Action, Attitude, and the Knobe Effect: Another Asymmetry

A majority of people regard the harmful side-effects of an agent’s behavior as much more intentional than an agent’s helpful side-effects. In this paper, I present evidence for a related asymmetry. When a side-effect action is an instance of harming, folk ascriptions are significantly impacted by the relative badness of either an agent’s main goal or her side-effect action, but not her attitude. Yet when a side-effect action is an instance
of helping, folk ascriptions are sensitive to an agent’s expressed attitude, but not to the relative goodness of her main goal or side-effect. It seems that the connection between harmful side-effects and intentionality is, for many,
uniquely impervious to the expressed attitude of the agent in question.