Philosophy Research Seminar - Jules Holroyd

Jules Holroyd (University of Sheffield)

Reform efforts in philosophy and implicit bias

Abstract: In recent years, there has been a growing international movement to change the way that our profession functions and is structured, in order to make it more welcoming for members of margnalised groups. One especially prominent and successful form of justification for these reform efforts has drawn on empirical data regarding implicit biases and their effects. There are two concerns we wish to address here about these empirical data. First, critics have for some time argued that the studies drawn upon cannot give us an accurate picture of the workings of prejudice, because they ignore the intersectional nature of these phenomena. More recently, concerns have been raised about the empirical data supporting the nature and existence of implicit bias. Each of these concerns, but perhaps more commonly the latter, are thought by some to undermine reform efforts in philosophy. In this paper, we take a three-pronged approach to these claims. First, we show that the reforms can be motivated quite independently of the implicit bias data. Next, we show that in fact the empirical concerns about the implicit bias data are not nearly as problematic as some have thought. Finally, we argue that while the intersectional concerns are an immensely valuable criticism of early work on implicit bias, more recent work is starting to address these worries.