Implicit bias, awareness and imperfect cognitions

AbstractAre individuals responsible for behaviour that is implicitly biased? Implicitly biased actions are those which manifest the distorting influence of implicit associations. That they express these ‘implicit’ features of our cognitive and motivational make up has been appealed to in support of the claim that, because individuals lack the relevant awareness of their morally problematic discriminatory behaviour, they are not responsible for behaving in ways that manifest implicit bias. However, the claim that such influences are implicit is, in fact, not straightforwardly related to the claim that individuals lack awareness of the morally problematic dimensions of their behaviour. Nor is it clear that lack of awareness does absolve from responsibility. This may depend on whether individuals culpably fail to know something that they should know. I propose that an answer to this question, in turn, depends on whether other imperfect cognitions are implicated in any lack of the relevant kind of awareness.In this paper I clarify our understanding of ‘implicitly biased actions’ and then argue that there are three different dimensions of awareness that might be at issue in the claim that individuals lack awareness of implicit bias. Having identified the relevant sense of awareness I argue that only one of these senses is defensibly incorporated into a condition for responsibility, rejecting recent arguments from Washington & Kelly for an ‘externalist’ epistemic condition. Having identified what individuals should – and can – know about their implicitly biased actions, I turn to the question of whether failures to know this are culpable. This brings us to consider the role of implicit biases in relation to other imperfect cognitions. I conclude that responsibility for implicitly biased actions may depend on answers to further questions about their relationship to other imperfect cognitions