Empirical work has lately confirmed what many philosophers have taken to be true: people are ‘biased toward the future’. All else being equal, we usually prefer to have positive experiences in the future, and negative experiences in the past. According to one hypothesis, the temporal metaphysics hypothesis, future-bias is explained either by our beliefs about temporal metaphysics—the temporal belief hypothesis—or alternatively by our temporal phenomenology—the temporal phenomenology hypothesis. We empirically investigate a particular version of the temporal belief hypothesis according (...) to which future-bias is explained by the belief that time robustly passes. Our results do not match the apparent predictions of this hypothesis, and so provide evidence against it. But we also find that people give more future-biased responses when asked to simulate a belief in robust passage. We take this to suggest that the phenomenology that attends simulation of that belief may be partially responsible for future-bias, and we examine the implications of these results for debates about the rationality of future-bias. (shrink)

Future-biased individuals systematically prefer positively valenced events to be in the future (positive future-bias) and negatively valenced events to be in the past (negative future-bias). The most extreme form of future-bias is absolute future-bias, whereby we completely discount the value of past events when forming our preferences. Various authors have thought that we are absolutely future-biased (Sullivan (2018:58); Parfit (1984:173) and that future-bias (absolute or otherwise) is at least rationally permissible (Prior (1959), Hare (2007; 2008), (...) Kauppinen (2018), Heathwood (2008)). The permissibility of future-bias is often held to be grounded in the structure of the temporal dimension. In this paper I consider several proposals for grounding the permissibility of such preferences and evaluate these in the light of the preferences we would have, and judge that we should have, in various time-travel scenarios. I argue that what we learn by considering these scenarios is that these preferences really have nothing to do with temporal structure. So if something grounds their permissibility, it is not temporal structure. (shrink)

Although it has been shown that immersive virtual reality can be used to induce illusions of ownership over a virtual body , information on whether this changes implicit interpersonal attitudes is meager. Here we demonstrate that embodiment of light-skinned participants in a dark-skinned VB significantly reduced implicit racial bias against dark-skinned people, in contrast to embodiment in light-skinned, purple-skinned or with no VB. 60 females participated in this between-groups experiment, with a VB substituting their own, with full-body visuomotor synchrony, (...) reflected also in a virtual mirror. A racial Implicit Association Test was administered at least three days prior to the experiment, and immediately after the IVR exposure. The change from pre- to post-experience IAT scores suggests that the dark-skinned embodied condition decreased implicit racial bias more than the other conditions. Thus, embodiment may change negative interpersonal attitudes and thus represent a powerful tool for exploring such fundamental psychological and societal phenomena. (shrink)

Social psychologists often describe “implicit” racial biases as entirely unconscious, and as mere associations between groups and traits, which lack intentional content, e.g., we associate “black” and “athletic” in much the same way we associate “salt” and “pepper.” However, recent empirical evidence consistently suggests that individuals are aware of their implicit biases, albeit in partial, inarticulate, or even distorted ways. Moreover, evidence suggests that implicit biases are not “dumb” semantic associations, but instead reflect our skillful, norm-sensitive, and embodied engagement with (...) social reality. This essay draws on phenomenological and hermeneutic methods and concepts to better understand what social-psychological research has begun to reveal about the conscious access individuals have to their own racial attitudes, as well as the intentional contents of the attitudes themselves. -/- First, I argue that implicit racial biases form part of the “background” of social experience. That is, while they exert a pervasive influence on our perceptions, judgments, and actions, they are frequently felt but not noticed, or noticed but misinterpreted. Second, I argue that our unreflective racial attitudes are neither mere associations nor fully articulated, propositionally structured beliefs or emotions. Their intentional contents are fundamentally indeterminate. For example, when a white person experiences a “gut feeling” of discomfort during an interaction with a black person, there is a question about the meaning or nature of that discomfort. Is it a fear of black people? Is it anxiety about appearing racist? There is, I argue, no general, determinate answer to such questions. The contents of our unreflective racial attitudes are fundamentally vague and open-ended, although I explain how they nevertheless take on particular shapes and implications—that is, their content can become determinate—depending on context, social meaning, and structural power relations. (If, for example, a perceived authority figure, such as a politician, parent, or scientist, encourages you to believe that your uncomfortable gut feeling is a justified fear of other social groups, then that is what your gut feeling is likely to become.). (shrink)

Most phobias are focussed on a small number of fear-inducing stimuli (e.g., snakes, spiders). A review of the evidence supporting biological and cognitive explanations of this uneven distribution of phobias suggests that the readiness with which such stimuli become associated with aversive outcomes arises from biases in the processing of information about threatening stimuli rather than from phylogenetically based associative predispositions or “biological preparedness.” This cognitive bias, consisting of a heightened expectation of aversive outcomes following fear-relevant stimuli, generates and (...) maintains robust learned associations between them. Some of the features of such stimuli which determine this expectancy bias are estimates of how dangerous they are, the semiotic similarity between them and their aversive outcomes, and the degree of prior fear they elicit. Ontogenetic and cultural factors influence these features of fear-relevant stimuli and are hence important in determining expectancy bias. The available evidence does not exclude the possibility that both expectancy biases and specific evolved predispositions coexist, but the former can explain a number of important findings that the latter cannot. (shrink)

Outcome bias and hindsight bias are important in philosophical debates and have wide-ranging implications outside of philosophy. Recently, Hedden has articulated a novel line of argumnt that the empirical evidence for what he labels hindsight bias is largely misguided and that empirical researchers who postulate such a bias are engaged in a fallacy fallacy. In this paper, I articulate Hedden’s core insights in terms of two principles and argue that in the relevant empirical research, these principles (...) are often (i) recognized, (ii) invoked in theoretical explanation, and (iii) guiding study designs and interpretation of data. On this basis, I argue that there is ample empirical evidence for outcome and hindsight bias and that cognitive psychologists do not generally exhibit a fallacy fallacy of postulating such biases in cases where there are none. More constructively, the present paper articulates some general principles that help us to better understand when an empirical study provides evidence of these types of bias. Thus, the debate casts light on both the specific evidence for outcome and hindsight bias but also on the general division of labor between philosophy and psychology. (shrink)

The literature addressing bias and fairness in AI models (fair-AI) is growing at a fast pace, making it difficult for novel researchers and practitioners to have a bird’s-eye view picture of the field. In particular, many policy initiatives, standards, and best practices in fair-AI have been proposed for setting principles, procedures, and knowledge bases to guide and operationalize the management of bias and fairness. The first objective of this paper is to concisely survey the state-of-the-art of fair-AI methods (...) and resources, and the main policies on bias in AI, with the aim of providing such a bird’s-eye guidance for both researchers and practitioners. The second objective of the paper is to contribute to the policy advice and best practices state-of-the-art by leveraging from the results of the NoBIAS research project. We present and discuss a few relevant topics organized around the NoBIAS architecture, which is made up of a Legal Layer, focusing on the European Union context, and a Bias Management Layer, focusing on understanding, mitigating, and accounting for bias. (shrink)

Mere exposure, generally, entails influences of familiarity manipulations on affective dependent variables. Previously (Phaf & Rotteveel, 2005), we have argued that familiarity corresponds intrinsically to positive affect, and have extended the correspondence to novelty and negative affect. Here, we present two experiments that show reverse effects of affective manipulations on perceived familiarity. In Experiment 1 affectively valenced exteroceptive cues of approach and avoidance (e.g., apparent movement) modulated recognition bias of neutral targets. This finding suggests that our correspondence hypotheses can (...) be generalised to an important aspect of emotion, namely approach and avoidance tendencies. In Experiment 2 participants? emotional mood was manipulated within the Jacoby?Whitehouse paradigm and a pattern of results was obtained as if consciousness was manipulated. We interpret the latter results within the affective modulation framework (AMF), which postulates facilitation of nonconscious processing by positive affect and an enhancement of conscious processing by negative affect. (shrink)

Recent research in social psychology suggests that many beliefs are formed as a result of implicit biases in favour of members of certain groups and against members of other groups. This article argues that beliefs of this sort present a counterexample to accessibilism in epistemology because the position cannot account for how the epistemic status of a belief that is the result of an implicit bias can differ from that of a counterpart belief that is the result of an (...) unbiased response to the available evidence. (shrink)

Abstract The market is sometimes thought to be a largely neutral means for coordinating cooperation among strangers under complex conditions because it is, as Hayek noted, a ?spontaneous order.? But in fact the market actively shapes the kinds of values it rewards, as do other spontaneous orders. Recognizing these biases allows us to see how such orders impinge on one another and on other communities basic to human life, sometimes negatively. In this way we may come to acknowledge the inevitability (...) of placing limits on spontaneous orders. (shrink)

Research on academic pay finds an unexplained gender pay gap that has not fully dissolved over time and that appears to increase with years of experience. In this study, I consider how role congruity bias contributes to this pay gap. Bias is more likely to manifest in a context where there is some ambiguity about performance and where stereotypes are stronger. I predict that bias in the attribution of credit for coauthored research leads to lower returns to (...) research for female professors. To test this prediction, I use a sample of Canadian faculty in accounting, where research is typically coauthored, where females are underrepresented at the most senior ranks, and where many universities evaluate merit in research, teaching, and service to determine salary increases. In regressions of salary on individual and institutional determinants of salary, I find that women earn marginally less than men. However, the pay gap is only evident for women who publish in a selective list of journals; for the subset of faculty with no publications from this list, there are no significant differences in salary. For researching faculty, the pay gap relates specifically to research productivity. While women publish less on average than men, the returns to their research are also lower. In particular, the relation between the individual’s research ranking and salary is significantly lower for women who publish a higher proportion of their work with men, than for all other faculty. Additional analysis of salary and coauthor patterns confirms that women receive significantly less credit for coauthored articles they publish with men than those they publish with other women but that no similar variations in reward are evident for men across publishing patterns. These findings suggest bias in the attribution of credit for coauthored research in the determination of salary, consistent with role congruity theory, and provide an important potential explanation for why salaries for women vary systematically from those of men even after considering productivity. Providing lower rewards for equal work represents a continuing ethical issue in academe and compounds the challenges women already facing in the profession. (shrink)

In this paper I explore the nature of confabulatory explanations of action guided by implicit bias. I claim that such explanations can have significant epistemic benefits in spite of their obvious epistemic costs, and that such benefits are not otherwise obtainable by the subject at the time at which the explanation is offered. I start by outlining the kinds of cases I have in mind, before characterising the phenomenon of confabulation by focusing on a few common features. Then I (...) introduce the notion of epistemic innocence to capture the epistemic status of those cognitions which have both obvious epistemic faults and some significant epistemic benefit. A cognition is epistemically innocent if it delivers some epistemic benefit to the subject which would not be attainable otherwise because alternative (less epistemically faulty) cognitions that could deliver the same benefit are unavailable to the subject at that time. I ask whether confabulatory explanations of actions guided by implicit bias have epistemic benefits and whether there are genuine alternatives to forming a confabulatory explanation in the circumstances in which subjects confabulate. On the basis of my analysis of confabulatory explanations of actions guided by implicit bias, I argue that such explanations have the potential for epistemic innocence. I conclude that epistemic evaluation of confabulatory explanations of action guided by implicit bias ought to tell a richer story, one which takes into account the context in which the explanation occurs. (shrink)

Narratives are an interface that evolution has instilled in our brains for their optimal interaction with reality. Without them we would not be who we are: creatures that narrativize their experiences, integrate them into their autobiographical self, and imagine the future of this self. But narratives also distort reality by endowing it with meaning, purpose, and causality even when none exist. Literary stories with weak narrativity, such as those by Raymond Carver, remind us of another modality of the human mind (...) and selfhood available to us, one that registers the world without subjecting it to narrative selection and chronological ordering. (shrink)

This study investigated how individuals perceive public opinion, examining several typical biases in estimating other people's opinions. Analyses of survey responses from university students provided evidence of ?looking glass perception?, a tendency to see others as holding opinions similar to one's own on public issues. Looking glass perception was found more significant in estimating the opinions of one's reference groups than in assessing the opinion of the anonymous general public. This finding suggests that looking glass perception may be attributed to (...) individuals? desire to be accepted by ?significant? other people. This study also found that a respondent's estimate of the opinion (% of conservative opinions) of a particular group on one issue was correlated with his/her estimate of the opinion of the same group on another issue. This finding suggests that individuals may have a preconception about the ideological position ("conservative? or ?liberal") of a particular social group and employ the preconception, to some extent, to estimate the opinions of the group on various public issues. (shrink)

Designed to help readers learn to seek out and recognize bias in the news; detect ideology, slant, and spin; and recognize propaganda, this volume in the Thinker’s Guide Library empowers readers to weed through overwhelming and often subjective media. It is an ideal supplement for media courses or a companion to daily news reports.

This paper examines the role of prestige bias in shaping academic philosophy, with a focus on its demographics. I argue that prestige bias exacerbates the structural underrepresentation of minorities in philosophy. It works as a filter against (among others) philosophers of color, women philosophers, and philosophers of low socio-economic status. As a consequence of prestige bias our judgments of philosophical quality become distorted. I outline ways in which prestige bias in philosophy can be mitigated.

_Anthropic Bias_ explores how to reason when you suspect that your evidence is biased by "observation selection effects"--that is, evidence that has been filtered by the precondition that there be some suitably positioned observer to "have" the evidence. This conundrum--sometimes alluded to as "the anthropic principle," "self-locating belief," or "indexical information"--turns out to be a surprisingly perplexing and intellectually stimulating challenge, one abounding with important implications for many areas in science and philosophy. There are the philosophical thought experiments and paradoxes: (...) the Doomsday Argument; Sleeping Beauty; the Presumptuous Philosopher; Adam & Eve; the Absent-Minded Driver; the Shooting Room. And there are the applications in contemporary science: cosmology ; evolutionary theory ; the problem of time's arrow ; quantum physics ; game-theory problems with imperfect recall ; even traffic analysis. _Anthropic Bias_ argues that the same principles are at work across all these domains. And it offers a synthesis: a mathematically explicit theory of observation selection effects that attempts to meet scientific needs while steering clear of philosophical paradox. (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)

This paper offers an unorthodox appraisal of empirical research bearing on the question of the low representation of women in philosophy. It contends that fashionable views in the profession concerning implicit bias and stereotype threat are weakly supported, that philosophers often fail to report the empirical work responsibly, and that the standards for evidence are set very low—so long as you take a certain viewpoint.

Our focus here is on whether, when influenced by implicit biases, those behavioural dispositions should be understood as being a part of that person’s character: whether they are part of the agent that can be morally evaluated.[4] We frame this issue in terms of control. If a state, process, or behaviour is not something that the agent can, in the relevant sense, control, then it is not something that counts as part of her character. A number of theorists have argued (...) that individuals do not have control, in the relevant sense, over the operation of implicit bias. We will argue that this claim is mistaken. We articulate and develop a notion of control that individuals have with respect to implicit bias, and argue that this kind of control can ground character-based evaluation of such behavioural dispositions. (shrink)

If you care about securing knowledge, what is wrong with being biased? Often it is said that we are less accurate and reliable knowers due to implicit biases. Likewise, many people think that biases reflect inaccurate claims about groups, are based on limited experience, and are insensitive to evidence. Chapter 3 investigates objections such as these with the help of two popular metaphors: bias as fog and bias as shortcut. Guiding readers through these metaphors, I argue that they (...) clarify the range of knowledge-related objections to implicit bias. They also suggest that there will be no unifying problem with bias from the perspective of knowledge. That is, they tell us that implicit biases can be wrong in different ways for different reasons. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the metaphors reveal a deep—though perhaps not intractable—disagreement among theorists about whether implicit biases can be good in some cases when it comes to knowledge. (shrink)

chapter on perception and bias including implicit bias.

Are individuals morally responsible for their implicit biases? One reason to think not is that implicit biases are often advertised as unconscious, ‘introspectively inaccessible’ attitudes. However, recent empirical evidence consistently suggests that individuals are aware of their implicit biases, although often in partial and inarticulate ways. Here I explore the implications of this evidence of partial awareness for individuals’ moral responsibility. First, I argue that responsibility comes in degrees. Second, I argue that individuals’ partial awareness of their implicit biases makes (...) them (partially) morally responsible for them. I argue by analogy to a close relative of implicit bias: moods. (shrink)

When interests and preferences of researchers or their sponsors cause bias in experimental design, data interpretation or dissemination of research results, we normally think of it as an epistemic shortcoming. But as a result of the debate on science and values, the idea that all extra-scientific influences on research could be singled out and separated from pure science is now widely believed to be an illusion. I argue that nonetheless, there are cases in which research is rightfully regarded as (...) epistemologically deficient due to the influence of preferences on its outcomes. I present examples from biomedical research and offer an analysis in terms of social epistemology. (shrink)

“Implicit bias” is a term of art referring to relatively unconscious and relatively automatic features of prejudiced judgment and social behavior. While psychologists in the field of “implicit social cognition” study “implicit attitudes” toward consumer products, self-esteem, food, alcohol, political values, and more, the most striking and well-known research has focused on implicit attitudes toward members of socially stigmatized groups, such as African-Americans, women, and the LGBTQ community.[1] For example, imagine Frank, who explicitly believes that women and men are (...) equally suited for careers outside the home. Despite his explicitly egalitarian belief, Frank might nevertheless implicitly associate women with the home, and this implicit association might lead him to behave in any number of biased ways, from trusting feedback from female co-workers less to hiring equally qualified men over women. Psychological research on implicit bias is relatively recent (§1), but a host of metaphysical (§2), epistemological (§3), and ethical questions (§4) about implicit bias are pressing.[2]. (shrink)

Sally Haslanger has recently argued that philosophical focus on implicit bias is overly individualist, since social inequalities are best explained in terms of social structures rather than the actions and attitudes of individuals. I argue that questions of individual responsibility and implicit bias, properly understood, do constitute an important part of addressing structural injustice, and I propose an alternative conception of social structure according to which implicit biases are themselves best understood as a special type of structure.

It has been argued that implicit biases are operative in philosophy and lead to significant epistemic costs in the field. Philosophers working on this issue have focussed mainly on implicit gender and race biases. They have overlooked ideological bias, which targets political orientations. Psychologists have found ideological bias in their field and have argued that it has negative epistemic effects on scientific research. I relate this debate to the field of philosophy and argue that if, as some studies (...) suggest, the same bias also exists in philosophy then it will lead to hitherto unrecognised epistemic hazards in the field. Furthermore, the bias is epistemically different from the more familiar biases in respects that are important for epistemology, ethics, and metaphilosophy. (shrink)