The philosophy of good intentionsThe philosophy of good intentions
All In The Mind
Reading the minds of others can be darned hard. Are their intentions good, bad or indifferent? Whether we hold people accountable for their behaviour depends on the answer. Scientists probe questions like this through experiments. Philosophers traditionally appeal to intuition and argument. But now a young band of experimental philosophers are taking armchair philosophy to task, and digging for data.
30:08•26 Dec 2009
Good Intentions, Bad Outcomes: How We Judge What People Meant to Do
Episode Overview
- Moral judgements strongly influence whether people say an action was intentional, especially for harmful outcomes.
- People often treat harmful side effects and accepted costs as deliberate, even when they are not the agent’s main goal.
- Children tend to blame accidents more than adults, and brain stimulation studies show reduced attention to intention makes adults more outcome-focused.
- Many people comfortably say corporations "intend" or "believe" things, but reject the idea that they "feel" emotions like sadness.
- People diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome in Machery’s study often judged both benefits and costs as unintentional, highlighting the role of perspective-taking in judging intention.
“"Since the person knew that he was going to harm the environment, he ended up harming the environment intentionally."”
What drives someone to seek a life shaped by "good intentions" rather than just good outcomes? This episode of All In The Mind zooms in on how we judge other people’s actions, and why our sense of morality quietly bends the way we think about intention. Host Natasha Mitchell talks with experimental philosophers Joshua Knobe and Edouard Machery, who swap the traditional armchair for lab-style studies.
They test everyday scenarios – CEOs harming or helping the environment, lottery wins, nuclear meltdowns, bushfires, and even smoothie purchases – to see how people decide whether something was done "on purpose". You’ll hear the now-famous case of the chairman who says, "I know this policy is going to harm the environment, but I don’t care at all about that.
All I care about is just making as much money as we possibly can." Around 85% of people say he harmed the environment intentionally. But when the same policy helps the environment and the chairman still doesn’t care, most people say the help was unintentional. Same mindset, different moral flavour, totally different judgement.
Knobe and Machery show that people treat harmful lucky outcomes as intentional, but lucky good outcomes as accidents, and that we treat costs (like paying an extra dollar or risking civilian deaths in war) as things people accept deliberately. Machery’s work with people diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome adds another layer, suggesting that difficulty "putting yourself in someone else’s shoes" changes how intention is seen.
The conversation stretches into corporate responsibility, universal morals, and why we think companies can "intend" things but can’t "feel" depressed. It’s thoughtful, occasionally cheeky, and asks you to look twice at your own snap judgements about blame, praise and accountability. If you’ve ever argued over whether someone "meant" to cause harm, this one might leave you wondering how often your moral reactions are secretly steering your reasoning.
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