Intentions and mixed results

Suppose the chairman of a company has to decide whether to adopt a new program. It would increase profits and help the environment too. "I don't care at all about helping the environment," the chairman says. "I just want to make as much profit as I can. Let's start the new program." Would you say that the chairman intended to help the environment?

O.K., same circumstance. Except this time the program would harm the environment. The chairman, who still couldn't care less about the environment, authorizes the program in order to get those profits. As expected, the bottom line goes up, the environment goes down. Would you say the chairman harmed the environment intentionally?

I don't know where you ended up, but in one survey, only 23 percent of people said that the chairman in the first situation had intentionally helped the environment. When they had to think about the second situation, though, fully 82 percent thought that the chairman had intentionally harmed the environment.

That's the opening of a piece by Kwame Anthony Appiah. He's reporting on a movement called 'experimental philosophy'. But the example is interesting in itself. Why should people be more inclined to think that the foreseeable negative side effects of a policy are intended, whereas the foreseeable positive side effects aren't? Supposing there are both negative and positive side effects of the very same policy - side effects because incidental to the policy's main objective - can those who initiate the policy sensibly be blamed for the former while being given no credit for the latter? (Via.)