Henrik_Jonsson comments on Celebrate Trivial Impetuses - Less Wrong

36 Post author: Alicorn 24 July 2009 10:36PM

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Comment author: Alicorn 25 July 2009 01:48:17AM 0 points [-]

There are more examples in a paper authored by Joshua Knobe on moral cognition and blameworthiness but I'm too lazy to get the reference. (Why don't you give ma slight impetus in that direction?)

This sounds like a cool paper and I'd love to read it - can you track down the citation, please? ;)

Comment author: Henrik_Jonsson 25 July 2009 04:01:21AM 2 points [-]

It looks like this might be the one: Knobe, Joshua. 2003. "Intentional action and side effects in ordinary language", Analysis 63: 190-194. [PDF]

Comment author: djcb 25 July 2009 10:11:05AM 0 points [-]

Thanks.

Basically it seems that people are more likely to call harmful side-effects intentional, compared to beneficial ones.

I'm not sure this really is a bias; the harmful/beneficial cases are not exact counterparts: in the harmful case one could assume that the actor needs to mentally do something -- namely, 'overcoming the moral problem' or 'silence his/her conscience', which makes the harmful case indeed a bit more 'intentional'.

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