It has often been suggested that people's ordinary capacities for understanding the world make use of much the same methods one might find in a formal scientific investigation. A series of recent experimental results offer a challenge to this widely-held view, suggesting that people's moral judgments can actually influence the intuitions they hold both in folk psychology and in causal cognition. The present target article distinguishes two basic approaches to explaining such effects. One approach would be to say that the relevant competencies are entirely non-moral but that some additional factor (conversational pragmatics, performance error, etc.) then interferes and allows people's moral judgments to affect their intuitions. Another approach would be to say that moral considerations truly do figure in workings of the competencies themselves. I argue that the data available now favor the second of these approaches over the first.

The compelling case that Anderson makes for neural reuse and against modularity as organizing principle of the brain is further supported by evidence from developmental disorders. However, to provide a full evolutionary-developmental theory of neural reuse that encompasses both typical and atypical development, Anderson's “massive redeployment hypothesis” (MRH) could be further constrained by considering brain development across ontogeny.

Knobe contends that in making judgments about a wide range of matters, moral considerations and scientific considerations are “jumbled together” and thus that “we are moralizing creatures through and through.” We argue that his own account of the mechanism underlying these judgments does not support this radical conclusion.

Knobe argues that people's judgments of the moral status of a side-effect of action influence their assessment of whether the side-effect is intentional. I tested this hypothesis using vignettes akin to Knobe's but involving economically or eudaimonistically (wellness-related) negative side-effects. My results show that it is people's sense of what agents deserve, and not the moral status of side-effects, that drives intuition.

Simple specialization cannot account for brain functioning. Yet, we believe Anderson's reuse can be better explained by re-function. We suggest that functional demands shape brain changes and are the driving force behind reuse. For example, we suggest that the prefrontal cortex (PFC) is built as an infrastructure for multi-functions rather than as a module for reuse.

Knobe's laudable conclusion that we make sense of our social world based on moral considerations requires a development account of human thought and a theoretical framework. We outline a view that such a moral framework must be rooted in social interaction.

We find the theory of neural reuse to be highly plausible, and suggest that human individual differences provide an additional line of argument in its favor, focusing on the well-replicated finding of “positive manifold,” in which individual differences are highly correlated across domains. We also suggest that the theory of neural reuse may be an important contributor to the phenomenon of positive manifold itself.

Depressive mood can be involved in the moral judgments made by people with depression. Here, we focus on the negative judgments depressed patients have of themselves and the world. Possibly, the alterations in moral judgment in subjects with depression can be understood by taking into account the neural basis of depression.

We propose an analogy between optical holography and neural behavior as a hypothesis about the physical mechanisms of neural reuse. Specifically, parameters in optical holography (frequency, amplitude, and phase of the reference beam) may provide useful analogues for understanding the role of different parameters in determining the behavior of neurons (e.g., frequency, amplitude, and phase of spiking behavior).

Knobe cites both relevant alternatives and defaults on a continuum to explain how moral judgments influence intuitions about certain apparently non-moral notions. I ask (1) how these two accounts are related, (2) whether they exclude or supplement supposedly competing theories, and (3) how to get positive evidence that people consider relevant alternatives when applying such notions.

Novel functions, which emerge by reusing existing resources formerly adapted to other original usages, cannot be anticipated before the need eventually arises. Simple reuse must be accidental. However, to survive the evolutionary race, one cannot merely keep hoping for a string of good fortune. So, successful species might be gifted with “rational” and “purposeful” biological mechanisms to prepare for future reuse. Neural reuse must be extrapolated from such mechanisms.

We use psychological concepts (e.g., intention and desire) when we ascribe psychological states to others for purposes of describing, explaining, and predicting their actions. Does the evidence reported by Knobe show, as he thinks, that moral evaluation shapes our mastery of psychological concepts? We argue that the evidence so far shows instead that moral evaluation shapes the way we report, not the way we think about, others' psychological states.

The commentators offer helpful suggestions at three levels: (1) explanations for the particular effects discussed in the target article; (2) implications of those effects for our understanding of the role of moral judgment in human cognition; and (3) more theoretical questions about the overall relationship between ordinary cognition and systematic science. The present response takes up these three issues in turn.

We are neither scientists nor moralists. Our mental capacities (such as attributing intentionality) are neither akin to the scientist's exact reasoning, nor are they “suffused through and through with moral considerations” (Knobe's target article, sect. 2.2, last para.). They are more similar to all those simple capacities that humans and animals are equally capable of, but with enhanced sensitivity to counterfactual situations: of what could have been.

Knobe argues in his target article that asymmetries in intentionality judgments can be explained by the view that concepts such as intentionality are suffused with moral considerations. We believe that the “culpable control” model of blame can account both for Knobe's side effect findings and for findings that do not involve side effects.

Presenting evidence from the social brain, we argue that neural reuse is a dynamic, socially organized process that is influenced ontogenetically and evolutionarily by the cultural transmission of mental techniques, values, and modes of thought. Anderson's theory should be broadened to accommodate cultural effects on the functioning of architecturally similar neural systems, and the implications of these differences for reuse.

Anderson's meta-analysis of fMRI data is subject to a potential confound. Areas identified as active may make no functional contribution to the task being studied, or may indicate regions involved in the coordination of functional networks rather than information processing per se. I suggest a way in which fMRI adaptation studies might provide a useful test between these alternatives.

Knobe reports that subjects' judgments of whether an agent did something intentionally vary depending on whether the outcome in question was seen by them as good or as bad. He concludes that subjects' moral views affect their judgments about intentional action. This conclusion appears to follow only if different meanings of “intention” are overlooked.

We isolate some critical aspects of the reuse notion in Anderson's massive redeployment hypothesis (MRH). We notice that the actual rearranging of local neural circuits at a timescale comparable with the reactivity timescale of the organism is left open. We propose the concept of programmable neural network as a solution.