Introduction

Abstract

Abstract This chapter motivates the book with the general motto assumed by most responsibility theorists that “to be a responsible agent is to be an apt candidate for responses like blame and praise.” The first worry about this motto is that blame doesn’t seem to have a unitary nature. We blame each other in multiple ways for multiple reasons. The second worry is that there’s been hardly any work on praise; indeed, most philosophers have assumed that, once we get clear on the nature of blame, then praise will simply be its positive counterpart. But as it turns out, there are many reasons to think not; indeed, there seem to be numerous asymmetries between them. What’s needed, therefore, is a systematic investigation into the nature of both blame and praise, as well as the nature of blameworthiness and praiseworthiness, and the remainder of the introduction lays out the plan of attack.