A Knobe Effect for Belief Ascriptions

Abstract

found that people are more likely to attribute intentionality to agents whose actions resulted in negative side-effects that to agents whose actions resulted in positive ones. Subsequent investigation has extended this result to a variety of other folk psychological attributions. The present article reports experimental findings that demonstrate an analogous effect for belief ascriptions. Participants were found to be more likely to ascribe belief, higher degrees of belief, higher degrees of rational belief, and dispositional belief to agents in central Knobe effect cases who bring about negative side-effects than to agents who bring about positive ones. These findings present a significant challenge to widely held views about the Knobe effect, since many explanations of it assume that agents in contrasting pairs of Knobe effect cases do not differ with respect to their beliefs. Participants were also found to be more confident that knowledge should be attributed than they were that belief or dispositional belief should be attributed. This finding strengthens the challenge that Myers-Schulz and Schwitzgebel (forthcoming) have launched against the traditional view that knowledge entails belief. keywords: Knobe effect, experimental philosophy, belief ascription, folk psychology * Thanks to

Variations in judgments of intentional action and moral evaluation across eight cultures

“…This asymmetry in intentional action attributions has been replicated with other scenarios (Knobe, 2003b;Knobe & Mendlow, 2004;Mallon, 2008;Nadelhoffer, 2004aNadelhoffer, , 2006Shepard & Wolff, 2013;Uttich & Lombrozo, 2010;Wright & Bengson, 2009), with children as young as four years (Lesle, Knobe, & Cohen, 2006), with participants who suffer from deficits in emotional processing due to lesions in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (Young, Cushman, Adolphs, & Hauser, 2006), and, for at least some versions of the scenarios, with adults with high functioning autism or Asperger's (Zalla & Leboyer, 2011;Zalla, Machery, & Leboyer, 2010). The asymmetry has also been reported with word changes in the original script introducing varying concepts such as intention and intending (McCann, 2005), deciding, being in favor of, advocating for (Pettit & Knobe, 2009), knowledge (Beebe & Buckwalter, 2010), belief (Beebe, 2013;Tannenbaum, Ditto, & Pizarro, 2007), awareness (Tannenbaum et al, 2007) remembering (Alfano, Beebe, & Robinson, 2012), and desire (Guglielmo & Malle, 2010;Tannenbaum et al, 2007).…”

Explanation classification depends on understanding: extending the epistemic side-effect effect

“…Uttich and Lombrozo (2010) , and 'was in favor of' (for a summary, see Knobe & Pettit 2009). It was then expanded to include psychological attributions that involve measures of belief, including 'knew' (Beebe & Buckwalter 2010) and 'believed' (Alfano, Beebe, & Robinson 2012, Beebe 2013. For instance, participants indicate that the businessman was more likely to know about the program's environmental side effects and to believe they would occur when those side effects were negative as opposed to positive.…”

“…This suggests that what is doing the work in the case of 'advocated' is the pro-attitude on top of what is said. 6 One hypothesis is that many instances of the SEE result from an increased willingness to attribute beliefs (Alfano et al 2012, Beebe 2013, Dalbauer & Hergovich 2013, perhaps because norm-violating behavior gives us more information (Uttich & Lombrozo 2010 7 There is (to our knowledge) one possible exception to the general claim that attributions of all-and-only mental states exhibit an SEE. Knobe and Fraser (2008) find that people are more likely to say that X's actions caused a certain result if the action was norm-violating.…”

The Omissions Account of the Knobe Effect and the Asymmetry Challenge

“…In such cases, the attribution of intentionality is reasonably explained in terms of the idea of the agent exercising skills (Mele and Sverdlik, ), which, on the omissions account, is the explanatory business of the orthodox theory of intentional action. Further reflection and research is required on the variety of epistemic effects (see Beebe and Buckwalter, ; Beebe and Jensen, ; Beebe, ).…”