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Recent empirical work on the relationship between causal judgements and norms
Author(s) -
Willemsen Pascale,
Kirfel Lara
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
philosophy compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.973
H-Index - 25
ISSN - 1747-9991
DOI - 10.1111/phc3.12562
Subject(s) - normative , norm (philosophy) , psychology , action (physics) , cognition , epistemology , outcome (game theory) , pragmatics , empirical evidence , social psychology , process (computing) , cognitive psychology , computer science , philosophy , linguistics , mathematics , physics , mathematical economics , quantum mechanics , neuroscience , operating system
Abstract It has recently been argued that normative considerations play an important role in causal cognition. For instance, when an agent violates a moral rule and thereby produces a negative outcome, she will be judged to be much more of a cause of the outcome, compared to someone who performed the same action but did not violate a norm. While there is a substantial amount of evidence reporting these effects, it is still a matter of debate how this evidence is to be interpreted. In this paper, we engage with the three most influential classes of explanations, namely, (a) the Norm‐Sensitive Cognitive Process View, (b) the Normative Concept View, and (c) the Pragmatics View. We will outline how these theories explain the empirical results and in what ways they differ. We conclude with a reflection on how well these strategies do overall and what questions they still leave unanswered.