On the epistemic costs of implicit bias

Partiality and prejudice in trusting

“…Like Fricker, she raises many more interesting issues than I can mention here, and I will focus on the notion of 'forbidden base rates' (Gendler 2011, section 5, where she discusses Tetlock et al (2000)). We do not live in perfectly egalitarian societies, and race, gender, class and other identities can significantly affect how our lives work out.…”

Dissolving the epistemic/ethical dilemma over implicit bias

“…5. Gendler (2011) outlines three epistemic costs that can follow from implicit bias. One of these costs is outlined in section 4f.…”

“…For example, we can assume that women are lacking in scientific expertise but nurturing, because of the superficial characteristics they display. Alternatively, we can notice that we are making erroneous judgements and expend a large amount of cognitive energy to suppress our stereotyping responses (Egan 2011;Gendler 2011). This can lead to the depletion of our cognitive resources, which can in turn cause errors of judgement.…”

“…3. There is some debate about whether implicit biases are beliefs (Mandelbaum 2015), belief-like states (Schwitzgebel 2010;Levy 2015) or belong in a distinct psychological category from beliefs (Gendler 2008a(Gendler , 2008b(Gendler , 2011Madva 2016a). There is also debate over whether they are propositional (Mandelbaum 2015) or merely associative (Gendler 2008a(Gendler , 2008b.…”

“…Meanwhile, the egalitarian responses include responding as if any nurturing person who is good at childrearing is equally likely to be a man or a woman; and responding to candidates of each gender as if they are equally likely to be future scientific leaders. It seems as if you face an ethical/epistemic dilemma (Kelly and Roedder 2008;Haslanger 2010;Egan 2011;Gendler 2011;Mugg 2013; for discussion see Brownstein 2015): you can choose either (i) the ethical choice, which is for the individual to respond in the egalitarian way; or (ii) the epistemically beneficial choice, that is, the choice that will increase the chance of the individual forming true beliefs and making accurate judgements. On this view, the ethical choice would make the individual less likely to achieve epistemic goals like obtaining true beliefs or fitting their beliefs to the evidence.…”