Inseparable subjectivity – Part 2: Critical vs moral blame

Part 2: Critical vs moral blame

Now that we have some idea of what ‘person’ refers to, we can make progress on what it means to blame a person. For a recap:

Person(1) = Public person = Your public person is that thing that generates within others certain experiences, such as visual experiences of a certain shape or auditory experiences of a certain sound (like the sound of your voice).
 
Person(2) = Private person = Your private self is any subjective / experiential / first-person / phenomenological property that carries a particular youness to it.

Because this is a phenomenal definition, it’s no surprise that it would be circular – i.e. you = those subjective properties that correspond to… you. The circularity is benign because phenomenal definitions must gesture toward a phenomenology. Compare: red = the red color, another phenomenal definition that is circular in a benign way, gesturing toward the phenomenology of seeing redness. Just as ‘red’ gestures toward the red experience you have, ‘you’ gestures toward the youness of any experience you have.

You can make further distinctions like where ‘you’ refers to the total experiences you caused others or the total experiences you’ve had. For now, these two key distinctions are enough.

I’ve made a distinction between moral versus critical blame, which basically means blaming Person(2) versus blaming Person(1), respectively. That is, to blame a person critically is to criticize the quality of their public properties. To blame a person morally is to criticize the quality of their phenomenal properties.

There’s two other distinctions of blame at work: Blame as cause and blame as blameworthy / blameless cause (or creditworthy / creditless), i.e., whether you are the cause in a way that reflects the quality of you. X can fail to be the cause of Y, explaining why the quality of Y says nothing about the quality of X. For example, I fail to be the cause of the 2015 earthquake in Nepal (so I claim), and so the badness of this disaster says nothing about the badness of me. Or, X can succeed in being the cause of Y, but in such a way that the quality of Y says nothing about the quality of X. For example, a baby succeeds to be the cause of accidentally knocking over a vase and breaking it. The badness of breaking the vase says nothing about the badness of the baby.

But that’s too quick. The badness of breaking the vase does say something about the badness of the baby: the baby can cause bad experiences in others by breaking their vases. So Baby(1) is extrinsically bad. But the badness of breaking the vase says nothing about the badness of the baby’s phenomenal properties, as the baby’s phenomenal properties had nothing to do with causing the vase to break. So Baby(2) is blameless with respect to breaking the vase.

But even if the baby’s phenomenal properties did have something to do with causing the vase to break, that wouldn’t necessarily mean that Baby(2) is bad. If the baby grows up and is now a teenager, and the teenager chooses to break the vase, and thus the teenager has a phenomenal property of making a choice, and if we allow for mental causation, then the teenager’s phenomenal properties do cause the vase to break. So doesn’t that mean that the badness of breaking the vase says something about the badness of Teenager(2)? Yes and no.

If we allow for mental causation, then Person(2) is embedded within Person(1), because “that thing that generates within others certain experiences” includes those phenomenal properties, like those involved in making choices, that cause one’s actions which then generate experiences within others. So if the badness of Y reflects the badness of what causes Y, then the badness of the bad experiences within others reflects the badness of that thing that generates within others those bad experiences. And so both public and private properties of personhood can be bad.

But we can imagine Pereboom-style manipulation cases where a person is manipulated into having properties, public or private, which cause those bad experiences within others. But whose fault is it that these badness-causing properties obtain? The fault lies with the source of the manipulation. But our deterministic (or random) inputs, like our genetics, social influences, and so on, all together comprise such a manipulator. We do not choose to be what we are. We do not choose to have the intelligence, rationality, or knowledge that we have. So we do not choose for our decision-making process to be what it is. So we do not choose for our choices to come out as they do. The badness of our choices reflects the badness of our inputs, but not the badness of us. The badness of our choices does reflect the badness of us as choosers within such and such contexts (e.g., reflects our stupidity, irrationality, ignorance, etc.), but not the badness of us as experiencers, as pure subjects (i.e., as experiencers we did not choose to be stupid or irrational or ignorant, but we experience our stupidity, irrationality, ignorance, etc.).

Our first-person properties come from somewhere. They do not come, ultimately, from us, i.e., our first-person properties do not ultimately come from other first-person properties of ours. They come ultimately from sources outside of us.

What this comes to is that at bottom, the most fundamental self-property is the property of pure subjectivity, a property that is divorced from any choices made. This first-person property is not involved in the making of any choices, and so its quality cannot be fairly criticized.

To capture the distinction between those first-person properties that can be fairly criticized and those that cannot be fairly criticized, we must split Person(2) in two:

Person(2a) = The pure subjectivity by which all first-person properties are unified.

Person(2b) = The other properties of first-person properties that accompany the pure subjectivity by which all first-person properties are unified.

You(2a) is the ‘you’ referred to in the following sentence: You do not choose to be what you are. You do not choose to have the intelligence, rationality, or knowledge that you have. So you do not choose for your decision-making process to be what it is. So you do not choose for your choices to come out as they do. The badness (or goodness) of your choices reflects the badness (or goodness) of your inputs, but not the badness (or goodness) of you.