Title: Vulnerability and Exposure: On Untimely Blame and Public Blame

Content warning: certain sensitive subjects, including serious illness, bereavrment, and sexual harassment, will be (briefly) referenced in this talk. Though I don’t plan on giving any detailed examples, some might nonetheless find this distressing.

Abstract: For this work-in-progress talk, I will explore the idea that blame can be expressed (i) at the ‘wrong’ time and/or (ii) at the ‘wrong’ place. In essence, I’ll consider two possible procedural norms of blame.

With respect to (i), I give an account of ‘untimely blame’, on which an instance of blame can be ‘untimely’ if the blamer fails to take into account the vulnerability of the wrongdoer (i.e., the target of blame). Less abstractly, consider cases where an agent has committed a wrongdoing, and is thus blameworthy, but they receive bad medical news or suffer a bereavement sometime following the relevant wrongdoing. In light of their vulnerability, it may sometimes be inappropriate to blame them while they are in this state, which may in some cases be permanent.

With respect to (ii), I consider ‘public blame’, that is, instances where blame is expressed before an ‘audience’ (paradigmatically, third parties), and may or may not be expressed in the presence of the relevant perpetrator. This includes online blaming, which is standardly taken to be problematic on the grounds that the audience might ‘pile on’ and thus render blame disproportionate. Against others, I will suggest that ‘exposing’ someone to an audience, and thus rendering them vulnerable to their blame, is itself sometimes objectionable, regardless of whether the audience joins in.