Kelly McCormick, "The Problem of Blame: Making Sense of Moral Anger" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
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What is the central problem of blame that the episode introduces?
Welcome to the New Books Network.
Hello, and thank you for joining us for this episode of New Books in Philosophy, which is part of the New Books Network. I'm Robert Talese. I'm professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt University, and I co-host the program with Carrie Figter, Malcolm Keating, and Sarah Tyson. My guest today is Kelly McCormick. Kelly is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Texas Christian University. Her research is focused on questions of moral responsibility and the various practices by which we hold one another responsible. Her new book has just been published with Cambridge University Press. Its title is The Problem of Blame, Making Sense of Moral Anger. Now, Blame seems both morally necessary and morally dicey. It's necessary because it appears to be central in our holding others to account for wrongdoing.
It's dicey, on the other hand, because at least in its standards forms, blame involves the expression of anger, and it also aims to impose some harm on its target, maybe in a very small sense of harm. But what's more, our blaming practices appear to presuppose a kind of free will that some would argue is implausible. In any case, we're aware of the many ways in which blaming can go wrong. We sometimes criticize others for being too blamey. Are we ever justified in blaming others? Now, in her book, The Problem of Blame, Kelly McCormick defends blame. She develops a novel theory of how agents can deserve a certain kind of blame and answers a range of skeptical views, according to which, because the relevant concept of dessert should be jettisoned, no one ever deserves to be blamed.
Now, along the way, McCormick introduces a range of insightful methodological considerations that help us to navigate the debate moving forward. So, as usual, there's a lot to talk about. But also, as usual, we will begin with our guest. Hello, Kelly. Hi, Bob. How are you today? I'm doing great. How are you? Oh, I'm doing fine. Thank you. And thanks for joining me for a discussion of your wonderful book. Oh, thanks for having me. Happy to be here. That's fabulous. Why don't you, you know, we usually start off by asking the author to say a few things about herself. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Sure.
Well, I guess the most pressing thing I've got going on at the moment is I just had a baby. So forgive any mom brain that might fog up in the interview. This is kind of my first toe dip back into professional responsibilities. But yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much. But yeah, I'm originally from upstate New York and ended up in Texas. And I've been here for about eight years. So that's been a really interesting adventure in itself. So for this summer, it's been 112 more days than I care to count. So yeah, I never thought I'd be living on the surface of the sun, but here we are.
and floods are you are you where there's flood problems yes
yeah those are also nearby that's at any given day you you never know how texas might try to kill you uh the upshot but there are many there are many nice things about texas too i think it gets a bad rap uh sometimes fairly but you know there are are some nice things about being here as well so we'll see
Well, very nice. Very nice. So let's talk about the book. And we can begin at the beginning, if that is OK with you. You know, I wanted to just, you know, start off by asking you about how you sort of frame, you know, what you call the problem of blame. As you note in the book, the philosophical vocabulary here is not well behaved. You know, there are lots of different things that are called blame. And sometimes when people are arguing about the moral justification or appropriateness of blame, it's very easy sometimes for them to talk past each other because they're thinking of two different or at least two phenomena both plausibly thought of as blame that are philosophically worth keeping distinct.
So you identify a particular kind of blame, what you call reactive blame, and you identify to desiderata that an account of this kind of blame or maybe a justification of this kind of blame needs to satisfy.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the central problem of blame that the episode introduces?
0:01–6:35
2
How does Kelly McCormick define “reactive blame” and why is it important?
6:35–15:17
3
What is “basic desert” and how does it differ from other notions of desert?
15:17–23:58
4
Why do skeptics (the “curmudgeons”) doubt the normativity of reactive blame?
23:58–34:32
5
What methodological tools does McCormick use to respond to blame skeptics?
34:32–41:18
6
How does the book address the “dark side” of free will and blame?
41:18–50:18
7
What arguments does McCormick give for keeping angry, reactive blame in moral practice?
50:18–59:10
8
What are the concluding take‑aways and future directions suggested at the end of the interview?
59:10–1:05:13
Speakers
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