How to Cancel the Knobe Effect

Abstract

Empirical support is offered for the claim that the original Knobe effect, whereby our intentional action ascriptions exhibit certain asymmetries in light of our moral attitudes, can be successfully cancelled. This is predicted by the view that the Knobe effect can be explained in purely pragmatic terms (Adams and Steadman 2004a; 2004b; 2007). However, previous cancelling studies (Adams and Steadman 2007; Nichols and Ulatowski 2007) have failed to identify evidence of cancellability. The key to the successful cancelling strategy presented here is to provide subjects with the opportunity to assent to statements that involve sufficiently strong forms of moral censure.

The pervasive impact of ignorance

“…The fact that people are more inclined to judge that agents intentionally brought about harmful vs. helpful side effects has been explained by reference to the agent's cost-benefit tradeoff (Machery, 2008;Mallon, 2008), inferences about the agent's mental states and beliefs (Alfano, Beebe, & Robinson, 2012;Laurent, Reich, & Skorinko, 2019;, emotional responses and blame judgements (Cova, Lantian, & Boudesseul, 2016;Hindriks, Douven, & Singmann, 2016;Nadelhoffer, 2006), and even an interaction of 'System 1' and 'System 2' reasoning (Ngo et al, 2015;Pinillos, Smith, Nair, Marchetto, & Mun, 2011). Other theories have adopted a more semantic approach, pointing to the interpretive diversity of the concept of intentionality (Guglielmo & Malle, 2010;Nichols & Ulatowski, 2007) or the role of pragmatic implicatures in these cases (Adams & Steadman, 2007;Lindauer & Southwood, 2021). Theories of this effect in domains other than intentional action are no less diverse.…”