Behavioral and Brain Sciences

Table of Contents - 2010 - Volume 33, Issue 04  

Open Peer Commentary

Morals, beliefs, and counterfactuals

Vittorio Girottoa1, Luca Suriana2 and Michael Siegala3

a1 Department of Arts and Design, University IUAV of Venice, 30123 Venice, Italy, and Laboratory of Cognitive Psychology, CNRS and University of Provence, 13003 Marseilles, France. girotto.vittorio@gmail.com http://www.iuav.it/Ricerca1/Dipartimen/dADI/Docenti/girotto-vi/index.htm

a2 Department of Cognitive Sciences and Education, Center for Mind/Brain Sciences. University of Trento, 38068 Rovereto (TN), Italy. luca.surian@unitn.it http://portale.unitn.it/cimec/persone/luca.surian

a3 Department of Psychology, University of Sheffield, Western Bank, Sheffield S10 2TP, United Kingdom. m.siegal@sheffield.ac.uk http://alacode.psico.units.it/index.html

Abstract

We have found that moral considerations interact with belief ascription in determining intentionality judgment. We attribute this finding to a differential availability of plausible counterfactual alternatives that undo the negative side-effect of an action. We conclude that Knobe's thesis does not account for processes by which counterfactuals are generated and how these processes affect moral evaluations.

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