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joet2026kglspergerfittingblameandthepartialityproblem
Journal article

Fitting Blame and the Partiality Problem

BHAP-PH

  • 2026
Published in:
  • The Journal of Ethics. - Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2026
Blame
fittingness of reactive attitudes
partiality problem
wrong kind of reason
agent-relative/-neutral
P.F. Strawson
English Blameworthiness is commonly understood in terms of fittingness of blame: An agent X is blameworthy to degree n for an action A if and only if it is fitting for all agents to blame X to degree n for A. The problem with this biconditional is that it conflicts with the intuition that whether and what kind of blame is fitting depends on the personal relationship between the blamer and the wrongdoer or the blamer and the victim. Sometimes it is, prima facie, fitting for certain agents to have different blaming responses toward the same wrongdoer due to personal relationships. This is the partiality problem for blame. I argue that we should not try to solve the problem by appealing to wrong kind of reasons, i.e. non-fittingness reasons. Instead, we should accept that different blaming responses toward the same wrongdoer may in fact be fitting. To solve the partiality problem, I propose distinguishing between agent-relative and agent-neutral blameworthiness and show how the distinction can be understood in a Strawsonian framework.
Faculty
Faculté des lettres et des sciences humaines
Department
Département de Philosophie
Language
  • English
License
CC BY
Open access status
hybrid
Identifiers
Persistent URL
https://folia.unifr.ch/unifr/documents/336239
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