Intentional Action and the Praise-Blame Asymmetry

Abstract

Abstract. Recent empirical research conducted by Joshua Knobe has uncovered two asymmetries in our judgments about intentional action and moral responsibility. First, people are more inclined to say that a side effect was brought about intentionally when they regard that side effect as bad than when they regard it as good. Second, people are more inclined to ascribe blame to someone for bad effects than they are inclined to ascribe praise for good effects. These findings suggest that the notion of intentional action has a normative component. In this paper I propose a theory of intentional action on which one acts intentionally if one fails to be motivated to avoid a bad effect. This explains the asymmetry concerning intentional action. The praise-blame asymmetry is explained in terms of the claim that praise depends on being appropriately motivated, whereas blame does not.Frank Hindriks (f.a.hindriks@rug.nl) University of Groningen Published in 2008, Philosophical Quarterly 58, 233: 630-41. 2 Intentional Action and the Praise-Blame AsymmetryJoshua Knobe (2003aKnobe ( , 2003bKnobe ( , 2004a has discovered an asymmetry in our judgments about praise and blame in relation to the side effects that our actions generate. When a side effect of someone's action is harmful, we are far more inclined to blame that person than we are inclined to praise someone when the side effect is beneficial -even though in neither of the two cases she cared about the occurrence of the effect. I believe there is a simple explanation for this praise-blame asymmetry, which many regard as puzzling. When the side effect has positive moral worth, the person does not deserve any praise, because -by hypothesis -the fact that her action would have that effect did not play any role in her reasoning. After all, she did not care about the occurrence of the effect. When the side effect has negative moral worth, she does deserve blame, because the fact that her action would have the harmful effect should have played a role in her reasoning while it did not.Knobe also reports an asymmetry in our judgments concerning intentional action. We are more inclined to judge that an effect is brought about intentionally when the effect is harmful as compared to when the effect is beneficial. This second finding can be explained in a way that resembles the proposed explanation of the praise-blame asymmetry, or so I shall argue. Concerning the beneficial effect we judge that it is not brought about intentionally because the effect did not play any role in the practical reasoning of the person at issue. In relation to the harmful effect, we do conclude that it is brought about intentionally. In this case, the person ignores a consideration she should treat as a reason against performing the action. Again, the fact that the relevant person does not care about bringing about the effect is crucial to the explanation of this asymmetry concerning our judgments about intentional action.My hypothesis, then, is that both asymmetries can be explained in terms of the ...

Mens rea ascription, expertise and outcome effects: Professional judges surveyed

“…e.g. Hindriks, 2008;Knobe, 2010b;Machery, 2008;Pettit & Knobe, 2009;. According to Knobe, for instance, intentionality ascriptions are sensitive to moral concerns since the concept of intentionality itself is constitutively tied to moral features.…”

Intentional Side-Effects of Action

“…It also encompasses both the view that this condition or influence reflects part of the concept of intentional outcomes and the opposing view that it reflects a bias affecting our application of the concept. We have therefore already seen variations of EEH voiced by Knobe (2003aKnobe ( , 2007, Knobe and Mendlow (2004), Adams andSteadman (2004a, 2004b), and Hindriks (2008). Various others working in this area subscribe to a form of EEH, including Nichols and Ulatowski (2007).…”

Intentional action and the frame-of-mind argument: new experimental challenges to Hindriks

“…In its first appearance (Hindriks 2008), this account also failed to account for the Terrorist case. However, the latest version can accommodate this purported counter-example.…”

“…In a series of paper, Hindriks (2008Hindriks ( , 2011Hindriks ( , 2014 has developed a complete account of intentional action, which he dubs the 'Normative Reason account of Intentional Action' (NoRIA). In its first appearance (Hindriks 2008), this account also failed to account for the Terrorist case.…”

“…However, this claim goes directly against a key conceptual intuition about intentional action -the 'frame-of-mind condition', according to which judgments about intentional action are about the agent's frameof-mind and not about the moral value of his action. To preserve this intuition, Hindriks (2008Hindriks ( , 2014 has proposed an alternate account of the Knobe Effect. According to his 'Normative Reason account of Intentional Action' (NoRIA), a side-effect counts as intentional only when the agent thought it constituted a normative reason not to act but did not care.…”