José V. Hernández-Conde: Unraveling the attribution of intentionality across domains

Tuesday January 9 2024 @12:00 (CEST)
Sala B, Edificio de Humanidades, UNED & online

Abstract
The Knobe effect describes the phenomenon whereby people tend to attribute intentionality to actions depending on whether the outcome of that action is perceived as positive or negative. In moral judgments, this means that people are more likely to attribute intentionality to actions with negative moral valence (such as harming) than to actions with positive moral valence (such as helping). This suggests that moral valence plays a crucial role in people’s judgments of intentionality, and that their perceptions of the moral character of an action can influence their attribution of intentionality to the agent. This work examines whether, in addition to the moral valence identified by Knobe as a factor capable of influencing subjects’ attributions of intentionality, the aesthetic and alethic components also exert a comparable influence –independent of the moral dimension–, and whether the effect of one particular component (i.e., moral, aesthetic, or alethic) is dominant over the others.

Bio
José V. Hernández-Conde es profesor ayudante doctor en el Departamento de Filosofía de la Universidad de Valladolid, y miembro del grupo Lindy Lab (Language in Neurodiversity) de la Universidad del País Vasco. Actualmente trabaja en cuestiones de filosofía experimental, y es beneficiario de una Beca Leonardo a Investigadores y Creadores Culturales de la Fundación BBVA para el estudio del efecto Knobe en diferentes dominios.