The Nature of Blame

My aim is to contribute to the contemporary debate on the nature of blame in two ways. First, I want to discuss and critically evaluate the most prominent attempts to answer the question: “What is blame?”. Second, I defend a theory on the nature of blame. According to this theory, blame is whatever mental state (cognitive, emotional, conative, or a mix of these) serves the function of signaling the blamer’s normative competence and normative commitments. A version of the theory of blame as signaling has been recently defended by D. Shoemaker and M. Vargas in their 2021. To my knowledge, their work has not been yet amply discussed. However, I think they are on the right track when they argue that the most important function of blame is that of signaling something. Finally, this dissertation also deals with a somewhat neglected topic in the philosophical discussion on blame. This topic is the status of non-moral blame. Does a theory of blame need to address cases of non-moral blame, too? Or, more radically, is non-moral blame to be considered as “proper” blame? In my opinion, a theory of blame that cannot account for cases of non-moral blame is at best incomplete. In the last chapter of this dissertation, I want to show that a theory of blame as signaling can also accommodate cases of non-moral blame.