The idea that thinking, and thinking about the future, is based on logical content and the computer-like processing of variables has been a cornerstone of the cognitive revolution. The fact that so few theories of prediction and so few prediction scientists explicitly incorporate any form of symbolic rule-based inferencing into their theorizing is another indication of a true paradigm shift in the mind and brain sciences toward a new probabilistic, and at least partly associationist, nonsymbolic and non-rule-based science of the predictive mind.

This chapter sets out a non-retributive conception of blame and of self-blame, that is, one that does not invoke the notion of basically deserved pain or harm. To blame is instead to take on a non-retributive stance of moral protest. The reasons for moral protest are forward-looking: moral formation or reconciliation in a relationship that has been impaired due to wrongdoing, protection from wrongdoing, and restoration of the integrity of its victims. Regret, a painful response to one’s own wrongdoing, which by contrast with guilt (by stipulation) does not involve the supposition that the pain it involves is basically deserved, may appropriately accompany self-blame. The pain of guilt, an attitude distinct from regret, conceptually involves basic desert since it involves the supposition that it would be prima facie permissible for those who are appropriately situated to impose it on a wrongdoer for a non-instrumental reason. The pain of regret, by contrast, does not involve this supposition.