Abstract
People asymmetrically attribute various agential features such as intentionality, knowledge, or causal impact to other agents when something of normative significance is at stake. I will argue that three questions are of primary interest in the debate about this effect. A methodological question about how to explain it at all; a substantive question about how to explain it correctly: and a normative question about whether to explain it in terms of an error or a legitimate judgmental pattern. The problem, I argue, is that these three questions are difficult to disentangle. I propose a solution to this problem, and show how it accounts for the most recent data regarding the effect.
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Notes
The exact wording of all the vignettes I refer to in this paper can be found in the footnotes.
Although there is no consensus on this issue, I see no reason to think that cases which do not involve side effects but, say, means to an end should not be considered instances of the same effect.
It should be noted that reflective endorsement accounts of the kind proposed here cannot solve all remaining problems. Take Nichols and Knobe’s (2007) study on people’s intuitions about responsibility and free will: subjects turn out to have inconsistent intuitions about the compatibility of free will and determinism, depending on whether they are given a scenario describing a concrete action (for example, a case of murder) or whether they consider this question in the abstract. When subjects are shown the results and are given the opportunity to resolve this tension, no consensus is reached. Half of the subjects chose to hold on to their compatibilist judgments, the other half to their incompatibilist intuitions. In such a case, the reflective endorsement account yields no clear verdict.
Free Will
Imagine a universe (Universe A) in which everything that happens is completely caused by whatever happened before it. This is true from the very beginning of the universe, so what happened in the beginning of the universe caused what happened next, and so on right up until the present. For example 1 day John decided to have French Fries at lunch. Like everything else, this decision was completely caused by what happened before it. So, if everything in this universe was exactly the same up until John made his decision, then it had to happen that John would decide to have French Fries.
[…]
Concrete
In Universe A, a man named Bill has become attracted to his secretary, and he decides that the only way to be with her is to kill his wife and 3 children. He knows that it is impossible to escape from his house in the event of a fire. Before he leaves on a business trip, he sets up a device in his basement that burns down the house and kills his family.
Is Bill fully morally responsible for killing his wife and children?
[…]
Abstract
In Universe A, is it possible for a person to be fully morally responsible for their actions? (Nichols and Knobe 2007, 669f.)
Chairman
The vice-president of a company went to the chairman of the board and said, ‘We are thinking of starting a new program. It will help us increase profits, but it will also [harm/help] the environment.’
The chairman of the board answered, ‘I don’t care at all about [harming/helping] the environment. I just want to make as much profit as I can. Let’s start the new program.’
They started the new program. Sure enough, the environment was [harmed/helped]. (Knobe 2003)
Nazi Law
In Nazi Germany, there was a law called the “racial identification law.” The purpose of the law was to help identify people of certain races so that they could be rounded up and sent to concentration camps. Shortly after this law was passed, the CEO of a small corporation decided to make certain organizational changes. The vice-president of the corporation said: “By making those changes, you’ll definitely be increasing our profits. But you’ll also be violating/fulfilling the requirements of the racial identification law.” The CEO said: “I don’t care one bit about that. All I care about is making as much profit as I can. Let’s make those organizational changes!” As soon as the CEO gave this order, the corporation began making the organizational changes.
Driver
John was driving over the speed limit (about 40 mph in a 30 mph zone) in order to get home in time to [hide an anniversary present for his parents that he had left out in the open before they could see it/hide a vial of cocaine he had left out in the open before his parents could see it].
[…]
As John came to an intersection, he applied his brakes, but was unable to avoid a car that ran through a stop sign without making any attempt to slow down. As a result, John hit the car that was coming from the other direction.
[…]
John hit the driver on the driver’s side, causing him multiple lacerations, a broken collar bone, and a fractured arm. John was uninjured in the accident. (Alicke 1992, 369)
Gizmo
The vice-president of a company in the Gizmo indus- try went to the chairman of the board and said, “We are thinking of starting a new program. It will help us increase profits, but it will result in our Gizmos being colored black. The convention is to make Gizmos col- ored darker than blue, so we would be complying with the convention.” [The convention is to make Gizmos colored lighter than blue, so we would be violating the convention.]
The chairman of the board answered, “I don’t care at all about the color of the Gizmos. I just want to make as much profit as I can. Let’s start the new program.”
They started the program. As it happened, the Gizmos were black, colored darker than blue. (Uttich and Lombrozo 2010, 90)
Jessica
Jessica lives in a neighborhood where everyone (including Jessica herself) happens to own a dog. One afternoon, she is planning to go for a walk and decides not to/to take her dog. Her friend Aaron says, “Jessica, if you go out like that, you will/won’t be doing what everyone else is doing.”Jessica responds, “I don’t care at all what everyone else is doing. I just want to go for a walk without/with my dog.” She goes ahead with her plan, and sure enough, she ends up doing what no one/everyone else is doing. (Alfano et al. 2012)
Extra Dollar
Joe was feeling quite dehydrated, so he stopped by the local smoothie shop to buy the largest sized drink available. Before ordering, the cashier told him that the Mega-Sized Smoothies were now one dollar more than they used to be. Joe replied, ‘I don’t care if I have to pay one dollar more, I just want the biggest smoothie you have.’ Sure enough, Joe received the Mega-Sized Smoothie and paid one dollar more for it. Did Joe intentionally pay one dollar more? (Machery 2008, 179). It should also be noted that this case is considered inadequate by some (Mallon 2008, Phelan and Sarkissian 2009), as the extra dollar seems to be a means rather than a side effect, thus constituting a different and presumably much less surprising finding.
Carl
Carl recently inherited $50,000. He is considering whether to invest the money in a Roth IRA, which is a type of retirement savings account, or give it to Oxfam, a charity that helps to alleviate the suffering of poor people all around the world.
[…]
Self Norm His friend, Diana says, “If you invest the money, you may be able to retire in comfort.”
Other Norm His friend, Diana says, “If you give the money to Oxfam, you will help a lot of people.”
[…]
Carl Invests
Carl ends up investing the money.
Carl Donates
Carl ends up donating the money. (Robinson et al. (forthcoming))
Terrorist:
A terrorist has planted a bomb in a nightclub. There are lots of Americans in the nightclub who will be injured or killed if the bomb goes off. The terrorist says to himself, ‘I did a good thing when I planted that bomb in the nightclub did a good thing. Americans are evil! The world will be a better place when more of them are injured or dead.’
Later, the terrorist discovers that his only son, whom he loves dearly, is in the nightclub as well. If the bomb goes off, his son will certainly be injured or killed. The terrorist then says to himself, ‘The only way I can save my son is to defuse the bomb. But if I defuse the bomb, I’ll be saving those evil Americans as well… What should I do?’
After carefully considering the matter, he thinks to himself, ‘I know it is wrong to save Americans, but I can’t rescue my son without saving those Americans as well. I guess I’ll just have to defuse the bomb.’
Did the terrorist intentionally save the Americans? (cf. Knobe 2004; Cova 2013).
I have a lot of sympathy for this approach, but I already wish to emphasize here that I do not think that ultimately, it can supply an answer to the normative question. Whether or not a judgment task is carried out by automatic or controlled processes has virtually no bearing whatsoever on whether or not its judgmental output is justified or not (see Greene 2008 and Berker 2009 for this; this problem is also reflected in the disagreement between Kahneman 2011 and Gigerenzer 2007 over the quality of automatic intuitions). 5 + 7 can be solved automatically, 565 + 765 takes some effort; yet whether or not your solutions to those math problems are correct or not does not depend on the speed with which you arrived at them, but on their truth.
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Sauer, H. It’s the Knobe Effect, Stupid!. Rev.Phil.Psych. 5, 485–503 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-014-0189-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-014-0189-0