Morality or modality?: What does the attribution of intentionality depend on?

Canadian Journal of Philosophy 40 (1):pp. 25-39 (2010)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

It has been argued that the attribution of intentional actions is sensitive to our moral judgment. I suggest an alternative, where the attribution of intentional actions depends on modal (and not moral) considerations. We judge a foreseen side-effect of an agent’s intentionally performed action to be intentional if the following modal claim is true: if she had not ignored considerations about the foreseen side-effect, her action might have been different (other things being equal). I go through the most important examples of the asymmetry in the attribution of intentionality and point out that the modal account can cover all the problematic cases, whereas the moral account can’t

Analytics

Added to PP
2010-06-09

Downloads
395 (#45,375)

6 months
73 (#53,526)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Bence Nanay
University of Antwerp