Date of Award

Spring 4-13-2011

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Philosophy

First Advisor

Eddy Nahmias

Second Advisor

George Graham

Third Advisor

Chris Henrich

Abstract

Sripada and Konrath (forthcoming) use Structural Equation Modeling techniques to provide empirical evidence for the claim that implicit and automatic inferences about people’s dispositions, and not normative judgments, are the driving cause behind the pattern of folk judgments of intentional action in Knobe’s (2003a) chairman case. However, I will argue that their evidence is not as strong as they claim due to the potential of methodological and statistical problems with the way they tested their model. After correcting for these problems, I show that even after accounting for the role of dispositional inferences, normative judgments are still playing a significant role in folk judgments of intentional action.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.57709/1952658

Included in

Philosophy Commons

COinS