This paper outlines a new conative theory of blame. I argue that the best-known conative
approaches to blame (Scanlon 1998, 2008, Sher 2006a) misrepresent the cognitive and
dispositional components of blame. Section 1 argues, against Scanlon and Sher, that
blaming involves the judgment that an act or state is the fault of
the blamed. I also propose an alternative dispositional condition on which blaming
only occurs if it matters to the blamer whether the blamed gets the punishment that
she deserves. In Section 2, I discuss objections to judgment-based accounts of blame
(that they cannot tell the difference between blaming and judging to be blameworthy,
that they cannot explain why blame is often accompanied by emotion, and that they
cannot make sense of irrational blame), and I argue that my proposal can handle all
of them.
