Manipulating Morality: Third‐Party Intentions Alter Moral Judgments by Changing Causal Reasoning
Cognitive Science 38 (8):1320-1347 (2014)
Abstract
The present studies investigate how the intentions of third parties influence judgments of moral responsibility for other agents who commit immoral acts. Using cases in which an agent acts under some situational constraint brought about by a third party, we ask whether the agent is blamed less for the immoral act when the third party intended for that act to occur. Study 1 demonstrates that third-party intentions do influence judgments of blame. Study 2 finds that third-party intentions only influence moral judgments when the agent's actions precisely match the third party's intention. Study 3 shows that this effect arises from changes in participants' causal perception that the third party was controlling the agent. Studies 4 and 5, respectively, show that the effect cannot be explained by changes in the distribution of blame or perceived differences in situational constraint faced by the agentAuthor's Profile
DOI
10.1111/cogs.12194
My notes
Similar books and articles
Crime and punishment: Distinguishing the roles of causal and intentional analyses in moral judgment.Fiery Cushman - 2008 - Cognition 108 (2):353-380.
Intention, temporal order, and moral judgments.Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Ron Mallon, Tom Mccoy & Jay G. Hull - 2008 - Mind and Language 23 (1):90–106.
Predicting moral judgments from causal judgments.Emmanuel Chemla, Paul Egré & Philippe Schlenker - 2015 - Philosophical Psychology 28 (1):21-48.
Apparent Paradoxes in Moral Reasoning; Or how you forced him to do it, even though he wasn’t forced to do it.Jonathan Phillips & Liane Young - 2011 - Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society:138-143.
Aggregating Causal Judgments.Richard Bradley, Franz Dietrich & Christian List - 2014 - Philosophy of Science 81 (4):491-515.
Are Causal Structure and Intervention Judgments Inextricably Linked? A Developmental Study.Caren A. Frosch, Teresa McCormack, David A. Lagnado & Patrick Burns - 2012 - Cognitive Science 36 (2):261-285.
Intentions and Moral Permissibility: The Case of Acting Permissibly with Bad Intentions.S. Matthew Liao - 2012 - Law and Philosophy 31 (6):703-724.
Agent Causation and Acting for Reasons.Rebekah L. H. Rice - 2011 - American Philosophical Quarterly 48 (4):333-346.
The role of the primary effect in the assessment of intentionality and morality.Michael Waldmann - forthcoming - Proceedings of the 34th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.
Analytics
Added to PP
2014-05-21
Downloads
1,326 (#4,754)
6 months
59 (#21,128)
2014-05-21
Downloads
1,326 (#4,754)
6 months
59 (#21,128)
Historical graph of downloads
Author's Profile
Citations of this work
Defeating Manipulation Arguments: Interventionist causation and compatibilist sourcehood.Oisín Deery & Eddy Nahmias - 2017 - Philosophical Studies 174 (5):1255-1276.
Effects of Manipulation on Attributions of Causation, Free Will, and Moral Responsibility.Dylan Murray & Tania Lombrozo - 2017 - Cognitive Science 41 (2):447-481.
Causal Responsibility and Robust Causation.Guy Grinfeld, David Lagnado, Tobias Gerstenberg, James F. Woodward & Marius Usher - 2020 - Frontiers in Psychology 11:1069.
Why we forgive what can’t be controlled.Justin W. Martin & Fiery Cushman - 2016 - Cognition 147 (C):133-143.
Stability, breadth and guidance.Thomas Blanchard, Nadya Vasilyeva & Tania Lombrozo - 2018 - Philosophical Studies 175 (9):2263-2283.
References found in this work
An enquiry concerning human understanding.David Hume - 1955 - In Steven M. Cahn (ed.), Exploring Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology. Oxford University Press. pp. 112.