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IT IS HARDER TO DO GOOD INTENTIONALLY THAN IT IS TO DO EVIL
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If we judge a human action to be bad, we will tend to think that it is intentional even if it is not.
In the philosophical tradition, the moral value of an act is judged by its intentions. But certain experimental studies show that, spontaneously, we judge intentions by the moral value of actions.
More precisely, our tendency to judge that a person is acting intentionally will be stronger if the results of his action are bad, and weaker if the results of his action are good.
It is Joshua Knobe who came to this startling conclusion, when examining a series of research projects carried out according to the following model.1
The subjects of the investigation are asked to judge the behavior of a company boss in two different situations:
 
1. The company boss doesn’t give a damn about destroying the environment or protecting it so long as he increases his profits. If he pursues a policy that destroys the environment, will you say that he has destroyed it intentionally?
2. The company boss doesn’t give a damn about destroying the environment or protecting it so long as he increases his profits. If he pursues a policy that improves the environment, will you say that he has improved it intentionally?
 
In his investigation, Knobe observes that 82 percent of respondents judge that the company boss who pursues the destructive policy has done it intentionally, and that only 23 percent judge that the company boss who pursues the protective policy has done it intentionally. However, in both cases the company boss acts in exactly the same way so far as his intentions were concerned!
Hence this conclusion, which stresses the importance for the moral evaluation of the action that it be perceived as intentional action: if an action is judged to be bad, we will be more inclined to reckon that it is intentional.2
Faced with this kind of experiment, we can level the following objection: it is not obvious that knowledge of the usual methods of attributing intention helps us to better understand the notion of intention itself.
They are two different questions.3