Premium
Asymmetries in Judgments of Responsibility and Intentional Action
Author(s) -
COLE WRIGHT JENNIFER,
BENGSON JOHN
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
mind and language
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.905
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1468-0017
pISSN - 0268-1064
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0017.2008.01352.x
Subject(s) - praise , psychology , attribution , intentionality , blame , action (physics) , folk psychology , epistemology , relation (database) , phenomenon , social psychology , moral responsibility , cognitive psychology , cognitive science , philosophy , computer science , physics , quantum mechanics , database
Recent experimental research on the ‘Knobe effect’ suggests, somewhat surprisingly, that there is a bi‐directional relation between attributions of intentional action and evaluative considerations. We defend a novel account of this phenomenon that exploits two factors: (i) an intuitive asymmetry in judgments of responsibility (e.g. praise/blame) and (ii) the fact that intentionality commonly connects the evaluative status of actions to the responsibility of actors. We present the results of several new studies that provide empirical evidence in support of this account while disconfirming various currently prominent alternative accounts. We end by discussing some implications of this account for folk psychology.