Abstract
In discussing the ways in which we hold each other accountable for immoral conduct, philosophers have often focused on blame, aiming to specify adequate responses to wrongdoing. In contrast, theorizing about the ways we can appropriately respond to minor moral mistakes – i.e., criticizable conduct that is bad but not wrong – has largely been neglected. My first goal in this paper is, thus, to draw attention to this blind spot and argue that a separate account of blameless moral criticism is desirable. My second goal is to propose one way to explicate the contrast between blaming and blameless moral criticism in terms of the contrast between moral anger and moral disappointment: while moral anger, as many argue, is an appropriate response to moral wrongdoing, moral disappointment, but not moral anger, is an appropriate response to these minor moral mistakes.
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Notes
Mellema (1987).
I.e., cases in which the protagonist does not stand to lose much.
For brevity’s sake, I will often refer to such conduct as ‘good but not required’.
For the sake of accuracy, I should stress that the term “best but not required” is slightly inaccurate. In some cases, a person might be criticizable for not choosing a better available option. And yet, this better option might, in turn, be worse than some third, best, available option. In such cases, the agent might well be criticizable for not choosing the second-best option.
This definition follows Dorsey (2013, 357). I purposely adopt a relatively wide, agreeable, characterization of “supererogation”, as this paper is not concerned with the definition of supererogation. In the literature, many additional specifications have been proposed. It has, for instance, been suggested that supererogatory actions require praiseworthiness, that supererogation is to be characterized in purely evaluative terms, or that its scope is restricted to benevolent actions (see Heyd 2019 for a summary).
To be clear, this is not meant to suggest either a necessary or a sufficient connection between praise and supererogation. Such claims would be controversial because, in some cases, agents perform the supererogatory act but they don’t know that they do. In these cases, the agent seems less than praiseworthy, thereby undermining the sufficiency interpretation. In other cases, it is arguable that agents are praiseworthy for even performing their duty (McNamara 2011, Sect. 6). After all, sometimes one’s obligations can be rather demanding, in which case an agent might deserve praise for performing it where most others would fail.
There are several ways to explain this intuition. Famously, Wolf (1982) argues that moral and prudential reasons might sometimes be incommensurable in that an agent cannot be criticized for choosing either the morally or the prudentially superior option. Another way to explain the intuition is that the balance of reasons simply favors refraining from acting morally. This is suggested, for instance, in Harman (2016).
In explaining why such omissions are criticizable, Harman crucially relies on the notion of all things considered rationality. The idea is this: Deontically speaking, Amanda has options. It is permissible for her either to read or decline to read the student’s essay. The moral reasons in favor of reading the essay, however, are strong enough to outweigh her prudential concerns which is why, all things considered, reading the paper is best. Things, Harman argues, don’t always have to go this way. Sometimes, what’s morally best is not what is best all things considered. “The morally best thing I could do right now might be this: go to the local hospital and offer up a kidney and some of my liver, to save two lives. But that’s not what I should do right now, all things considered” (Harman 2016, 380). Thus, morally permissible moral mistakes are grounded in a failure to choose what is, for moral reasons, all things considered best but not morally required. Now, it might be objected that not all theories of supererogation are compatible with the existence of morally permissible moral mistakes and, therefore, with the existence of criticizable failures to supererogate. For instance, Portmore (2003, 326ff) argues that supererogation occurs when nonmoral reasons make it all things considered rational not to choose what is morally best. Of course, no one could be criticized for defying one’s moral reasons when doing so is favored by the balance of reasons. Interestingly, Portmore (2008) himself criticizes his earlier view precisely on the ground that it had “the implication that all supererogatory acts are objectively irrational” (Portmore 2008, footnote 21). Now, although some theories of supererogation (e.g., Portmore’s earlier view) are incompatible with my arguments, many other theories of supererogation are compatible with my arguments. For instance, philosophers such as Dancy, Horgan, and Timmons believe that some moral reasons endorse an action, thereby favoring this action all things considered without also requiring the action (see Macnamara and Little 2020 for an excellent summary).
An interesting corollary of this view is that cases such as ‘Amanda’ and ‘Yuca or cauliflower’ do not seem to call for guilt on part of the actor. Instead, they seem to call for something milder, e.g., regret based on one’s moral reasons. If Jonas is criticizable, on moral grounds, for not planting yuca on his garden patch, then these reasons likewise seem to give him reason to regret his choice.
In a sense, Cohen presents the inverse of Mellema’s position: whereas Mellema argued that certain failures to supererogate are not wrong, but nevertheless blameworthy, Cohen argues that such failures can be wrong, but not blameworthy.
The current proposal is built on the distinction between supererogation and deontic notions such as obligation, duty, or wrongness: Some failures to supererogate call for disappointment. Wrong actions (or actions contrary to duty), in turn, merit blaming reactions such as indignation. This perspective, it might be argued, does not naturally chime with a perspective according to which rightness and wrongness are graded notions (e.g., Peterson 2013). The idea would be that such a fine-grained graded analysis of wrongness provides the resources to re-describe failures to supererogate as being ‘wrong to some degree’. Such a theory would indeed not be compatible with my approach. However, any account of graded wrongness that does not consume failures to supererogate, as it were, would be compatible with the present approach. A case in point is Peterson (2013, Sect. 2.4) who explicitly denies that supererogation can be analyzed in terms of degrees of rightness.
Some consequentialists (e.g., Parfit 1984, Chap. 1.14; Tannsjö 1995) have argued that some actions are blameless but wrong. This is the case when an action with bad consequences is part of a set of actions with the best overall consequences. For instance, it may be that a person who always chooses what is morally best (by consequentialist lights) would need to be endowed with a humanly impossible set of motivations. The best humanly possible set of motivations might inevitably lead to some bad actions. While it seems wrong to blame agents for their bad actions in these cases, one might wonder whether disappointment may nevertheless be fitting. On reflection, we should answer in the negative. After all, on a consequentialist outlook, the fact that a wrong action is a result of the best set of motives seems to fully exculpate the agent for performing the wrong act. This is not to say, however, that disappointment is not psychologically plausible in these cases. An unattainable, yet conceivable, ideal might be a cause for disappointment, but such disappointment could not be justified on moral grounds.
“Ordinarily, it is reasonable […] to feel disappointed when a substantial benefit that one reasonably expected to receive is snatched away by some unlikely turn of events” (Draper 1999, 392). “If disappointment is only appropriate when legitimate expectations are violated, therefore, then disappointment will not be appropriate in the case of subjects whose bad behavior reflects routine moral thinking and judgment. Judgments of […] disappointment will thus be equally inappropriate with respect to such subjects”. (Brady 2010, 183)
Similarly, Telech and Katz (2022) argue for a moral type of disappointment which contrasts with a non-moral “run of the mill” type of disappointment. Moral disappointment, as they construe it, is a response to one’s frustrated “normative hope”. Such normative hope is, again, grounded in normative expectations, i.e., beliefs about what someone ought to do.
On a popular view, this valence is best described as the “seeming badness” (Carruthers 2018, 663).
E.g., Ekman (2003, Chap. 5).
On a popular view, this valence is best described as the “seeming badness” (Carruthers 2018, 663) of its object. This description will be agreeable to most theorists. Perception theories of emotions have explicitly defended the idea that an emotion’s valence is a perception-like seeming (see e.g., Döring 2007; Tappolet 2016). Cognitivists about emotions argue that these seemings are, in fact, beliefs.
The idea that wrong acts make retaliation appropriate should be read with a “pro tanto” clause writ large. After all, if you wrong me, this does not entail that I have a de facto right to punish and harm you. Severe punishment (that goes beyond dirty looks, etc.) is standardly taken to be monopolized by the state.
The fact that a single event can make several negative emotions (e.g., anger, disappointment, disgust, negative surprise) appropriate raises delicate questions about the norms that guide their co-occurrence. In particular, co-occurring negative emotions might unjustly cause compounded harm to their target, for if each of these emotions cause some harm individually, then they will likely cause greater harm in concert. For instance, if it stings to be the target of anger, and if it stings to be the target of disappointment, then it likely stings more to be the target of anger and disappointment. Furthermore, if disappointment prompts disengagement, and anger prompts retaliation, both of which are perceived as bad, then it will typically be worse to be the target of both emotions. Thus, although someone’s conduct might make both anger and disappointment appropriate, there might be further reasons, grounded in justice, calling for their moderation. Let me provide two responses. First, the fact that reasons of justice might call for emotional moderation in the cases just described leaves their fittingness untouched. The fact that it is angering that my friend humiliated me does not obviously make it less disappointing. Second, although in typical cases, the action tendencies of disappointment and anger are both perceived as negative, they are negative for very different reasons: retaliation and withdrawal both hurt, but they hurt in different ways. Suppose N steals my life savings which, in turn, makes me angry and disappointed. Consequently, I withdraw from the friendship and file a lawsuit against N. Of course, here I don’t have to start weighing whether withdrawing from the friendship is too drastic given that my lawsuit is likely to be successful. If the action tendencies associated with both emotions were the same, then the case for moderation for reasons of unjust compounding would be stronger.
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Peter Carruthers, Dan Moller, Javiera Perez Gomez, Arthur Schipper, Aiden Woodcock and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on drafts of this paper. I am moreover grateful to Noemi Swierski for her help editing this paper.
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Schönherr, J. Blameless Moral Criticism – the Case of Moral Disappointment. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 26, 53–71 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-022-10352-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-022-10352-2