If to err is human, then so too is to regret. At least if we follow Paddy McQueen in his recent book about the nature, normativity, and politics of regret. According to McQueen, regret is, roughly, a painful feeling of self-reproach or self-recrimination for making a “mistake” (21). Like all emotions, regret is more than just a judgment, though it has a constitutive thought type (i.e., “I have made a mistake”), which can be realized by many different token thoughts (e.g., “I wish I had not done that”, “I should have acted differently” or “what an idiot I am!”). Regret’s “phenomenological core” is the feeling of “kicking oneself” or “beating oneself up” for a mistake (21). Regret directs our attention to the mistake in decision-making we have made and motivates us to avoid making the same kind of mistake in the future (72, 136).
What makes regret fitting (i.e., reasonable, rational, appropriate, or called for)?
The answer is given by the constitutive thought and feeling of regret: “I’ve made a mistake”. Regret is fitting only in response to one’s own past mistakes in decision-making. To make a mistake is to fail to act in a way that one is practically justified in acting. How one is practically justified in acting at t is determined by one’s practical identity and the information that is “epistemically available” to one at t. One’s practical identity is one’s “reflectively endorsed values, preferences, projects, social roles, and normative commitments” (54–55). Information is “epistemically available” to one if one “can easily, or at least relatively easily, be aware of [it] when [one] is deliberating about what to do” (58). This rules out the fittingness of regret for outcomes one could not have reasonably foreseen as well as the possibility of retrospective justification for one’s actions, i.e., the view that whether or not it is fitting to regret some decision turns on how things turn out.
McQueen’s view is, in some respects, rather narrow. It entails that one cannot fittingly regret anything except one’s own choices. Thus, we cannot fittingly regret other people’s choices, our own traits, or states of affairs when these are not the result of our own choice(s). Regret is also a non-moral emotion (i.e., it need not be about violating a moral norm, wronging, or harming anyone, in contrast to guilt and remorse) only about one’s choices (unlike disappointment). Thus, one can regret a mistake that has nothing to do with violating a moral norm or wronging/harming someone else, e.g., regretting that I took too long to pack and thus missed my flight.
This narrow view is preferable to a host of seemingly overly broad views that define regret as, for example, “an affect of pain or distress about a past event that is judged to be in some way unfortunate or lamentable” (Wallace 2013, 45), “a painful feeling about something we did which we think was bad” (Bittner 1992, 262), or “a more or less painful judgement and state of feeling sorry for misfortunes, limitations, losses, shortcomings, transgressions, or mistakes” (Landman 1993, 4). On such views it would be fitting to regret events that one was not responsible for—or only marginally responsible for.
McQueen nicely avoids concerns about his view being overly narrow by delicately mapping out the borders between regret and its neighboring or kindred emotions (e.g., disappointment, wistfulness, guilt, sadness, dismay, and remorse). For example, this allows McQueen to say that it is unfitting for Williams’ infamous lorry driver to regret killing the child who ran into the street, but nonetheless fitting for them to feel “horror, distress, sadness, and dismay” (102). Likewise, while it might be unfitting for someone to feel regret for making the best decision in a moral dilemma—because the choice was not a mistake—it is nonetheless fitting for them to feel sadness, dismay, distraught, or even grief.
The second half of Regret concerns the politics of regret, e.g., the way that regret is used to shape people’s social identities as well as moral and political debates. McQueen addresses growing appeals to (likely) future regret to argue against females’ choice to undergo voluntary sterilization and abortion as well as people’s choice to seek gender-confirming treatment. I have much less to say about this section of the book. McQueen’s arguments against (a) appealing to potential regret as a reason against making such choices and (b) the data used in support of the likelihood of regret are largely convincing. One consistent, and important, strain throughout is that as long as those choosing to undergo these procedures have the certain practical identities and sufficient evidence—as McQueen thinks they generally do—then their choice will not be a mistake and thus not something they ought to regret. Nevertheless, it may be fitting in some range of cases for people to feel related emotions that are not so tied to choice, e.g., disappointment, sadness, or wistfulness.
I now want to turn to a concern. As noted, McQueen accepts that emotions involve a certain action tendency or motivational profile. This motivational profile is important because it is partly constitutive of an emotion and helps to distinguish one emotion type from others. McQueen argues that regret’s “action-tendency” or characteristic motivation is to “improve our decision-making in the future” (12). Moreover, he suggests that improving future decision-making is regret’s primary function (12, 128).
But this is a puzzling view about the characteristic motivation of regret. Why? It conflicts with two seeming truisms about emotions. First, the characteristic motivation of any emotion is directly concerned with the intentional object of the token emotion and not potential future intentional objects. When I am afraid of some particular ferocious dog, disgusted by some particular insect, or angry with some particular person, the motivation that is partly constitutive of that emotion directly concerns that dog, that image, and that person. Second, the motivation that is partly constitutive of negative emotions is such that when that motivation succeeds, the emotional episode is rationally resolved or diminished. For example, fear motivates me to evade the ferocious dog; once I succeed, it becomes rational to cease fearing it—or to fear it less.
But notice that on McQueen’s account, the motivational profile of a token episode of regret is directed not at the intentional object of that token episode of regret, but at future possible choice situations.[1] Also, notice that it does not seem like avoiding the same (or similar) mistake in the future makes it rational to cease regretting some previous mistake, or to regret it less. If I regret not spending enough time with my first child, spending more time with my second child will not make it rational to feel less or no regret about this.
It seems to me that the characteristic motivation of regret is to undo or at least mitigate the action that is the intentional object of my regret (or at least its effects). Imagine you get a tattoo that you immediately regret getting. For example, you get someone’s name tattooed on your arm after only a few dates. When experiencing this regret, your first and primary motivation will not be to avoid making the same mistake in the future. Rather, your motivation will concern that very tattoo. If you could easily have it removed, that’s precisely what you’d do first. If doing so is too painful or expensive, then you’ll be motivated to get it covered up by a new tattoo. If that is too painful or expensive, then you’ll be motivated to cover it with clothing. If you cannot cover it, you might be motivated to undo its significance by telling others it was a mistake and not something that aligns with your values. Of course, it may be that some mistakes cannot be undone or mitigated, but it is also true that some mistakes are such that one will never have the opportunity to avoid making a similar one in the future.
The fact that McQueen does not see undoing one’s mistake as the primary goal or motivation of regret is also highlighted by the fact that he sees the primary function of regret as improving one’s decision-making. As he argues, because regret is painful and concerns a particular mistake, it can help us remember this mistake and thereby be able to avoid it (or similar mistakes) in the future (28–29)
Yet it seems to me that this is not a distinguishing feature of regret. Many—if not all—negative emotions play a similar role. If I experience fear (e.g., during a roller coaster), disgust (e.g., at some food), contempt (e.g., toward some co-worker), or guilt (e.g., for wronging someone), then the pain of this emotional episode will help me remember that event and motivate me to avoid the same kind of situation in the future.
Perhaps the idea is that in order to improve decision-making in the future, one must judge that some previous experience is such that it would have been better if one didn’t have it. But regret only applies to choices that are such that it would have been better if we didn’t make them. It might be that I made no mistake in choosing to take the roller coaster and so should not regret it even though I was terrified the whole time. Rather, what helps my decision-making in the future is the unpleasantness of the fear and this negative affect’s impact on my memory. Such emotions improve deliberation by helping one remember (and thereby avoid) experiencing what one found unpleasant (e.g., scary, disgusting, annoying, etc.). The more information one has about the consequences of a choice, the better the decision one is able to make. So, it’s not clear to me that there is any special connection between regret and decision-making that demarcates it from other negative emotions.
These concerns aside, Regret is a rich, compelling, and eminently readable book and essential reading for those interested in the nexus of moral psychology, normative ethics, value theory, and bioethics. You won’t (fittingly) regret reading it.
REFERENCES
Bagnoli, Carla. 2000. “Value in the Guise of Regret.” Philosophical Explorations 3, no. 2: 169-87.
Bittner, Rüdiger. 1992. “Is It Reasonable to Regret Things One Did?”Journal of Philosophy 89, no. 5: 262-73.
Jacobson, Daniel. 2013. “Regret, Agency and Error.” In David Shoemaker (ed.), Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility vol. 1, 95–125. New York Oxford University Press.
Landman, Janet. 1993. Regret: The Persistence of the Possible. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
McQueen, Paddy. 2024. Regret. New York: Oxford University Press.
[1] In fairness to McQueen, he sometimes talks about regret involving “wanting” to undo a mistake and approvingly cites Jacobson’s (2013) view of regret which involves “the wish to undo the error” (17, 21). But wanting to bring something about and being motivated to do it are different things and wishes are normally thought to have no tight connection with action as one can wish for (and want) what one knows to be impossible. More importantly, in McQueen’s explicit statement of his view, he focuses exclusively on future decision-making and lists improving (future) decision-making as the “action-tendency” of regret (12, 115, 136, and 256). Moreover, he argues that it is the primary function of regret as improving decision-making and not undoing or mitigating (the effects of) mistakes.