Accessibility, implicit bias, and epistemic justification

It has recently been argued that beliefs formed on the basis of implicit biases pose a challenge for accessibilism, since implicit biases are consciously inaccessible, yet they seem to be relevant to epistemic justification. Recent empirical evidence suggests, however, that while we may typically la...

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Detalhes bibliográficos
Autor: Toribio Mateas, Josefa
Formato: artículo
Estado:Versión aceptada para publicación
Fecha de publicación:2021
País:España
Recursos:Universidad de Barcelona
Repositorio:Dipòsit Digital de la UB
OAI Identifier:oai:diposit.ub.edu:2445/145837
Acesso em linha:https://hdl.handle.net/2445/145837
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palavra-chave:Teoria del coneixement
Evidència
Justificació (Teoria del coneixement)
Theory of knowledge
Evidence
Justification (Theory of Knowledge)
Descrição
Resumo:It has recently been argued that beliefs formed on the basis of implicit biases pose a challenge for accessibilism, since implicit biases are consciously inaccessible, yet they seem to be relevant to epistemic justification. Recent empirical evidence suggests, however, that while we may typically lack conscious access to the source of implicit attitudes and their impact on our beliefs and behaviour, we do have access to their content. In this paper, I discuss the notion of accessibility required for this argument to work vis-à-vis these empirical results and offer two ways in which the accessibilist could meet the challenge posed by implicit biases. Ultimately both strategies fail, but the way in which they do, I conclude, reveals something general and important about our epistemic obligations and about the intuitions that inform the role of implicit biases in accessibilist justification.