Hmm, are you interpreting the results as “boo CEOs” then?
I’m only interpreting the result as “boo this fictional CEO”.
How would you modify the experiment to return information closer to what was sought?
Well, what Knobe is looking for is a situation where subjects make their ‘is’ judgements partly on the basis of their ‘ought’ judgements. Abstractly, we want a ‘moral proposition’ X and a ‘factual proposition’ Y such that when a subject learns X, they tend to give higher credence to Y than when they learn ¬X. Knobe takes X = “The side-effects are harmful to the environment” and Y = “The effect on the environment was intended by the CEO”.
(My objection to Knobe’s interpretation of his experiment can thus be summarised: “The subjects are using Y to express a moral fact, not a ‘factual fact’.” After all, if you asked them to explain themselves, in one case they’d say “It wasn’t intentional because (i) he didn’t care about the effect on the environment, only his bottom line.” In the other they’d say “it was intentional because (ii) he knew about the effect and did it anyway.” But surely the subjects agree on (i) and (ii) in both cases—the only thing that’s changing is the meaning of the word ‘intentional’, so that the subjects can pass moral judgement on the CEO.)
To answer your question: I’m not sure that genuine examples of this phenomenon exist, except when the ‘factual’ propositions concern the future. If Y is about a past event, then I think any subject who seems to be exhibiting the Knobe effect will quickly clarify and/or correct themselves if you point it out. (Rather like if you somehow tricked someone into saying an ungrammatical sentence and then told them the error.)
Hmm, are you interpreting the results as “boo CEOs” then?
How would you modify the experiment to return information closer to what was sought?
I’m only interpreting the result as “boo this fictional CEO”.
Well, what Knobe is looking for is a situation where subjects make their ‘is’ judgements partly on the basis of their ‘ought’ judgements. Abstractly, we want a ‘moral proposition’ X and a ‘factual proposition’ Y such that when a subject learns X, they tend to give higher credence to Y than when they learn ¬X. Knobe takes X = “The side-effects are harmful to the environment” and Y = “The effect on the environment was intended by the CEO”.
(My objection to Knobe’s interpretation of his experiment can thus be summarised: “The subjects are using Y to express a moral fact, not a ‘factual fact’.” After all, if you asked them to explain themselves, in one case they’d say “It wasn’t intentional because (i) he didn’t care about the effect on the environment, only his bottom line.” In the other they’d say “it was intentional because (ii) he knew about the effect and did it anyway.” But surely the subjects agree on (i) and (ii) in both cases—the only thing that’s changing is the meaning of the word ‘intentional’, so that the subjects can pass moral judgement on the CEO.)
To answer your question: I’m not sure that genuine examples of this phenomenon exist, except when the ‘factual’ propositions concern the future. If Y is about a past event, then I think any subject who seems to be exhibiting the Knobe effect will quickly clarify and/or correct themselves if you point it out. (Rather like if you somehow tricked someone into saying an ungrammatical sentence and then told them the error.)