Sytsma, Justin and Livengood, Jonathan (2021) Causal Attributions and the Trolley Problem. [Preprint]
This is the latest version of this item.
|
Text (Main Text)
Causal Attributions and the Trolley Problem__PREPRINT.pdf - Accepted Version Download (231kB) | Preview |
|
|
Text (Supplemental Material)
Supplemental Materials__PREPRINT.pdf - Supplemental Material Download (81kB) | Preview |
Abstract
In this paper, we consider two competing explanations of the empirical finding that people’s causal attributions are responsive to normative details, such as whether an agent’s action violated an injunctive norm—the counterfactual view and the responsibility view. We then present experimental evidence that uses the trolley dilemma in a new way to investigate causal attribution. In the switch version of the trolley problem, people judge that the agent ought to flip the switch, but they also judge that she is more responsible for the resulting outcome when she does so than when she refrains. As predicted by the responsibility view, but not the counterfactual view, people are more likely to say that the agent caused the outcome when she flips the switch.
Export/Citation: | EndNote | BibTeX | Dublin Core | ASCII/Text Citation (Chicago) | HTML Citation | OpenURL |
Social Networking: |
Item Type: | Preprint | |||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Creators: |
|
|||||||||
Additional Information: | Forthcoming in Philosophical Psychology. | |||||||||
Subjects: | General Issues > Causation Specific Sciences > Cognitive Science Specific Sciences > Psychology |
|||||||||
Depositing User: | Justin Sytsma | |||||||||
Date Deposited: | 17 Jun 2021 19:09 | |||||||||
Last Modified: | 17 Jun 2021 20:33 | |||||||||
Item ID: | 19181 | |||||||||
Subjects: | General Issues > Causation Specific Sciences > Cognitive Science Specific Sciences > Psychology |
|||||||||
Date: | 16 June 2021 | |||||||||
URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/19181 |
Available Versions of this Item
Monthly Views for the past 3 years
Monthly Downloads for the past 3 years
Plum Analytics
Actions (login required)
View Item |