2009: Is the trade-off hypothesis worth trading for

Psychological Issues, ’ puts forth an intriguing new hypothesis concerning recent work in experimental philosophy on the concept of intentional action. As opposed to other hypotheses in the literature, Machery's 'trade-off hypothesis ' claims not to rely on moral considerations in explaining folk uses of the concept. In this paper, we critique Machery's hypothesis and offer empirical evidence to reject it. Finally, we evaluate the current state of the debate concerning the concept of intentional action, and motivate skepticism toward the plausibility of any parsimonious account of the relevant data. † Our thanks to Edouard Machery and Thomas Nadelhoffer for stimulating discussion of a previous draft of this paper, and to Machery and Bertram F. Malle for helpful comments in their referee reports for Mind and Language. Finally, special thanks to Joshua Knobe for comments and suggestions on numerous previous drafts, and to Fiery Cushman for suggestions on analysis of data