Knobe, Joshua. (forthcoming)
"Intention, Intentional Action and Moral Considerations."
Analysis.
Summary:
The paper reports experimental data on people's use of reason explanations.
Suppose that the chairman of a board is wondering whether or not to implement a certain policy. The policy will
increase profits, but it will also harm the environment. The chairman does not care at all about the environment, and he therefore
decides to implement the policy. Here most people think that it sounds right to say: "The chairman harmed the environment
in order to increase profits."
But now suppose that we change the word 'harm' to 'help.' The chairman knows that the policy will both increase profits and
help the environment. But he doesn't care at all about the environment; he just wants to increase profits. Here most people think
that it sounds wrong to say: "The chairman helped the environment in order to increase profits."
The paper argues that this asymmetry has important consequences for research in the theory of action.
Note: This paper will be published as a response to a paper by Adams and Steadman, which is in turn a response
to an earlier paper of mine. The actual published version (available as a Word file)
doesn't really make sense in isolation
from the Adams & Steadman paper, but you can also read a specially modified version
(available in pdf) that is designed to
be read all by itself.