This article examines the evaluative nature of the folk concepts of weakness and strength of will and hypothesizes that their evaluative nature is strongly connected to the folk concepts of blame and credit. We probed how people apply the concepts of weakness and strength of will to prototypical and non-prototypical scenarios. While regarding prototypical scenarios the great majority applied these concepts according to the predictions following from traditional philosophical analyses. When presented with non-prototypical scenarios, people were divided. Some, against traditional (...) analyses, did not apply these concepts, which we explain in terms of a clash of evaluations involving different sorts of blame and credit. Others applied them according to traditional analyses, which we explain in terms of a disposition to be reflective and clearly set apart the different sorts of blame and credit involved. Still others applied them in an inverse way, seemingly bypassing the traditional components resolution and be.. (shrink)

Cognitive scientists have been debating how the folk concept of intentional action works. We suggest a simple account: people consider that an agent did X intentionally to the extent that X was causally dependent on how much the agent wanted X to happen (or not to happen). Combined with recent models of human causal cognition, this definition provides a good account of the way people use the concept of intentional action, and offers natural explanations for puzzling phenomena such as the (...) side-effect effect. We provide empirical support for our theory, in studies where we show that people’s causation and intentionality judgments track each other closely, in everyday situations as well as in scenarios with unusual causal structures. Study 5 additionally shows that the effect of norm violations on intentionality judgments depends on the causal structure of the situation, in a way uniquely predicted by our theory. Taken together, these results suggest that the folk concept of intentional action has been difficult to define because it is made of cognitive building blocks, such as our intuitive concept of causation, whose logic cognitive scientists are just starting to understand. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

Recent empirical and conceptual research has shown that moral considerations have an influence on the way we use the adverb 'intentionally'. Here we propose our own account of these phenomena, according to which they arise from the fact that the adverb 'intentionally' has three different meanings that are differently selected by contextual factors, including normative expectations. We argue that our hypotheses can account for most available data and present some new results that support this. We end by discussing the implications (...) of our account for folk psychology. (shrink)

Extant models of moral judgment assume that an action’s intentionality precedes assignments of blame. Knobe (2003b) challenged this fundamental order and proposed instead that the badness or blameworthiness of an action directs (and thus unduly biases) people’s intentionality judgments. His and other researchers’ studies suggested that blameworthy actions are considered intentional even when the agent lacks skill (e.g., killing somebody with a lucky shot) whereas equivalent neutral actions are not (e.g., luckily hitting a bull’s-eye). The present five studies offer an (...) alternative account of these provocative findings. We suggest that people see the morally significant action examined in previous studies (killing) as accomplished by a basic action (pressing the trigger) for which an unskilled agent still has sufficient skill. Studies 1 through 3 show that when this basic action is performed unskillfully or is absent, people are far less likely to view the killing as intentional, demonstrating that intentionality judgments, even about immoral actions, are guided by skill information. Studies 4 and 5 further show that a neutral action such as hitting the bull’s-eye is more difficult than killing and that difficult actions are less often judged intentional. When difficulty is held constant, people’s intentionality judgments are fully responsive to skill information regardless of moral valence. The present studies thus speak against the hypothesis of a moral evaluation bias in intentionality judgments and instead document people’s sensitivity to subtle features of human action. (shrink)

People’s moral judgments affect their judgments of intentionality for actions that succeeded by luck. This article aimed to explain that phenomenon by suggesting that people’s judgments of intentionality are driven by the underlying questions they have considered. We examined two types of questions: questions about why people act, and questions about how they succeed in acting. In a series of experiments, we found that people prefer different questions for neutral and immoral actions (Studies 1 and 2) and that asking them (...) to think about questions they would not have preferred can change their judgments of intentionality (Study 3). These experiments suggest that neutral actions are judged to be less intentional simply because they do not motivate observers to ask questions which draw attention to the actor’s mental states. We discuss the potential application of this framework to other concepts affected by morality in surprising ways, such as causality. (shrink)

Based on a puzzling pattern in our judgements about intentional action, Knobe [. “Intentional Action and Side-Effects in Ordinary Language.” Analysis 63: 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 [. “Intentional (...) Action and the Praise-Blame Asymmetry.” The Philosophical Quarterly 58: 630–641;. “Normativity in Action: How to Explain the Knobe Effect and its Relatives.” Mind & Language 29: 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... (shrink)

Cílem článku je ukázat, že zdánlivě asymetrický vztah mezi teorií mysli a morálkou je ve skutečnosti symetrický. Totiž nejen, že lidé využívají teorii mysli k rozhodnutí, zda si agent zaslouží vinit a zda učinil něco morálně špatného (nebo si zaslouží chválit a učinil něco morálně dobrého), ale někdy samotný morální charakter situace může ovlivnit teorii mysli. Nejprve provedu krátký úvod do teorie mysli - co to je, jak ji používáme a jak nám může být nápomocna. Poté popíšu proces hodnocení morální (...) situace se směrem od teorie mysli (zvážení agentových mentálních stavů, připsání konceptů agentovi) k morálce (vynesení morálního soudu). V tomto procesu figuruje důležitý koncept - koncept záměrného jednání - který může hrát významnou roli při rozhodování o vině (nebo chvále) agenta: pokud jednal záměrně, vina (nebo chvála) by měla být větší. Opravdu to takto funguje? A co laici? Jaký je lidový koncept záměrného jednání? Na tyto otázky se pokusím odpovědět s pomocí empirických dat, která poskytli Bertram Malle a Joshua Knobe, a představím pět podmínek lidového konceptu záměrného jednání. Poté se ve světle dat shromážděných Joshuou Knobem pokusím ukázat, že dřívější přístup ke vztahu mezi teorií mysli a morálkou jako jednosměrnému se zdá být neudržitelný. Způsobil agent vedlejší účinek záměrně? Dosáhl něčeho agent záměrně, ačkoli neměl dostatek potřebných dovedností? Výsledky Knobových experimentů naznačují, že lidé jsou nejspíše ovlivněni morálním charakterem samotného vedlejšího účinku nebo výsledku. Pokud je morálně špatný, agent jednal záměrně, avšak pokud je morálně dobrý, agent nejednal záměrně - tato asymetrie se nazývá „Knobův efekt“. Rovněž se pokusím vyrovnat se s některými možnými námitkami. V závěru se budu zabývat určitými právnímu důsledky, které z tohoto nově symetrického vztahu mezi teorií mysli a morálkou vyvstávají. (shrink)

This paper provides a comprehensive review of the experimental philosophy of action, focusing on the various different accounts of the Knobe Effect.

The aim of this paper is to present an explanation for the impact of normative considerations on people’s assessment of certain seemingly purely descriptive matters. The explanation is based on two main claims. First, a large category of expressions are tacitly modal: they are contextually equivalent to modal proxies. Second, the interpretation of predominantly circumstantial or teleological modals is subject to certain constraints which make certain possibilities salient at the expense of others.