On Praise, Side Effects, and Folk Ascriptions of Intentionality.

Abstract

In everyday discourse, we often draw a distinction between actions that are performed intentionally (e.g. shutting a car door) and those that are performed unintentionally (e.g. shutting a car door on your finger). This distinction has interested philosophers working in a number of different areas (e.g. action theory, free will, moral responsibility, and the philosophy of law). And while most philosophers agree that the concept of intentional action plays an important role in our folk psychology, there is still wide-scale disagreement about the precise nature of this role. Until recently, because there has been a dearth of empirical data about folk ascriptions of intentional action, the conceptual analyses of intentionality developed by philosophers have been mostly