Neither Fish nor Fowl: Implicit Attitudes as Patchy Endorsements

Abstract

Implicit attitudes are mental states that appear sometimes to cause agents to act in ways that conflict with their considered beliefs. Implicit attitudes are usually held to be mere associations between representations. Recently, however, some philosophers have suggested that they are, or are very like, ordinary beliefs: they are apt to feature in properly inferential processing. This claim is important, in part because there is good reason to think that the vocabulary in which we make moral assessments of ourselves and of others is keyed to folk psychological concepts, like 'belief', and not to concepts that feature only in scientific psychology: if implicit attitudes are beliefs there is a prima facie case for thinking that they can serve as the basis for particular kinds of moral assessment. In this paper I argue that while implicit attitudes have propositional structure, their sensitivity and responsiveness to other mental representations is too patchy and fragmented for them to properly be considered beliefs. Instead, they are a sui generis kind of mental state, a state I dub patchy endorsements. C 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Do you see what I see? How social differences influence mindreading

“…On that interpretation, IAT reveals that despite explicit egalitarian attitudes toward Blacks and Whites, many White people have implicit White supremacist attitudes. In contrast, Levy (2014) argues that IAT measures our patchy endorsements, which is something more fragmented than ordinary beliefs. Machery (2016) Moreover, in categorizing individuals into in-groups and out-groups, we gloss over differences within the groups and exaggerate differences between the groups (Linville, Fischer, & Salovey, 1989;Mullen & Hu, 1989).…”

Dissolving the epistemic/ethical dilemma over implicit bias

“…3. There is some debate about whether implicit biases are beliefs (Mandelbaum 2015), belief-like states (Schwitzgebel 2010;Levy 2015) or belong in a distinct psychological category from beliefs (Gendler 2008a(Gendler , 2008b(Gendler , 2011Madva 2016a). There is also debate over whether they are propositional (Mandelbaum 2015) or merely associative (Gendler 2008a(Gendler , 2008b.…”

Implicit Bias, Stereotype Threat, and Political Correctness in Philosophy

“…Evidentiary standards, already low, are giving way to a default politicized "liberation" ideology founded on the assumption that implicit bias is real and well-substantiated, and interest is shifting towards abstract musings on how to best understand it and what the normative implications are. 13 Despite these weaknesses in empirical support, cv biases (among other examples) are being taken as so conclusively established as to make a firm basis for reflections on our blameworthiness in the "rapidly growing" [59] (p. 819) literature on implicit bias and epistemic responsibility (see also Levy) [68]. A different lesson that could be drawn about epistemic responsibility is that philosophers ought to quit making claims about implicit bias that far outstrip the evidence.…”

“…Hence, Holroyd errs in drawing such definitive conclusions about philosophers on the basis of a single questionable study about undergraduates making hypothetical judgments in a non-scholarly, non-professional context. Notwithstanding these difficulties, others, such as Levy, seem to uncritically recycle Holroyd's analysis of the Dovidio and Gaertner study [59] as support for thinking that "implicit attitudes make a difference" for such things as "being hired" [59] (p. 803).…”