Intentional Action and Moral Judgment in Asperger Syndrome and High-Functioning Autism*

While evidence shows that people with Asperger Syndrome or High Functioning Autism (AS/HFA), a mild form of autism, have an impaired capacity for mindreading, little is known as to whether their understanding of the intentional status of actions is also impaired. In this work, we report the results from two experiments that address this question. In the first experiment, by using Machery’s free cup and extra-dollar cases, we show that individuals with AS/HFA seem to have difficulty understanding the intentional status of means that are negatively valued, in contrast to what is the case in the general population (Machery, 2008). In the second one, by using Knobe’s harm and help cases and his murder and bull’s-eye cases, we show that individuals with AS/HFA are sensitive to moral considerations and that these inform their judgment about the intentional status of actions, as is also the case in the general population (Knobe, 2003). In light of these findings, we hypothesize that because of their mindreading impairments, individuals with AS/HFA have difficulty judging that some actions are intentional—in particular, those actions that are not intrinsically valuable, but that are desired as means for something else—and that to compensate for their impairment, they use a moral heuristic to decide whether an action is intentional: If an action violates a moral norm, then it is likely seen as intentional. * The authors wish to thank Pierre Jacob, Paul Egré, Joshua Knobe, Shaun Nichols, Maria Grazia Rossi, and Liane Young for their insightful comments on a previous version of this article. The present findings have been presented at the “Winter Workshop 2008 on Games, Experiments and Philosophy” at the Max Planck Institute of Economics, in January 2008 in Jena, Germany. This work was made possible by the Fondation France Telecom and the Fondation