Experimental Philosophy on Intentionality of Actions

Abstract

Recent studies concerning folk concept of intentional action reveal interesting asymmetry: people have tendency to claim that an action is intentional when the side effect is harmful, and as unintentional when the side effect is beneficial. Based on this research, some experimental philosophers claim that our judgments about intentionality of action are affected by moral considerations. The goal of this paper is to show a series of empirical data which refer to asymmetry in assessing the intentionality and to analyze various theories and their interpretations of the above phenomenon. In particular, the article presents a theoretically promising hypothesis that explains asymmetry by appealing to the responsibility of agents.