Mirela Koleva
University of Vienna
Conversational accounts of blame hold that our diverse blaming practices aim at communicating a disposition, a desire, or a protest to the wrongdoer and/or to the moral community. Two of the most famous conversational accounts are Angela Smith’s (2012) and Miranda Fricker’s (2016). Suppose I see a mother spanking her toddler in the park. On Smith’s account, when I blame her, I protest the claim implicit in her conduct, namely that parents can abuse their children, and I want her or the moral community to acknowledge this. On Fricker’s account, I want to make the mother feel remorse and alter her moral perception of the situation.
My main aim in this talk is to show that Smith’s and Fricker’s accounts are extensionally inadequate, as they are unable to accommodate cases of private blame. Private blame is a frequently glossed-over type of blame which refers to cases where the blamer does not intend to receive uptake for their blaming and intentionally refrains from any outward expressions of it. I might blame the aggressive mother without frowning or calling her out.
If all cases of blame have a communicative function, as the conversational accounts hold, then uptake should be at least possible in all instances of blame, because successful communication requires uptake. When I blame privately, however, I aim at not expressing my blame. If the mother or anyone else notices that I am blaming her, that would be failed private blaming. Thus, I argue, private blame does not fall in the scope of conversational accounts.
I anticipate and respond to possible objections to my argument by highlighting how Smith and Fricker seek to include private blame in their accounts, namely by conflating it with something else which they can accommodate: a failed illocutionary act (Fricker, 2016), the beginnings of expressed blame (Smith, 2012), or openly blaming the dead (Ibid.).
From exploring Smith’s and Fricker’s accounts, I conclude that conversational accounts of blame are extensionally inadequate.
Literature
Fricker, M. (2016). What’s the Point of Blame? A Paradigm Based Explanation. Noûs, 50(1),
165–183.
Smith, A. M. (2012). Moral Blame and Moral Protest. In D. J. Coates & N. A. Tognazzini
(Eds.), Blame: Its Nature and Norms (pp. 27–48). Oxford University Press.
Chair: Kendra Gordillo
Time: September 13th, 10:40 – 11:10
Location: SR 1.007
SOPhiA 2026 