Just as we may praise or dispraise a woman for her figure, a footballer for his fleetness or slowness of foot, a lecturer in philosophy for his intelligence or lack of intelligence, and a writer for clarity or obscurity, so naturally enough, we may praise or dispraise a man for his honesty or dishonesty, truthfulness or untruthfulness, kindness or unkindness and so on. In this sense of 'praise' we may praise moral qualities and moral actions in exactly the same way as we may praise beauty, intelligence, agility or strength. Either we may do so quite generally, using a grading word like 'good', 'excellent' or 'first-class', or we may simply give a description. (For example: her cheeks are like roses, her eyes are like stars.) Praise has a primary function and a secondary function. In its primary function it is just to tell people what people are like. To say that one candidate for a lecturership writes clear prose whereas another cannot put a decent sentence together is to help the committee to decide who should be given the lecturership. Naturally enough, therefore, we like to be praised, hate to be dispraised. And even if no actual advantage is to come from praise, we like to be praised by a competent judge for work we have done because we take this as evidence that we have been on the right track and done something valuable. Because we come to like being praised and to hate being dispraised, praise and dispraise come to have an important secondary function. To praise a class of actions is to encourage people to do actions of that class. And utility of an action normally, but not always, corresponds to utility of praise of it.
(J. J. C. Smart, "Free-Will, Praise and Blame," Mind, n.s., 70 [July 1961]: 291-306, at 304 [italics in original])
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 