There are lots of different ways to approach this question, but they do in fact end up in the same place: that it does make sense to assign blame for actions. This is not the same as saying that they should be punished for it, so let’s set aside punishment, rehabilitation, deterrence, and other surrounding factors.
How does it make sense to blame a person for not doing what they are incapable of doing?
If I have an oven with a thermostat that stops working without warning one day, I can certainly blame the oven for burning my meal. Ovens in general of its model and make and age are in general capable of maintaining the correct temperature, but this one was faulty. If it functioned correctly, then my meal would not have been burned. It had no choice to do otherwise, but that doesn’t stop it from being faulty. To a large extent blaming people just means the same thing: proclaiming that their decision-making was faulty. If they did something immoral (or failed to even attempt to perform a moral duty), then it was their moral decision-making that has been demonstrated to be faulty.
If fixing this fault was as easy and without side effects as replacing the thermostat in an oven, then we probably would just do that. Failing that, being able to say “this person’s moral decision-making was faulty” and consequently treating them differently from those who have not demonstrated faulty moral decision-making makes sense.
There are lots of different ways to approach this question, but they do in fact end up in the same place: that it does make sense to assign blame for actions. This is not the same as saying that they should be punished for it, so let’s set aside punishment, rehabilitation, deterrence, and other surrounding factors.
If I have an oven with a thermostat that stops working without warning one day, I can certainly blame the oven for burning my meal. Ovens in general of its model and make and age are in general capable of maintaining the correct temperature, but this one was faulty. If it functioned correctly, then my meal would not have been burned. It had no choice to do otherwise, but that doesn’t stop it from being faulty. To a large extent blaming people just means the same thing: proclaiming that their decision-making was faulty. If they did something immoral (or failed to even attempt to perform a moral duty), then it was their moral decision-making that has been demonstrated to be faulty.
If fixing this fault was as easy and without side effects as replacing the thermostat in an oven, then we probably would just do that. Failing that, being able to say “this person’s moral decision-making was faulty” and consequently treating them differently from those who have not demonstrated faulty moral decision-making makes sense.