 J. J. C. Smart (1961) also defended a well-known, forward-looking approach to moral responsibility in the mid-twentieth century. Smart claimed that to blame someone for a piece of behavior is simply to assess the behavior negatively (to “dispraise” it, in Smart’s terminology) while simultaneously ascribing responsibility for the behavior to the agent. And, for Smart, an ascription of responsibility merely involves taking an agent to be such that he would have omitted the behavior if he had been provided with a motive to do so. Whatever sanctions may follow on an ascription of responsibility are administered with eye to giving an agent motives to refrain from such behavior in the future.