The Aptness of What We Do Together

This essay outlines and responds to the problem of appropriate piling-on. Suppose that a person is responsible for having acted wrongly. It seems apt for you to blame that person. Now suppose that I also find out about the wrongdoing. If blame is an apt response for you, and there is no special difference between us, then it is surely an apt response for me as well. Imagine, however, that there are millions of people all in identical situations to you and me. It does not seem appropriate for all these people to blame the person together. But how can that be? Why can’t we iterate the reasoning just outlined until we reach the umpteen-millionth person, and conclude that all of the millions can appropriately blame? I argue that everyone can blame inaptly even if each person blames aptly. The argument involves an account of when and why blame’s outcomes make it inapt, drawing an unexplored contrast between internal and external standards of proportionality in blaming.