Three Ambiguities in the Knobe Effect

Abstract

The Knobe effect is widely regarded as one of the first and most importantfindings in the field of experimental philosophy. A good deal of research inthis field over the past decade has been concerned with explaining the Knobeeffect. However, much of this research has been vitiated by neglect for themore fundamental matter of defining “the Knobe effect.” In this article Iaddress the definitional question and argue that the Knobe effect is in factplagued by three ambiguities which have received insufficient attention. In thefirst place, I show that the term has both a narrow and a broad interpretation. Inits narrow sense, the term refers to an effect that moral considerations allegedlyhave on ascriptions of intentional action; in its broad sense, it refers to aneffect that evaluative considerations allegedly have on all folk psychologicalascriptions. Secondly, I show that the narrow reading of “the Knobe effect” isitself ambiguous between one interpretation on which the moral considerationsin question refer to conscious moral judgments and another interpretation onwhich they refer to non-conscious reactions to norm violations. Thirdly, I arguethat the Knobe effect can be interpreted either as a hypothesis concerning howpeople ordinarily use certain folk psychological concepts or as a hypothesisconcerning how people use those concepts only in the context of hypotheticalthought-experiments. While the vast majority of researchers have assumed theformer view, recent experimental research supports the latter view, suggestingthat the Knobe effect is in fact an experimental artifact.