Posted: Aug 14, 2017 10:38 pm
by romansh
zoon wrote:
I would say that blaming someone includes a call for that someone to be punished for causing the event, whether they are to be punished by God, karma, or other people. I’m arguing (I think fairly uncontroversially) that blame evolved as part of moral behaviour in human groups, it’s when one person calls on others in the group to punish some transgressor. ?

Well blaming might involve punishment but not necessarily. I might blame the wife for breaking a favourite glass or something but I certainly would not think about punishing her. Obviously there are likely more than a couple of reasons I would not ;) .

zoon wrote: I think Sapolsky is arguing that blaming (or praising) people assumes the existence of ultimate free will, so as a determinist he’s saying it’s a bad idea. The problem is that he tells us in moral terms that we should not blame people because we are all determinate and so people’s actions are not their fault, i.e. he’s saying anyone who blames someone else is blameworthy, which is incoherent.

When I have finished his book I will let you know. But I can't imagine Sapolsky not understanding that at times a proximate cause may need to be contained. I am reminded of Galen Strawson't philosophical take on this:
“…my attitudes on such questions are dramatically inconsistent. For (a) I regard any gifts that I have, and any good that I do, as a matter of pure good fortune; so that the idea that I deserve credit for them is some strong sense seems absurd. But (b) I do not regard others’ achievements and good actions as pure good fortune, but feel admiration (and, where appropriate, gratitude) of a true-responsibility-presupposing kind. Furthermore, (c), I do not regard bad things that I do as mere bad luck, but have true-responsibility-presupposing attitudes to them (which may admittedly fade with time). Finally, (d), I do (in everyday life) naturally regard bad things other people do as explicable in ways that make true-responsibility-presupposing blame inappropriate. I suspect that this pattern may not be particularly uncommon.”
from
zoon wrote: I think blaming (along with punishments and rewards) makes sense if we merely don’t understand our own mechanisms, we don’t have to have ultimate free will, so I’m one kind of compatibilist, but I would not claim that I’m entirely clear about these matters.

Blaming as in ascribing proximate cause yes and applying appropriate consequences for actions I (or society) hold undesirable, yes. We can do this without invoking morality.