Dissolving the epistemic/ethical dilemma over implicit bias

No abstract

In some neuropsychological disorders, distorted reports seem to fill gaps in people's memory of their past, where people's self‐image, history, and prospects are often enhanced. False beliefs about the past compromise both people's capacity to construct a reliable autobiography and their trustworthiness as communicators. However, such beliefs contribute to people's sense of competence and self‐confidence, increasing psychological well‐being. Here, we consider both the psychological benefits and epistemic costs and argue that distorting the past is likely to also have epistemic benefits that cannot be obtained otherwise, such as enabling people to exchange information, receive feedback, and retain key beliefs about themselves.

What, if anything, is epistemically wrong with beliefs involving accurate statistical generalizations about demographic groups? This paper argues that there is a perfectly general, underappreciated epistemic flaw which affects both ethically charged and uncharged statistical generalizations. Though common to both, this flaw can also explain why demographic statistical generalizations give rise to the concerns they do. To identify this flaw, we need to distinguish between the accuracy and the projectability of statistical beliefs. Statistical beliefs are accompanied by an implicit representation of the statistic's modal profile. Their modal profile determines the circumstances in which they can legitimately be projected to unobserved instances. Errors in that implicit content can be compatible with the accuracy of the "bare" statistic, whilst systematically leading to downstream errors in reasoning, in a manner which reveals an epistemic flaw with an important aspect of the belief state itself.There are some generalizations about demographic groups which we may hesitate to endorse, even as they are borne out by empirical data. These include claims like the following: "Black Americans are almost eight times more likely to have a homicide conviction than white Americans;" 2 "teenage girls perform less well at mathematics than boys;" 3 "gay men have far higher rates of sexually transmitted diseases than straight men;" 4 "conservative political views are associated with lower IQ." 5 These sound like classic racist, sexist or homophobic claims, and yet they are statistically supported. Nonetheless, we tend to feel uneasy with such beliefs, and to suspect that someone who drew on them in their reasoning about the people they met would be rationally remiss. 6 This gives rise to the following puzzle: what explains that unease? Is it due merely to a socially commendable but epistemically 228