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Respecting the Game: Blame and Practice Failure
Author(s) -
Dorsey Dale
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
philosophy and phenomenological research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.7
H-Index - 39
eISSN - 1933-1592
pISSN - 0031-8205
DOI - 10.1111/phpr.12629
Subject(s) - blame , normative , presumption , mistake , action (physics) , law and economics , psychology , commit , epistemology , social psychology , sociology , political science , law , philosophy , computer science , physics , quantum mechanics , database
Typically, we think that blameworthiness is tied to normative failure. To be susceptible to blame for an act, attitude, or trait it must be that this target of blame entailed some sort of mistake: bad, wrong, or unjustified action on the part of the agent. In this paper, I challenge this common presumption. Instead, I suggest that blameworthiness needn’t be a result of normative failure or a failure to maintain normative justification, but can also be a result of failures to conform to the standards that govern particular practices in which one is engaged, whether or not engagement in that practice, or indeed the norms that structure it, help to determine how one ought to live.