I defend the historical definition of "function" originally given in my Language, Thought and Other Biological Categories (1984a). The definition was not offered in the spirit of conceptual analysis but is more akin to a theoretical definition of "function". A major theme is that nonhistorical analyses of "function" fail to deal adequately with items that are not capable of performing their functions.

Epistemic exploitation occurs when privileged persons compel marginalized persons to educate them about the nature of their oppression. I argue that epistemic exploitation is marked by unrecognized, uncompensated, emotionally taxing, coerced epistemic labor. The coercive and exploitative aspects of the phenomenon are exemplified by the unpaid nature of the educational labor and its associated opportunity costs, the double bind that marginalized persons must navigate when faced with the demand to educate, and the need for additional labor created by the default (...) skepticism of the privileged. I explore the connections between epistemic exploitation and the two varieties of epistemic injustice that Fricker (2007) identifies, testimonial and hermeneutical injustice. I situate epistemic exploitation within Dotson’s (2012; 2014) framework of epistemic oppression, and I address the role that epistemic exploitation plays in maintaining active ignorance and upholding dominant epistemic frameworks. (shrink)

Philosophers often call emotions appropriate or inappropriate. What is meant by such talk? In one sense, explicated in this paper, to call an emotion appropriate is to say that the emotion is fitting: it accurately presents its object as having certain evaluative features. For instance, envy might be thought appropriate when one’s rival has something good which one lacks. But someone might grant that a circumstance has these features, yet deny that envy is appropriate, on the grounds that it is (...) wrong to be envious. These two senses of ‘appropriate’ have much less in common than philosophers have supposed. Indeed, the distinction between propriety and correctness is crucial to understanding the distinctive role of the emotions in ethics. We argue here that an emotion can be fitting despite being wrong to feel, and that various philosophical arguments are guilty of a systematic error which we term the moralistic fallacy. (shrink)

Philosophers often call emotions appropriate or inappropriate. What is meant by such talk? In one sense, explicated in this paper, to call an emotion appropriate is to say that the emotion is fitting: it accurately presents its object as having certain evaluative features. For instance, envy might be thought appropriate when one's rival has something good which one lacks. But someone might grant that a circumstance has these features, yet deny that envy is appropriate, on the grounds that it is (...) wrong to be envious. These two senses of `appropriate' have much less in common than philosophers have supposed. Indeed, the distinction between propriety and correctness is crucial to understanding the distinctive role of the emotions in ethics. We argue here that an emotion can be fitting despite being wrong to feel, and that various philosophical arguments are guilty of a systematic error which we term the moralistic fallacy. (shrink)

When we hope to explain and perhaps vindicate a practice that is internally diverse, philosophy faces a methodological challenge. Such subject matters are likely to have explanatorily basic features that are not necessary conditions. This prompts a move away from analysis to some other kind of philosophical explanation. This paper proposes a paradigm based explanation of one such subject matter: blame. First, a paradigm form of blame is identified—‘Communicative Blame’—where this is understood as a candidate for an explanatorily basic form (...) of blame. Second, its point and purpose in our lives is investigated and found to reside in its power to increase the alignment of the blamer and the wrongdoer's moral understandings. Third, the hypothesis that Communicative Blame is an explanatorily basic form of blame is tested out by seeing how far other kinds of blame can reasonably be understood as derivative, especially in respect of blame's point and purpose. Finally, a new and quasi-political worry about blame is raised. (shrink)

It is notable that all of the leading theories of blame have to employ ungainly fixes to deflect one or more apparent counterexamples. What these theories share is a content‐based theory of blame's nature. Such approaches overlook or ignore blame's core unifying feature, namely, its function, which is to signal the blamer's commitment to a set of norms. In this paper, we present the problems with the extant theories and then explain what signaling is, how it functions in blame, why (...) appealing to it resolves the problems in other theories, what the signaling function implies for a wider range of gray‐area cases, and what the larger significance is of blame's core function for interpersonal interactions in a variety of (non‐moral) normative domains. (shrink)

This paper examines the methodological claim made famous by P.F. Strawson: that we understand what features are required for responsible agency by exploring our attitudes and practices of holding responsible. What is the presumed metaphysical connection between holding responsible and being fit to be held responsible that makes this claim credible? I propose a non-standard answer to this question, arguing for a view of responsible agency that is neither anti-realist (i.e. purely 'conventionalist') nor straightforwardly realist. It is instead ‘constructivist’. On (...) the ‘Scaffolding View’ I defend, reactive attitudes play an essential role in developing, supporting, and thereby maintaining the capacities that make for responsible agency. While this view has relatively novel implications for a metaphysical understanding of capacities, its chief virtue, in contrast with more standard views, is providing a plausibly defensible account of how so-called responsible agents genuinely deserve to be treated as such. (shrink)

Three pictures of integrity have gained philosophical currency. On the integrated self picture, integrity involves the integration of "parts" of oneself into a whole. On the identity picture, integrity means fidelity to projects and principles constitutive of one's core identity. On the clean hands picture, integrity means maintaining the purity of one's agency, especially in dirty hands situations. I sketch each picture and suggest two general criticisms. First, integrity is reduced to something else with which it is not equivalent--to the (...) conditions of unified agency, to the conditions for continuing as the same self, and to the conditions for having reason to refuse cooperating with evil. Second, integrity is understood as a personal, but not also a social virtue; this limits the analysis of what integrity is and why it is a virtue. In the last section, I suggest a way of understanding integrity as the social virtue of standing before others for what, in one's best judgment, is worth persons' doing. (shrink)

If, as many suppose, pornography changes people, a question arises as to how.1 One answer to this question offers a grand and noble vision. Inspired by the idea that pornography is speech, and inspired by a certain liberal ideal about the point of speech in political life, some theorists say that pornography contributes to that liberal ideal: pornography, even at its most violent and misogynistic, and even at its most harmful, is political speech that aims to express certain views about (...) the good life, 2aims to persuade its consumers of a certain political point of view—and to some extent succeeds in persuading them. Ronald Dworkin suggests that the pornographer contributes to the ‘moral environment, by expressing his political or social convictions or tastes or prejudices informally’, that pornography ‘seeks to deliver’ a ‘message’ , that it reflects the ‘opinion’ that ‘women are submissive, or enjoy being dominated, or should be treated as if they did’, that it is comparable to speech ‘advocating that women occupy inferior roles’.3 Pornography on this view is political speech that aims to persuade its listeners of the truth of certain ideas about women, and of course ‘the government must leave to the people the evaluation of ideas’.4 Another answer offers a vision that is not grand and noble, but thoroughly reductive. Pornography is not politically persuasive speech, but speech that works by a process of psychological conditioning. This view seems common enough in the social science literature. Consider, for example, this description of an early experiment, from a time that pre-dates contemporary political debate. (shrink)

Philosophers analyzing standing to blame have argued that in view of a blamer’s own fault she can lack standing to blame another for an act even if the act is blameworthy and that standingless, hypocritical blame is pro tanto morally wrongful. The bearing of these conclusions on standing to praise is yet to receive the attention it deserves. I defend two claims. The first is the conditional claim that if and are true, so are and. The latter are: a praiser (...) can lack the standing to praise herself for an act even if that act is praiseworthy and standingless, hypocritical praise is pro tanto morally wrongful. So I am suggesting that facts about standing to blame reflect more general facts about standing to hold responsible. The second is the claim that and are true. (shrink)

One way of being responsible for an action is being praiseworthy for it. But what is the “praise” of which the praiseworthy agent is worthy? This paper provides a survey of answers to this question, i.e. a survey of possible accounts of praise’s nature. It then presents an overview of candidate norms governing our responses of praise. By attending to praise’s nature and appropriateness conditions, we stand to acquire a richer conception of what it is to be, and to regard (...) another as, a responsible agent. (shrink)

In recent years there has been an explosion of philosophical work on blame. Much of this work has focused on explicating the nature of blame or on examining the norms that govern it, and the primary motivation for theorizing about blame seems to derive from blame’s tight connection to responsibility. However, very little philosophical attention has been given to praise and its attendant practices. In this paper, I identify three possible explanations for this lack of attention. My goal is to (...) show that each of these lines of thought is mistaken and to argue that praise is deserving of careful, independent analysis by philosophers interested in theorizing about responsibility. (shrink)

The wrongdoing that feminists critique often occurs at the level of social practice where social acceptance of oppressive practices and the absence of widespread moral critique impede the wrongdoer’s awareness of wrongdoing. This chapter argues that under these circumstances individuals are not blameworthy for participating in conventionalized wrongdoing. However, because social vulnerability to reproach is necessary to publicizing moral standards and conveying the obligatory force of moral requirements, it is sometimes reasonable to reproach moral failings even when individuals are excused.

Many theorists claim that the reactive emotions, even in their private form, are communicative entities. But as widely endorsed as this claim is, it has not been redeemed: the literature lacks a clear and compelling account of the sense in which reactive attitudes qua private mental states are essentially communicative. In this paper, I fill this gap. I propose that it is apt to characterize privately held reactive attitudes as communicative in nature because they, like many paradigmatic forms of communication, (...) have representational content and the function of evoking uptake of this content in a recipient. (shrink)

I argue for adopting a conception of obligation that is broader than the conception commonly adopted by moral philosophers. According to this broader conception, the crucial marks of an obligatory action are, first, that the reasons for the obliged party to perform the action include an exclusionary reason and, second, that the obliged party is the appropriate target of blaming reactive attitudes, if they inexcusably fail to perform the obligatory action. An obligation is directed if the exclusionary reason depends on (...) the relationship between the obliged person and the person to whom they owe the obligatory action, and the latter person is positioned to personally blame the obligated person for inexcusably failing to perform the obligatory action. Some direc- ted obligations are not owed as a matter of right, and the person to whom the obligatory action is owed is the only person positioned to blame nonperformance. Other directed obligations are owed as a matter of right, and people who are not part of the relationship grounding the obligation nevertheless are also positioned to (impersonally) blame non-performance. Only the rights-based form of directed obligation has received signifi- cant attention from moral philosophers, yet the former—which is at the heart of what I call “personal bonds”—is a pervasive and significant theme of our ordinary interpersonal lives. (shrink)

I defend an instrumentalist account of moral responsibility and adopt Manuel Vargas’ idea that our responsibility practices are justified by their effects. However, whereas Vargas gives an independent account of morally responsible agency, on my account, responsible agency is defined as the susceptibility to developing and maintaining moral agency through being held responsible. I show that the instrumentalism I propose can avoid some problems more crude forms of instrumentalism encounter by adopting aspects of Strawsonian accounts. I then show the implications (...) for our understanding of responsibility: my account requires us to adopt a graded notion of responsibility and accept the claim that certain individuals may not be responsible because they are not susceptible to being influenced by our moral responsibility practices. Finally, I discuss whether the account is committed to allowing the instrumentalization of non-responsible individuals in cases where blaming them may benefit others’ moral agency. (shrink)

Philosophers have had a lot to say about blame, much less about praise. In this paper, I follow some recent authors in arguing that this is a mistake. However, unlike these recent authors, the reasons I identify for scrutinising praise are to do with the ways in which praise is, systematically, unjustly apportioned. Specifically, drawing on testimony and findings from social psychology, I argue that praise is often apportioned in ways that reflect and entrench existing structures of oppression. Articulating what (...) is going wrong here helps us to see what to do about it. (shrink)

Philosophers have turned their attention to gaslighting only recently, and have made considerable progress in analysing its characteristic aims and harms. I am less convinced, however, that we have fully understood its nature. I will argue in this paper that philosophers and others interested in the phenomenon have largely overlooked a phenomenon I call moral gaslighting, in which someone is made to feel morally defective—for example, cruelly unforgiving or overly suspicious—for harbouring some mental state to which she is entitled. If (...) I am right about this possibility, and that it deserves to be called gaslighting, then gaslighting is a far more prevalent and everyday phenomenon than has previously been credited. And it can also be a purely structural phenomenon, as well as an interpersonal one, which remains a controversial possibility in the current literature. (shrink)

This paper attempts to provide a more plausible theory of moral accountability and the crucial role in it of moral address by taking seriously four "marginal" cases of agency: psychopaths, moral fetishists, and individuals with autism and mild intellectual disabilities. Each case motivates the addition of another key accountability capacity.

A neglected and non-trivial problem exists for a central cluster of Strawsonian accountability theories of moral responsibility, namely those that, following Gary Watson, understand the reactive attitudes to be implicit forms of moral address, particularly moral demand. The problem consists in the joint acceptance of two claims: (a) Accountability is a matter of agents holding one another to moral demands, and (b) accountability is a view of blame and praise. I label joint acceptance of these claims the Strawsonian’s demand dogma. (...) Symptomatic of a larger tendency among responsibility theorists to focus on blame to the neglect of its positive counterpart, the demand dogma saddles the Strawsonian with an impoverished and ultimately untenable view of praise. This is because moral demand occupies a dual role on the Strawsonian's view of blame, one that it is incapable of occupying for praise. For, demands figure not only in the contents of blame responses; demand typifies the form of these responses themselves. That is, reactive attitudes of blame, unlike those of praise, implicitly make demands of their targets. The force of this problem is highlighted by considering the inadequacy of various strategies for shoehorning “demand” into our conception of praise. If reactive attitudes generally are incipient forms of moral address, praise-manifesting attitudes must communicate something other than demand. Though primarily critical, this paper invites Strawsonian responsibility theorists to give renewed attention to the foundations of the proposal that the reactive attitudes are incipiently communicative, focusing this time on the form of address that lies at the heart of praise. (shrink)

This paper develops a recognition-theoretical analysis of human dignity. I argue that a life with dignity requires social esteem (recognition for one’s contribution to socially shared goals) as well as respect (recognition of one’s equal status). I illustrate this through an empirically informed discussion of three aspects of the current social organization of labour which threaten human dignity: unemployment, precarity and low pay. I also argue that in class societies the assertion of dignity as a positional good can undermine its (...) general progressive appeal. (shrink)

Motivating reforms to address discrimination and exclusion is important. But what epistemic practices characterize better or worse ways of doing this? Recently, the phenomena of implicit biases have played a large role in motivating reforms. We argue that this strategy risks perpetuating two kinds of epistemic oppression: the vindication dynamic and contributory injustice. We offer positive proposals for avoiding these forms of epistemic oppression when confronting racism.

Praise is a common feature of interpersonal interaction. It is used to encourage, socialize, ingratiate, seduce, reward, and influence other people. These assorted usages reflect a widespread belief in the efficacy of praise for altering the behaviour and affective state of the recipient. Despite this assumed power of praise, and despite its salience and frequency in human social interaction, research interest in praise has been sporadic and intermittent, and not united within an all-embracing theoretical model.In this article we will present (...) an analysis of the effects of praise. We will begin by considering how to define praise. Next, we will examine the view of praise as social reinforcement, a conception which roots praise firmly within an empiricist framework; this appears to have been the predominant theoretical view guiding previous research on praise. We will conclude, however, that this view is conceptually inadequate to account for the empirical evidence. Because of that conclusion, our next step will be to provide a novel examination of the likely processes and consequences involved in praise. The remainder of the article will then be devoted to examining, where it is available, empirical evidence relevant to our analysis. (shrink)