Implicit Bias

In Tobia (2016), Kevin P. Tobia tests for bias using two ontological arguments claimed to be symmetrical and of equal strength. We show they are neither.

What factors affect judicial decision-making? The legal system is of utmost importance because of its impact on our lives. Judges appear to have the most power among any social workers seeing as the precedents set in their decisions are tantamount to written law. Nevertheless, judges may be subject to certain biases, moral and cognitive alike, which influence their rulings. Looking into how morality and cognitive biases affect judges may also reveal how we as individuals handle combining morals with ethics- as (...) well as whether any discrepancies among ourselves are justifiable. An investigation into relevant moral and jurisprudential theories revealed much about the inner workings of a judge’s mindset- whether he or she recognizes it or not. Coupling this with corroborated research on a select few heuristics present specifically for judges sets the foundation for an array of possible solutions in order to ensure the most impartial judicial proceedings. Plausible remedies include conducting premortems, implicit association tests, and a revised ruling procedure. (shrink)

Recently, psychologists have developed indirect measurement procedures to predict suicidal behavior. A prominent example is the Death/Suicide Implicit Association Test (DS-IAT). In this paper, I argue that there is something special about the DS-IAT which distinguishes it from different IAT measures. I argue that the DS-IAT does not measure weak or strong associations between the implicit self-concept and the abstract concept of death. In contrast, assuming a goal-system approach, I suggest that sorting death-related to self-related words takes effort because death-related (...) words trigger avoidance-impulses, which suicide ideation weakens. The DS-IAT taps into weakened automatic responses from the self-preservation system. Additionally, the suggested cognitive structure, illuminated with the selfish-goal theory, explains predictable suicidal behavior. (shrink)

This paper starts from an observation of our practices: when people are ascribed delusional beliefs or conspiracy beliefs, they tend to be excluded from shared epistemic projects relevant to the content of their beliefs. What might motivate this exclusion? One possibility is that delusional beliefs and conspiracy beliefs are considered as evidence of irrationality and pathology, and thus endorsing them suggests that one’s epistemic agency is compromised, at least in some contexts. One common argument for the irrational and pathological nature (...) of delusional beliefs and conspiracy beliefs lies in their being the outputs of faulty cognition. There are some areas of overlap in the cognitive antecedents of delusional beliefs and conspiracy beliefs as identified in the empirical literature. For instance, some biases and thinking styles have been correlated either with the adoption of delusional beliefs and conspiracy beliefs, or with the strength of conviction in such beliefs. The paper challenges the claim that, if delusional beliefs and conspiracy beliefs are the outputs of biased cognition, then it is justified to exclude people endorsing delusional beliefs and conspiracy beliefs from epistemic projects relevant to the content of their beliefs. The relevant biases and thinking styles are widespread in the non-clinical population, do not need to be part of a dysfunctional cognitive process, and can be adaptive in some contexts. (shrink)

Generative artificial intelligence systems based on transformers, including both text-generators like GPT-4 and image generators like DALL-E 3, have recently entered the popular consciousness. These tools, while impressive, are liable to reproduce, exacerbate, and reinforce extant human social biases, such as gender and racial biases. In this paper, we systematically review the extent to which DALL-E Mini suffers from this problem. In line with the Model Card published alongside DALL-E Mini by its creators, we find that the images it produces (...) tend to represent dozens of different occupations as populated either solely by men (e.g., pilot, builder, plumber) or solely by women (e.g., hairdresser, receptionist, dietitian). In addition, the images DALL-E Mini produces tend to represent most occupations as populated primarily or solely by White people (e.g., farmer, painter, prison officer, software engineer) and very few by non-White people (e.g., pastor, rapper). These findings suggest that exciting new AI technologies should be critically scrutinized and perhaps regulated before they are unleashed on society. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence chatbots driven by large language models (LLMs) have the potential to increase public science literacy and support scientific research, as they can quickly summarize complex scientific information in accessible terms. However, when summarizing scientific texts, LLMs may omit details that limit the scope of research conclusions, leading to generalizations of results broader than warranted by the original study. We tested 10 prominent LLMs, including ChatGPT-4o, ChatGPT-4.5, DeepSeek, LLaMA 3.3 70B, and Claude 3.7 Sonnet, comparing 4900 LLM-generated summaries to (...) their original scientific texts. Even when explicitly prompted for accuracy, most LLMs produced broader generalizations of scientific results than those in the original texts, with DeepSeek, ChatGPT-4o, and LLaMA 3.3 70B overgeneralizing in 26–73% of cases. In a direct comparison of LLM-generated and human-authored science summaries, LLM summaries were nearly five times more likely to contain broad generalizations (OR = 4.85, 95% CI [3.06, 7.70], p < 0.001). Notably, newer models tended to perform worse in generalization accuracy than earlier ones. Our results indicate a strong bias in many widely used LLMs towards overgeneralizing scientific conclusions, posing a significant risk of large-scale misinterpretations of research findings. We highlight potential mitigation strategies, including lowering LLM temperature settings and benchmarking LLMs for generalization accuracy. (shrink)

To Protect and Serve is Norm Stamper’s second book, following Breaking Rank: A Top Cop’s Exposé of the Dark Side of American Policing (2005), and is a welcome contribution to the debate between those who advocate violence against the police and those who insist that no reform is necessary. Radley Balko’s The Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces (2013) inadvertently provided the context of the civil unrest in Ferguson ignited by the shooting of Michael Brown (...) in 2014 and the controversy surrounding the “Ferguson effect” provides the context for Stamper’s treatise on the problems faced – and caused – by contemporary U.S. law enforcement. Stamper is one of the few senior police officers singled out for praise by Balko, for the most part on the basis of his activism against police prejudice and militarisation subsequent to his retirement as Seattle’s police chief in 2000. (shrink)

Fairness in machine learning (ML) has become a rapidly growing area of research. But why, in the first place, is unfairness in ML wrong? And why should we care about improving fairness? Most fair-ML research implicitly appeals to distributive equality: the idea that desirable benefits and goods, such as opportunities (e.g., Barocas et al., 2023), should be equally distributed across society. Unfair ML models, then, are seen as wrong because they unequally distribute such benefits. This paper argues that this exclusive (...) focus on distributive equality offers an incomplete and potentially misleading ethical foundation, especially in the context of text- and image-generation models. Grounding ML fairness in egalitarianism—the view that equality is a fundamental moral and social ideal—requires challenging structural inequality: systematic, institutional, and durable arrangements that privilege some groups while disadvantaging others. Structural inequality manifests through ML systems in two primary forms: allocative harms (e.g., economic loss) and representational harms (e.g., stereotypes, erasure). While distributive equality helps address allocative harms, it fails to explain why representational harms are wrong—that is, why it is wrong for ML systems to reinforce social hierarchies that stratify people into superior and inferior groups—and why ML systems should aim to foster a society where people relate as equals (i.e., relational equality). To address these limitations, the paper proposes a novel multifaceted egalitarian framework for ML fairness that integrates both distributive and relational notions of equality. Drawing on critical social and political philosophy, including the work of Anderson, Young, and Fraser, this framework offers a more comprehensive ethical foundation for tackling the full spectrum of harms perpetuated by ML systems. The paper also outlines practical pathways for implementing the framework across the entire ML pipeline. (shrink)

The phrase from the title in quotes is from Carlos Alberto Sánchez's translation and analysis of Jorge Portilla's Fenomenología del Relajo (Phenomenology of …well, Relajo. This term needs some philosophical work to translate appropriately). "Relajo" could mean "relaxation" or "letting loose", or "fucking around", but this does not quite get to Portilla's sense. His conception, which will be fleshed out more in the text, can be summed up here: "Relajo, literally, wants a freedom for nothing; freedom to choose nothing; it (...) promotes disorder so as not to have to do anything in a prolonged action with sense. Relajo has irresponsibility as an end" (Sánchez 188). It is, in other words, a "suspension of seriousness"-the shitposting memes of an internet troll seeking to redpill normies, with zero concern for what might be true, good, or a genuine value. This chapter will evaluate the current state of meme creation, replication, manipulation, and perpetuation and their role in education through the lens of Portilla's conceptions of the relajamiento and apretado. The former represents a consistently frivolous attitude explicitly ambivalent toward any and all values, while the latter can be found in the dogmatic snob who embodies what Sartre and De Beauvoir call a "spirit of seriousness", the presumption that they possess, and in some instances are, the embodiment of value. For the relajo, serious, genuine commitment to any principles is mocked, made worse by the replicating nature of such clownishness. There are interesting and enlightening parallels with the contemporary use of internet memes, those replicating bytes of imagery and usually minimal text that have become the analogue of the unthinking cliché, ironically (in the post-modern hipster not Socratic sense) perpetuated in a shallow, sloganeering manner. Surprisingly, this might not be all that bad. Following Portilla, I do not fully dismiss today's memer, even one who leans more to the relajo than apretado in the spectrum. In Aristotle's lexicon, I would favor the mean that leans toward the buffoon over the boor. There is a possibility for edification via this attitude, but, with the caveat that it is tempered with a pedagogically-minded and ethically habituated attitude. I seek a similar middle ground found in Portilla's study that critiques both ends of the meme-use spectrum. I end with an account of the pros and perils of teaching philosophy with memes, briefly advocating for a Socratic Ironist attitude toward memes in general, but specifically in teaching philosophy, as an ideal approach to teaching with memes. (shrink)

While standard forms of discrimination are widely considered morally wrong, philosophers disagree about what makes them so. Two accounts have risen to prominence in this debate: One stressing how wrongful discrimination disrespects the discriminatee, the other how the harms involved make discrimination wrong. While these accounts are based on carefully constructed thought experiments, proponents of both sides see their positions as in line with and, in part, supported by the folk theory of the moral wrongness of discrimination. This article presents (...) a vignette-based experiment to test empirically what, in the eyes of “folks”, makes discrimination wrong. Interestingly, we find that, according to folks, both disrespect and harm make discrimination wrong. Our findings offer some support for a pluralistic account of the wrongness of discrimination over both monist respect-based and monist harm-based accounts. (shrink)

Sometimes I am with a group of people but feel socially distant because their activities make me think, ‘I don't belong here!’ However, the distance between me and them is not created by intentional acts of exclusion. It stems from my non-participation in their chosen activities—the things other members of the in-group do for fun—for personal reasons. Although we share a lot in common, such as being supporters of the same football club, staff at the same institution, students at the (...) same university or having shared religious beliefs, we differ in the things we do for fun; not all of us are smokers, not all of us drink beer/alcohol, and not all of us speak the same languages. The feeling of social distance that one experiences when excluded from activities enjoyed by members of one's in-group is a form of discrimination. In this perspective paper, I expose this type of discrimination as acceptable within in-groups for two reasons: (1) the general lack of discriminatory intentions towards victims and (2) the spatial situatedness of the discriminatory activities. I call this acceptable type of discrimination ‘Groupcism’. I argue that groupcism is regarded as an acceptable form of discrimination not primarily because of the two reasons stated above, but because of another two: (1) other activities that the victims of groupcism share with the members of their in-group; and (2) the agency to opt in and out of the sub-group activities that engender groupcism. (shrink)

Deliberative democracy is increasingly criticised as out of touch with the realities of partisan politics. This paper considers the rise of fake and hyperpartisan news as one source of this scepticism. While popular accounts often blame such content on citizens’ political biases and motivated reasoning, I survey the empirical evidence and argue that it does not support strong claims about the inability of citizens to live up to deliberative ideals. Instead, much of this research is shown to support the deliberative (...) capacities of citizens and points to their potential in helping to reduce the spread of false and misleading content. (shrink)

Reflective reasoning has been central to philosophy and cognitive science more generally. However, scholars lack a unified empirical explication of ‘reflection’. This paper synthesizes a cross-disciplinary account from philosophers, scientists, and centuries of English speakers: ‘reflection’ often refers to—among other things—conscious and deliberate reconsideration of an initial intuition. This two-factor account of reflection empirically distinguishes reflection from often conflated phenomena such as rumination; it also tidily classifies self-conscious reflection as a subset of reflection. This account also accommodates mounting evidence that (...) reflection is neither necessary nor sufficient for rationality. The two-factor account has implications for philosophy (e.g., that both practical and theoretical reasoning can benefit from reflection) and science (e.g., that reflection can be a solution to rather than just a symptom of negative rumination). So the two-factor account should be preferred to accounts that do less to unify, make sense of, and guide philosophy and science. (shrink)

Explicit knowledge is consciously accessible to the knower: the person can introspect what it is that they know and articulate it in the form of a statement (Dummett 1991, Davies 2015, Thompson 2023). If a person possesses some knowledge which they are unable to articulate to themselves or others, this knowledge is said to be implicit rather than explicit. Standard examples of implicit knowledge include a speaker’s knowledge of language, or practical knowledge such as how to ride a bike. The (...) concept of implicit knowledge, however, raises challenging philosophical questions. This piece explores some of the different ways in which cognitive psychology can attempt to explain implicit knowledge and considers how these scientific explanations relate to the more traditionally philosophical questions about the concept of implicit knowledge. (shrink)

In this paper, I investigate how the affective component of smell can be implicitly biased and, more broadly, I provide reasons for the importance of taking into account the affective component of perceptual implicit bias. After introducing the notion of perceptual implicit bias, I delineate the case of affective perception for the sense of smell: since olfactory experience typically has a strong affective load, affective properties should, in those cases, be considered part of the perceptual states themselves. Next, I explore (...) why certain smells are perceived to be pleasant or unpleasant, defending the hypothesis that the cultural setting of the perceiver plays an important role in determining the perceived pleasantness of smells. Then, I argue that some instances of affective olfactory perception should be conceived as cases of implicit bias, conditioned by the cultural context of the perceiver. Lastly, I sketch general considerations on the importance of including the affective component in the study of implicitly biased perception. (shrink)

En este texto, sostengo que el estudio psicológico del sesgo implícito puede beneficiarse de los enfoques de segunda persona. Específicamente, muestro que las aproximaciones experimentales dominantes basadas en el Test de Asociación Implícita (IAT por su sigla en inglés) presuponen un internalismo según el cual la posesión de un sesgo implícito se identifica con la posesión de una asociación conceptual. Al equiparar la posesión del sesgo implícito con la posesión de una asociación conceptual, la visión tradicional reduce el sesgo a (...) una activación en memoria particular e ignora los aspectos socioculturales involucrados en este fenómeno. Para evitar esto, sugiero adoptar una perspectiva externalista, considerando el enfoque de segunda persona, que permite incluir en la identificación del sesgo aspectos socioculturales y normativos. Exploro finalmente algunas consecuencias de la propuesta externalista para la medición y la intervención sobre el sesgo implícito. (shrink)

Affective realism, roughly the hypothesis that you “perceive what you feel”, has recently been put forward as a novel, empirically-backed explanation of police shooting errors. The affective states involved in policing in high-pressure situations result in police officers literally seeing guns even when none are present. The aim of this paper is to (i) unpack the implications of this explanation for assessing police culpability and (ii) determine whether we should take these implications at face value. I argue that while affective (...) realism stands to diminish, if not eliminate, the moral and legal responsibilities of officers who have made shooting errors, the empirical data itself does not directly support such a radical rethink of police culpability. (shrink)

Emerging single-process propositional perspectives in psychology and philosophy have introduced the key idea that, much like their explicit (deliberately retrieved) counterparts, implicit (automatically retrieved) attitudes should be sensitive to logical operations such as negation. In the present project, we subject this idea to a particularly stringent test by probing not only whether the formation of implicit attitudes is sensitive to negation but also whether such sensitivity additionally reflects the distinction between easy-to-negate bipolar adjectives (those with clear antonyms, e.g., strong) and (...) difficult-to-negate unipolar adjectives (those without clear antonyms, e.g., unique). Across four experiments (three preregistered; total N = 6,707), we found (a) no significant difference in the formation of implicit attitudes in response to affirmed bipolar versus affirmed unipolar adjectives (β = 0.07); (b) modulation of the formation of implicit attitudes by whether adjectives were affirmed or negated (β = 0.67); and, critically, (c) stronger modulation of the formation of implicit attitudes by the negation of bipolar relative to unipolar adjectives (β = 0.23). These results generalized across three sets of adjectives, two implicit attitude measures (the Implicit Association Test and the Affect Misattribution Procedure), and two novel targets (social and nonsocial). Together, these data provide strong evidence to suggest that the formation of implicit attitudes is sensitive to logical operations, including not only whether an adjective is affirmed or negated but even whether adjectives are relatively easy or difficult to negate. We discuss theoretical implications for single-process and dual-process accounts of attitude formation and higher-order human cognition. (shrink)

Some policies are paternalistic and discriminatory at the same time (e.g., certain benevolent sexist policies). Such policies constitute an interesting, yet somewhat overlooked, category. We scrutinize what paternalistic discrimination is and account for its wrongness. First, we argue that paternalistic discrimination is pro tanto wrong because it is disrespectful. The disrespect consists in the selective negligence or denial of some people’s moral power over their own good. This applies even if the policies and actions in question benefit those interfered with. (...) Second, we show that paternalistic discrimination gives rise to a dilemma in situations where different social groups face different risks. In such situations, a choice must be made between (i) protecting people equally and (ii) respecting people's moral power over their own good equally. Finally, we show that paternalistic discrimination in certain cases shows a lack of respect for the moral worth of the persons who are not the target of the policies. (shrink)

Mentalizing is our ability to infer agents’ mental states. Attributing beliefs, knowledge, desires, and intentions are frequently discussed forms of mentalizing. Attributing mentalistically loaded stereotypes, personality traits, and evaluating others’ rationality are forms of mentalizing, as well. This broad conception of mentalizing has interesting and important implications for social epistemology. Several topics in social epistemology involve judgments about others’ knowledge, rationality, and competence, e.g., peer disagreement, epistemic injustice, and identifying experts. Mentalizing is at the core of each of these debates. (...) In this chapter, I describe the broad conception of mentalizing and show how it is central to how we judge others’ knowledge, competence, and rationality. I will apply this perspective on mentalizing to two debates: the epistemology of peer disagreement and interventions on testimonial injustice. I argue that understanding how mentalizing works can help us see these debates in a different light. Such reframing can help us make progress on these challenging debates. (shrink)

Across Europe, countries are reducing CO2 emissions and energy demand by lowering the temperature in public office buildings. These measures affect men and women unequally because the latter prefer and, indeed, perform better under higher temperatures than the standard temperature. Lowering the temperature thus further increases an already existing inequality. We show that the philosophical literature on discrimination provides an interesting theoretical approach to understanding such measures. On prominent understandings of what discrimination is, the policy would be considered direct discrimination (...) against women if it could be shown to reflect a broader inattentiveness to the needs of women in society. Alternatively, and more straightforwardly, the policies can be considered indirect discrimination because of their disparate effects on men and women. The final part of the paper shows that the policies are also wrong for the reasons it is often argued that discrimination is wrong—to wit, that it harms or disrespects those who are discriminated against. The final section suggests a range of measures to offset the discriminatory aspects of the policy. (shrink)

Can agents overcome unconscious psychological influences without being aware of them? Some philosophers and psychologists assume that agents need to be aware of psychological influences to successfully control behavior. The aim of this text is to argue that when agents engage in a proactive control strategy, they can successfully shield their behavior from some unconscious influences. If agents actively check for conflicts between their actions and mental states, they engage in reactive control. For engaging in reactive control, agents need awareness (...) of those mental states which are in conflict with an action. In contrast, if agents are actively maintaining a goal in consciousness, they engage in proactive control. Proactive control does not consist of conflict detection or conflict resolution. I argue that proactive control explains how agents overcome unconscious psychological influences. In doing so, I claim that consciousness is important for engaging in reactive and proactive control. (shrink)

People often discriminate based on negative or positive stereotypes about others. Important examples of this are highlighted by the theory of ambivalent sexism. This theory distinguishes sexist stereotypes that are negative (hostile sexism) from those that are positive (benevolent sexism). While both forms of sexism are considered wrong toward women, hostile sexism seems intuitively worse than benevolent sexism. In this article, we ask whether the difference between discriminating based on positive vs. negative stereotypes in itself makes a morally relevant difference. (...) We suggest that it does not. By examining a number of prominent accounts of what makes discrimination wrong, we defend the Moral Irrelevance View according to which stereotype valence is irrelevant to the moral evaluation of discrimination, all else equal. (shrink)

I argue that influential recent discussions have whitewashed blame, characterizing it in ways that deemphasize or ignore its morally problematic features. I distinguish “definitional,” “creeping,” and “emphasis” whitewash, and argue that they play a central role in overall endorsements of blame by T.M. Scanlon, George Sher, and Miranda Fricker. In particular, these endorsements treat blame as appropriate by definition (Scanlon), or as little more than a wish (Sher), and infer from blame's having one useful function that it is a good (...) practice overall (Fricker). I use an analogy with revenge to illustrate the mechanisms of whitewashing, including broadening a concept to include available alternatives to it and inference from one feature of a practice to an overall conclusion about that practice. Several features of blame make it particularly prone to whitewashing, including blamers' personal or emotional stake in blaming and widespread disagreement about the nature of blame. I argue that a non‐whitewashing treatment of blame must pay closer attention both to blame's harms, and to comparisons between blame and alternative, non‐blaming reactions. (shrink)

Hume argues that we succumb to the vice of prejudice when we fail to correct negative generalizations about social groups in the face of counter-evidence. We are blameworthy for these biases, moreover, even if they are unavoidable. Hume’s theory of doxastic responsibility entails that his own racial prejudices are deserving of condemnation. In contrast, contemporary vice epistemologists are more inclined to absolve agents of culpability for prejudices beyond their control.

The distinction between personal-level and subpersonal-level attributions of cognition raises interesting questions. What is the relationship between personal-level and subpersonal-level attributions of cognition, for example? Does the personal/subpersonal distinction pick out two different kinds of cognitive processes, or does it merely reflect two different kinds of explanatory projects we might have? This piece gives an overview of the personal/subpersonal distinction and explores how the distinction is used to guide research in cognitive science and beyond.

To biologise racism is to treat racism as a neurological phenomenon susceptible to biochemical intervention. In 'Race on the Brain: What Implicit Bias Gets Wrong About the Struggle for Racial Injustice', Kahn (2018) critiques cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists for framing racism in a way that tends to biologise racism, which he argues draws attention and resources away from non-individualistic solutions to racial inequality. In this paper I argue the psychological sciences can accommodate several of Kahn’s criticisms by adopting a situated (...) approach to cognition, where we take environmental features as integral to the cognitive processes that manifest racial bias. (shrink)

How feasible are conceptual engineering projects of social concepts that aim for the engineered concept to be deployed in people's ordinary conceptual practices? Predominant frameworks on the psychology of concepts that shape work on stereotyping, bias, and machine learning have grim implications for the prospects of conceptual engineers: conceptual engineering efforts are ineffective in promoting certain social‐conceptual changes. Since conceptual components that give rise to problematic social stereotypes are sensitive to statistical structures of the environment, purely conceptual change won't be (...) possible without corresponding world change. This tradition, however, tends to ignore that concepts don't only encode statistical, but also causal information. Paying attention to this feature of concepts, I argue, shows that conceptual engineering is not only possible. There is an imperative to conceptually‐engineer. (shrink)

Drawing on empirical findings, a number of philosophers have recently argued that people who use English as a foreign language may face a linguistic bias in academia in that they or their contributions may be perceived more negatively than warranted because of their English. I take a critical look at this argument. I first distinguish different phenomena that may be conceptualized as linguistic bias but that should be kept separate to avoid overgeneralizations. I then examine a range of empirical studies (...) that philosophers have cited to argue that people who use English as a foreign language are subject to linguistic bias in academia. I contend that many of these studies do not sufficiently support key claims that philosophers have made about linguistic bias, are challenged by counterevidence, and lack generalizability. I end by introducing methodological recommendations that may help philosophers develop more convincing empirically informed arguments regarding linguistic bias. (shrink)

I argue that what speakers mean or express can be determined by their implicit or unconscious states, rather than explicit or conscious states. Further, on this basis, I show that the sincerity conditions for utterances can also be fixed by implicit states. This is a surprising result which goes against common assumptions about speech acts and sincerity. Roughly, I argue that the result is implied by two plausible and independent theories of the metaphysics of speaker meaning and, further, that this (...) is a robust basis on which to make an inference, with a fair degree of confidence, about the relationship between expression and implicit attitudes. (shrink)

Whenever we communicate, we inevitably have to say one thing before another. This means introducing particularly subtle patterns of salience into our language. In this paper, I introduce ‘order-based salience patterns,’ referring to the ordering of syntactic contents where that ordering, pretheoretically, does not appear to be of consequence. For instance, if one is to describe a colourful scarf, it wouldn’t seem to matter if one were to say it is ‘orange and blue’ or ‘blue and orange.’ Despite their apparent (...) triviality, I argue that order-based salience patterns tend to make the content positioned first more salient – in the sense of attention-grabbing – in a way that can have surprising normative implications. Giving relative salience to gender differences over similarities, for instance, can result in the activation of cognitively accessible beliefs about gender differences. Where those beliefs are epistemically and/or ethically flawed, we can critique the salience pattern that led to them, providing an instrumental way of evaluating those patterns. I suggest that order-based salience patterns can also be evaluated on constitutive grounds; talking about gender differences before similarities might constitute a subtle form of bias. Finally, I reflect on how the apparent triviality of order-based salience patterns in language gives them an insidious strength. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that instead of primarily paying attention to the nature of implicit attitudes that are taken to cause implicit discrimination, we should investigate how discrimination can be implicit in itself. I propose to characterize implicit discrimination as unintentional discrimination: the person responds to facts unintentionally and often unconsciously which are, given their end, irrelevant and imply unfair treatment. The result is a unified account of implicit bias that allows for the different ways in which it can (...) display itself and can be explained. Furthermore, the view can account for the central characteristics of implicit bias: (1) that it is, for a variety of reasons, difficult to control, (2) that we are not necessarily unconscious of implicit bias but not properly conscious either, and (3) that we can unintentionally discriminate regardless of whether we claim to care about fairness. (shrink)

Virtue theories can plausibly be argued to have important advantages over normative ethical theories which prescribe a strict impartialism in moral judgment, or which neglect people’s special roles and relationships. However, there are clear examples of both virtuous and vicious partiality in people’s moral judgments, and virtue theorists may struggle to adequately distinguish them, much as proponents of other normative ethical theories do. This paper first adapts the “expanding moral circle” concept and some literary examples to illustrate the difficulty of (...) adequately distinguishing virtuous from vicious partiality. Later sections aim to show how an adequate philosophical ethics will be able to both a) attribute virtue (and hence praiseworthiness) to agents whose actions may directly serve only their special interests, roles, or special relationships; and b) attribute vice (and hence censure) where an agent’s attitudes and/or actions mirror known personal biases (for instance, an egoistic attitude) or social biases (for instance, and ethnocentric attitude). This dual ability leaves space for much virtuous partiality, while also reflecting a “risk-aware” approach, recognizing the deleterious consequences of our human penchant for constructing and imbuing moral significance to oftentimes factitious us/them dichotomies. (shrink)

The central focus of this paper is to motivate and explore the question, when is it permissible to endorse a psychologizing explanation of a sincere interlocutor? I am interested in the moral question of when (if ever) we may permissibly dismiss the sincere reasons given to us by others, and instead endorse an alternative explanation of their beliefs and actions. I argue that there is a significant risk of wronging the other person, and so we should only psychologize when we (...) are in a position to know that they are in bad faith. (shrink)

Much has been made about the ways that implicit biases and other apparently unreflective attitudes can affect our actions and judgments in ways that negatively affect our ability to do right. What has been discussed less is that these attitudes negatively affect our freedom. In this paper, I argue that implicit biases pose a problem for free will. My analysis focuses on the compatibilist notion of free will according to which acting freely consists in acting in accordance with our reflectively (...) endorsed beliefs and desires. Though bias presents a problem for free action, I argue that there are steps agents can take to regain their freedom. One such strategy is for agents to cultivate better self-knowledge of the ways that their freedom depends on the relationship between their conscious and unconscious attitudes, and the way these work together to inform action and judgment. This knowledge can act as an important catalyst for agents to seek out and implement short- and long-term strategies for reducing the influence of bias, and I offer four proposals along these lines. The upshot is that though bias is a powerful influence on our actions, we need not resign ourselves to its negative effects for freedom. (shrink)

This chapter explores the implications of the fact that biased believers can have genuine knowledge. It argues that the possibility of biased knowing gives us good reason to reject various proposed norms of philosophical methodology. It then turns to the relationship between bias and skepticism and explores the question of whether we are biased in favor of commonsense: it argues that recognizing the possibility of biased knowing allows us to concede that there is a sense in which we are biased (...) against skepticism while clearheadedly retaining our claims to have genuine knowledge despite the skeptic’s challenges. Finally, the chapter takes up questions about the relationship between bias and cognitive reliability. It argues that when it comes to our most basic ways of forming beliefs, we differ significantly from the practices of both paradigmatically biased thinkers and paradigmatically unbiased thinkers, and the philosophical significance of this fact is explored. (shrink)

This chapter introduces the norm-theoretic account of bias, according to which biases typically involve systematic departures from norms. It explores the perspectival character of bias attributions, or the ways in which our first order views about a topic rationally influence and constrain our higher-order judgments about who is and who isn’t biased about that topic. It shows how this general framework explains a familiar phenomenon: the fact that accusations of bias often inspire not only denials but also countercharges of bias. (...) It explores the circumstances in which we are rationally required to believe that those who disagree with us are not only mistaken but also biased simply because they disagree with us in the way that they do. In addition, it argues that theoretical rationality, practical rationality, and morality can all require us to be biased, in the pejorative sense of “bias.”. (shrink)

This chapter explores the bias blind spot, the well-documented and widespread tendency for people to believe that they are more objective and less biased than their peers. It argues that the norm-theoretic account of bias offers a compelling explanation of the bias blind spot, one that improves on the kinds of explanations that are popular among social psychologists. Appeals to “naïve realism” are criticized. In addition, the norm theoretic account also offers a compelling explanation of why introspection is both an (...) unreliable and a biased way of detecting one’s own biases. Finally, it is argued that both the bias blind spot and the characteristic biases of introspection are not contingent facts that depend on the fine details of our psychology but rather hold of necessity: even God could not have made us reliable detectors of our own biases by way of introspection. (shrink)

In ordinary life, we attribute bias to a radical diversity of things, including people, their mental states, their behavior, and the groups to which they belong; temporally extended processes and the outcomes of those processes; and much else besides. This chapter explores a number of basic structural features of bias, including the facts that biases have a characteristic direction and that they typically come in complementary pairs. It defends the idea that whether a person or thing counts as biased can (...) be a relative matter and offers preliminary discussions of the phenomena of higher-order bias (or bias about bias) and biased representation. Finally, it explores the relationships between biased wholes and biased parts. It argues that a group might be biased even if all of its individual members are unbiased, and that, conversely, a group might be unbiased even if its members are severely biased. (shrink)

This chapter identifies and addresses two challenges to the norm-theoretic account of bias. According to the first challenge, this way of thinking about bias is fatally flawed because it is not extensionally adequate: some systematic departures from genuine norms are not biases, and some biases do not involve systematic departures from genuine norms. According to the second challenge, the norm-theoretic account lacks the resources to make sense of the many non-evaluative uses of “bias” and its cognates. The chapter offers a (...) unified response to the two challenges. In the course of doing so, it explores the pervasive role of symmetry considerations in our thinking about bias, as well as the relationship between a theory of bias and a theory of our bias attributing practices. (shrink)

Biases of people are best understood as multiply realizable dispositions that admit of degrees. “Bias” and its cognates often function like thick evaluative terms, and attributions of bias are frequently used to make or implicate normative claims. A person might count as biased against something because of what she thinks, how she acts, or what she feels; and different people might count as biased against the same thing despite a lack of overlap in their mental states, their actions, and their (...) dispositions. One common way in which a person can end up biased is by trying not to be, as in cases of overcompensation. The contrasts between biased believers and biased agents, and between biased agents and unreliable agents, are further explored. (shrink)

This book is a philosophical exploration of bias and our practices of attributing it. It develops and defends the norm-theoretic account of bias, according to which objectionable biases involve systematic departures from objective norms or standards of correctness. It explores the perspectival character of bias attributions, or the ways in which our views about which people and sources of information are biased about a topic are influenced and constrained, both rationally and psychologically, by our views about the topic itself. The (...) book defends a robust pluralism about bias, according to which a radical diversity of things are genuinely biased, with none of these more fundamental than all of the rest. Biases of people are understood as multiply realizable dispositions to depart from objective norms. It offers a novel account of the bias blind spot, or our tendency to fail to see bias in ourselves in a way that we see it in others. It explores the connections between bias and central topics in the theory of knowledge, including truth, knowledge, rationality, reliability, introspection, skepticism, and disagreement. A number of radical conclusions are defended: that both rationality and morality sometimes require us to be biased; that in many cases of disagreement, we are rationally required to view those who disagree with us as biased, even if we know nothing about how they arrived at their views or why they hold them; and that even God could not have made us reliable detectors of our own biases through introspection. (shrink)

This chapter argues for a robust pluralism about bias, a pluralism that has two aspects. First, many different kinds of things are genuinely biased: the fact that in the normal course of everyday life we unhesitatingly attribute bias to a radically diverse collection of things is not a matter of overly casual speech or sloppy thought on our part, but rather reflects reality. Second, this pluralism is robust, in the sense that no one of type of biased thing is fundamental (...) in the order of explanation across contexts. In addition to arguing that robust pluralism is true, the chapter offers a speculative hypothesis about why such pluralism holds. It explores the relationships between biased processes, biased outcomes, and biased people, and argues that biased processes sometimes produce unbiased outcomes, that unbiased processes sometimes produce biased outcomes, and that biases of people are typically not fundamental in the order of explanation. (shrink)

This chapter explores the connections between bias and knowledge. It defends the possibility of _biased knowing_: biased believers can sometimes know, even when they believe in accordance with their biases, and even if those biases guarantee that they would believe as they do even if the truth were otherwise. It also explores the idea that, far from excluding knowledge, biases are actually essential to knowing, and deeply implicated in paradigmatic instances of knowledge acquisition and exemplary human reasoning, an idea that (...) is suggested by leading models of perception and induction, as well as the work of figures such as Thomas Kuhn, Noam Chomsky, and Nelson Goodman. It shows how this idea can be consistently reconciled with the commonsense idea that beliefs that are the manifestation of bias are not knowledge. Finally, it offers a positive proposal about how and when bias excludes knowledge. (shrink)

Typical cases of bias involve the systematic violation of norms that are not specifically concerned with bias. However, some norms—_norms of objectivity_—are specifically concerned with bias, in one way or another. This chapter distinguishes and explores three different kinds of norms of objectivity: norms of preemption (including norms of blinding and norms of recusal); norms of remediation, and constitutive norms of objectivity. It then develops and defends an account of the Socratic norm of _following the argument wherever it leads_. It (...) argues that believing reasonably and avoiding motivated irrationality and dogmatism are necessary but insufficient for fulfilling this intellectual ideal, and that it is best understood as a kind of modalized reasonableness. (shrink)

A common response to disagreement is to discount the other person’s opinion on the grounds that they are or might be biased. This chapter explores the propriety of such reasoning, with special attention to the way that it interacts with the bias blind spot. It argues that even if the only reasons that an unbiased person can offer for her correct assessments of bias beg the question against the biased person, it does not follow that those assessments are unwarranted; and (...) that, all else being equal, the unbiased person will generally be in a stronger position to rationally resist skeptical pressure from disagreement. Finally, it hypothesizes that judgments about bias are subject to strong “rich get richer, poor get poorer” effects, according to which initial differences in accuracy lead to greater differences at later times, as believers fall into epistemically virtuous and vicious cycles. (shrink)

This final chapter provides an overview of the main themes and conclusions of the book. Five main themes are identified. These include: (1) a robust pluralism about bias, (2) the deep connections between bias and norms, (3) the perspectival character of bias attributions, (4) the objectivity of bias and bias attributions, and (5) a thoroughgoing externalism about bias. Some connections among these themes are noted. The chapter then summarizes 125 claims about bias that are endorsed (and in most cases, argued (...) for) over the course of the book, with references to the specific sections in which those claims are discussed. (shrink)