Patrick J. Winther-Larsen
University of St Andrews
In this two-part paper, I discuss the subject of public blame, i.e., instances of verbal blame that are expressed in the presence of an audience. This includes cases where the wrongdoer is blamed in front of an audience or where the blamer addresses an audience in their absence. Much of the extant literature on public blame focuses on the audience’s reaction – the worry being that they will ‘pile on’ and that the wrongdoer will thereby receive a disproportionate amount of blame. In the first part, I explore whether merely blaming a wrongdoer in the presence of an audience can be objectionable, even in the absence of the audience’s blame. It’s argued that instances of public blame are uniquely objectionable in that they impose on the wrongdoer the risk of them receiving disproportionate blame from the blamer’s audience. In the second part, I turn to instances of public blame that involve exposing wrongdoers. To qualify as exposure, a given instance of public blame must satisfy two conditions: (1) the blamer must provide sufficiently identifying information about the wrongdoer, and (2) the audience must not be aware that this particular wrongdoer has committed the relevant wrongdoing. If successful, the audience thereby learns the identity of the wrongdoer. I explore whether cases of exposure are uniquely objectionable compared to other cases of public blame (in addition to inheriting its wrong-making feature). Specifically, I discuss whether exposing ‘blameworthy information’ can violate a wrongdoer’s claim to informational privacy, along the same line as the disclosure of ‘blameless information’ (e.g., their sexual orientation). Presumably, there are differences between these cases, which would undermine the wrongdoer’s claim to privacy with respect to the former. Notably, exposure is often a prerequisite for third-party blame; there doesn’t appear to be anything uniquely wrong about a victim exposing a wrongdoer to a third party. Even if the relevant wrongdoing is in some sense ‘private’ (say, the victim and the wrongdoer are members of an intimate relationship), it doesn’t follow that it should stay private. Like other cases of public blame, exposure may still be inappropriate, but the act of disclosing blameworthy information doesn’t appear to be uniquely objectionable, unlike the disclosure of blameless information.
Chair: Leonard Parr
Time: 04 September, 10:40 – 11:10 (Cancelled)
Location: SR 1.004
SOPhiA 2026 