could nonetheless accept basic blame and blameworthiness across a variety of domains, and adopt the remainder of the theory, albeit limited to the so-called negative side of things. Granted, the motivation for those elements would likely have to be altered, given how much leverage I sought from parallel treatments of the phenomena, but I see no reason to foreclose the possibility of such alternatives. With those parting gifts out of the way, let’s consider some “odds and ends” of my account.

Specifying Activities I’ve repeatedly put to use the notion of an activity. I never defined the notion, relying on the intuitive sense we have of being engaged in actions

³ As I said elsewhere, similar understandings of the responsibility relation may be found in Fischer & Ravizza 1998 and Smith 2005, 2007. My sense is that we differ largely in the details of how the views are developed, and, perhaps, the overarching methodology employed.

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over time. Every action is thus an activity; but some activities may not fit particular technical definitions of “action.” The advantage of the term was that it allowed a certain flexibility—activities can be more or less specified—that made it well-suited to the demands of responsibility across many different domains and kinds of objects. Here, I want to suggest a picture for one way in which activities might fit together. One idea is that there is, at root, just a single global activity in which we’re engaged: living a life. It encompasses all we do, stretching out indefinitely (though not infinitely), and punctuated with periods of unconsciousness. It is the inescapable activity of our lives. Of course, we populate that life with many other activities. Some of these stretch for years, as when we pursue a degree or develop a skill or build a log cabin in the woods. Others are truncated and abandoned, while still others are ephemeral, like reading a sign or closing the door. Some of these activities will be related to one another. They will interconnect and reinforce one another, or else they might intersect and conflict with each other. Writing a book requires dedicated time and attention in ways that, say, handling a pandemic puts pressure on. Pursuing a degree will typically involve taking classes, studying, writing papers, etc. These various activities will produce lots and lots of doings. A typical life will be positively saturated with things for which one is basically responsible.⁴ Many, perhaps most, of these doings will be relatively mundane, their standards altogether bland.⁵ We brush our teeth and drive to work; we read a novel or tend a garden; we pass pleasantries with a shopkeeper and play games on our phones. There’s a tendency in the responsibility literature to focus on the more salacious or significant incidents, those morally laden events, both good and bad. Even I have generally examined non-moral cases with some “oomph” (to use a ⁴ This position is in stark contrast to certain views in which direct responsibility is found in relatively rare exercises of agency, for example, Kane’s (1996) discussion of self-forming actions. ⁵ Or even non-existent. It could be that there are some doings that we can be responsible for despite it being the case that we cannot be blameworthy or praiseworthy for them because they are not covered by any relevant standards. Alternatively, if activities are in part indexed by the standards that govern them, then this may guarantee a certain degree of basic blameworthiness or praiseworthiness in all we do. Such blameworthiness (and praiseworthiness) need not amount to very much, of course.

160   technical term). Great feats of athletic prowess or masterful artistry, clear instances of performance, serve as effective illustrations. But they can obscure the more banal aspect of basic responsibility’s pervasiveness. Responsibility is everywhere. We collect responsible doings, then, as a matter of course. They add up to an enormous set over the course of a day, a year, a life. A further question for consideration, then, concerns how to best understand this set of responsible doings. Per my minimalist theory, we merit basic blame and praise for those things we are basically blameworthy and praiseworthy for. But I have said relatively little about how these objects compose with one another, and while I don’t think the minimal theory of responsibility I have offered here demands any particular resolution, some of my comments on character assessments in Chapter 5 are suggestive. There, I indicated that character assessments might reflect a way of packaging a certain set of appraisals; a cumulative conclusion about a number of responsible doings. A cruel or dishonest person is just one that is responsible for a sufficient set of, respectively, cruel and dishonest things. Widening our gaze, we might say something similar about weighing up a person’s responsible doings over their life (or some period of time). In the character case, our interest in a particular virtue or vice will restrict our focus, so that we only look to those doings that exhibit the relevant positive or negative features (as well as those that count against, perhaps).⁶ In the general case, we may be forced to simply look at all their responsible doings, good and bad, along all dimensions. Pragmatically speaking, this may be impossible, or, at any rate, deeply difficult, out of both the enormity of objects and their complexity. A more typical arrangement will have us inquiring along some particular dimensions—whether artistic, athletic, or, say, moral—and this focus will concentrate our efforts in particular directions, restricting their scope. When we talk about the “greatest of all time” in a given sport or position, consider lifetime achievement awards, or wrestle with our own assessments of our lives so far, we tend to adopt, even if only implicitly,

⁶ That is, if we can find opposing pairs, then we might assess all instances of cruelty and kindness together, since each would pull in the opposite direction as the other.

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some guiding framework that pares the set down to what strike us as the most salient entries.⁷ Indeed, at least sometimes, when feeling depressed or disappointed at one’s accomplishments, it often proves effective to be directed toward a different set of accomplishments, ones that are independent of the domain one was considering.⁸ A person might consider their life a failure due to their dissatisfaction over their professional record, say, only to be reminded of their many personal successes. (Likewise, under different circumstances, a reminder of one’s failures can give a reality check or sharpened perspective.) The terrain here is complex and difficult. My suggestive comments are meant to indicate some of the avenues for further thought, rather than making concrete progress down them. Most of the questions here concern what we ought to make of our responsible doings, the significance our blameworthiness and praiseworthiness has, rather than the mechanics of making us responsible for them. While bearing many interesting connections to basic responsibility, such questions extend beyond the scope of my theory here.

The Moral in Responsibility My account of basic responsibility makes no explicit reference to moral terms. The moral realm is to be treated just like any evaluative domain, and its standards are just as legitimate a part of the architecture as those of artistic or athletic domains. So, all evaluative domains are structurally on a par. But there’s nothing about the view that requires us to take all evaluative domains to be equally important or significant. And certainly nothing about the view that requires us to take them all to be important in the same way. The first thing to consider is that there is no straightforward way to distinguish the moral from the non-moral. Certainly, attempts have been ⁷ This again suggests the imperfect metaphor of so-called “ledger views” of responsibility. ⁸ “Accomplishment” is not meant to denote a doing of substance, something we might call an “achievement” (see Bradford 2015). Putting on one’s pants is an accomplishment in the sense I mean, even if utterly trivial.

162   made to cleave certain elements of a comprehensive moral domain into a conceptually tidy one. When some insist their interest is in our obligations, what we “owe” to each other,⁹ they’re giving an independent characterization of a particular sort of moral idea with which they’re concerned. But even they admit, and they must admit, that this is only one corner of morality. And it is far from uncontroversial that this is what morality ought to be fundamentally concerned with. If one is committed to a particular picture of morality in this way, it may make sense to extend that picture in order to explain some elements of our practices of holding others responsible. It can serve to strengthen that particular picture of morality to show how it supplies a framework for thinking about blameworthiness and accountability, say. But these advantages are dependent on that prior picture of morality. Clearly, this observation does not itself constitute a critique. It only means that the prospects for such a theory of responsibility are tied to the prospects of the underlying ethical framework. Perhaps some form of contractualism is indeed the superior moral theory. I take no stand on the matter here, and, quite obviously, don’t think that a theory of responsibility should have to. (Though, admittedly, my view may pair more comfortably with alternative approaches to normative ethics than others, e.g. perfectionism.) In any case, I don’t intend to presuppose any ethical framework, though that concomitantly means that I don’t intend to presuppose the falsity of any framework either. Instead of starting with an ethical framework, my approach has begun with a more general observation, tying together various instances of purported responsibility across domains. I’ve made no attempt to characterize those various domains, how best to understand their standards, or what objects they must take. Instead, I’ve developed a theory whose structure allows for variation between domains and employs such minimal machinery that it is thereby more likely to be compatible across the board. In the major key, I think my overall strategy suggests a general critique of certain approaches in ethics. If I’m right about a kind of unity regarding human activity, then it may be a mistake to insist on a certain ⁹ See e.g. Darwall 2006; Scanlon 1998, 2008; Wallace 1994.

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kind of distinctiveness to morality. Appeals to so-called “moral reasons,” and other similar invocations of morality as a special modifier, may be consequently mistaken. Obviously, much more argument would be needed to justify such a conclusion. I am here merely suggesting that this is one potential upshot of the account I defend here. In the minor key, I can offer a more conciliatory view, indicating ways in which my account remains neutral with respect to the correct normative theory. For example, my focus on evaluative domains might suggest a potential conflict with more deontic notions, such as rights, obligations, what we must do, regard and respect, etc. Though I’ve suggested that accounts of moral responsibility framed in such terms could face special difficulty tackling non-moral cases, the counterpoint remains. If such concepts cannot be understood in purely evaluative terms, then there would be, as it were, distinctive moral currency that goes unaccounted for in my framework. Relatedly, my view might seem to imply that we’ll have to explain the “Right” in terms of the “Good.” After all, I build blameworthiness and praiseworthiness out of evaluative assessments of things done, so it seems I’ll have to understand wrongness in terms of badness. One immediate thing to say is that it isn’t obviously true that the Right is prior to the Good.¹⁰ So even if my theory did have such an implication, that wouldn’t doom its prospects. It might count against it, but only, presumably, if we have good reason to think the right is prior to the good.¹¹ Admittedly, I’m a bit skeptical about such priority. But this is not a pre-theoretical bias, so much as a growing suspicion that the categories of “Right” and “Wrong” are not particularly well formed, in part because

¹⁰ In its common contemporary usage, the phrase is meant to characterize deontological—or at least, nonconsequentialist—ethical frameworks. ¹¹ I should note that, in this respect, I’m at least in good company. As I noted in Chapter 5, approaches to moral responsibility have increasingly moved toward models seemingly predicated on deontological (especially contractualist) normative frameworks. And yet hardly any have explicitly defended those frameworks independent of the theory of responsibility being adduced. Notable exceptions include Darwall 2006 and Scanlon 2008, though in each case it is less clear that they are defending the connection between responsibility and morality generally, rather than defending a particular connection between a particular understanding of responsibility and a particular understanding of morality. (Indeed, Scanlon is explicit about limiting discussion to a substantial part of morality.)

164   of how I’ve come to think about responsibility and its attendant notions. At this point, of course, it’s hard to disentangle where I’ve been guided toward thinking the ethical is not particularly distinct in kind from, say, the artistic, and where I’ve guided my view that way. (Though the same may be said about those led in diverging ways from my view in both responsibility and ethics.) One advantage of my approach, as I see it, is that its starting point, the broad swath of general human activity across evaluative domains, is thereby domain-neutral, which cannot be said of many competing approaches.¹² Regardless, it just doesn’t follow from anything I’ve said so far that the Good is prior to the Right, at least not as that thesis is typically understood. I cautioned upfront about interpreting “bad” and “good” substantively, as I regularly interchanged them with “negative” and “positive.” This was by design. To be blameworthy on my view is to be responsible for something bad, where “bad” is read as “negative.” To assess an action as wrong is clearly a negative assessment. And since the view is perfectly neutral regarding the evaluative standards that assess objects of responsibility positively and negatively, it is open to apply moral standards of wrongness. Thus, the mechanics of my view are perfectly compatible with a deontological (or otherwise “Right-first”) ethical framework. One is morally blameworthy, on such an interpretation, when one is responsible for a doing that is wrong. It may be comparatively more difficult to neatly slide an account of praiseworthiness into the same architecture, but I certainly think it could be done. One might treat the parallel positive evaluation as exceeding one’s duty, say. (This is, obviously, just one possibility.) Of course, some will still disagree. Either they will think that one can blamelessly do wrong, or they will think that wrongness attaches to elements that inform one’s blameworthiness such that neither piece can be assessed independently. My aim here, however, hasn’t been to show why every other view about responsibility is mistaken. Nor has it been to develop an account of responsibility that is compatible with any ¹² I concede that those who think the moral domain should be treated separately will see this as a bug, rather than a feature. I’ll refer such readers back to the discussion from the Introduction regarding theorizing’s push toward greater generalization (as well as the necessary caveats I included there).

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possible ethical theory. Rather, it has been to motivate and defend a particular approach to responsibility, grounded in virtues of generality and simplicity. Here it is enough, I think, to show avenues for accommodating alternative points of view, even if I cannot fully accommodate every conflicting approach (or, more demandingly, every element of a particular conflicting approach). But we shouldn’t expect the explication of a view to rule out all conflicting views.

Koko, the Artist As the conditions on the basic responsibility relation are so minimal, they are relatively easy to meet. This raises a question regarding whether non-humans could meet them. Many approaches to moral responsibility treat it as limited to moral agents, which naturally restricts the set of creatures that could be morally responsible. Since my view adopts much less restrictive conditions, since basic agency is exceedingly modest, the implication is that non-human animals could be basically responsible as well. To test this implication, I propose considering a few cases of potential animal responsibility.¹³ First, take Koko the gorilla, who famously fingerpainted quite extensively. In addition, she learned some sign language and understood at least some human speech, seemingly communicating her thoughts and feelings to her handlers. Because she could sign, her paintings even have titles, and thus some paintings appear to be representational, whereas others might be better categorized as abstract.¹⁴ On my minimalist view, Koko is basically responsible for her painting if it was accurately and appropriately guided by her representations. It is clear that, quite generally, lowland gorillas engage in agential activity. Like humans, they represent the world around them, form and revise plans, initiate and modify action plans, etc. While their mental life may not be as rich or robust as ours, decades of primatology has reached the ¹³ For ease of exposition, I’ll treat “animal” as convenient shorthand for “non-human animal.” I don’t deny that humans are also animals. For a discussion of non-human agency in the context of developing a general account of freedom, see Steward 2014 (esp. ch. 4). ¹⁴ A sampling of these can be seen at koko.org.

166   consensus that gorillas (as well as other primate species) have relatively sophisticated agency.¹⁵ Since the conditions on basic responsibility are so minimal, it is plausible that Koko meets them, and is therefore responsible for her paintings, in the sense that they reflect on her as an artist. Whether she was basically blameworthy or praiseworthy for them would depend on further facts, most importantly whether the paintings were good or bad. I take no stand on that matter here. It is enough for exploring animal responsibility to consider that she would be blameworthy for them if they were bad (negatively assessed) and praiseworthy if they were good (positively assessed). But this seems a plausible conclusion to reach. Her caretakers certainly treated her as responsible for them. Their interactions with her resemble those of human adults with a human child, rather than training, say, rats with reward incentives.¹⁶ They encouraged her, but also left it to her to guide her artistic endeavors. Consequently, her paintings look to be clearly her doings. As a second kind of case, and one with moral significance, consider instances where animals protect human safety. Recently, a marine biologist and her team documented a humpback whale protecting her from a tiger shark. It shielded her, staying between her and the shark, gradually putting her closer to her boat.¹⁷ Of course, such events are open to interpretation, and there is no scientific consensus regarding the matter.¹⁸ None of that matters here, however, since I’m not asserting that whales are responsible for protecting human lives. My more modest suggestion is conditional on the claim that the whale in question counts as protecting ¹⁵ For a good summary, see Seed & Tomasello 2010. ¹⁶ Might rats nevertheless be basically responsible for successfully completing a maze, as they do in many a research lab? The answer will depend on the details regarding what sorts of representations rats are capable of and their actual mechanisms of agency. But if they can meet the conditions on basic responsibility, then they can be basically responsible. This strikes me as the only sensible conclusion to reach. What this means for our treatment of rats is a largely separate question, however, just as it is for our treatment of other humans. See below for further discussion on holding animals responsible. ¹⁷ The biologist in question is Nan Hauser, President and Director of the Center for Cetacean Research and Conservation. You can read about the incident at https://www. nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/whale-protects-diver-from-shark-video-spd. ¹⁸ Though there is published research of whales protecting other species, and dolphins have reportedly been observed protecting humans in a similar fashion. See Pitman, et al. 2016.

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the scientist. That is, so long as the whale represented the danger posed to the human and had the goal of preventing such harm, then it follows from my view that such a whale is basically responsible—indeed, basically praiseworthy—for doing so. The empirical facts may end up showing that the whale did not protect the scientist; that the behavior only appeared to be protective. Regardless, if the whale was protecting her, then the whale is responsible, for to even count as protecting certain kinds of representations must be guiding the doer. Nothing about such a verdict, however, strikes me as strange or problematic. As a potential case of blameworthiness, consider deaths caused by orcas in captivity. The documentary Blackfish tackles Tilikum, an orca linked to three human deaths, including a very public killing of trainer Dawn Brancheau. Tilikum may be basically blameworthy for her death, depending on the details involved in orca representations. These empirical details will be crucial, however, as it is also possible that an orca’s grasp of what it is doing is too limited to be assessable in the relevant ways.¹⁹ It is a separate question just what such verdicts mean for our interactions with such animals. On my view, conditional on certain empirical assumptions, the humpback whale basically deserves basic praise. But as the latter is an appraisal of the whale, in light of the protecting, this amounts to no more than regarding the whale in a particular way. (For the record, the marine biologist in question, and her colleagues, appeared to be grateful for the whale’s actions.)²⁰ Of course, given certain practical barriers, including the limited forms in which our interactions can take place, it may make no sense to direct blaming or praising

¹⁹ Additionally, many assert that extended captivity is psychologically damaging to orcas, which would certainly complicate how we understand the situation. While interesting in their own right, these issues extend beyond the scope of the theory here. See King & May 2018 and 2022 for discussion of the general relationship between responsibility and mental disorder. ²⁰ Per Hauser’s account, she saw the whale involved in the original incident a year later. It came up to the boat and stared up at her. When she got in the water, it nuzzled her with its head and brought her up out of the water on his pectoral fin. She interprets this behavior as involving recognition of her, memory of the protecting event, and an indication of the whale’s continued concern or affection for her. (You can see Hauser tell her story on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NtBqnKg1Ms.)

168   behaviors toward such animals, their blameworthiness and praiseworthiness notwithstanding. I have appealed here to examples using smart mammals. Lower order animals, to the extent that we have reason to suppose their representations are less sophisticated, may thus fail to be basically responsible for much of their behavior. It follows from my view, of course, that they can be basically responsible for all doings that satisfy the conditions on the basic responsibility relation. That might mean that squirrels can be basically responsible for retrieving their hidden nut, or a salmon for navigating to their spawning grounds, or the long-distance and treacherous migratory flight of a crane. As with Koko, however, the verdicts depend entirely on the facts regarding their representations. After all, their representations will determine what they count as doing, and will depend, among other things, on the sorts of concepts they employ. As many a nature program exploits, our reactions to such animal behavior tends to be quite mixed. We marvel at certain spectacular feats of animal ingenuity or prowess, while at other times we note how oblivious animals are to certain features of their environment or circumstance. Though we might be guilty of anthropomorphizing the facts, plausibly whether these assessments are accurate ought to depend on just how the animal is thinking through their conduct (though, of course, they needn’t be representing themselves). In sum, I see no reason to deny basic responsibility to animals. Whether or not any particular animal is basically responsible for any particular doing will depend on the details. Indeed, in this way, the story is no different than it is for humans. Whether any particular person is basically responsible for any particular doing likewise depends on satisfaction of the conditions on the basic responsibility relation. Since those conditions are decidedly minimal, even for humans, it is natural to suppose that they might be satisfied by some non-human creatures. Of course, whether animals control their conduct as basic agents do will depend on careful examination of our best theories of animal minds. I take no stand on the matter either way. But I admittedly find it quite plausible that at least some animals are responsible for at least some things. Indeed, methodologically, I’m attracted to including some of our practices toward animals as at least some evidence in support of this idea,

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much as I did with the parallels across non-moral domains. If we are inclined to react to life-saving animals with gratitude, or form the complex emotional bonds we see with Koko and her caretaker, Penny Patterson, this is at least suggestive of extending responsibility to them as well. Our responsibility-related behaviors will no doubt be attenuated in various ways, given the practical and emotional constraints imposed by belonging to different species. But, as I’ve indicated previously, our responsibility-related behaviors are often modulated in various ways toward members of our own species. In the end, we may view animal responsibility in much the same way as we view the responsibility of young children.

Coming of Age Speaking of children, it’s worth saying a few words separately about the development of responsibility. We often treat immaturity as a mitigating consideration. We’re apt to react more harshly to a moral violation from a teenager than from a 5-year-old. At a certain age, one “knows better,” and we begin to demand more in terms of how one relates to others and the standards to which one is held. The thought might be that younger children cannot meet certain demands. I argued in Chapter 5 that considerations of fairness can be relevant to how we treat others even if they have no bearing on basic responsibility itself. And this seems right. A child’s poor artwork is poor. In this way, the standards of assessment are absolute. What makes a good piece of artwork does not depend on who’s creating it. But our responses to those who make poor art need not be so strict. That a child’s artwork is rather poor doesn’t mean we should be insulting to them or even that we should share our honest appraisal. Perhaps it’s far more important to encourage the child because it simply doesn’t matter, in any important sense, whether a 5-year-old is any good at art yet. In most cases, the development of a skill requires training. So, we may calibrate our broader responses to our expectations for someone at a particular stage of development. A novice shouldn’t be expected to produce work of the same caliber as an expert. But this is just another way of saying that we shouldn’t expect a novice to be as good as an

170   expert. (Indeed, we are often quite taken with prodigies for precisely this reason.) We may, therefore, focus our comments on what is good about a child’s drawing, or on other positive qualities of the activity, ignoring altogether the overall quality of the artwork. As I’ve repeatedly emphasized, we are often responsible for many things whenever we are responsible for something, and what we choose to focus on in our broader responses to others ought to be sensitive to the full range of relevant considerations, moral and otherwise. There remains, however, a question about just when, and how, we come to be responsible. It’s clear enough that an infant is not basically responsible for anything. And yet adults are basically responsible for a lot of things. But there is no real mystery here. Infants cannot satisfy even the minimalistic conditions on basic responsibility. Their behaviors are not appropriately sensitive to their representations, which are themselves largely limited. As we grow and develop, the representations of which we’re capable gain increasing sophistication and complexity, opening up avenues of responsibility that were not previously accessible. A child who cannot understand what is potentially insulting in an innocent comment about another’s appearance may not be responsible for the insult, precisely because they cannot represent it as an insult, and so cannot even disregard the possibility. In Chapter 2, I claimed that responsibility only requires very basic competence. That’s true enough, though the relevant competence will still need to be calibrated to the activity in question. A child can be responsible for a comment without thereby being responsible for insulting the addressee if they do not yet understand the finer details regarding how their language will be interpreted. One cannot disregard the risk of causing offense without some understanding of how offense is caused. Even so, a child may certainly still be basically responsible for more coarsely grained doings, even when the further finer details are lost on them. They need not fully understand just why a certain kind of comment is apt to upset another to represent that it will upset someone else. Many a child knows that a type of behavior will hurt someone else’s feelings, even if they lack a fuller appreciation of just why that is so. (Indeed, I’d wager this is true for many an adult as well!) As we can do more and more things, there will be more and more things for which we are responsible. Our responsible agency, such as it is, develops

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in step with the development of our basic agency (or the components with which our basic agency is concerned).

Compatibility Test Though somewhat less fashionable these days, a traditionally central question has been whether moral responsibility is compatible with determinism. Determinism is the thesis that the past plus the laws of nature determine every subsequent event, including human action. Thus, everything we do is determined by the distant past and causal laws we cannot affect. The traditional worry is that determinism might very well preclude our ability to act freely or meet some other condition necessary for being morally responsible for the things we do. Incompatiblism is the position that the truth of determinism precludes moral responsibility; the two are incompatible. Compatibilism allows that we could be responsible for what we do even if the world is deterministic.²¹ I have remained officially neutral on this matter in this book. My account of basic responsibility doesn’t require a settled answer to the compatibility question, the details of which are orthogonal to my project. If determinism precludes the kind of control and basic agency that I argued the basic responsibility relation requires, then we would not be basically responsible for anything if determinism is true. While the compatibility question may have implications for whether or not we are in fact responsible, it ought not impact my account of how it is that we are responsible, except to modulate whether its conditions are ever satisfied. Nonetheless, I think there is clear way to motivate a compatibilist answer out of the resources of my view, thanks in no small part to the decidedly minimal requirements of basic responsibility. Because they are so minimal, they are less susceptible to whatever the precise metaphysical configuration of the universe turns out to be. If basic agency gives us all that’s required for basic responsibility, then determinism is only threatening to basic responsibility if it endangers the mechanisms of basic ²¹ Traditionally, there are (at least) two compatibility questions: one about responsibility and one about free will. The differences need not detain us here.

172   agency. We should be confident that basic responsibility is compatible with determinism, then, so long as we’re confident that in a deterministic world we could still meet the control, intentionality, and accuracy conditions on basic responsibility. Given the theory’s minimalism, it’s hard to see how our actions being determined by the distant past and the laws of nature could keep us from setting and pursuing our goals, in line with our accurate representations of the world, informed by our broader set of commitments and values.²² Of course, if determinism is true, one might think that such goals (or commitments or values) are in some important sense not really ours. But such conclusions require careful argument, and it seems that the basic responsibility relation will be less vulnerable to such attacks than other approaches to responsibility.²³ As a supporting idea, notice that while many people are worried about the threat of determinism to our moral responsibility, the threat doesn’t seem so pressing for non-moral cases. That Ramona’s riff was determined by the distant past and the laws of nature does not obviously render her not responsible for it. Many theorists have thought our practices of punishment (and to a lesser extent reward) will have to be amended if determinism is true, but they don’t generally think all forms of human assessment will require similar adjustments.²⁴ Of course, none of this is evidence for compatibilism. If I’m right about basic responsibility, maybe incompatibilism should then be extended to this fuller range of human endeavors as well. Interestingly, that would seemingly increase the costs of responsibility skepticism, which holds that we aren’t responsible for anything, broadening such skepticism to all areas of agential activity. But as it stands, this line of inquiry is mostly speculative, as my aim here has not been to resolve the so-called compatibility question (or even address it directly). So, while I am ²² For example, many have thought that determinism would rule out a kind of control over our actions that requires genuine alternate possibilities or the ability to do otherwise than we did. The conditions on basic responsibility do not require either notion, so determinism would not, in and of itself, be incompatible with basic responsibility. ²³ I don’t intend the above to constitute a refutation of such arguments. I have raised general procedural worries about such arguments elsewhere (see King 2013). ²⁴ Though see Russell 2008 for a nuanced and delicate discussion of some the relevant issues here. As I noted at the outset, I’ve been influenced by his discussion, but depart in important ways from how he frames the topic. In particular, he seems to give a larger pride of place to certain elements of what I call our broader blaming and praising behaviors.

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comfortable as a compatibilist, I don’t suppose to have defended that position here. Those with alternative persuasions are still free to interpret basic responsibility’s relationship to determinism however they prefer.

Concluding Thoughts As I cautioned in the Introduction, I don’t pretend to have delivered on every element we may want a theory of responsibility to address. I have endeavored instead for a certain level of generality, both of purpose and of phenomena. There are deep and pervasive parallels in how we are assessable across an enormous range of domains. These parallels are supported by a common root. When I applaud Beethoven’s Fifth, or groan under the weight of a bad joke, or whistle over a free kick, these responses depend on a single relation, the basic responsibility relation, tying those doings to their doers. Beethoven is responsible for his symphony in just the same way that Buckner is responsible for the missed ball and I am responsible for this book. We are all responsible in the very same way that the burglar is responsible for burgling. That the responsibility relation is the same throughout does not imply that there are no differences between being responsible for moral things and being responsible for, say, athletic ones. There are obvious differences in the significance of being basically blameworthy for moral doings and being basically blameworthy for athletic ones. My approach only asks us to take seriously the non-moral things that we do, giving them equal weight in terms of their theoretical significance. Nothing I’ve said supposes that Buckner ought to feel particularly badly about his play, and the hostility he faced was certainly out of order. Nonetheless, our various pursuits, and the standards we use to help guide our activities, can have profound significance to a life well-lived. Whether seeking medical breakthroughs, building model ships, or running marathons, the activities around which we organize our lives help give them shape and meaning, often regardless of whether we succeed or fail. My minimalist approach understands responsibility as connecting us to these doings, independent of the evaluative standards by which we assess them. This is perfectly consistent with certain domains—say,

174   morality—holding a special pride of place in the hierarchy.²⁵ In my view, the answers to these questions have to do with the significance of being blameworthy and praiseworthy in the various ways we are, rather than bearing on whether or how we are so blameworthy and praiseworthy. To explain how we are responsible across all these domains, we need only some exceedingly modest conditions and underlying components. We are, after all, simply responsible. Admittedly, there is much more to examine on the general approach I’ve defended here. I have tried to motivate a certain kind of picture, situating the elements of my view within it. That picture, however, is incomplete. There are details to fill in, challenges to work through, and broader themes to address. Artists and athletes, who I’ve made so much of in this book, often strive for perfection. They are constantly refining and improving, pursuing some ideal. Here, I settle for much less. I am content with a job well done, and so I leave such improvements and iterations for future activity. For now, I hope the minimalist theory I’ve offered provides an interesting and attractive alternative to much of the contemporary work on (moral) responsibility. Likewise, I hope to have shown the appeal of seeking a more general theory of responsibility, and some of the perhaps surprising resources available to such a project.

²⁵ Though I’m sympathetic to those who think either that morality isn’t always predominant in that hierarchy or else that it isn’t obvious how best to demarcate its boundaries. Some may notice a certain similarity here to themes in Wolf 1982.

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Index For the benefit of digital users, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–53) may, on occasion, appear on only one of those pages. Academy Awards 22, 100 accident 24, 27–30, 41–2, 45–52, 55–6, 58–62 Adams, Douglas 73n7 Adams, Robert 75, 85n32 admiration 2, 5, 24, 32, 95, 103–8 (see also reactive attitude) action architecture 42–3, 46, 48–9, 55–6, 58, 60–1, 63 individuation of 44 intentional 44–50 agency basic 16, 18–19, 36–68, 78n15, 88–9, 125, 154, 157–8, 165–71 moral 56n38 predicament of 148 responsible 1, 14–15, 56n38, 130n11, 155–6, 170–1 akrasia (see weakness of will) amusement 104 answerability 4n4, 127n4, 130n11 apology 10–11, 28n16, 120–1, 136–7, 152–3 appraisal 74–103, 105–10 of animals 167–9 aretaic 142–4, 160–1 of children 169–71 moral 8n17, 30n18 negative (involved in blame) 69n1, 73–94, 103, 109–10, 112–13, 122 non-moral 5 positive (involved in praise) 123–4

Arpaly, Nomy 67n56, 132–40, 149n48 assessment (see also evaluative standard) academic 3, 23–5 animal (see appraisal of animals, animal responsibility) artistic 2–3, 5, 9, 22–8, 40–2, 58n43, 64, 151–2, 159–61 athletic 3, 9, 21–2, 26–8, 53–5, 71–2, 137–8, 144–5, 159–61, 173–4 moral 3n2, 26–7 parallels between moral and non-moral 20–7 artistic integrity 144–5 Austin, J.L. 47n23 Baier, Kurt 6n9 Basu, Rima 146n44 Becker, Jason 42n13 Beethoven, Ludwig von 2, 8, 105, 173 belief 40, 58n41, 62–3, 90, 106–7 derogatory 146–8 involved in blame 36n1, 76n14, 78, 87, 92–4, 134 Berofsky, Bernard 8n17 Björnsson, Gunnar 8n16, 24n10 blame 1–19, 134n20, 155–8 as anger 1, 4n5, 16–17, 24, 32, 76n13, 81, 84n31, 108–9, 112–13, 156–7 as resentment 32, 76n13, 79nn18–19, 84–5, 112–17, 130n11, 156–7 basic 18–19, 98–111, 114–16, 122–6, 130n10, 149–61

184  blame (cont.) deserving (see blameworthiness) force of 85–91 hypocritical 92, 151 of oneself (see self-blame) standing to 84n28 symmetry with praise 20–31 blameworthiness 4n4, 7–8, 18–19, 28–35, 54–64, 120–4, 150–3, 158–65 (see also praiseworthiness) and blame 69–82, 98–110 and punishment 110–20 for attitudes (see responsibility for attitudes) for character (see character) judgments of 79n18, 85–94, 109 of animals (see animal responsibility) blaming behaviors 69–70, 79–85, 84n30, 89–96, 98, 103, 105–9, 114–15, 130, 148–50, 157, 172n24 (see also praising behaviors) and animals 167–9 and punishment 113–17 Boxer, Karin 86n35 Boyle, Matthew 58n41 Bradford, Gwen 4n4, 161n8 Brancheau, Dawn 167 Brand, Myles 39n9 Brandt, Richard 82n25 Bratman, Michael 39n9, 46n21 Brink, David 4n5, 9n19, 69n1 Brownstein, Michael 42n12, 67n57, 133n19, 148–9 Buckner, Bill 21–31, 71–2, 74–6, 80, 83n26, 84n30, 91n43, 105, 173–4 Canady, John 145n40 capacities 1, 4n5, 14–15, 65 care 66–7, 80n19, 81–91, 106, 128n7, 132–41 carelessness 15, 53n34, 61–2 Carlsson, Andreas Brekke 84nn30,31 Caruso, Gregg 86n35 character 43n15, 74n9, 126–31, 141–5 “out of character” actions 136–8

choice 22, 33–4, 61, 121, 128, 133 Clarke, Randolph 84n30, 87n38 Cliffhanger 50n28 Coates, D. Justin 71n3, 76n13, 126n1 coercion 152 Cohen, G.A. 151n51 compatibilism (see determinism) compulsion 34 commitments 5, 40, 45–6, 56–7, 66–7, 78n17, 84–5, 126, 134–5, 140, 171–2 concern (see cares) consequentialism 73n8, 100, 110–11, 117–18, 163n10 contractualism 100, 110–11, 129, 162–3 control 9, 18–19, 33–4, 39–40, 47–50, 54–8, 65–8, 88n40, 110–11, 125, 132n15, 143, 148–9, 154, 171–2 animal 168–9 -based account 4n3 condition 5n8, 55–6, 64 see also self-control “could have done otherwise” 32–4 criticism 3, 20, 22, 26–7, 70, 79, 86–8, 112, 137n30, 139, 141 cruelty 73n8, 87, 141–4, 160–1 Curb Your Enthusiasm 29n17 Curry, Steph 54, 86 D’Arms, Justin 75n10, 76n13 Darwall, Stephen 10n20, 74n9, 129n8, 161–3 Davidson, Donald 44n16 Dennett, Daniel 48n25, 65n51 deontology 85n34 “right prior to the good” 163–4 desert basic 18–19, 98–101, 110–12, 131, 138, 154–7 of blame 103, 109–10, 121–2, 154 of praise 103, 123–4, 154 of punishment 12, 113–20 (see also retributivism) requirement 85n34, 101–3, 111–12, 122

 de Sousa, Ronald 76n13 determinism 4n4, 39n6, 66n53, 112–13, 171–3 Dewey, John 67n56 The Disaster Artist 22–3 doctrine of double effect 45n18 Doris, John 145n42 Dorsey, Dale 145n40 Dresser, Rebecca 15n28 Duchamp, Marcel 24n8 duress (see coercion) Ellen DeGeneres Show, The 167n20 embarrassment 22, 78, 114–15, 137 Emmy Award 9 emotion 10, 32, 69–70, 76, 79n18, 84–5, 92–4, 103–9, 112–14, 148–9, 157, 168–9 endorsement 132–6 envy 104 ES.PN 21–2 evaluative stance 19, 66–7, 110, 125–6, 133–7, 148–9 evaluative standard 25, 63–4, 81n22, 128, 164, 173–4 excuse 24n9, 28–9, 33–4, 42, 53n34, 55–64, 80–1, 108, 121, 136–7 exemptions 15 fear 103–9, 115–16 Feinberg, Joel 80n21 Feldman, Fred 71n3 Fischer, John Martin 5nn6,8, 15n29, 33n23, 38n5, 65n51, 68n60, 126n1, 158n3 fittingness 18–19, 73, 98–105, 110, 115–16, 156–7 fitting-attitude approaches 98, 103–7 Foot, Philippa 128n7 forgiveness 10–11, 21, 152–3 Frankfurt, Harry 33n25, 67nn56,58, 132–3 Franklin, Christopher 83n26 free will 4n4, 5n8, 9, 9n18, 17, 83n26, 95, 148, 171n21

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French, Peter 8n16 Fritz, Kyle 151n51 Galileo 7–8 Galileo probe 6n12 generalization 4–11, 13, 67n59, 73, 98–9, 144–5, 164n12 Genghis Khan 94 Golden Raspberry Award 22, 22n4 Glover, Jonathan 5–6, 82n25 Grammy Award 151–2 gratitude 1, 20, 23, 32, 85n32, 95–6 (see also reactive attitudes) toward animals 168–9 guilt 69n1, 89, 116, 136–7 (see also self-blame) being guilty 119 feeling guilty 113, 116 “guise of the good” 67n55 Haas, Daniel 70n2 Haji, Ishtiyaque 4n4 Harman, Gilbert 145n42 Hart, H.L.A. 82n25 Hauser, Nan 166n17, 167n20 Herstein, Ori 151n51 Hess, Kendy 8n16 Hieronymi, Pamela 85–91, 85n33 holding responsible 9, 130–1, 141, 150–1 (see also accountability, practices of holding responsible) in sports 21–6, 81–4, 91n43, 145n41, 159–60 Hughes, Robert 85n32 hurt feelings 45–6, 77–8, 120–1, 170–1 identification 132–3 ill will 91n44, 109n18 (see also reactive attitudes) improvisation 61 incompatibilism (see determinism) indignation (see reactive attitudes)

186  intentionality 12–13, 29, 44–50, 55–6, 171–2 condition 55–62, 64 intention 39–42, 101 intentional action 44 involuntariness 29 irrationality (of attitudes) 106–8 Isaacs, Tracy 8n16 Jacobson, Daniel 75n10, 76n13 Johnson, Randy 52n33 Johnson King, Zoe 138n33 judgment 61–2, 82, 106–8, 130n11, 148–9 (see also judgments of blameworthiness) evaluative 132–7, 146–9 of character 141–2, 144–5 justice 88n39, 89n41 justification against blame 60, 87n38 of our practices 9, 130 of punishment 10–11, 98, 102, 110–24 (see also sanction) Kant, Immanuel 138n33 Kane, Robert 159n4 Keane, Margaret 145n40 Khoury, Andrew 84n29 kleptomania 33–4 Knight, Bobby 84n30 Koko (the gorilla) 165–9 (see also animal responsibility) Kubala, Robbie 128n7 Levy, Neil 81n22, 99–100 lex talionis 75n11 LIFE magazine 22–3 Macnamara, Coleen 89n41 major key 11–12, 16, 102–3, 155, 162–3 manipulation 149, 149n49 Markovits, Julia 138n33, 140n36 Matheson, Benjamin 4n5, 91n43 Matlock 6n12

Maxwell, James Clerk 7–8 May, Joshua 15n28, 33n24, 167n19 McIntyre, Alison 45n18 McKenna, Michael 5, 9n19, 56n38, 78n15, 80n21, 85n34, 100–5, 122–3 McVeigh, Timothy 37 Mele, Alfred 5n8 mental activities 57–8, 147 merit 18–19, 51, 72, 98–117, 122–4, 149, 151n53, 157, 160–1 (see also desert) Milam, Per 4n5, 91n43 Miller, Daniel 151n51 minor key 12, 16, 102–3, 123, 155–8, 163 mistakes 10–11, 28–30, 48–53, 55–6, 62–4 and fittingness 106–9, 124 Model Penal Code 45n19 moral responsibility 1, 4–8, 11–14, 11n21, 24n10, 30, 38, 65, 155–8, 171–3 (see also responsibility) and desert 99–105 and ethical theory 161–5 and sanction 112–20 different types of 126–32 vs. non-moral 5–8, 11–13, 138 (see also assessment) Morissette, Alanis 6n12 motivation 69n1, 108, 121, 128n7, 133n18, 134–44, 158 Murphy, Colleen 88n39 Murphy, Jeffrie 80n19 Mylopoulos, Myrto 53n35 NASA 6n12 National Public Radio 7n13 negligence 62n48 (see also carelessness) Nelkin, Dana Kay 4n5, 9n19, 33nn22,25, 69n1, 75n10, 126, 145n40 Newton, Isaac 7–8 normativity 4n4, 6n11, 10n20, 61–2, 72 and reasons 108–10 artistic 76n12

 ethics 162–3 of attitudes 105–9 (see also fittingness) of blame and praise 73, 97, 99–104, 111–13, 122–3 (see also fittingness) novice 54, 81n22, 169–70 Oakley, Justin 8n17 O’Connor, Timothy 83n26 O’Neal, Shaquille 86 Oscars (see Academy Awards) Pacherie, Elisabeth 40n10, 53n35 Paul, Sarah K. 58n41 Patterson, Penny 168–9 Pereboom, Derk 86n35, 100–1, 110–13 Perfectionism 162 persons 10, 115, 119–20, 144 personal identity 15n28 Persson, Karl 24n10 Pitman, Robert 166n18 Pollock, Jackson 22–4, 27–31 Portmore, Douglas 69n1, 84n30 practices discriminatory 147 blaming 31–2, 69–70, 79–80 (see also blaming behaviors, practices of holding responsible) interpersonal 152–3 ordinary 20, 114–15, 168 (see also practices of holding responsible) of holding responsible 9–13, 20–3, 31, 69–71, 83–5, 150–2, 162 (see also holding responsible) of punishment 111–13, 117, 172 (see also punishment) normative 78n16 praising 13, 70–1, 95–6 (see also blaming practices, praising behaviors) praise 1–5, 18–19, 134n20, 155–8 basic 70–8, 123–4, 130n11, 138–41, 150–1 deserving (see praiseworthiness)

187

praiseworthiness 6–8, 18–19, 38–9, 55–64, 70, 85, 94–103, 122–4, 138, 150–3, 158–64 (see also blameworthiness) and animals (see animal responsibility) asymmetry with blameworthiness 31–5 for attitudes (see responsibility for attitudes) for character (see character) of children (see responsibility of children) symmetry with blameworthiness 20–31 praising behaviors 81n22, 85n32, 95–6, 124, 140–1, 172n24 protest 76n13, 156–7 punishment 5–6, 10–12, 87n38, 99–100, 102–5, 112–14, 117–20, 152–3, 172 (see also sanction) deserving (see desert of punishment) quality of will 84n29 Radzik, Linda 88n39 Ravizza, Mark 5nn6,8, 33n23, 38n5, 158n3 Razzies (see Golden Raspberry Award) reactive attitudes 42, 95–6, 102, 113–14, 157 (see also blame as anger, blame as resentment; guilt) Real Self views 4n3, 19, 132–41, 148–50 reasons for action 108, 138, 140–1 for blaming 24, 28n16, 82–5, 92, 116–17, 120, 130, 140–1, 150 (see also blaming behaviors) for caring 67 for fearing 105–6 for punishing 118 moral 162–3 and normative force (see normativity and reasons) reasonability 45, 146, 152

188  reasons (cont.) -responsiveness 38n5, 143 right 138n33, 140 regard 26–7, 71, 89n41, 98, 130n11, 143–4, 150, 163 (see also respect) representations 36–58, 62–5, 109, 148, 171–2 animal (see animal responsibility) of children (see responsibility of children) representational content 105–8, 156n2, 157 respect 75–6, 84, 119–20, 127–8, 146–7, 150, 163 (see also regard) appraisal 74n9 responsibility animal 165–9 as accountability 4n3, 6n12, 91n43, 126–32, 162 as attributability 4n3, 6n12, 8n17, 67n59, 75, 126–32 being vs holding 8–11, 126–32 conditions on 55–68 for attitudes 146–8 for character (see character) legal 4n5, 59 (see also Model Penal Code) moral (see moral responsibility) of children 169–71 professional 5 retributivism 104–5, 112–13, 117–20 Rosen, Gideon 6n10, 146n44 Ross, Bob 65n52 Rossi, Benjamin 151n51 Rothko, Mark 24 Russell, Paul 4n4

self-blame 84nn30,31, 92 self-control 15n26 self-forming actions 159n4 Sher, George 76n14 Shepherd, Joshua 4n4, 39n7, 53n35 Shpall, Sam 44n17 Shoemaker, David 5n7, 9n19, 14–15, 71n3, 77–8, 81n23, 84nn30,31, 89n41, 92–4, 100–6, 126n1, 127n4, 130–5, 146–7 Simpsons, The 151n53 Singh, Keshav 138n33 skepticism of character traits 145n42 of responsibility 172–3 of value 26n13 skill 24, 53–5, 59, 159, 169–70 Skow, Brad 71n3 Small, Will 53n35 Smart, J.J.C. 70n2 Smith, Angela 8n17, 30n18, 67n56, 76n13, 127n4, 131nn12–13, 158n3 Smith, Holly 133n18 Snedgar, Justin 140n37 Sripada, Chandra 67nn56,57, 132–6 Stallone, Sylvester 50n28 status as a responsible agent 14 evaluative 96 moral 80n19, 100 Steward, Helen 165n13 Strawson, Galen 83n26, 86n35, 99–100 Strawson, P.F. 10, 76n13, 89n41, 109n18 Swift, Taylor 84n29

sanction 12n22, 35, 111–17, 156–7 Scanlon, Tim 8n17, 10n20, 69n1, 87n38, 88n40, 129n8, 161–3 Scarantino, Andrea 76n13 Schroeder, Mark 75n10, 140n37 Schroeder, Timothy 33n24, 132n16, 133n18, 149n48 seed, Amanda 166n15

Talbert, Matthew 126n1, 127n5, 132n15 Tenenbaum, Sergio 67n55 Tierney, Hannah 84n30 Tikkanen, Esa 80n20 Tilikum (the orca) 167 Todd, Patrick 151n51 Tognazzini, Neal 71n3, 76n13, 126n1

 Tomasello, Michael 166n15 Trump, Donald 80, 105 unintentionality (see intention) van Halen, Edward 42n13, 52n32 Vargas, Manuel 5n7, 70n2, 71n3, 77–8, 92–4, 149 vice 34, 81–2, 127–8, 160–1 (see also virtue) virtue 33–4, 127–8, 160–1 (see also vice) ethics 53n36 Wallace, R. Jay 5–6, 10n20, 15n26, 76n13, 113–14, 129n8, 151n51, 162n9

189

Washington Capitals 80–1 Watson, Gary 6n12, 67n56, 75, 85n33, 113–14, 126–32 Webber, Chris 91n43 weakness of will 136–8 Weatherson, Brian 13n24 Wilson, George 44n17 Wiseau, Tommy 22–3, 84n30, 111 Wolf, Susan 4n5, 32–5, 76n13, 78n17, 85, 132n16, 174n25 Yousafzai, Malala 105 Zaibert, Leo 76n12 Zimmerman, Michael J. 5–6, 71n4