The folk strike back; or, why you didn’t do it intentionally, though it was bad and you knew it

• DOI: 10.1007/s11098-006-9047-y
• Publication Date: 2006-10-24T13:17:33Z
• Authors: Mark T. Phelan; Hagop Sarkissian
• Keywords: Philosophy of language

Recent and puzzling experimental results suggest that people's judgments as to whether or not an action was performed intentionally are sensitive to moral considerations. In this paper, we outline these results and evaluate two accounts which purport to explain them. We then describe a recent experiment that allegedly vindicates one of these accounts and present our own findings to show that it fails to do so. Finally, we present additional data suggesting no such vindication could be in the offing and that, in fact, both accounts fail to explain the initial, puzzling results they were purported to explain.