As part of the Ethics Lunchtime Series, Eugene Chislenko will give a talk entitled “Respect and the Standing to Blame”.

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Abstract:

Many philosophers believe that hypocritical, complicit, or meddling blamers lose their standing to blame. Some hesitate to use the notion of standing. ‘Standing’ can seem too ambiguous, too binary in contexts rife with degrees, inapplicable to relevant mental kinds such as belief and emotion, and not really distinct from other evaluative notions. I argue that talk of standing can be made both coherent and useful if it models itself not on legal standing but, instead, on social and academic standing. I introduce the Disrespect View of Standing to Blame: To have standing to blame someone for something is to be in a relation to the relevant norms that enables one to blame her for it without disrespect. I argue that the Disrespect View addresses concerns about talk of standing, and offers an account of standing that is illuminating in assessing and applying conditions on standing. The Disrespect View also reorients attention toward the many interesting, tricky cases of partly undermined standing, and resists an overly legalistic conception of personal relationships.