An Experimental Study Of The Knobe Effect From The Perspective Of Truth-Conditional Pragmatics

As a surprising phenomenon,the Knobe effect was brought to light when some experimental philosophers turned their focus of study to the folk's intuitive judgment of intentionality.The philosopher and psychologist Joshua Knobe has found that the moral evaluations of the side effects influence people's intuitive judgment of intentional action.This robust phenomenon has aroused wide-ranging discussions among scholars.In recent decades,quite a few enlightening hypotheses have been put forward for explicating the Knobe effect from diversified perspectives,but they have not been universally accepted.Previous studies on this issue are mainly conducted by foreign researchers,and rarely seen at home.The present study endeavors to apply the major theory of pragmatic modulation of Truth-Conditional Pragmatics,taking 160 advanced Chinese English learners as participants and carrying out follow-up interviews with some participants,and aims to address the following research questions:(1)Can the intrusion of the pragmatic factors including the agent,goal and outcome of the action influence advanced Chinese English learners' understanding of the concept of intentional action?(2)How does the pragmatic modulation influence advanced Chinese English learners' understanding of the concept of intentional action? Based on the above questions,the design of the present experiment includes two control cases and four test cases.There is a pragmatic variable involved in each pair of test cases and other materials are almost identical.Subjects are required to make judgments of intentionality and provide the corresponding degree of intentionality based upon information from materials,and then present the precise explanations for their judgments.The experiment results manifest that results of judgment of intentionality and degree of intentionality in each pair of cases are statistically significant with the intrusion of pragmatic factors,indicating that the intrusion of the pragmatic factors surely influences advanced Chinese English learners' understanding of the concept of intentional action.In a given context,some salient features of an intentional action will intervene in the process of pragmatic modulation of the concept of intentional action and exert a huge influence on the subjects' understanding of the concept of intentional action,thereby further affecting their judgments of intentionality and ultimately leading to the Knobe effect.We can conclude that Truth-Conditional Pragmatics provides an innovative account for the Knobe effect from a unique and comprehensive perspective,thus demonstrating its strong explanatory power.