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This paper investigates the relevance of social roles and hierarchies for the attribution of blame and causation in five culturally different countries, namely China, Germany, Poland, the United Arabic Emirates, and the United States of America. We demonstrate that in all these countries, hierarchical differences between the social roles occupied by two agents and associated differences in duties to care for others affect how these two agents are morally and causally judged when they make a decision together. Agents higher in a hierarchy are attributed more blame and considered more causally responsible for an action's consequences. We also demonstrate that the degree of this effect depends on culture-specific differences in how hierarchies are conceived. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An important theme in recent experimental philosophy is that certain judgments (e.g., our judgments involving intentional action and causation) exhibit a kind of normative penetration whereby, in spite of a not-obviously-normative subject matter, they turn out to be sensitive to, and co-vary with, our normative attitudes in interesting and surprising ways. We present the results of several new experimental studies that suggest that our judgments about feasibility also appear to exhibit this kind of normative penetration in at least some cases; that the best explanation of it involves attributing to subjects a certain kind of extensional error that results from conflating the question at hand with another question that is more salient given their normative attitudes; and that these conclusions have significant, though not straightforward, implications for our understanding of both normative penetration and feasibility, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Holding companies accountable for their decisions' environmental side effects becomes increasingly important in the light of current debates on the climate crisis. The present study investigated a young sample's (n = 925) causal and moral responsibility attributions to a company's manager and their subordinate employee, who were either young or middle-aged. The agents jointly made a profit-oriented decision which either harmed or helped the environment. Results were analyzed with respect to the valence of the side effect, the agents' social role, the agents' age group, and participants' affective state. We successfully replicated findings from prior studies, showing that more intention and moral responsibility is ascribed to the manager in case of a negative side effect than in case of a positive side effect, and that the manager deserves more blame for negative side effects than the employee, whereas the employee deserves more praise for positive side effects. Additionally, responsibility attributions varied with the agents' age group, participants' positive and negative affective state, and participants' gender. By incorporating these hitherto neglected factors, the study complements existing theories of responsibility attribution and intergroup perception. The findings further highlight the contribution of affective mechanisms as driving factors of responsibility attributions. Combining moral responsibility research, intergroup research, and affective measures promises to foster the understanding of how and to whom people ascribe blame, praise, and causal responsibility for environmental consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the article, we present analyses and findings which add precision to the role of intentions and the relation between effects in attributing the intentionality of causing a side effect. Our research supplements and modifies numerous findings regarding the appearance of the so-called Knobe effect. The experiments and analyses show that the very originality of the story used by Knobe and the relationship between the evaluative properties of the main effect and the side effect results in an asymmetry of responses and contributes to the occurrence of the side-effect effect. Because of this, we reject the thesis that the mode of attitude of the agent to the caused side effect or that the social expectation of this attitude determine the attribution of the intentionality of the caused effect. On the contrary, we defend the thesis that it is the relationship between the evaluative properties of the main effect and those of the side effect, as well as the impact of a side effect on the main effect, that significantly influence the attribution of intentionality in causing a side effect.

In this paper, we investigate the effect described in the literature as the Group Knobe Effect, which is an asymmetry in ascription of intentionality of negative and positive side-effects of an action performed by a group agent. We successfully replicate two studies originally conducted by Michael and Szigeti (Philos Explor 22:44–61, 2019), who observed this effect and provide empirical evidence of the existence of two related effects—Group Epistemic and Doxastic Knobe Effects—which show analogous asymmetry with respect to knowledge and belief ascriptions. We explain how the existence of the Group Knobe Effect and its epistemic and doxastic counterparts affects the philosophical debate on collective agency and intentionality and supports the intuitiveness of realism about collective agency among laypeople. We also critically assess the reasoning presented by Michael and Szigeti (2019) in favor of the realist-collectivist interpretation of their results (as opposed to the realist-distributivist interpretation). We argue that a thorough analysis of both their data and our new findings shows a rather wide range of differing intuitions among laypeople regarding the status of groups as agents. These results show that while some laypeople may have realist-collectivist intuitions, the contrary realist-distrubutivist intuitions are also widespread and the claim that the majority of laypeople hold collectivist intuitions regarding group agency is unjustified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some argue that it is ethically justifiable to unilaterally withdraw life‐sustaining treatment during crisis standards of care without the patient's consent in order to reallocate it to another patient with a better chance of survival. This justification has been supported by two lines of argument: the equivalence thesis and the rule of the double effect. We argue that there are theoretical issues with the first and practical ones with the second, as supported by an experiment aimed at exploring whether the Knobe effect, which affects the folk concept of intention, applies to situations of unilateral withdrawal. Fifty‐two critical care physicians from one university were asked to ascribe intention in two hypothetical scenarios A and B in which outcomes differ—the patient from whom life‐sustaining treatment is withdrawn dies in scenario A but survives in scenario B—but the intention, to save the other patient regardless of the outcome of the other, is the same. The survey was administered via a web‐based survey and all answers were anonymous. A paired proportion test was used to compare responses to both questions. All 52 surveyed individuals responded in scenario A and 30 (57.7%) ascribed intention when outcomes were unfavorable, whereas 50 responded in scenario B and 8 (16%) ascribed intention when outcomes were favorable, a difference that was statistically significant (p < 0.001). There are theoretical and practical issues with the arguments proposed to justify the unilateral withdrawal of life‐sustaining treatment based on the equivalence thesis and the rule of double effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large body of research has found that people judge bad foreseen side effects to be more intentional than good ones. While the standard interpretation of this Side-Effect Effect (SEE) takes it to show that the ordinary concept of intentionality is influenced by normative considerations, a competing account holds that it is the result of pragmatic pressure to express moral censure and, thus, that the SEE is an experimental artifact. Attempts to confirm this account have previously been unsuccessful, but Lindauer and Southwood (Am Philos Q 58(2):181–186, 2021) present a study that appears to provide support for it, by cancelling the SEE. We are not convinced. Here, we detail three studies testing their interpretation. The results indicate that it is the purported cancellation, rather than the SEE, that is an experimental artifact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The characteristic asymmetry in ascribing intentionality, known as the Knobe effect, is widely thought to result from the moral evaluation of the side effect. Existing research has focused mostly on elucidating the ordinary meaning of the notion of intentionality, while less effort has been devoted to the moral conditions associated with the analyzed scenarios. The current analysis of the moral properties of the main and side effects, as well as of the moral evaluations of the relationship between them, sheds new light on the influence of moral considerations on the attribution of intentionality in the Knobe effect. The moral evaluation of the relationship between the main and side effects is significant in that under certain circum-stances it cancels asymmetry in intentionality ascription.

People frequently label harmful (but not helpful) side effects as intentional. One proposed explanation for this asymmetry is that moral considerations fundamentally affect how people think about and apply the concept of intentional action. We propose something else: People interpret the meaning of questions about intentionally harming versus helping in fundamentally different ways. Four experiments substantially support this hypothesis. When presented with helpful (but not harmful) side effects, people interpret questions concerning intentional helping as literally asking whether helping is the agents' intentional action or believe questions are asking about why agents acted. Presented with harmful (but not helpful) side effects, people interpret the question as asking whether agents intentionally acted, knowing this would lead to harm. Differences in participants' definitions consistently helped to explain intentionality responses. These findings cast doubt on whether side-effect intentionality asymmetries are informative regarding people's core understanding and application of the concept of intentional action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The characteristic asymmetry in the attribution of intentionality in causing side effects, known as the Knobe effect, is considered to be a stable model of human cognition. This article looks at whether the way of thinking and analysing one scenario may affect the other and whether the mutual relationship between the ways in which both scenarios are analysed may affect the stability of the Knobe effect. The theoretical analyses and empirical studies performed are based on a distinction between moral and non-moral normativity possibly affecting the judgments passed in both scenarios. Therefore, an essential role in judgments about the intentionality of causing a side effect could be played by normative competences responsible for distinguishing between normative orders.

The Knobe effect (Analysis 63(3):190–194, 2003a) consists in our tendency to attribute intentionality to bringing about a side effect when it is morally bad but not when it is morally good. Beebe and Buckwalter (Mind Lang 25:474–498, 2010) have demonstrated that there is an epistemic side-effect effect (ESEE): people are more inclined to attribute knowledge when the side effect is bad in Knobe-type cases. ESEE is quite robust. In this paper, I present a new explanation of ESEE. I argue that when people attribute knowledge in morally negative cases, they express a consequence-knowledge claim (knowledge that a possible consequence of an action is that harm will occur) rather than a predictive claim (knowledge that harm will actually occur). I use the omissions account (Paprzycka in Mind Lang 30(5):550–571, 2015) to explain why the consequence-knowledge claim is particularly salient in morally negative cases. Unlike the doxastic heuristic account (Alfano et al. in Monist 95(2):264–289, 2012), the omissions account can explain the persistence of ESEE in the so-called slight-chance of harm conditions. I present the results of empirical studies that test the predictions of the account. I show that ESEE occurs in Butler-type scenarios. Some of the studies involve close replications of Nadelhoffer's (Analysis 64(3):277–284, 2004) study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the process by which civilians ascribe blame, praise, and intentionality to governments in conflict is key to formulating a successful counterinsurgency strategy. We conducted survey experiments with Palestinian civilians to examine perceived intentionality of Israeli forces for the outcomes of riot control methods with various consequences. We extend a psychological theory, the side-effect effect, to examine how individuals evaluate actors within conflict. Consistent with expectations, civilians assign more responsibility to state actors with regards to negative (versus positive) outcomes of an action. Additionally, we find a moderator: individuals exposed to violence assign even more responsibility for negative outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses how to interpret the so-called Knobe effect, which refers to the asymmetry in judgments about the intentionality of the side effects caused by one's actions. The observed tendency is explained through the "moral undertone" of the actions judged. So far, discussions have mostly been held among philosophers in the analytical tradition that is, those who see the theory of morality largely as an ethics of rules. The analysis developed in this article advances the research carried out so far to include teleological ethics, most notably the tradition of Thomistic ethics. Philosophical discussions address the problem of normative orders, focusing in particular on two types of cognition concerned, respectively, with moral judgments and facts. Investigating this issue proves to be helpful not only to explain the Knobe effect, but also to better understand the very notion of an intentional action as employed in the philosophy of action. As a result of this analysis, the Author explains the existing asymmetry in the attribution of intentionality to actions with the respondents' confusion between cognitive orders. This problem brings us to the issue of normative competences. In analyzing the Knobe effect, normative competences could be responsible for the classification of the data collected and separation of the "purely informative" order from the order of moral judgments, referring to norms or values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In "Intentional action and side-effects in ordinary language" (2003), Joshua Knobe reported an asymmetry in test subjects' responses to a question about intentionality: subjects are more likely to judge that a side effect of an agent's intended action is intentional if they think the side effect is morally bad than if they think it is morally good. This result has been taken to suggest that the concept of intentionality is an inherently moral concept. In this paper, we draw attention to the fact that Knobe's original interpretation of the results is based on an abstract rendering of the central scenario (the Chairman scenario) that is significantly different from the vignettes presented to the survey participants. In particular, the experimental vignettes involve temporal and social dimensions; they portray sequences of social actions involving an agent and an interlocutor, rather than a lone agent making a momentary decision in light of certain attitudes. Through textual analyses of a set of vignettes used to study the Knobe effect, drawing on ethnomethodology, conversation analysis, and discursive psychology, we show that there are many differences between the experimental conditions besides the moral valence of the side effect. In light of our textual analyses, we discuss vignette methodology in experimental philosophy and suggest an alternative interpretation of Knobe's original experimental results. We also argue that experimental philosophy could benefit from considering research on naturally occurring social interaction as an alternative source of empirical findings for discussions of folk-psychological concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the existing philosophical literature on the Knobe Effect (KE) in two main ways: first, this paper disconfirms the KE by showing that the latter does not hold in contexts with probable outcomes; second, this paper shows that KE is strongly sensitive to the availability heuristic bias. In particular, this paper presents two main findings from three empirical tests carried out between 2016 and 2018: the first finding concerns the fact that if the issuer of a decision with consequences on third parties is unlikely to be perceived as unfriendly, then KE is reduced or absent; the second finding regards instead the fact that if an action has two possible outcomes (one likely to obtain with strong intensity and one likely to obtain with less intensity), then KE does not obtain for decisions whose side-effects have limited consequences on third parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the current paper, we present and discuss a series of experiments in which we investigated people's willingness to ascribe intentions, as well as blame and praise, to groups. The experiments draw upon the so-called "Knobe Effect". Knobe [2003. "Intentional action and side effects in ordinary language." Analysis 63: 190-194] found that the positiveness or negativeness of side-effects of actions influences people's assessment of whether those side-effects were brought about intentionally, and also that people are more willing to assign blame for negative side-effects of actions than they are to assign praise for positive side-effect of actions. Building upon this research, we found evidence that the positiveness or negativeness of side-effects of group actions influences people's willingness to attribute intentions to groups (Experiment 1a), and that people are more willing to assign blame to groups for negative side-effects of actions than they are to assign praise to groups for positive side-effects of actions (Experiment 1b). We also found evidence (Experiments 2a, 2b, 3 and 4) that the "Group Knobe Effect" persists even when intentions and blame/praise are attributed to groups non-distributively, indicating that people tend not to think of group intentions and group blame/praise in distributive terms. We conclude that the folk are collectivist about group intentions, and also about the blameworthiness and praiseworthiness of groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present the results of four experiments concerning the evaluations people make of sentences involving many, showing that two sentences of the form many As are Bs and many As are Cs need not be equivalent when evaluated relative to a background in which B and C have the same cardinality and proportion to A, but in which B and C are predicates with opposite semantic and affective values. The data provide evidence that subjects lower the standard relevant to ascribe many for the more negatively valued predicate, and that judgments involving many are sensitive to moral considerations in a broad sense, namely to expectations involving a representation of the desirability as opposed to the mere probability of an outcome. We relate the results to similar semantic asymmetries discussed in the psychological literature, in particular to the Knobe effect and to framing effects. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.8.13 Supplementary materials, BibTeX info

According to the New Angle, any explanation of the Knobe effect must be gradable and asymmetric. It has been argued that only Hindriks' approach meets both criteria. First, we argue that Holton's hypothesis also meets the criteria. Second, we show that the authors are not justified in taking the criteria to be empirically justified. We have failed to replicate the asymmetry result in two experiments. Moreover, gradability can be objective or epistemic. We show that the New Angle presupposes objective gradability. In our experiments, the patterns of responses to questions about epistemic and objective gradability are the same, irrespective of whether the feature is objectively gradable (e.g., blameworthiness) or not (e.g., intentionality). Our results thus question the extent to which the New Angle is empirically grounded. Moreover, they raise doubt whether the answers to questions about epistemic and objective gradability can be taken at face value at all. Abbreviations: NRH - normative reasons hypothesis; NVH - norm violation hypothesis; DQ - degree question; DAQ - degree of agreement question [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we will propose a simple linguistic approach to the Knobe effect, or the moral asymmetry of intention attribution in general, which is just to ask the felicity judgments on the relevant sentences without any vignette at all. Through this approach we were in fact able to reproduce the (quasi-) Knobe effects in different languages (English and Japanese), with large effect sizes. We shall defend the significance of this simple approach by arguing that our approach and its results not only tell interesting facts about the concept of intentional action, but also show the existence of the linguistic default, which requires independent investigation. We will then argue that, despite the recent view on experimental philosophy by Knobe himself, there is a legitimate role of the empirical study of concepts in the investigations of cognitive processes in mainstream experimental philosophy, which suggests a broadly supplementary picture of experimental philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dominant view in contemporary philosophy of action is that, to explain an action we need to provide a reason for it. A reason is what rationalises an action. According to Donald Davidson, before we can describe a reason we must identify the need that accompanies the performance of a given action, as well as the specific attitude of the agent to the action. The author of Action, Reason and Cause believes that the proattitude/belief pair helps determine the reason for action, which is at the same time the action's cause. Davidson's view has a lot of supporters today and is strictly related to the so-called post-Humean theories of action. The objective of the present analysis is to demonstrate that the primary reason for action is not provided by the pro-attitude/belief pair, but by predictions due to which agents act in such and such a way. This expands on Elizabeth Anscombe's intuition according to which each intention is predictive in nature. I will support the thesis about the predictive nature of reasons for action by means of two arguments. The first argument relies on the analysis of the Knobe effect concerning the asymmetry between attributing intentionality and attributing responsibility for actions; the other draws upon the theory of predictive processing. The remainder of this paper has the following structure: in §1, I will discuss Donald Davidson's theory. §2 will focus on Elizabeth Anscombe's conception. In §3, I will examine an argument drawn from the analysis of the Knobe effect, according to which an agent will intentionally perform a given action when he can predict the effects of performing it. §4 will introduce the problem of providing reasons for action in the context of folkpsychological explanations. §5 will examine the theory of predictive processing. §6 will demonstrate that predictions serve a specific, normative role in the decision-making processes, whereas §7 will advance the argument from predictive processing whereby to explain an action is to identify specific predictive reasoning which caused the action to be performed. In the Conclusions, I will show the consequences of my main thesis for the problem of the nature of actions and explanations, as well as the rationale for using folk-psychological categories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses how to interpret the so-called Knobe effect, which refers to the asymmetry in judgments about the intentionality of the side effects caused by one's actions. The observed tendency is explained through the "moral undertone" of the actions judged. So far, discussions have mostly been held among philosophers in the analytical tradition, who see the theory of morality largely as an ethics of rules. The analysis developed in this article advances the research carried out so far to include teleological ethics, most notably the tradition of Thomistic ethics. Philosophical discussions address the problem of normative orders, focusing in particular on two types of cognition concerned, respectively, with moral judgments and facts. Investigating this issue proves to be helpful not only to explain the Knobe effect, but also to better understand the very notion of an intentional action as employed in the philosophy of action. As a result of this analysis, the Author explains the existing asymmetry in the attribution of intentionality to actions with the respondents' confusion between cognitive orders. This problem brings us to the issue of normative competences. In analysing the Knobe effect, normative competences would be responsible for the classification of the data collected and separation of the "purely informative" order from the order of moral judgments, referring to norms or values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A coherent practice of mens rea ('guilty mind') ascription in criminal law presupposes a concept of mens rea which is insensitive to the moral valence of an action's outcome. For instance, an assessment of whether an agent harmed another person intentionally should be unaffected by the severity of harm done. Ascriptions of intentionality made by laypeople, however, are subject to a strong outcome bias. As demonstrated by the Knobe effect, a knowingly incurred negative side effect is standardly judged intentional, whereas a positive side effect is not. We report the first empirical investigation into intentionality ascriptions made by professional judges, which finds (i) that professionals are sensitive to the moral valence of outcome type, and (ii) that the worse the outcome, the higher the propensity to ascribe intentionality. The data shows the intentionality ascriptions of professional judges to be inconsistent with the concept of mens rea supposedly at the foundation of criminal law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Based on a puzzling pattern in our judgements about intentional action, Knobe [(2003). “Intentional Action and Side-Effects in Ordinary Language.”Analysis63: 190–194] has claimed that these judgements are shaped by our moral judgements and evaluations. However, this claim goes directly against a key conceptual intuition about intentional action – the “frame-of-mind condition”, according to which judgements about intentional action are about the agent’s frame-of-mind and not about the moral value of his action. To preserve this intuition Hindriks [(2008). “Intentional Action and the Praise-Blame Asymmetry.”The Philosophical Quarterly58: 630–641; (2014). “Normativity in Action: How to Explain the Knobe Effect and its Relatives.”Mind & Language29: 51–72] has proposed an alternate account of the Knobe Effect. According to his “Normative Reason account of Intentional Action”, a side-effect counts as intentional only when the agent thought it constituted a normative reason not to act but did not care. In this paper, I put Hindriks’ account to test through two new studies, the results of which suggest that Hindriks’ account should be rejected. However, I argue that the key conceptual insight behind Hindriks’ account can still be saved and integrated in future accounts of Knobe’s results. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Research has consistently shown that people consider harmful side effects of an action more intentional than helpful side effects. This phenomenon is known as the sideeffect effect (SEE), which refers to the influence of moral considerations in judgments of intentionality and other non-moral concepts. There is an ongoing debate about how to explain this asymmetric pattern of judgment and the psychological factors involved in it. It has been posited that affective reactions to agents that bring about harmful sideeffects could bias intentionality attributions in these cases, explaining the asymmetric pattern of intentionality judgments that we observe in the SEE. We call this the affective bias hypothesis (ABH). Evidence for the ABH is mixed, with some findings suggesting a role for affective processes, while others suggesting that affective processes play no role in the SEE. A possible explanation for these apparently contradictory results points to affective processes involved in the SEE being confined to anger. In a series of empirical studies, we systematically measured and manipulated participants' anger in order to test this possibility. Our findings suggest that anger play no role in intentionality judgments in SEE cases, while providing support for a non-emotional motivation to blame as a factor underlying the SEE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing a company’s short-term profit seems to be still the primary responsibility of business leaders, but profit-oriented decision strategies may also elicit long-term side effects. While positive side effects might be considered as an additional benefit, negative side effects are a crucial problem calling for social responsibility. One central question is how the public evaluates managerial decisions based on an indifferent attitude toward potential side effects. This topical question becomes even more salient when focusing on multinational companies and cross-cultural differences in judgment tendencies. Thus, we explored effects of the boss–employee relationship on attributions of intentionality as well as blame and praise in the case of positive and negative side effects that derive from a solely profit-oriented measure of a company decided by its boss. With participants from Germany and the United Arab Emirates, we investigated whether the social role (boss vs. employee) influences these attributions and whether cross-cultural differences in the perception of social hierarchy moderate the effects. We used an adapted version of a paradigm developed by Knobe (2003), who discovered an asymmetry in the attribution of intentionality: While negative side effects are perceived as intentional and blameworthy, positive side effects do not cause the same intentionality attributions and do not appear as particularly praiseworthy. Across two studies, we were able to replicate the typical asymmetric attribution of blame/praise and intentionality for the boss in both cultures. Moreover, we also demonstrate moderating effects of the social role and the cultural background on these attributions. Overall, the results show that the boss–employee relationship is differently evaluated in different cultures, and this might explain some of the variance in perceived accountability within companies. Moreover, an indifferent attitude toward potential side effects leads to less lenient evaluations of managers and their subordinated employees. We discuss practical and theoretical implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A central topic in experimental epistemology has been the ways that non-epistemic evaluations of an agent's actions can affect whether the agent is taken to have certain kinds of knowledge. Several scholars (e.g., Beebe and Buckwalter Mind Lang 25:474-98; 2010; Beebe and Jensen Philosophical Psychology 25:689-715, 2012; Schaffer and Knobe Noûs 46:675-708, 2012; Beebe and Shea Episteme 10:219-40, 2013; Buckwalter Philosophical Psychology 27:368-83, 2014; Turri Ergo 1:101-127, 2014) have found that the positive or negative valence of an action can influence attributions of knowledge to the agent. These evaluative effects on knowledge attributions are commonly seen as performance errors, failing to reflect individuals' genuine conceptual competence with knows. In the present article, I report the results of a series of studies designed to test the leading version of this view, which appeals to the allegedly distorting influence of individuals' motivation to blame. I argue that the data pose significant challenges to such a view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Norm violations have been demonstrated to impact a wide range of seemingly non-normative judgments. Among other things, when agents' actions violate prescriptive norms they tend to be seen as having done those actions more freely, as having acted more intentionally, as being more of a cause of subsequent outcomes, and even as being less happy. The explanation of this effect continue to be debated, with some researchers appealing to features of actions that violate norms, and other researcher emphasizing the importance of agents' mental states when acting. Here, we report the results of two large-scale experiments that replicate and extend twelve of the studies that originally demonstrated the pervasive impact of norm violations. In each case, we build on the pre-existing experimental paradigms to additionally manipulate whether the agents knew that they were violating a norm while holding fixed the action done. We find evidence for a pervasive impact of ignorance: the impact of norm violations on non-normative judgments depends largely on the agent knowing that they were violating a norm when acting. Moreover, we find evidence that the reduction in the impact of normality is underpinned by people's counterfactual reasoning: people are less likely to consider an alternative to the agent's action if the agent is ignorant. We situate our findings in the wider debate around the role or normality in people's reasoning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Philosophers have often appealed to intuitive judgments in various thought experiments to support or reject particular theses. Experimental philosophy is an emerging discipline that examines the cognitive nature of such intuitive judgments. In this paper, we assess the methodological and epistemological status of experimental philosophy. We focus on the Knobe effect, in which our intuitive judgment of the intentionality of an action seems to depend on the perceived moral status of that action. The debate on the philosophical implications of the Knobe effect has been framed in terms of the distinction between the competence and performance of the concept of intentionality. Some scholars seem to suggest that the Knobe effect reflects the competence (or otherwise, the performance error) of the concept of intentionality. However, we argue that these notions are purely functional and thus do not have philosophical implications, without assuming normativism, which we see as problematic in a psychological methodology. Finally, focusing on the gap between competence and rationality, we suggest future directions for experimental philosophy.

Joshua Knobe's work has marshaled considerable support for the hypothesis that everyday judgments of whether an action is intentional are systematically influenced by evaluations of the action or agent. The main source of evidence for this hypothesis is a series of surveys that involve an agent either helping or harming something as a side effect. Respondents are much more likely to judge the side effect intentional if harm is involved. It is a remarkable feature of the discussion so far that it assumes without scrutiny that the substitution of one act-type for another could not, taken alone, explain the difference in responses that the two scenarios yield. This paper presents evidence, both experimental and conceptual, that it is precisely this difference that explains the asymmetry in responses. Briefly, agents who token the act-type help must fulfill certain psychological conditions that they don't have to fulfill if they are to token the act-type harm. Harming, unlike helping, does not require the fulfillment of such conditions. Consequently, it can be freely attributed to the well-intentioned and ill-intentioned, the knowing and the naive, just as long as they cause damage. The hypothesis also has important methodological implications: The widely held assumption that Knobe's CEO scenario is a good way to test for intentionality judgments is challenged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the swirling tide of controversy surrounding the work of Machery et al. (Cognition 92:B1-B12, ), the cross-cultural differences they observed in semantic intuitions about the reference of proper names have proven to be robust. In the present article, we report cross-cultural and individual differences in semantic intuitions obtained using new experimental materials. In light of the pervasiveness of the Knobe effect (Analysis 63:190-193, , Philos Psychol 16:309-324, , Behav Brain Sci 33:315-329, ; Pettit and Knobe in Mind Lang 24:586-604, ) and the fact that Machery et al.'s original materials incorporated elements of wrongdoing but did not control for their influence, we also examined the question of whether the moral valence of actions described in experimental materials might affect participants' responses. Our results suggest that uncontrolled moral valence did not distort participants' judgments in previous research. Our findings provide further confirmation of the robustness of cross-cultural and intra-cultural differences in semantic intuitions and strengthen the philosophical challenge that they pose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last decade, experimental philosophers have documented systematic asymmetries in the attributions of mental attitudes to agents who produce different types of side effects. We argue that this effect is driven not simply by the violation of a norm, but by salient-norm violation. As evidence for this hypothesis, we present two new studies in which two conflicting norms are present, and one or both of them is raised to salience. Expanding one's view to these additional cases presents, we argue, a fuller conception of the side-effect effect, which can be reversed by reversing which norm is salient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last decade, many articles have suggested that the "badness" of side-effect outcomes influences perceivers' intuitions about intentionality, contradicting the traditional notion that mental state inferences lead to moral judgments rather than the reverse. Challenging this assertion, we argue that typically, consideration of intentionality involves thinking about "intentional actions" (things people do) rather than unintended outcomes. Across several studies, we offer an explanatory framework describing why side-effect asymmetries emerge. We first establish that people differentiate actions, outcomes, goals, and side effects, associating intentions with goals but intentionality with actions in furtherance of goals, and that each of these components is readily identified in side-effect scenarios. We then demonstrate that when relationships among actions, goals, and side effects are available for consideration in response options, side-effect effects disappear. We additionally show that, because actions are not explicitly referenced, people reinterpret questions about the intentionality of side effects-particularly for harmful outcomes-as asking about intentional actions that caused side effects, creating a mismatch between participants' pragmatic and researchers' literal interpretations. Finally, we demonstrate how harmful side effects shift perceivers' attention toward considering agents' knowledge/awareness, whereas beneficial side effects focus attention on intentions/motives, which serves a useful social purpose. We discuss how perceptions of intentionality are not influenced by side-effect valence, although, because of structural differences in how people view harm versus benefit, outcomes influence which mental states perceivers consider important when answering questions that are typically asked in side-effects research. Beyond intentionality, we consider how these findings may shed light on trait attribution processes, more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'Knobe effect' is the name given to the empirical finding that judgments about whether an action is intentional or not seems to depend on the moral valence of this action. To account for this phenomenon, Scaife and Webber have recently advanced the 'Consideration Hypothesis', according to which people's ascriptions of intentionality are driven by whether they think the agent took the outcome in consideration when taking his decision. In this paper, I examine Scaife and Webber's hypothesis and conclude that it is supported neither by the existing literature nor by their own experiments, whose results I did not replicate, and that the 'Consideration Hypothesis' is not the best available account of the 'Knobe Effect'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent findings in experimental philosophy have revealed that people attribute intentionality, belief, desire, knowledge, and blame asymmetrically to side-effects depending on whether the agent who produces the side-effect violates or adheres to a norm. Although the original (and still common) test for this effect involved a chairman helping or harming the environment, hardly any of these findings have been applied to business ethics. We review what little exploration of the implications for business ethics has been done. Then, we present new experimental results that expand the attribution asymmetry to virtue and vice. We also examine whether it matters to people that an effect was produced as a primary or side-effect, as well as how consumer habits might be affected by this phenomenon. These results lead to the conclusion that it appears to be in a businessperson's self-interest to be virtuous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studying the folk concept of intentional action, Knobe (2003a) discovered a puzzling asymmetry: most people consider some bad side effects as intentional while they consider some good side effects as unintentional. In this study, we extend these findings with new experiments. The first experiment shows that the very same effect can be found in ascriptions of intentionality in the case of means for action. The second and third experiments show that means are nevertheless generally judged more intentional than side effects, and that people do take into account the structure of the action when ascribing intentionality. We then discuss a number of hypotheses that can account for these data, using reactions times from our first experiment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of researchers have begun to demonstrate that the widely discussed “Knobe effect” (wherein participants are more likely to think that actions with bad side-effects are brought about intentionally than actions with good or neutral side-effects) can be found in theory of mind judgments that do not involve the concept of intentional action. In this article we report experimental results that show that attributions of knowledge can be influenced by the kinds of (non-epistemic) concerns that drive the Knobe effect. Our findings suggest there is good reason to think that the epistemic version of the Knobe effect is a theoretically significant and robust effect, and that the goodness or badness of side-effects can often have greater influence on participant knowledge attributions than explicit information about objective probabilities. Thus, our work sheds light on important ways in which participant assessments of actions can affect the epistemic assessments participants make of agents’ beliefs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In two experiments, we demonstrate that intentional action intuitions vary as a function of whether one brings about or observes an event. In experiment 1a (N = 38), participants were less likely to judge that they intended (M = 2.53, 7 point scale) or intentionally (M = 2.67) brought about a harmful event compared to intention (M = 4.16) and intentionality (M = 4.11) judgments made about somebody else. Experiments 1b and 1c confirmed and extended this pattern of actor-observer differences. Experiment 2 suggested that these actor-observer differences are not likely to occur when participants are asked to “imagine” being an actor. We argue that these results challenge the substantial philosophical and empirical reliance on hypothetical thought examples about intentional action. Our data offer new and necessary methodological avenues for understanding folk intentional action intuitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fiery Cushman and Alfred Mele recently proposed a 'two-and-a-half rules' theory of folk intentionality. They suggested that laypersons attribute intentionality employing: one rule based on desire, one based on belief, and another principle based on moral judgment, which may either reflect a folk concept (and so count as a third rule) or a bias (and so not count as a rule proper) and which they provisionally count as 'half a rule'. In this article, I discuss some cases in which an agent is judged as having neither belief nor desire to bring about an action, and yet laypersons find the agent's action to be intentional. Many lay responses apparently follow a rule, but many other seem biased. The contribution of this study is two-fold: by addressing actions performed without desire or belief, it expands Mele and Cushman's account; it also helps discriminate between a two-rules and a three-rules theory. As a conclusion, I argue in favor of a three-and-a-half concepts theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At least since the middle of the twentieth century, philosophers have tended to identify weakness of will with akrasia-i.e. acting, or having a disposition to act, contrary to one's judgments about what is best for one to do. However, there has been some recent debate about whether this captures the ordinary notion of weakness of will. Richard Holton claims that it doesn't, while Alfred Mele argues that, to a certain extent, it does. As Mele recognizes, the question about an ordinary concept here is one apt for empirical investigation. We evaluate Mele's studies and report some experiments of our own in order to investigate what in the world the ordinary concept of weakness of will is. We conclude that neither Mele nor Holton (previously) was quite right and offer a tentative proposal of our own: the ordinary notion is more like a prototype or cluster concept whose application is affected by a variety of factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Skill or control is commonly regarded as a necessary condition for intentional action. This received wisdom is challenged by experiments conducted by Joshua Knobe and Thomas Nadelhoffer, which suggest that moral considerations sometimes trump considerations of skill and control. I argue that this effect (as well as the Knobe effect) can be explained in terms of the role normative reasons play in the concept of intentional action. This explanation has significant advantages over its rivals. It involves at most a conservative extension rather than a radical revision of what we tend to believe about intentional action, and it fits better with the way we conceive of the relation between intentional action and moral responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies by experimental philosophers demonstrate puzzling asymmetries in people's judgments about intentional action, leading many philosophers to propose that normative factors are inappropriately influencing intentionality judgments. In this paper, I present and defend the Deep Self Model of judgments about intentional action that provides a quite different explanation for these judgment asymmetries. The Deep Self Model is based on the idea that people make an intuitive distinction between two parts of an agent's psychology, an Acting Self that contains the desires, means-end beliefs, and intentions that are the immediate causal source of an agent's actions, and a Deep Self, which contains an agent's stable and central psychological attitudes, including the agent's values, principles, life goals, and other more fundamental attitudes. The Deep Self Model proposes that when people are asked to make judgments about whether an agent brought about an outcome intentionally, in addition to standard criteria proposed in traditional models, people also assess an additional 'Concordance Criterion': Does the outcome concord with the psychological attitudes of the agent's Deep Self? I show that the Deep Self Model can explain a very complex pattern of judgment asymmetries documented in the experimental philosophy literature, and does so in a way that has significant advantages over competing models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Theory of mind, the capacity to understand and ascribe mental states, has traditionally been conceptualized as analogous to a scientific theory. However, recent work in philosophy and psychology has documented a “side-effect effect” suggesting that moral evaluations influence mental state ascriptions, and in particular whether a behavior is described as having been performed ‘intentionally.’ This evidence challenges the idea that theory of mind is analogous to scientific psychology in serving the function of predicting and explaining, rather than evaluating, behavior. In three experiments, we demonstrate that moral evaluations do inform ascriptions of intentional action, but that this relationship arises because behavior that conforms to norms (moral or otherwise) is less informative about underlying mental states than is behavior that violates norms. This analysis preserves the traditional understanding of theory of mind as a tool for predicting and explaining behavior, but also suggests the importance of normative considerations in social cognition. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper focuses on Joshua Knobe’s experiments which show that people attribute blame and intentionality to the chairman of a company that knowingly causes harmful side effects, but do not attribute praise and intentionality to the chairman of a company that knowingly causes helpful side effects. Knobe’s explanation of this data is that people determine intentionality based on the moral consideration of whether the side effect is good or bad. This observation and explanation has come to be known as the “Knobe Effect.” One implication from the Knobe Effect is that it seems profit-driven businesses can only intentionally cause harmful and never good side effects. This paper examines the Knobe Effect, and argues for a way that business persons can understand it and avoid its implications. The argument has three parts. The first point is that business persons who care only about profits are blameworthy and rightly should not get credit for good side effects. Second, when a morally praiseworthy person who cares about values other than profits causes side effects, her actions are intentional and praiseworthy. Therefore, profit-driven business persons can be praised for intentionally producing good side effects if they consider other moral values as moral agents should. Finally, morally praiseworthy business persons need only to be Minimally Good Samaritans and not totally altruistic. When a business person strives for profits, adheres to other morally important values, and produces morally good side effects, then we should say that she intentionally caused those effects and is praiseworthy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]