•  23
    Implicit Bias and Philosophy, Volumes 2: Moral Responsibility, Structural Injustice, and Ethics (edited book)
    with Jennifer Mather Saul
    Oxford University Press UK. 2016.
    At the University of Sheffield between 2011 and 2012, a leading group of philosophers, psychologists, and others gathered to explore the nature and significance of implicit bias. The two volumes of Implicit Bias and Philosophy emerge from these workshops. Each volume philosophically examines core areas of psychological research on implicit bias as well as the ramifications of implicit bias for core areas of philosophy. Volume II: Moral Responsibility, Structural Injustice, and Ethics is comprise…Read more
  •  170
    S-frames and i-frames do not represent two opposed types of intervention. Rather they are interpretive lenses for focusing on specific aspects of interventions, all of which include individual and structural dimensions. There is no sense to be made of prioritizing either system change or individual change, because each requires the other.
  •  17
  •  224
    Change the People or Change the Policy? On the Moral Education of Antiracists
    Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 1 (1): 1-20. 2023.
    While those who take a "structuralist" approach to racial justice issues are right to call attention to the importance of social practices, laws, etc., they sometimes go too far by suggesting that antiracist efforts ought to focus on changing unjust social systems rather than changing individuals’ minds. We argue that while the “either/or” thinking implied by this framing is intuitive and pervasive, it is misleading and self-undermining. We instead advocate for a “both/and” approach to antiracis…Read more
  •  9
    Mind as magic eight ball: A review of Kahneman, Sibony, and Sunstein’s (review)
    Philosophical Psychology 36 (3): 695-699. 2023.
    Different doctors make different judgments about whether the same patient has breast cancer, tuberculosis, depression, and many other illnesses. Some case managers in child protective service agenc...
  •  19
    Mind as magic eight ball: A review of Kahneman, Sibony, and Sunstein’s (review)
    Philosophical Psychology 36 (3): 695-699. 2023.
    Different doctors make different judgments about whether the same patient has breast cancer, tuberculosis, depression, and many other illnesses. Some case managers in child protective service agenc...
  •  76
    Philosophy’s other climate problem☆
    with Neil Levy
    Journal of Social Philosophy 52 (4): 536-553. 2021.
    Journal of Social Philosophy, Volume 52, Issue 4, Page 536-553, Winter 2021.
  •  713
    How Should We Think About Implicit Measures and Their Empirical “Anomalies”?
    with Bertram Gawronski and Alex Madva
    WIREs Cognitive Science 1-7. 2022.
    Based on a review of several “anomalies” in research using implicit measures, Machery (2021) dismisses the modal interpretation of participant responses on implicit measures and, by extension, the value of implicit measures. We argue that the reviewed findings are anomalies only for specific—influential but long-contested—accounts that treat responses on implicit measures as uncontaminated indicators of trait-like unconscious representations that coexist with functionally independent conscious r…Read more
  •  14
    Most people show unconscious bias in their evaluations of social groups, in ways that may run counter to their conscious beliefs. Volume 1 addresses key metaphysical and epistemological questions on this kind of implicit bias, while Volume 2 turns to the themes of moral responsibility and injustice.
  •  377
    Review of The Evolution of Moral Progress: A Biocultural Theory by Allen Buchanan and Russell Powell (review)
    with Daniel Kelly
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science Review of Books 1 1-14. 2019.
    Allen Buchanan and Russel Powell’s The Evolution of Moral Progress (EMP) is likely to become a landmark. It adeptly builds on much of the recent empirical work, weaving it together with philosophical material drawn from a series of essays published by the two authors. EMP makes the case that moral progress is not only consistent with human psychology but—under some conditions—likely. At its heart is a careful, well-developed rebuttal to the idea that there are evolved constraints endogenous to h…Read more
  •  427
    Taking social psychology out of context
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 45 26-27. 2022.
    We endorse Cesario's call for more research into the complexities of “real-world” decisions and the comparative power of different causes of group disparities. Unfortunately, these reasonable suggestions are overshadowed by a barrage of non sequiturs, misdirected criticisms of methodology, and unsubstantiated claims about the assumptions and inferences of social psychologists.
  •  167
    Philosophy’s other climate problem☆
    with Neil Levy
    Journal of Social Philosophy 52 (4): 536-553. 2021.
    Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.
  •  4061
    Understanding Implicit Bias: Putting the Criticism into Perspective
    Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 101 (2): 276-307. 2020.
    What is the status of research on implicit bias? In light of meta‐analyses revealing ostensibly low average correlations between implicit measures and behavior, as well as various other psychometric concerns, criticism has become ubiquitous. We argue that while there are significant challenges and ample room for improvement, research on the causes, psychological properties, and behavioral effects of implicit bias continues to deserve a role in the sciences of the mind as well as in efforts to un…Read more
  •  1756
    What do implicit measures measure?
    WIREs Cognitive Science 1-13. 2019.
    We identify several ongoing debates related to implicit measures, surveying prominent views and considerations in each debate. First, we summarize the debate regarding whether performance on implicit measures is explained by conscious or unconscious representations. Second, we discuss the cognitive structure of the operative constructs: are they associatively or propositionally structured? Third, we review debates whether performance on implicit measures reflects traits or states. Fourth, we dis…Read more
  •  182
    Implicit bias
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2017.
    “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…Read more
  •  301
    How do cognition and affect interact to produce action? Research in intergroup psychology illuminates this question by investigating the relationship between stereotypes and prejudices about social groups. Yet it is now clear that many social attitudes are implicit. This raises the question: how does the distinction between cognition and affect apply to implicit mental states? An influential view—roughly analogous to a Humean theory of action—is that “implicit stereotypes” and “implicit prejudic…Read more
  •  195
    The Normativity of Automaticity
    with Alex Madva
    Mind and Language 27 (4): 410-434. 2012.
    While the causal contributions of so-called ‘automatic’ processes to behavior are now widely acknowledged, less attention has been given to their normative role in the guidance of action. We develop an account of the normativity of automaticity that responds to and builds upon Tamar Szabó Gendler's account of ‘alief’, an associative and arational mental state more primitive than belief. Alief represents a promising tool for integrating psychological research on automaticity with philosophical wo…Read more
  •  286
    Ethical Automaticity
    with Alex Madva
    Philosophy of the Social Sciences 42 (1): 68-98. 2012.
    Social psychologists tell us that much of human behavior is automatic. It is natural to think that automatic behavioral dispositions are ethically desirable if and only if they are suitably governed by an agent’s reflective judgments. However, we identify a class of automatic dispositions that make normatively self-standing contributions to praiseworthy action and a well-lived life, independently of, or even in spite of, an agent’s reflective judgments about what to do. We argue that the fundame…Read more
  •  15
    The central contention of The Implicit Mind is that understanding the two faces of spontaneity-its virtues and vices-requires understanding the "implicit mind." In turn, Michael Brownstein maintains that understanding the implicit mind requires the consideration of three sets of questions. First, what are implicit mental states? What kind of cognitive structure do they have? Second, how should we relate to our implicit attitudes? Are we responsible for them? Third, how can we improve the ethics …Read more
  •  52
    In what they call their “manual of the sanities”—a positive psychology handbook describing contemporary research on strengths of character—Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman argue that “there is no true disadvantage of having too much self-control.” This claim is widely endorsed in the research literature. I argue that it is false. My argument proceeds in three parts. First, I identify conceptual confusion in the definition of self-control, specifically as it pertains to the claim that you…Read more
  •  49
    At the University of Sheffield during 2011 and 2012, a leading group of philosophers, psychologists, and others gathered to explore the nature and significance of implicit bias. The two volumes of Implicit Bias and Philosophy emerge from these workshops. Each volume philosophically examines core areas of psychological research on implicit bias as well as the ramifications of implicit bias for core areas of philosophy. Volume I: Metaphysics and Epistemology is comprised of two parts: “The Nature …Read more
  •  147
    In their recent debate, Hubert Dreyfus rejects John McDowell’s claim that perception is permeated with "mindedness" and argues instead that ordinary embodied coping is largely "nonconceptual." This argument has important, yet largely unacknowledged consequences for normative social theory, which this article demonstrates through a critique of Charles Taylor’s Verstehen thesis. If Dreyfus is right that "the enemy of expertise is thought," then Taylor is denied his defense against charges of relat…Read more
  •  291
    Rationalizing flow: agency in skilled unreflective action
    Philosophical Studies 168 (2): 545-568. 2014.
    In recent work, Peter Railton, Julia Annas, and David Velleman aim to reconcile the phenomenon of “flow”—broadly understood as describing the “unreflective” aspect of skilled action—with one or another familiar conception of agency. While there are important differences between their arguments, Railton, Annas, and Velleman all make, or are committed to, at least one similar pivotal claim. Each argues, directly or indirectly, that agents who perform skilled unreflective actions can, in principle,…Read more
  •  165
    We consider a range of cases—both hypothetical and actual—in which agents apparently know how to \ but fail to believe that the way in which they in fact \ is a way for them to \. These “no-belief” cases present a prima facie problem for Intellectualism about knowledge-how. The problem is this: if knowledge-that entails belief, and if knowing how to \ just is knowing that some w is a way for one to \, then an agent cannot both know how to \ and fail to believe that w, the way that she \s, is a w…Read more
  •  62
    The Background, the Body and the Internet
    Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 15 (1): 36-48. 2011.
    In recent years, Hubert Dreyfus has put forward a critique of the social and cultural effects of the Internet on modern societies based on the value of what he calls “the background” of largely tacit and unarticulated social norms. While Dreyfus is right to turn to the “background” in order to understand the effects of the Internet on society and culture, his unequivocally negative conclusions are unwarranted. I argue that a modified account of the background – one more attuned to what the Frenc…Read more
  •  10
    There is abundant evidence that most people, often in spite of their conscious beliefs, values and attitudes, have implicit biases. 'Implicit bias' is a term of art referring to evaluations of social groups that are largely outside conscious awareness or control. These evaluations are typically thought to involve associations between social groups and concepts or roles like 'violent,' 'lazy,' 'nurturing,' 'assertive,' 'scientist,' and so on. Such associations result at least in part from common …Read more