In the following, we present the vignettes from Knobe (2003) in a way that makes the sequential development of the described actions and events explicit. The intended action and the side effect are presented as the final ‘turn’ of the conversation. Thereby we aim to make explicit the place of the outcome in the longer sequence portrayed in the vignette. We begin our analysis with the Chairman scenario, here presented with the turns of the conversation numbered. The Harm vignette is presented on the right, and the Help vignette on the left (VP = vice-president; CM = chairman).

To control for the specific features of the chairman case (e.g., subjects’ attitudes towards environmental damage and corporations), Knobe (2003) also used another scenario, the Lieutenant scenario. The same results were obtained (LT = Lieutenant; ST = Sergeant).

In presenting the Chairman case, Knobe claims that Help is “almost exactly the same [as Harm] except that the word ‘harm’ was replaced by ‘help’” (2003: 191). Much of the argument in Knobe (2003) hinges on this claim. As we have indicated, however, there are other salient differences that may be relevant to how subjects’ responses should be interpreted. An initial difference at the level of wording can be seen in the substitution of “and” for “but”. In sequential terms, the “but” marks the side effect as a possible objection to the development, while the “and” marks the side effect as additional support for the development. This difference is highly salient in the Lieutenant scenario where the initial turn is a directive, an order. The sergeant’s turn 02 is phrased as an objection in Harm, while this phrasing is absent in Help. Hence, at the point where the side effect has been presented, Help and Harm have developed into two quite different sequences. In Help, support for the prior directive has been presented. But in Harm, an objection to the suggested action has been produced by the interlocutor’s highlighting of the side effect. In the Lieutenant scenario, this is an objection to an order. In the Chairman scenario, it is a complicating consequence of the suggested action articulated by the agent’s interlocutor.

Discussions of the Knobe effect standardly proceed from the assumption that the only difference in wording between the vignettes is the ‘harm’/‘help’ difference (see, e.g., Adams and Steadman 2004: 174; Hindriks 2008: 632; Nadelhoffer 2010: 282; Sripada 2010: 161). For example, Cova first quotes the Harm vignette of the Chairman scenario and then states that other subjects were “given the same vignette, but this time with the word ‘harm’ changed into ‘help’” (2016: 122). Of course, not mentioning other differences does not necessarily reflect an oversight. A more charitable reading is that commentators simply point out what is assumed to be the only relevant difference between the vignettes. It would be nit-picking, one might think, to highlight the additional difference between ‘but’ and ‘and’. While we do not claim that this additional difference plays a decisive role in generating the response asymmetries, we want to suggest that it contributes to the narration of sequences of conversational actions in the vignettes.

An important aspect of the action of bringing up the side effect is that the interlocutor’s own assessment of it is evident. The social action of bringing it into the conversation displays the interlocutor’s stance toward the side effect—through markers such as “but” and “and”—as well as highlights it as relevant to the decision to be taken. In Harm, the characters treat it as a complicating factor for the intended action, but not in Help. Regardless of what presumed ‘moral valence’ would be assigned to the side effect by the subject reading the vignette, there is a proximal valence already assigned to it by the vignette’s characters. In the decision-point rendering, this difference between Harm and Help is absent.

In the sequential rendering, after the turn in which the interlocutor articulates the possible relevance of the side effect, we have the agent’s response. How we understand this response will turn out to be crucial, and much of the following discussion will therefore focus on various aspects of its design and its sequentially conditioned significance. To begin with, we suggest that, in Harm, subjects presumably read the agent’s response as a counter to the previous turn. In the Lieutenant scenario, for instance, we have the utterance “Look, I know that […], but I don’t care at all…”. When “look” is used as a turn-initial component of a response to a prior turn, it “marks a disjunction and a redirection of the talk” (Sidnell 2007: 387). Furthermore, as Marjorie Harness Goodwin (1982) has observed, responses such as “I know” and “I don’t care” are used in disputes to argue for the irrelevance of the prior contribution. They are “especially apt moves following statements whose truth values are not an issue, such as warnings [and] criticisms” (85). A construction such as “I know” also works rhetorically as a riposte, undermining the status of the prior turn as “news” (Goodwin 1982). In the vignette, the agent is placed precisely in this position; he does not question the truth-value of the articulated side effect, and so produces the objection by other means. What is central is thus the social action of countering the side effect’s presented status as a relevant objection, rather than any literal informational content of the uttered sentence.

The agent’s objection to the relevance of the side effect, one could also add, builds on so-called extreme case formulations (“I don’t care at all about…,” “all I care about is…”). In everyday speech, such formulations typically occur in argumentative sequences in which an “adversarial or defensive stance” is conveyed (Pomerantz 1986: 220). More generally, Edwards (2000) shows that, in disputes, participants typically deploy extreme case formulations to display that a locution is used non-literally.

It thus seems plausible that subjects understand the agent’s reply in Harm as implying that the agent is treating the interaction as an argument or potential dispute with two possible outcomes. In rejecting the practical relevance of the prior turn, the agent’s utterance thus becomes a potentially important causal factor in bringing about the negative side-effect. If no such rejection had been issued, the decision would perhaps have turned out differently. In conclusion, a crucial component in Harm is the action of rejecting a suggested complication to the intended action. The matter at stake that this action addresses is the ultimate decision as to whether or not to go ahead with the plan to send the squad to the hill or to start the new program.

In Help, there is no argument about whether or not to implement the action of moving the squad or starting the new program. The articulation of the side effect does not point to any complication associated with the suggested action, and the agent’s reply does not function as a consequential response to the practical implication of the prior turn (that is, that they should move forward with the decision). The agent’s response, however, still signals disagreement. How can we account for this objection to an expression of support? If the argument is not about the decision under consideration, then what is it about?

We noted above that the lieutenant’s reply (“Look, I know…” and so on) serves to reject the relevance of the prior contribution. What significance could such a rejection have in a situation where the decision itself is not at stake? Note that at the point where the side effect has been articulated in Help, it is unclear what the further intent or purpose of the suggested action is. To speak of a main intended action and a side effect is premature at this point in the narrative. In the chairman version, the vice president presents two effects of the new program, without any indication whatsoever of their relative significance. In fact, the vice president is easily heard as presenting profit and environmental improvement as the two reasons for starting the program. Note that the two consequences are appended to the articulation of the plan, thus functioning as an account supporting the plan. In the lieutenant scenario, the sergeant’s exclamation that lives will be saved can even be heard as a candidate formulation of an unarticulated further intent or purpose behind the order, that is, that moving the squad to Thompson hill is done in order to save the lives of the soldiers. It is only apparent in the sergeant’s subsequent reply that the squad is moved in order to “take control” of the hill, a purely military-strategic purpose as opposed to a safety-related one. Similarly, in the Chairman scenario, it is only with the chairman’s reply to the vice president’s initial turn that we get any sense that one of the articulated consequences should be considered an unimportant “side effect” rather than one reason for engaging in the intended action. In Harm on the other hand, the two consequences are differentiated by the x but y construction, conveying that x is the motivation for the action, permitting a characterisation of the other as a “side effect”.

Implicit in the interlocutor’s turn in the Help vignette of the Lieutenant scenario, in which the side effect is mentioned, is thus a suggestion of what the action’s further intent or purpose is. This suggestion is then corrected by the agent’s reply. The interlocutor’s candidate interpretation of the prior directive’s motive is rejected, followed by the articulation of a different motivation. In the Chairman scenario, where the side-effect is mentioned as a suggested reason in favour of starting the new program, the ambiguity inherent in the vice president’s presentation of the program is resolved by the Chairman’s rejection of the relevance of the environmental effect, followed by a repetition and reinforcement of the other purpose mentioned for starting the new program, namely making profit.

This analysis shows that the interlocutors are not debating the particular decision to be taken in Help. They are rather negotiating, and the agent corrects and clarifies what the relevant description of the intended action is, that is, what its further purpose is. In the Lieutenant scenario, are they ‘saving [their] men’ or ‘taking control of Thompson hill’? In the Chairman scenario, are they starting a new profitable program or are they engaging in good business and environmental work? The agent’s reply in the vignette serves to disambiguate what should be regarded as the main, in fact the only, purpose of the endeavour: taking control of the hill, making profit. Help thus contains, as an emergent feature of the narrated sequence, a kind of participant perspective on how the relative intentional status of the two articulated consequences should be evaluated. By resolving an initial ambiguity, the sequence itself plays out as a clarification of what the agent takes to be “intentional”.

In conclusion, a central component of Help is the correction of a suggested further intent or purpose of an intended action (the Lieutenant scenario) or the rejection of a suggested reason favouring an action (the Chairman scenario). The correction or rejection clarifies for relevant parties what should be treated as the accountably relevant intentions or reasons for action, and it resolves ambiguities regarding intent. The matter at stake addressed by the correction or rejection is thus the vignette characters’ shared understanding of intent itself. This plausibly explains why the beneficial side effect is not judged to be intentional. The sequences in the Help vignettes suggest a certain interpretation of “intentionally”. This is an interpretation according to which intentional action simply means an action that is intended. Given this meaning of intentional, side effects are not intentional.

We hope to have made clear that, apart from the differences in wording, Harm and Help represent very different action sequences. In reducing the vignettes to a representation of an event involving a single agent, a single intended action, a set of attitudes and a side-effect, Knobe and others gloss over differences that are potentially important for subjects’ intentionality judgements. Here, we would like to highlight one salient difference in particular: In Help, the conversation depicted in the vignette is about intentionality in the sense of intent or purpose.Footnote 3 The story revolves around the ways in which the intent of an agent should be properly described. This story is told via the characters’ suggesting purposes or reasons for action which are then either validated or corrected/rejected. Harm, on the other hand, is not a story about intent. The vignette’s characters do not treat the agent’s intent as a topic of discussion; it is rather treated as a given. Harm is primarily a story in which the agent is placed in a position of choice, where reasons favouring both options are brought forward by the agent’s interlocutor: aborting an intended action when a particular consequence of the action is presented as relevant or moving forward in spite of it.

Harm is thus a story about choice and Help is a story about further intent. When subjects are asked to assess whether or not the so-called “side effect” was brought about “intentionally,” this question is thus posed in two very different contexts. Given the difference in context, one could ask whether subjects make sense of the question in the same way in the two experimental conditions. Our suggestion is that “intentionally” means something different in the context of choice compared to a context where the clarification of the agent’s further intent is the main issue.

To argue this, we need to deal with variations of Knobe’s study that show that subjects do not always rate side effects as intentional in stories focusing on choice. In studies using vignettes where the agent expresses regret at the prospect of bringing the side effect about, the judgment of intentionality that would be assigned to the negative side effect in otherwise similar Harm vignettes is moderated (e.g., Sverdlik 2004; Cova 2014; Knobe and Kelly 2009). For instance, Knobe (2007) found no difference in intentionality ratings using such a vignette when compared to the original Help vignette. Let us look briefly at one such scenario [adapted from Mele and Cushman (2007)].

(AL = Al; AN = Ann):

Did Ann intentionally make the kids sad? MVH would predict that she did, since the side effect is ‘morally bad’ from the standpoint of the typical subject. As it turns out, however, subjects respond in a way similar to the original Help scenario; a majority judges the side effect to be unintentional. How come? One common way of interpreting this result is that it shows how the agent’s attitudes towards the side effect influence intentionality ratings (see Cova 2016). This is usually expressed by saying that an element of regret is introduced. Similar to discussions of the original Help and Harm scenarios, the agents’ utterances in a conversational sequence are thus considered primarily as vehicles of informational content regarding the agents’ mental states.

What such a treatment does not acknowledge is that Ann’s expressed attitude is a component of her justification of the decision, which is very different from the agent’s response in the original Harm scenarios. Ann, in turn 02, does not flatly reject the objection. Instead, she produces a complex reply that strikes a balance between acknowledging the objection and retaining the (implicitly) intended action of filling the pond. She appeals to circumstances that favour that she fills the pond: the presence of mosquitos, her ownership of the pond, and the obligations that come with ownership. The result is a portrayal of the action of filling the pond as an action that she is forced to take (“It must be filled in”). She thus presents a situation where there is actually no choice between two live options, at least not insofar as she is to remain a rational moral agent. As part of a justification, the regret component is a rhetorical device by which the agent demonstrates the unavoidable status of the action, while acknowledging and accepting the prior speaker’s assessment of the side effect. Of course, the agent might be taken to sincerely communicate an affective stance—an expression of sadness and regret at the prospect of bringing the side effect about. However, what is important is the way in which the expression helps the agent justify her action and portray the situation as one of constrained choice.

Hence, results from studies of ‘regret’ arguably provide additional support for our suggestion that ‘intentionally’ has a different meaning in the context of choice than in a context where the main issue is the clarification of the agent’s further intent or reason for action. Viewing bad side-effect vignettes (Harm and Regret) as revolving around choice, and consequently interpreting ‘intentionally’ as connected with moral responsibility, one would expect justifications and accounts to matter for how subjects understand and assess the central actions in the vignette (a point to which we will return). In this, we are in line with Mele and Cushman (2007) in their acknowledgment that subjects may judge the agent to be justified in her actions and moderate intentionality ratings accordingly, rather than in response to the agent’s expressed attitudes as such.