On 15th-16th October 2015 the University of Leeds Minorities and Philosophy chapter hosted the MAP@Leeds Implicit Bias Conference. The
conference included a large number of high quality talks covering a wide-range
of issues relating to implicit bias. This report focuses on three of these
talks.
In her talk, “What do we want from a model of implicit
bias?”, Jules Holroyd (pictured above) noted that competing models of implicit cognition
have emerged from different sources, with different priorities and conceptual
frameworks. She set out a framework for assessing these competing models. She
set out some desiderata for a model of implicit cognition, set out some test
cases, and considered some recent models of implicit bias in light of the
desiderata and cases. She showed that models provided by Levy, Schwitzgebel,
Mandelbaum, Gendler and Machery each fail to meet the desiderata. In developing
this argument she provided a clear articulation of what an account of implicit
cognition should do, bringing to light important cases that have been ignored
in much discussion of implicit cognition and implicit bias.
In his talk, Ian James Kidd (pictured above) asked “Can We Retain
Confidence in Philosophy in the Light of Implicit Bias?” He emphasised a
number of different forms of confidence that might be threatened by knowledge
of implicit bias: confidence in oneself as a philosopher; confidence in other
philosophers, or philosophers as a collective; and confidence in philosophy’s agenda,
heritage and future. He argued that the aggressive adversality in philosophy,
which is slave to psychosocial biases, has the potential to be particularly
damaging to each of these forms of confidence. Moreover, discoveries about
implicit bias present a threat to the authority of reason and the idea that
philosophers identify solid foundations for knowledge through the philosophical
enterprise. However, Kidd argued that discoveries about implicit bias also have
a positive impact: they highlight the advantages of an ancient vision of
philosophy’s nature and purpose, according to which it involves identifying
objects that prevent flourishing, and then identifying and implementing
ameliorative strategies that facilitate flourishing. Philosophy, on this view,
can be seen as improving understanding in order to facilitate the
transformation of how people live. With regards to implicit bias, philosophy
allows understanding of implicit bias and facilitates transformation of the
ways in which people live that are related to implicit bias.
In their talk on “The Pragmatics of Inclusivity” Katharine Jenkins and Jennifer Saul (pictured above) focused on ways to improve philosophy teaching. They argued that it is important to diversify
syllabi, so that more of the ideas of members of minority groups are
represented. However, they argued that additional action is required to
successfully combat the negative effects of phenomena such as implicit bias and
stereotype threat. They argued that it is necessary to emphasise the social
group membership of members of minority groups where their work is taught, e.g.
when teaching about the work of a Black female one might highlight her gender
and racial group membership. They recognised, however, that statements such as
“here is Joan Smith, she is Black” could produce unintended conservational
implicature, suggesting to students that there is something negative about
being female or Black. They argued that it is necessary to cancel this
implicature by explicitly stating why it is that the social group membership of
the individual is being emphasised, i.e. to combat the negative effects of
biases.
Congratulations to the organisers of this conference for bringing together so many excellent philosophers working at the cutting edge of this extremely interesting topic.