The CEO of a company is sitting in his office when his Vice President of R&D comes in and says, ‘We are thinking of starting a new programme. It will help us increase profits, but it will also harm the environment.’ The CEO responds that he doesn’t care about harming the environment and just wants to make as much profit as possible. The programme is carried out, profits are made and the environment is harmed.Did the CEO intentionally harm the environment? The vast majority of people Knobe quizzed – 82 per cent – said he did.
But what if the scenario is changed such that the word ‘harm’ is replaced with ‘help’? -
The CEO of a company is sitting in his office when his Vice President of R&D comes in and says, ‘We are thinking of starting a new programme. It will help us increase profits, but it will also help the environment.’ The CEO responds that he doesn’t care about helping the environment and just wants to make as much profit as possible. The programme is carried out, profits are made and the environment is helped.Now faced with the question ‘Did the CEO intentionally help the environment?’, just 23 per cent of Knobe’s participants said ‘yes’.
More at Wikipedia and its links, and at Futility Closet.
Well I guess the trick is that the statements contain the words: "The CEO responds that he doesn’t care about helping the environment and just wants to make as much profit as possible." If you leave out that sentence the whole meaning changes.
ReplyDeleteIMO this is a typically nonsensical sociology type experiment.
Just this afternoon I heard a podcast in the "Philosophy Bites" series (http://www.philosophybites.com/) about the Knobe Effect, featuring Knobe himself, who talks about what he calls "experimental philosophy." It's worth a listen, if only for the insight on how people make moral and ethical judgments. Made me say "Hmmm" to myself several times.
ReplyDeleteMy gut tells me I agree that he did harm in one case, but did not do good in the second one.
ReplyDeleteThinking about why this is the case, I wrote and re-wrote this post several times. While I still can't seem to find a concise measure, the causing of harm due to indifference seems to be inherently different from doing good due to indifference.
My best shot:
Accepting good things as a side effect of my actions is a no-brainer; I don't have to weigh anything against anything else. Causing harm means I need to weigh the possible outcomes by my priorities.
As a side note, I disagree with felix. The "I don't care" bit is the important piece of information. Without this extra information, I would say that the CEO did good in the latter case. As it stands, I do not.
The CEO is a greedy pig who only cares about making money. Whether someone/something else is helped or harmed is completely irrelevant to this person. So what they did on purpose was make money and ignore the consequences, whatever they may be.
ReplyDelete