 Dewey argued that praise and blame function to make individuals conscious of and responsive to the wider consequences of their actions for others. This forward-looking view of praise and blame enabled Dewey to avoid the problem of free will in its connection with responsibility. Praise and blame are tools for enabling people to assume responsibility for their conduct — to enable them to regulate their conduct in view of their consequences for others. Hence, the presupposition of praise and blame is not that the individual held to account could have done otherwise at the time of acting. It is rather that praise and blame can induce people to be more conscientious — to govern their conduct in light of the responsibilities ascribed to them, to act out of a sense of their own responsibility, and thereby to take notice and mastery of the motives by which they act — in the future. This fact is most evident in our practices of praising and blaming children. Young children are not autonomous agents and lack free will in any sense relevant to the debates about responsibility. They are not responsible for their conduct.  Yet, in praising and blaming them, we hold them responsible for their conduct, as the necessary means by which they can become responsible for their conduct in the future. This is not a special or anomalous use of praise or blame; it is its paradigmatic use (HNC 119–22; LE 86–96).