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Whose Mind Matters More—The Agent or the Artist? An Investigation of Ethical and Aesthetic Evaluations

Theory of mind, the capacity for reasoning about mental states such as beliefs and intentions, represents a critical input to ethical and aesthetic evaluations. Did the agent cause harm on purpose? Were those brushstrokes intentional? The current study investigates theory of mind for moral and artis...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Hawley-Dolan, Angelina, Young, Liane
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2013
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3770669/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24039707
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0070759
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author Hawley-Dolan, Angelina
Young, Liane
author_facet Hawley-Dolan, Angelina
Young, Liane
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description Theory of mind, the capacity for reasoning about mental states such as beliefs and intentions, represents a critical input to ethical and aesthetic evaluations. Did the agent cause harm on purpose? Were those brushstrokes intentional? The current study investigates theory of mind for moral and artistic judgments within the same paradigm. In particular, we target the role of intent for two kinds of judgments: “objective” judgments of quality and “subjective” judgments of preference or liking. First, we show that intent matters more for objective versus subjective judgments in the case of ethics and aesthetics. Second, we show that, overall, intent matters more for ethical versus aesthetic evaluations. These findings suggest that an “objective-subjective” dimension describes judgments across both domains, and that observers assign more weight to the mind of the moral agent than the mind of the artist when making the relevant evaluations.
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spelling pubmed-37706692013-09-13 Whose Mind Matters More—The Agent or the Artist? An Investigation of Ethical and Aesthetic Evaluations Hawley-Dolan, Angelina Young, Liane PLoS One Research Article Theory of mind, the capacity for reasoning about mental states such as beliefs and intentions, represents a critical input to ethical and aesthetic evaluations. Did the agent cause harm on purpose? Were those brushstrokes intentional? The current study investigates theory of mind for moral and artistic judgments within the same paradigm. In particular, we target the role of intent for two kinds of judgments: “objective” judgments of quality and “subjective” judgments of preference or liking. First, we show that intent matters more for objective versus subjective judgments in the case of ethics and aesthetics. Second, we show that, overall, intent matters more for ethical versus aesthetic evaluations. These findings suggest that an “objective-subjective” dimension describes judgments across both domains, and that observers assign more weight to the mind of the moral agent than the mind of the artist when making the relevant evaluations. Public Library of Science 2013-09-11 /pmc/articles/PMC3770669/ /pubmed/24039707 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0070759 Text en © 2013 Hawley-Dolan and Young http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Hawley-Dolan, Angelina
Young, Liane
Whose Mind Matters More—The Agent or the Artist? An Investigation of Ethical and Aesthetic Evaluations
title Whose Mind Matters More—The Agent or the Artist? An Investigation of Ethical and Aesthetic Evaluations
title_full Whose Mind Matters More—The Agent or the Artist? An Investigation of Ethical and Aesthetic Evaluations
title_fullStr Whose Mind Matters More—The Agent or the Artist? An Investigation of Ethical and Aesthetic Evaluations
title_full_unstemmed Whose Mind Matters More—The Agent or the Artist? An Investigation of Ethical and Aesthetic Evaluations
title_short Whose Mind Matters More—The Agent or the Artist? An Investigation of Ethical and Aesthetic Evaluations
title_sort whose mind matters more—the agent or the artist? an investigation of ethical and aesthetic evaluations
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3770669/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24039707
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0070759
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