I’ve been reading a blog called Mind Hacks recently, and they’ve been featuring several stories on the emerging field of “experimental philosophy”.  Essentially this is a new attempt by researchers to apply the scientific method, or parts of it anyway, to the normally very “soft” science of philosophy.  The results so far have been pretty fascinating, and I think one of the most striking, and universally accessible, studies to come out of this early movement is the one featured in the YouTube video above, and described in this Mind Hacks Article.  Now the video is great but honestly I almost think the scenario it presents works better when read so I’ve included my paraphrasing of the situation below:

In our first scenario imagine that a vice president goes up to his CEO and tells him, “We’ve got a great plan for a new project.  It will create huge profits for the company, but it will harm the environment.  What do you want to do?”  The CEO responds saying,… ”I don’t care about the environment, all I care about is maximizing profit.  Lets do it.”  So the plan goes forward, the company makes boatloads of money, and the environment is indeed harmed.

So the question is, did the CEO in this scenario harm the environment intentionally?  There’s no right or wrong answer just think to yourself for a minute and figure out what you think.  Got it?  Ok, move on to the second scenario.

In our second scenario imagine that a vice president goes up to his CEO and tells him, “We’ve got a great plan for a new project.  It will create huge profits for the company, and it will help the environment.  What do you want to do?”  The CEO responds saying, “I don’t care about the environment, all I care about is maximizing profit.  Lets do it.”  So the plan goes forward, the company makes boatloads of money, and the environment is indeed helped.

Now ask yourself, in this scenario, did the CEO help the environment intentionally?  Analyze your feelings on the issue and then move on.

Interestingly, the vast majority of the population says “Yes” to the first question and “No” to the second.  So they say the CEO intentionally harmed the environment in the first one, but did not intentionally help the environment the second time.  Isn’t that interesting?  That we’re so much more likely to assign people blame for the side effects of their actions when those side effects are negative, but we don’t give them credit for the positive side effects?  

I’ve got my own tentative ideas about why this may be, and I think this case has some interesting applications to modern politics, among other things.  But in an effort to get some discussion going around here, I’m going to try something new and open this up to you guys.  I know you’re out there reading this, I get the statistics every night.  So speak up!  What is going on?  Why does there seem to be this discrepancy, or is it a discrepancy at all?  How does this affect our every day lives?  What do you think?

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