Shoulds and Shouldn’ts: What is blame?
Allan Gibbard, 28 May 2009
A tyrant, imagine, spares an innocent man from torture, but solely in order to reap good publicity. He does what morality demands, but not for the reasons that demand it. T.M. Scanlon’s new book Moral Dimensions plays on the two kinds of moral evaluation this case illustrates: the permissibility of an act, and the meaning of the way one does it. Half the book uses this distinction...