Abstract
This chapter aims at characterizing the impact of the discussion on implicit biases-a politically loaded phenomenon-for some fundamental questions in philosophy of mind and at exploring new lines of investigation in epistemology. In the first part of the chapter, I focus on the still lively debate about the type of mental state that implicit biases are. In contrast to the current views that analyze implicit bias against a traditional view of beliefs, I propose that a more promising position is one that accommodates implicit biases within the belief category, while proposing a new paradigm for what beliefs are. The second part explores some epistemological issues centered on the question about what is biased in implicit biases. Implicit biases seem to be epistemically and ethically mistaken. Implicit biases are prejudice-based mental states. Also, very often, implicit biases diverge from what people explicitly hold to be the case. However, it is unclear whether implicit biases are constitutively inaccurate or unjustified. Moreover, it is not easy to understand what the source of such failures are, whether they have their origin in the individual’s cognitive system or in the individual’s social environment. I aim to formulate these epistemological problems and explore some possible routes to their answer.
