Recent work by Joshua Knobe indicates that people ' s intuition about whether an action was intentional depends on whether the outcome is good or bad. This paper argues that part of the explanation for this effect is that there are stable individual differences in how ' intentional ' is interpreted. That is, in Knobe ' s cases, different people interpret the term in different ways. This interpretive diversity of ' intentional ' opens up a new avenue to help explain Knobe ' s results. Furthermore, the paper argues that the use of intuitions in philosophy is complicated by fact that there are robust individual differences in intuitions about matters of philosophical concern.We would like to thank 1 Folk intuitions on intentional actions depend on a complex set of psychological processes, and it would be rash to think our account is a complete story. We will be well satisfi ed if our proposal captures an important part of the Knobe effect. 348S. Nichols and J. Ulatowski concepts. However, as we ' ll argue, a further problem looms. For it ' s possible that there are signifi cant intra-cultural differences in philosophically relevant intuitions. The problem takes a more concrete shape in recent work on folk intuitions about intentional action, to which we now turn. The Knobe EffectIn an experiment that has now been replicated several times, Joshua Knobe presented lay subjects with one of these two closely matched scenarios:Harm: 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 profi ts, but it will also harm the environment. 'The chairman of the board answered, ' I don ' t care at all about harming the environment. I just want to make as much profi t as I can. Let ' s start the new program. ' They started the new program. Sure enough, the environment was harmed. Help: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 profi ts, and it will also help the environment. ' The chairman of the board answered, ' I don ' t care at all about helping the environment. I just want to make as much profi t as I can. Let ' s start the new program. ' They started the new program. Sure enough, the environment was helped.A large majority of subjects given the Harm scenario said that the CEO intentionally harmed the environment; a large majority of subjects given the Help scenario denied that the CEO intentionally helped the environment. What can explain this surprising asymmetry in folk intuition? 2 Perhaps we can consult the folk themselves to get an account of ' intentional ' on which the asymmetric responses are appropriate. Maybe their explanations will reveal why ' intentional ' applies asymmetrically to Harm and Help. We gave the Knobe cases to 85 undergraduates at the University of Utah and asked them to explain why they answered as they did. Here are typical examples of answers from subjects who said that the CEO intentionally harmed the en...

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