Intentional action and moral considerations: still pragmatic
Adams & Steadman (2004) argued that the core concept of intentional action does not involve moral considerations, but that moral considerations are involved in the pragmatic implications of intentional talk. Joshua Knobe (Knobe 2003a, 2003b) discovered data showing an asymmetry in folk judgments about intentional action. Persons answering Knobe’s questionnaires judge actions to be performed intentionally when were right the present reasoning would be no better than the reasoning which Brueckner criticises. For the present reasoning still relies on (**). I reply that there is nothing absurd about the idea that just about any sound philosophical and mathematical argument fails the negation test. It would be absurd to say that just about any such argument is trivial. But failure in the negation test is not enough to make an argument trivial. An argument fails the negation test if and only if were a normally intelligent person to want the argument to have a false conclusion, reflection would destroy his attitude. And an argument is trivial only if it fails this test. But there is another necessary condition for the triviality of an argument: were a normally intelligent person to want the argument to have a true conclusion, reflection would destroy his attitude. Sound demonic arguments do doubtless meet this further necessary condition. But we cannot infer from (**) that all or most other sound philosophical or mathematical arguments are in the same boat. It is perfectly possible to have a reflectively indestructible desire for the truth of what one believes to be necessarily true.