International Journal of Philosophical Studies

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Blame as a sentiment

Marta Johansson Werkmäster

To cite this article: Marta Johansson Werkmäster (2022) Blame as a sentiment, International
Journal of Philosophical Studies, 30:3, 239-253, DOI: 10.1080/09672559.2022.2121893
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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES
2022, VOL. 30, NO. 3, 239–253
https://doi.org/10.1080/09672559.2022.2121893

Blame as a sentiment
Marta Johansson Werkmäster
Department of Philosophy, Lund University, Lund, Sweden

ABSTRACT
The nature of blame is not to be identified solely with a judgment, or an overt
act, or an angry emotion. Instead, blame should be identified with a sentiment:
more specifically, a multi-track disposition that manifests itself in various differ­
ent emotions, thoughts or actions in a range of different circumstances. This
paper aims to argue for these two claims. I start by arguing that blame is not
solely a judgment, overt act, or an angry emotion. Then I develop the view that
blame is a sentiment. In doing so, I also show how viewing blame as a sentiment
avoids objections that justifies us in dismissing the previous accounts. In addi­
tion, I argue that it significantly affects other inquiries concerning blame. I end
by answering a skeptical challenge that there cannot be an illuminating and
unifying analysis of blame.

KEYWORDS Blame; sentiment; emotion; disposition; moral responsibility

1. Introduction
The nature of blame is not to be identified solely with a judgment, or an overt
act, or an angry emotion. Instead, blame should be identified as a sentiment:
more specifically, a multi-track disposition that manifests itself in various
different emotions, thoughts or actions in a range of different circumstances.
This paper aims to argue for these two claims. I start by arguing that blame is
not solely a judgment, overt act, or an angry emotion (Section 3). Then
I develop the view that blame is a sentiment (Section 4). In doing so, I also
show how viewing blame as a sentiment avoids the objections that justifies us
in dismissing the previous accounts. In addition, argue that viewing blame as
a sentiment significantly informs other inquiries concerning blame. I end by
answering the skeptical claim that there cannot be an illuminating and
unifying analysis of blame (Section 5).
In other words, I believe the problem with previous accounts is that they
mistakenly identified the nature of blame with certain manifestations of
blame. In that sense, they are over-simplistic, ignore the full complexity of
the phenomenon of blaming.

CONTACT Marta Johansson Werkmäster Marta.johansson_werkmaster@fil.lu.se

© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-
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transformed, or built upon in any way.
240 M. J. WERKMÄSTER

2. Preliminaries
I do not search for a lexical definition of blame. That is, I do not search for
how ordinary language or lay people define blame. We can get this by
consulting a dictionary or conducting some empirical investigation.
Rather, I search for a theory or an analysis of the concept ‘blame’.
A good analysis of blame has certain structural features and does not
deviate too much from folk conceptions of blame.1 To name some structural
features, a good analysis is clear, informative, simple, useful in normative
investigations and in understanding worldly phenomena. For reasons of
transparency and to make it explicit, here are some vital intuitions we have
about blame:
Blame is . . .

(a) . . . about something, i.e. has intentionality,

(b) connected to various different emotions, e.g. anger, disappointment,
sadness, and guilt,
(c) connected to motivations to act or actions, e.g. motivation to demand
an apology or explanation, social distancing, and ostracism,
(d) connected to thoughts or evaluations, e.g. the evaluation that
a particular agent ought to apologize, and the thought that it is
appropriate for others to blame a particular agent,
(e) relatively long lasting, lasting for several minutes, hours, days or even
years, usually until we feel proper amends have been made.

As is evident, it is not entirely unimportant to me how ordinary language and

lay people define blame. Instead of letting our folk conceptions determine
what blame is, I treat our folk conceptions about blame to count as prima
facie evidence for or against certain analyses of blame. If an analysis of blame
deviates too much from our folk conceptions about blame, that is a prima
facie reason against the analysis (and vice-versa).
At first glance, my endeavor of searching for an analysis of blame may
seem uncontroversial. Actually, it is not. There is a growing trend in current
blame research which seem to recommend that we should not aim to give an
analysis of blame. According to Nussbaum (2016), ‘blame’ is a too hollow
concept to analyze. She writes:
In short, while it is very useful to distinguish these different cases, and while we
surely learn a lot from the distinctions that these fine philosophers have
introduced, human reactions come in many types, and the word “blame” is
very imprecise. Maybe it’s not quite as duplicitous as “privacy”, which covers
things that have no common thread at all. But it’s pretty empty and unin­
formative. (Nussbaum 2016, 260)

1
I take this to be a fairly uncontroversial claim and therefore assume without argument.
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES 241

Fricker (2016) similarly argues that the practice of blame is too heterogenous
for there to be an illuminating and unifying analysis of it. She writes:
Take blame. Let us assume that there is an analysis available. The point is we
should not expect any such analysis to be very illuminating, owing to the fact
that the practice of blame is significantly disunified, and is therefore likely to
have distinctive or otherwise central features that may not be present in all
instances. (Fricker 2016, 166) [author’s emphasis]

Taken together, these skeptical claims suggest our intuitions about blame are
too heterogenous for there to be an illuminating and unifying analysis of it.
Now, I believe that this form of skepticism is a last resort. So before accepting
it, I want to make sure that no analysis of blame can fit the bill. In the end,
I argue that this skeptical conclusion can be resisted.

3. Blame Is Not Solely a Judgment, an Overt Act, or to Be Angry

In the debate about the nature of blame, it is common to analyze blame in
terms of one feature. Some identify blame with a judgment, others with an
overt act, and some with an emotion, usually an angry emotion.2 Below,
I critically discuss each of these views in turn. I discuss these and no other
views because I believe what I say about these reveal important objections we
want a good analysis of blame to overcome. In addition, my aim is not
primarily to provide a detailed refutation of all accounts there are on the
nature of blame – that would be too lengthy an endeavor. Rather, my aim is
to offer an alternative account of blame which I believe avoids important
objections and makes better sense of our ordinary intuitions about the nature
of blame.
According to what I call the judgment account, to blame is to make
a certain judgment. What the crucial judgment consists of, varies from one
author to the other. According to the most common suggestions, the parti­
cular judgment is, roughly, one of the following:

● the judgment that an agent has ‘stained’ her ‘record’ (about her lifetime
moral worth) (Zimmerman 1988, 38), or
● the judgment that an agent has manifested insufficient goodwill
(Hieronymi 2004).

Although the suggestions differ in their details, they all analyze blame in
terms of a judgment. I will treat all suggestions under the same heading. This
is because, as we see shortly, there is an important objection to all accounts
2
It should be noted that it has not always been entirely clear to me whether the authors I discuss below
intend to provide an analysis of blame or something else. With the risk of being uncharitable to some,
I assume they intend to provide an analysis of the nature of blame.
242 M. J. WERKMÄSTER

that appeal solely to judgments, irrespective of the content of these

judgments.
One virtue of the judgment account is that it is simple and neat. To blame
is simply to judge that an agent is, more or less, blameworthy. Further, it
captures the intuition that blame is about something and connected to
thoughts or evaluations. Despite these virtues, I believe the judgment
account fails. The main reason for this is that it overlooks the distinction
between judging blameworthy and blaming.3 It explains what it is to judge
someone blameworthy, not what it is to blame someone.4
Below, I provide a case in support of the phenomenon of judging an agent
blameworthy without blaming her. If this case is possible, I believe we have
a sufficient reason for distinguishing judging blameworthy from blaming.
Wallace (1994) writes one may:
believe that an especially charming colleague who has cheated and lied to you
has done something morally wrong, insofar as he has violated a moral obliga­
tion not to cheat or lie for personal advantage, and yet you may have trouble
working up any resentment or indignation about this case. In a situation of this
sort it would perhaps be strange to say that you blame the colleague for what he
has done. (Wallace 1994, 76)

According to Wallace, in some circumstances you are not prone to react in

any way at all to an agent you judge is blameworthy, by for instance feeling
resentment, disappointed or wanting to avoid or confront her. In those
circumstances Wallace holds, and I concur, that it would be odd to claim
that you blame the agent.
Granting that the above case shows that it is possible to judge someone
blameworthy and at the same time deny that one blames her, we should
distinguish between blaming and judging someone blameworthy.5 In order
3
For simplicity, I write ‘judging blameworthy’ instead of for example ‘judging the agent has manifested
insufficient good will’ or “judging the agent has stained her moral record’. I believe we can change
‘judging blameworthy’ to any of the particular accounts presented and have the same problem.
4
This distinction echoes the general distinction pointed out by Kubala (2017) and Scheffler (2010)
between judging valuable and valuing. Kubala (2017) argues for the psychological possibility of valuing
without believing valuable. He states ‘[a]s a matter of psychological fact, it is possible to value
something [. . .] without believing it valuable.’ (Kubala 2017, 60) Scheffler (2010) has similarly defended
the distinction between valuing and believing valuable. He states ‘[b]ut the proposal that to value X is
simply to believe that X is valuable is unsatisfactory in any case, for it is not only possible but
commonplace to believe that something is valuable without valuing it oneself. There are, for example,
many activities that I regard as valuable but which I myself do not value, including, say, folk dancing,
bird-watching, and studying Bulgarian history. Indeed, I value only a tiny fraction of the activities that
I take to be valuable.’ (Scheffler 2010, 21).
5
Some argue that it is even possible to blame an agent without judging her blameworthy (Menges 2017;
Pickard 2013; Portmore 2022). It is common to refer to this phenomenon as irrational blame or
recalcitrant blame (Menges 2017; Pickard 2013; Portmore 2022). The discussion of recalcitrant blame
draws much inspiration from D’Arms and Jacobson’s work on recalcitrant emotions (D’arms 2003;
D’Arms and Jacobson 2000). The idea here is that judgements and emotions can come apart in the
sense that we may experience an emotion despite having made a judgment that conflicts with it. In
some circumstances we may for example judge that a monster in a movie does not pose a danger to us
and still fear it or judge that an agent is not loveable, but rather cruel, and still love her. Similarly, these
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES 243

to arrive at an analysis of blame, we need to understand what it is to blame an

agent that is distinct from solely judging her blameworthy.
Moving to what I call the act account. According to the act account, to
blame is to perform some overt act, like booing, performing a speech act, or
punishing someone. No one, to my knowledge, really defends this analysis of
the nature of blame. Some blame scholars refer to it to make helpful
comparisons. Scanlon (2008) locate for example his account of the nature
of blame between the act account and the judgment account.6 In addition,
some instrumentalists about blame seem to assume it when discussing the
justification of blame, see for example (Arneson 2003; Milam 2021; Svedberg
and Tännsjö 2017). Despite all this, I believe it is fruitful to discuss the act
account as a potential analysis of blame. Not only because I believe that some
version of the act account is what most people ordinarily have in mind, but
also because it has a virtue which I believe an adequate analysis of blame
should be able to account for. This virtue is that the act account acknowl­
edges the fact that we often do something when we blame. We usually cut
relations with those who have wronged us and protest wrongs made by
politicians. Despite this virtue, I argue that the act account fails. This is
because it overlooks the important phenomenon of private blame and seems
ill-equipped to account for the intuition that blame is connected to various
different emotions.
We can blame ‘privately,’ that is, without performing any overt act
(Wallace 1994, 56; Sher 2005, 74). If that is true, blame cannot be identified
solely with an overt act. Consider the following case:

Vaccination: Your friend’s friend refuses to take vaccination against a severe

virus. You feel that it is not your place to publicly criticize or boo her for
refusing to take the vaccination, so you do not do that. However, you still
blame her.

In Vaccination, it is true that the agent blames her friend’s friend but false
that she performs any overt act, like booing or punishing her. Rather, she
keeps her blame to herself. Regardless of whether or not we believe the details
of the case or whether or not we believe her omission is justified, in such
a case it is right to say that you blame your friend’s friend. This shows that
blame is not just the performance of an overt act.

blame scholars argue we may sometimes judge an agent not blameworthy and still blame her. Here,
I do not take a stance regarding the feasibility of this phenomenon. For my purposes, it is sufficient that
we do not believe that simply judging an agent blameworthy is to blame her.
6
Scanlon summarizes his account nicely as follows: ‘Briefly put, my proposal is this: to claim that a person
is blameworthy for an action is to claim that the action shows something about the agent’s attitudes
toward others that impair the relations that others can have with him or her. To blame is to judge him
or her to be blameworthy and to take your relationship with him or her to be modified in a way that
this judgment of impaired relations holds to be appropriate.’ (Scanlon 2008, 128–129).
244 M. J. WERKMÄSTER

In reply, one might revise the act account to include ‘private acts.’ Doing
so, one might argue, avoids the above counterexample.7 Bracketing issues
concerning how we should construe private acts and whether it even makes
sense to speak of private acts of blaming, even if we avoid the counter­
example by modifying the act account to include ‘private’ acts, I still believe it
ultimately fails. This is because it seems ill-equipped to account for the
intuition that blame is connected to various different emotions. It is not
just the case that we often do something when we blame someone; we also
often feel something.
The final account I wish to consider says that to blame others is to feel
either resentment or indignation against them, and to blame oneself is to feel
guilty.8 Most defenders of this account identify these affective responses
more or less explicitly with Strawson’s reactive attitudes (Menges 2017;
Wallace 1994, 2012). Although the accounts differ somewhat in their details,
most of them hold that the particular affective response is either resentment,
indignation or guilt and that, in the case we blame others, these affective
responses motivate hostile behavior, like the motivation to punish or harm
the blameworthy. I therefore lump the accounts together and call the account
angry blame.
These authors have not said much about the nature of these angry
affective phenomena. Menges (2017) claim that an agent may either have
an affective episode of anger or guilt, or an affective single-tracked disposition
to be angry with someone or feel guilty with oneself.9 In addition, he (ibid)
also holds that angry emotions need not be identified with a judgment.10

7
Thanks are owed to the anonymous referee and András Szigeti for introducing this reply to me.
8
Wolf writes: “Let me return to the first and perhaps the main point that I wish to defend – namely, that
the range of attitudes and related activities that I am used to referring to when I use the word ‘blame’ is
distinct from the range to which Scanlon refers, and has a potentially valuable role in our lives. The
range of attitudes I have in mind, as I have said, is a range that includes resentment, indignation, guilt,
and righteous anger – they are emotional attitudes that involve negative feelings toward a person,
arising from the belief or impression that the person has behaved badly toward oneself or to a member
(or members) of a community about which one cares and which tend to give rise to or perhaps even
include a desire to scold or punish the person for his bad behavior. I shall refer to the range of attitudes
I have in mind as ‘the angry attitudes’ and the kind of blame that is characterized by these attitudes as
‘angry blame.’ (Wolf 2011, 335–6).
9
There are two crucial distinguishing properties between affective episodes and affective dispositions.
First, while affective episodes are usually thought to be short lived, lasting for minutes, or in rare cases
even hours, affective dispositions are usually thought to be long-lived, lasting for several minutes,
hours, days, weeks, months, even years. Second, while affective episodes are commonly thought to
have a phenomenology, a ‘what-it-is-likeness’, affective dispositions are not commonly thought to
have a phenomenology (at least not by themselves). To have an episode of fear involves experiencing
various bodily changes, e.g. increased heart rate and feeling warm. By contrast, having a disposition to
be afraid of certain objects does not involve bodily feelings. Rather, affective dispositions can be
viewed as tendencies to experience certain affective episodes with bodily feelings. For more about this
distinction, see (Deonna and Teroni 2011; Tappolet 2016).
10
For defenders of the view that emotions are identified with judgements, see (Nussbaum 2001;
Solomon 1976). For critique of such views, see (Deonna and Teroni 2011). If we accept that the
angry blame emotions need not be identified with a judgment, this can be interpreted as a virtue
because they have the tools to make sense of irrational or recalcitrant blame, see fn 5.
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES 245

One virtue of angry blame is that it accounts for the observation that when
we blame others, we are usually angry with them, and when we blame
ourselves, we usually feel guilty.11 Furthermore, it can account for the
observations that blame is about something, as emotions are generally
thought to be about something (Deonna and Teroni 2011). In addition, the
observation that blame is connected with actions because emotions often
motivate us to act (ibid). Despite these virtues, I argue that angry blame is too
narrow and that a modified version of it fails to provide a good analysis of
blame.
Sher (2005) does not believe that other-blame is always something angry
or hostile. He writes:

We may, for example, feel no hostility toward the loved one whom we blame
for failing to tell a sensitive acquaintance a hard truth, the criminal whom we
blame for a burglary we read about in the newspaper, or the historical figure
whom we blame for the misdeeds he performed long ago. (Sher 2005, 88)

I share Sher’s claim that other-blame is not always something hostile. If we

reflect on our own lived experiences, we soon find that it supports Sher’s
claim. I believe our own lived experiences support another claim as well:
namely, that blame – both other-blame and self-blame – is connected to
various different emotions, not just for example hostile emotions in the case
of other-blame. A view of the nature of blame strictly in terms of angry
emotions or guilt therefore seems too narrow.
Instead of rejecting the fact that various different emotions can be
instances of blaming, defenders of angry blame can modify their view to
include all emotions we believe can be instances of blaming. Such a view
could look like follows: to blame is to feel guilt, or shame, or resentment, or
indignation, or disappointment, or hurt feelings, or disgust, or contempt, or
sadness, or any other emotion in the vicinity.
Even though the modified angry blame account seems better in terms of
co-extensionality than the non-modified angry blame account, it fails on
other grounds. The modified account provides us with a disjunction con­
sisting of different emotions. These emotions differ in, among other things,
their phenomenology and which kind of behavior they tend to prompt:
resentment generally attack tendencies, guilt usually reparation tendencies,
and disappointment generally withdrawal tendencies (Prinz 2009). Not only
are they different, we can experience the emotions included in the disjunc­
tion without blaming someone. For example, I can feel disgusted with my
food. Consequently, we want an explanation of when an instance of these
emotions counts as an instance of blaming and, more generally, what ties
11
A further criticism with the judgment account is that it seems ill equipped to account for this intuition
and the intuition that we often do something when we blame someone.
246 M. J. WERKMÄSTER

instances of all these different emotions together to count as instances of

blaming. We can call this worry the unity worry.12
In the literature on the nature of blame, there is no clear or generally
accepted answer to this worry. Below, I elaborate on two possible answers
and argue that none of them is successful (at least not yet).
One way of unifying the emotions is by arguing that they have the same
behavioral upshot. Drawing inspiration from Rosen (2015), we can argue that
instances of affective episodes or dispositions that prompt sanctioning beha­
viors are instances of blaming.13 Drawing inspiration from Skorupski (2010),
on the other hand, we can argue that instances of affective episodes or
dispositions that prompt withdrawal of recognition, social distancing, ostra­
cism, are instances of blaming.
Generally, angry emotions tend to prompt sanctioning behavior, not
withdrawal tendencies. Further, disappointment, guilt, shame and hurt feel­
ings are generally thought to not prompt sanctioning behavior, but rather
withdrawal or social distancing. Accepting the Rosen or Skorupski inspired
way of unifying the blame emotions would therefore probably exclude some
of the emotions our ordinary thoughts suggest can be instances of blaming.
For that reason, these ways of uniting the emotions we believe can be
instances of blaming seem to fail.
Another way to unite the emotions is by claiming they have the same
content. There are no clear suggestions about what that content should be. To
elaborate on one suggestion. If the content is ‘x is blameworthy’, that poses
theoretical problems for some who want to analyze blameworthiness in
terms of fitting blame.14 More precisely, the analysis would turn out circular
if we analyzed blameworthiness by reference to an emotion with the content
‘x is blameworthy’.15 In addition, accepting this suggestion risks over-
intellectualizing blame, excluding people whom we think can blame from
being able to blame. For example, young children, as it is questionable
whether they have the concept of blameworthiness.

12
Pickard (2013) writes similarly: ‘If blame is like an emotion, then which emotion is it like? For, there is no
“basic” emotion of blame. Indeed, it seems that blame can be connected to a range of different
emotions. Most obviously, these include anger, hate, and resentment. But the range can plausibly be
extended to conclude certain other states that have an affective dimension without being uncontro­
versially identifiable as emotions, such as, for instance, disappointment, indignation and contempt.
Moreover, as expected given this range, blame’s manifestations can be equally various. Alongside
punishing, blame can also be manifest in berating, attacking, humiliating, writing off, rejecting,
shunning, abandoning, and criticizing, to name but a few behaviours. There is thus a challenge facing
the suggestion that blame is like an emotion. The challenge is to unite these various emotions and
manifestations thereof into a single account of blame. For, given that they can occur without counting
as instances of blame, we must explain what makes them count, when they do, as instances of blame.’
(Pickard 2013, 622–3).
13
It should be mentioned that Rosen (2015) does not aim to provide an analysis of blame. Despite this,
I believe what he writes about blame and how he unifies the blame emotions in his 2015 paper is
helpful in this section.
14
Which is common to do, see for instance (Ewing 1948; Skorupski 2010).
15
For defenders of circular fitting attitude analyses of value, see (Garcia 2018; Tappolet 2016).
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES 247

Thus, it seems that we have ended up in a dead end. If we accept the Rosen
or Skorupski-inspired way of unifying the blame emotions, we fail to unite all
the emotions we believe can be instances of blaming. The other way is not
promising either, at least not yet. If we accept the modified version of angry
blame without answering the unity worry in a plausible way, we end up
lacking a neat and informative analysis of blame, i.e. a good analysis of
blame.
Moving to a final worry with both angry blame and the modified angry
blame account, it is questionable whether it even makes sense to view blame
as an affective episode. Intuitively, blame is relatively long-lasting. Blame
typically lasts for several minutes, hours, days, or even years. And we do not
normally say that we experience a ‘pang’ or ‘episode’ of blame, while we
commonly say that we experience a ‘pang’ or ‘episode’ of anger or fear.
Finally, we do not stop to blame someone after having experienced a bout of
anger or disappointment in, for instance, the presence of the blameworthy
agent – we continue to blame her after that experience, usually until we feel
proper amends have been made. This is not a knock-down objection to angry
blame. Some defenders of this view claim, remember, that we may have
a disposition to be angry, and dispositions are usually taken to be relatively
long-lasting and exist in the agent after its manifestation has disappeared.
In sum: to blame is not solely to make a certain judgment. To blame is not
solely to perform some overt act either. And, to blame is not solely to just feel
angry or guilt.16 Next, I argue that blame is a sentiment. More precisely,
blame is a multi-track disposition that manifests itself in various different
emotions, thoughts or actions in a range of different circumstances. Put in
other words, I believe the problem with previous accounts is that they
mistakenly identified the nature of blame with certain manifestations of
blame. This failure is similar to identifying love with certain manifestations
of love. To love is not solely to give roses or to only feel happy in the presence
of the beloved: love is a sentiment, that is, it is a multi-track disposition that
in a range of different circumstances manifests itself in various different
emotions, thoughts or actions.

4. Blame as a Sentiment
In this section, I (i) argue that blame is a type of sentiment.17 More precisely,
blame is a multi-track disposition that manifests itself in various different
16
Again, this should not be read as saying that the accounts discussed above are adequately refuted and
cannot be made to work. Rather, it should be read as saying that the worries they are subject to are
severe enough to motivate the search for an alternative account of the nature of blame that can
account for the presented worries.
17
In the literature on emotions, the term ‘sentiment’ has been used in many different ways, compare for
instance how the following philosophers use the term (D’Arms and Jacobson 2000; Deonna and Teroni
2009; Helm 2009; Hume 2000; Naar 2018; Vendrell Ferran forthcoming). Some use it to mark an
248 M. J. WERKMÄSTER

emotions, thoughts or actions in a range of different circumstances. In this

sense, it can be viewed as a hybrid account: an account of blame that
combines the judgment account, act account and modified angry blame
account. In addition, I (ii) argue that by viewing blame as a sentiment, we
avoid the problems earlier raised to the other accounts of blame. Finally,
I (iii) show that viewing blame as sentiment significantly affects other
inquiries concerning blame.
I take a sentiment to be a multi-track disposition (Ben-Ze’ev 2000;
Deonna and Teroni 2009; Vendrell Ferran forthcoming). Below, I say more
about the nature of dispositions. It is a disposition that in a range of different
circumstances manifest itself in various different emotions, thoughts or
actions. Depending on the sentiment we are concerned with, the manifesta­
tions and triggering conditions will differ. Paradigmatic examples of senti­
ments include ‘love’, ‘hate’, ‘like’, ‘dislike’, and ‘care’. To illustrate how
sentiments manifest themselves in various different ways, consider what
Prinz (2004) writes about the sentiments ‘like’ and ‘dislike’:

If you like someone, then you experience joy in her presence. But you may also
experience amusement when she makes a joke, excitement when anticipating
your next encounter, sadness when you are apart, distress when she is harmed,
and so forth. If you dislike someone, you may experience anger, disgust, or
contempt in her presence. You may even experience Schadenfreude when she
falls victim to misfortune. (Prinz 2004, 189)

It makes perfect sense to say that when you blame someone, you are in
a range of different circumstances disposed to experience various different
emotions, thoughts or actions. Characteristic emotions, actions and thoughts
include, but are not limited to, the following:
Characteristic emotions: resentment, indignation, guilt, shame, disap­
pointment, contempt, sadness, hurt feelings, disgust.
Characteristic actions: demand an excuse or explanation, withdraw,
ostracism.
Characteristic thoughts: thinking that it is fitting for others to blame her,
that she ought to take responsibility for her action.
The blame sentiment is usually triggered when the agent is confronted
with the particular blameworthy agent and her action in some way, such as
when the agent is contemplating, hearing about, being reminded about,
being confronted by, seeing, or perceiving the particular blameworthy
agent and her action. To illustrate all this, you might experience resentment
when thinking about the fact that your partner has cheated, disgust when
seeing that she is unaffected by the fact she cheated, sadness when thinking

affective episode, others a disposition. Among those marking it as a disposition, there are disagree­
ments regarding how to spell out the details. Feel free to call my view the disposition view if you
believe it does not coincide perfectly with your preferred understanding of sentiments.
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES 249

about the fact that your relationship with her has changed due to the fact that
she cheated, think that she owes you an excuse when contemplating the fact
that she cheated, or be disposed to demand an excuse from her when
discussing the fact that she cheated with her.
Importantly, sentiments are taken to remain in the agent after its mani­
festation have disappeared. This is a difference between sentiments and
affective episodes. For example, I still love my partner after having experi­
enced an affective episode of joy in, say, her presence. As hinted at in the
previous section, I still blame someone after having experienced an episode
of resentment when being reminded about the blameworthy agent’s action.
Further, sentiments are commonly taken to have the property of inten­
tionality: they are about something, usually agents or specific objects (Naar
2018). I love my cat, care for my child, and dislike a particular politician, for
example. Like other sentiments, blame is also about something.
Finally, sentiments, in contrast to affective episodes, are relatively long-
lasting (Ben-Ze’ev 2000; Deonna and Teroni 2011; Naar 2018; Tappolet
2016). By ‘relatively long-lasting’ I mean lasting for several minutes, hours,
days, weeks, or even years. Blame is commonly taken to last for a relatively
long period of time: several minutes, hours, days, weeks and even years.
Usually until we feel proper amends have been made.
Now we can see how viewing blame as a species of sentiment avoids the
objections discussed in the previous section.
The problem for the judgment account is that it fails to capture that we
react in certain ways when we blame someone – we do not just judge
someone blameworthy. Viewing blame as a sentiment avoids this problem,
as blame on this account is manifested in various different reactions. The
problem for the act account is that blame is connected to overt acts, but
cannot be identified with only an overt act. We can blame ‘privately.’ On this
account, to blame is to be disposed to perform, among other things, overt
acts. When the blame disposition is not manifested or manifested in some­
thing other than overt acts, e.g. an emotion, we can say that you blame
privately. It also avoids the too narrow worry presented to angry blame in
virtue of identifying blame as a disposition that is manifested in a plurality of
emotions. How about the unity worry? How do we explain whether an
instance of disappointment is an instance of blaming? And how do we
explain what ties instances of all the characteristic emotions, thoughts and
actions together to constitute instances of blaming? I believe defenders of the
sentiment account can answer this worry.18 More precisely, I believe defen­
ders of the sentiment account can answer this worry differently depending
on, among other things, which view of the nature of dispositions they

18
Thanks are owed to the anonymous referee for inviting me to clarify the unity worry and how
defenders of the sentiment account can answer it.
250 M. J. WERKMÄSTER

subscribe to. Below, I illustrate how a realist about emotional dispositions

might go about answering this worry. In order to understand that reply
better, it is helpful to first say what I take realism about emotional disposi­
tions to be.19
According to Naar (2013, 2018), emotional dispositions like sentiments
are actual properties of persons. These properties are connected to or
directed towards their manifestations but are not to be identified with
them. They are distinct. Consequently, a number of disassociations are
possible between them. An agent might in suitable circumstances behave
in a way that is characteristic of a person who blames someone without
having the disposition which we call blame. Reversely, an agent might have
the disposition which we call blame without in suitable circumstances behav­
ing in a way that is characteristic of a person who blames someone. Further,
these properties are taken to play a causal role in producing the manifesta­
tions they are connected.20
Granting such a rough realist conception of dispositions, we can answer
the unity worry. We can say that an instance of disappointment is an instance
of blaming when it is a manifestation of the blame sentiment, that is,
produced by the disposition which we call blame. Likewise, what ties
instances of all the characteristic emotions, thoughts and actions together
to constitute instances of blaming is that they all are manifestations of the
blame sentiment, that is, produced by the disposition which we call blame.21
Related to this, it seems that some of blame’s characteristic manifestations
are also characteristic manifestations of other sentiments. For example,
disgust might manifest hate, not just blame. How do we decide whether an
instance of disgust is an instance of blaming or hating? The answer to this
worry is similar to the answer I just gave above: disgust is an instance of
blaming when it is a manifestation of the blame sentiment, that is, produced

19
An antirealist – antirealism about dispositions is the thesis, roughly put, that emotional dispositions are
nothing over and above their manifestations – might unite instances of the characteristic emotions,
actions and thoughts by claiming that they are part of the same rationally connected sequence of
emotions, thoughts and actions characteristic of blaming. An instance of disappointment is an instance
of blaming when it is part of such a sequence. I do not have the space to compare these kinds of
explanations, and more generally, argue for whether or not we should be realists or antirealists about
sentiments.
20
For other realist theories about dispositions, see (Molnar 2003; Mumford 1998; Heil 2003).
21
In the context of love, Naar (2013) writes something similar: ‘What ties all the events of a given
sequence together as constituting an expression of love? The answer, on the dispositional account, is
simply that a disposition, love, is their common origin. And we now have a way to tell whether or not
a given event is part of the relevant sequence: we need to consider the disposition that produced it; if it
is the disposition with which we identify love, then the event is an expression of love, and if it is not,
then the event is not an expression of love. What distinguishes an episode of joy towards another
person’s embarrassment as an expression of love from a similar episode that is an expression of cruelty
is thus that the former originates in love while the latter originates in cruelty. (Perhaps certain cases
can be interpreted as mimicking cases.) This point is trivial only superficially, however: whatever sort of
thing love-the-disposition is – so far, the account is silent on this more specific question – an event that
counts as an ’expression of love’ must come from that thing.’ (Naar 2013, 353).
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES 251

by the disposition which we call blame, and an instance of hating when it is

a manifestation of the hate sentiment, that is, produced by the disposition
which we call hate.22
Over and above the virtues mentioned above, the way I view blame as
a sentiment is not committed to the claim that blame always manifest itself in
aggressive or hostile behavior. This is an important upshot. If blame is not
always something hostile, it is not equally evident, as some philosophers
argue, that it is morally bad or that we ought to discourage it (Nussbaum
2016; Pereboom 2009). Thus, accepting my view of blame is likely to sig­
nificantly affect other inquiries concerning blame.

5. Conclusion
Recall the skeptical challenge presented at the beginning of this paper: our
intuitions about blame are too heterogenous for there to be an illuminating
and unifying analysis of it. Is analyzing blame as a sentiment an illuminating
and unifying analysis? I believe that it is. As showed in the previous section, it
unites all our intuitions about blame to a single analysis. On the account
I develop, blame has intentionality, is connected to various thoughts, actions
and emotions because blame manifests itself in various different thoughts,
actions and emotions, and relatively long-lasting.
Regarding whether the account is informative or illuminating, we do not
need to know all the details in order to have an illuminating or informative
analysis of blame. We only need to know enough. I believe the account of
blame I have developed in the previous section is sufficiently illuminating
and informative. It tells us what blame is and explains how we, by viewing
blame as a sentiment, avoid problems associated with other popular accounts
of blame. What more information do we as philosophers need in order to
have an illuminating analysis of blame? To summarize and conclude, the
nature of blame is not to be identified solely with a certain judgment, some
overt act, or an angry emotion. Instead, blame is to be identified with
a sentiment.

22
I do not think it is a unique flaw with my account that it includes manifestations that are manifestations
of other sentiments as well. It is common that sentiments share some characteristic manifestations
with each other. Consider, for instance, the sentiments ‘love’ and ‘care’, and ‘hate’ and ‘dislike’. The
emotion ‘joy’ might be a characteristic manifestation of both love and care. Likewise, ‘disgust’ might be
a characteristic manifestation of dislike as well as hate. When we individuate sentiments, or multi-track
dispositions more generally, I think it makes sense to look at all characteristic manifestations (or, rather,
all characteristic manifestations we know of) instead of just some of them. If we consider all
manifestations we know about, we see for instance that even though hate and blame share some
characteristic manifestations, they do not share all. For example, to demand an excuse, feel guilt or
thinking it is fitting for others to blame the blameworthy agent are not characteristic manifestations of
hate.
252 M. J. WERKMÄSTER

Acknowledgments
For helpful feedback on earlier drafts, I would like to thank in particular David Alm,
Julien Deonna, Björn Petersson, András Szigeti, Matthew Talbert, Fabrice Teroni,
Jakob Werkmäster, the anonymous reviewer, participants at the Higher Seminars at
Lund University, members of the LGRP and members of Thumos, the Genevan
research group on emotions, values and norms.

Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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