In this article, we argue that it can be fruitful for philosophers interested in the nature and moral significance of racism to pay more attention to psychology. We do this by showing that psychology provides new arguments against Garcia's views about the nature and moral significance of racism. We contend that some scientific studies of racial cognition undermine Garcia's moral and psychological monism about racism: Garcia disregards (1) the rich affective texture of racism and (2) the diversity of what makes (...) racial ills morally wrong. Key Words: racism • emotions • implicit bias • psychology • racial ills • pluralism. (shrink)

Who is morally permitted to tell jokes about Jews? Poles? Women? Only those in the group? Only those who would be punching up? Anyone, since they are just jokes? All of the standard approaches are too broad or too narrow. In on the Joke provides a more sophisticated approach according to which each person possesses "joke capital" that can serve as "comic insurance" covering certain jokes in certain contexts. When Bob tells a joke about Jews, we can never know exactly (...) what Bob is intending since we cannot see inside Bob’s mind. But we could reasonably infer, if we knew Bob himself was Jewish, if he worked tirelessly for Jewish causes, or was a card-carrying Neo-Nazi. Each would affect his joke capital, and, in certain circumstances, we would have a moral standing to demand to see his ledger to see how much joke capital he had with respect to Jews. The permissibility of that joke depends upon four factors: the joke, the teller of the joke, the audience, and the setting. The view developed in In on the Joke is the only view that clearly explains how each of these components work together in an integrated, effective ethic of humor. (shrink)

We first describe recent empirical research on racial cognition, particularly work on implicit racial biases that suggests they are widespread, that they can coexist with explicitly avowed anti-racist and tolerant attitudes, and that they influence behavior in a variety of subtle but troubling ways. We then consider a cluster of questions that the existence and character of implicit racial biases raise for moral theory. First, is it morally condemnable to harbor an implicit racial bias? Second, ought each of us to (...) suspect ourselves of racial bias, and therefore correct for it in ordinary activity, such as grading student papers? (shrink)

I propose the Shared Presupposition Norm of Joking (SPNJ) as a constitutive norm of joke-telling. This norm suggests that a person should only tell a joke if they believe their audience shares the presuppositions—both explicit beliefs and implicit inferential connections—upon which the joke turns. Without this shared understanding, the audience would lack the necessary comprehension to appreciate the joke. I defend this norm in an analogous way to Williamson’s defense of the Knowledge Norm of Assertion by demonstrating that it explains (...) a number of patterns of joking behavior. If SPNJ is indeed a constitutive norm of joking, it provides an epistemological foothold. Jokes function as conversational explicatures serving an epistemically diagnostic function, revealing implicit and perhaps disavowed inferential dispositions of the joking community. This norm does not teach us about the subject matter of the joke, but instead illuminates the language games of the joke teller and audience. (shrink)

This paper is a response to recent student protests at South African universities, and the essentialising rhetoric and practices that characterise South African public debates. I explore the likely responses of white South Africans to views that seem to make their whiteness inescapable and necessarily morally bad.

Often machine learning programs inherit social patterns reflected in their training data without any directed effort by programmers to include such biases. Computer scientists call this algorithmic bias. This paper explores the relationship between machine bias and human cognitive bias. In it, I argue similarities between algorithmic and cognitive biases indicate a disconcerting sense in which sources of bias emerge out of seemingly innocuous patterns of information processing. The emergent nature of this bias obscures the existence of the bias itself, (...) making it difficult to identify, mitigate, or evaluate using standard resources in epistemology and ethics. I demonstrate these points in the case of mitigation techniques by presenting what I call ‘the Proxy Problem’. One reason biases resist revision is that they rely on proxy attributes, seemingly innocuous attributes that correlate with socially-sensitive attributes, serving as proxies for the socially-sensitive attributes themselves. I argue that in both human and algorithmic domains, this problem presents a common dilemma for mitigation: attempts to discourage reliance on proxy attributes risk a tradeoff with judgement accuracy. This problem, I contend, admits of no purely algorithmic solution. (shrink)

Luc Faucher and Edouard Machery’s recent article in this journal uses evidence from psychological studies to criticize Jorge Garcia’s view of racism. This brief response argues that their critique fails because they misinterpret Garcia’s view and engage in some conceptual equivocation. It also argues that their focus on affect and human psychology is in fact compatible with Garcia’s view of racism as rooted in the human heart. Hence the evidence that they cite should be seen as empirical enrichment of Garcia’s (...) basic view, rather than as evidence against that view. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

A stereotype is a belief or claim that a group of people has a particular feature. Stereotypes are expressed by sentences that have the form of generic statements, like “Canadians are nice.” Recent work on generics lends new life to understanding generics as statements involving probabilities. I argue that generics (and thus sentences expressing stereotypes) can take one of several forms involving conditional probabilities, and these probabilities have what I call a naturalness requirement. This is the natural probability theory of (...) stereotypes. Each of the two components of the theory entails a family of fallacies that contributes to the spurious reinforcement of stereotypes: inferential slippage within and between the different generic forms, and inferential slippage from facts about frequencies of group traits to beliefs about natural propensities or dispositions of groups. Empirical research suggests that we often commit these fallacies. Moreover, this theory can referee a vitriolic debate between some psychologists, who hold that stereotypes are always false and stereotyping is always wrong, and other psychologists, who hold that stereotypes are often accurate and stereotyping is often reasonable. (shrink)

This article explores the affective dimension of resilient epistemological systems. Specifically, I argue that responsible epistemic practice requires affective engagement with nondominant experiences. To begin, I outline Kristie Dotson's account of epistemological resilience whereby an epistemological system remains stable despite counterevidence or attempts to alter it. Then, I develop an account of affective numbness. As I argue, affective numbness can promote epistemological resilience in at least two ways. First, it can reinforce harmful stereotypes even after these stereotypes have been rationally (...) demystified. To illustrate, I examine the stereotype of Black criminality as it relates to false confessions. Second, it can encourage “epistemic appropriation”, which I demonstrate by examining the appropriation of “intersectionality” and #MeToo by white culture. Finally, I conclude that resisting harmful resilience requires affective resistance, or efforts that target numbness via different kinds of affective engagement. I consider Kantian “disinterestedness” as a candidate. (shrink)

In the flurry of recent exchanges between defenders of moral encroachment and their critics, some of the finer details of particular encroachment accounts have only begun to receive critical attention. This is especially true concerning accounts of the putative wrong-making features of the beliefs to which defenders of moral encroachment draw our attention. Here I attempt to help move this part of the discussion forward by critically engaging two leading accounts. These come from Mark Schroeder and Rima Basu, respectively. The (...) problem of explaining how the beliefs at issue have a morally significant impact on the people they are about will turn out to be difficult. However, this shouldn’t be taken to mean that the beliefs have no such significance. In any case, as I hope to show, there are resources available to the evidentialist for acknowledging that the beliefs at issue affect those they are about in morally relevant ways—indeed, that they harm the person in a way that results in a demand on even the most impeccably rational believer. This is not the demand that she abandon her belief, however. It is instead a demand for a substantial form of regret in relation to the belief, a doxastic analogue to Bernard Williams’ “agent-regret”. An evidentialism with space for this notion of regret shows promise for withstanding the moral encroachment challenge. (shrink)

It has been argued that humans can face an ethical/epistemic dilemma over the automatic stereotyping involved in implicit bias: ethical demands require that we consistently treat people equally, as equally likely to possess certain traits, but if our aim is knowledge or understanding our responses should reflect social inequalities meaning that members of certain social groups are statistically more likely than others to possess particular features. I use psychological research to argue that often the best choice from the epistemic perspective (...) is the same as the best choice from the ethical perspective: to avoid automatic stereotyping even when this involves failing to reflect social realities in our judgements. This argument has an important implication: it shows that it is not possible to successfully defend an act of automatic stereotyping simply on the basis that the stereotype reflects an aspect of social reality. An act of automatic stereotyping can be poor from an epistemic perspective even if the stereotype that is activated reflects reality. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer an explanation of the moral significance of microaggressions, seemingly minor incidents in which someone is demeaned in virtue of an oppressed social identity, often without the full awareness of the perpetrator. I argue for a broadly Kantian account of the wrongs of microaggressions and the moral responsibilities of various actors with respect to these incidents.

The objective of this paper is to show that pornography dehumanizes women through essentialization. First, I argue that certain acts of subject-essentialization are acts of subject-dehumanization. Second, I demonstrate, by reviewing evidence about the linguistic material that we find in and around pornography, that pornography systematically deploys content that essentializes women in the ways identified as problematic. It follows that pornography dehumanizes women.

Many believe that we ought to treat people as individuals and that this form of treatment is in some sense incompatible with treating people as members of groups. Yet, the relation between these two kinds of treatments is elusive. In this paper, we develop a novel account of the normative requirement to treat people as individuals. According to this account, treating people as individuals requires treating people as agents in the appropriate capacity. We call this the Agency Attunement Account. This (...) view has the surprising implication that it’s not only possible to fail in treating people as individuals but also possible to fail in treating people as members of groups, on the presumption that people’s agency is sometimes nested in, and exercised via, agential groups. (shrink)

In light of recent social psychological literature, I expand Miranda Fricker’s important notion of testimonial injustice. A fair portion of Fricker’s account rests on an older paradigm of stereotype and prejudice. Given recent empirical work, I argue for what I dub prescriptive credibility deficits in which a backlash effect leads to the assignment of a diminished level of credibility to persons who act in counter-stereotypic manners, thereby flouting prescriptive stereotypes. The notion of a prescriptive credibility deficit is not merely an (...) interesting conceptual addendum that can be appended to Fricker’s theory without need for further emendation. I develop the wider implications of prescriptive credibility deficits and argue that they pose a challenge to Fricker’s conception of the function of credibility assignments in conversational exchange and how a virtuous listener should respond to the potential threat of a prejudicial stereotype affecting her credibility assignments. (shrink)

This paper develops a precise understanding of the thesis of moral encroachment, which states that the epistemic status of an opinion can depend on its moral features. In addition, I raise objections to existing accounts of moral encroachment. For instance, many accounts fail to give sufficient attention to moral encroachment on credences. Also, many accounts focus on moral features that fail to support standard analogies between pragmatic and moral encroachment. Throughout the paper, I discuss racial profiling as a case study, (...) arguing that moral encroachment can help us identify one respect in which racial profiling is epistemically problematic. (shrink)

The two-part thesis of this work is that Native mascots are morally wrong but that they do not warrant proscription. They are wrong because they propagate false or misleading beliefs about others and contribute to disrespectful misrelationships. This moral wrong lacks the weight to warrant proscription because of the countervailing weight of free-expression and the fact that Native mascots are mere offensive nuisances rather than profound offenses. Because Native mascots are morally wrong they ought to be challenged and resisted, but (...) without recourse to legislature. (shrink)

Here are two widely held positions on the ethics of dating: First, people are generally morally justified in excluding people they don’t find attractive from their dating pool. Second, people are not justified in maintaining a dating pool that is racially exclusive, even on grounds like attraction. In this paper, we demonstrate how these positions are consistent. To do so we differentiate our attitudes in dating and our dating behavior. Then we show how existing criticisms of racialized attitudes in dating (...) are incomplete as practical criticisms of our behavior. Finally, we give our account of the moral reasons whites have to change their dating preferences when they exclude people of color. In doing so, we supplement existing discussions of race-based discrimination in dating. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie Jahrgang: 65 Heft: 3 Seiten: 490-503.

In this paper I discuss the interrelated topics of stereotype threat and attributional ambiguity as they relate to gender and gender identity. The former has become an emerging topic in feminist philosophy and has spawned a tremendous amount of research in social psychology and elsewhere. But the discussion, at least in how it connects to gender, is incomplete: the focus is only on cisgender women and their experiences. By considering trans women's experiences of stereotype threat and attributional ambiguity, we gain (...) a deeper understanding of the phenomena and their problematic effects. (shrink)

Imagine you are casually browsing an online bookstore, looking for an interesting novel. Suppose the store predicts you will want to buy a particular novel: the one most chosen by people of your same age, gender, location, and occupational status. The store recommends the book, it appeals to you, and so you choose it. Central to this scenario is an automated prediction of what you desire. This article raises moral concerns about such predictions. More generally, this article examines the ethics (...) of artificial social cognition—the ethical dimensions of attribution of mental states to humans by artificial systems. The focus is presumptuous aim attributions, which are defined here as aim attributions based crucially on the premise that the person in question will have aims like superficially similar people. Several everyday examples demonstrate that this sort of presumptuousness is already a familiar moral concern. The scope of this moral concern is extended by new technologies. In particular, recommender systems based on collaborative filtering are now commonly used to automatically recommend products and information to humans. Examination of these systems demonstrates that they naturally attribute aims presumptuously. This article presents two reservations about the widespread adoption of such systems. First, the severity of our antecedent moral concern about presumptuousness increases when aim attribution processes are automated and accelerated. Second, a foreseeable consequence of reliance on these systems is an unwarranted inducement of interpersonal conformity. (shrink)

The background to the present discussion is the prevalence of political and personal criticisms in philosophical discussions about Africa. As philosophers in South Africa—both white and black—continue to philosophise seriously about Africa, responses to their work sometimes take the form of political and personal criticisms of, if not attacks on, the philosopher exploring and defending considerations about the African continent. One of us (TM) has been the target of such critiques in light of his work. Our aim in this conversation (...) is not to diminish or deflect such critiques. On the contrary, our aim is to understand them, to make them as strong as possible, and to bring them into the cooler realm of philosophical discussion. (shrink)

What is a bias? Standard philosophical views of both implicit and explicit bias focus this question on the representations one harbours, for example, stereotypes or implicit attitudes, rather than the ways in which those representations are manipulated. I call this approach representationalism. In this paper, I argue that representationalism taken as a general theory of psychological social bias is a mistake, because it conceptualizes bias in ways that do not fully capture the phenomenon. Crucially, this view fails to capture a (...) heretofore neglected possibility of bias, one that influences an individual’s beliefs about or actions toward others, but is, nevertheless, nowhere represented in that individual’s cognitive repertoire. In place of representationalism, I develop a functional account of psychological social bias which characterizes it as a mental entity that takes propositional mental states as inputs and returns propositional mental states as outputs in a way that instantiates social-kind inductions. This functional characterization leaves open which mental states and processes bridge the gap between the inputs and outputs, ultimately highlighting the diversity of candidates that can serve this role. (shrink)

This paper explores the complex nature of social biases, arguing for a functional framework that recognizes their unity and diversity. The functional approach posits that all biases share a common functional role in overcoming underdetermination. This framework, I argue, provides a comprehensive understanding of how all psychological biases, including social biases, are unified. I then turn to the question of disunity, demonstrating how psychological social biases differ systematically in the mental states and processes that constitute them. These differences indicate that (...) biases at various levels of the cognitive architecture require distinct treatment along at least two dimensions: epistemic evaluation and mitigation strategies. By examining social biases through this dual lens of unity and diversity, we can more effectively identify when and how to intervene on problematic biases. Ultimately, this approach provides a nuanced understanding of the nature of social bias, offering practical guidance for addressing existing biases and proactively managing emerging biases in both human and artificial minds. (shrink)

Research programs in empirical psychology over the past few decades have led scholars to posit implicit biases. This is due to the development of innovative behavioural measures that have revealed aspects of our cognitions which may not be identified on self-report measures requiring individuals to reflect on and report their attitudes and beliefs. But what does it mean to characterise such biases as implicit? Can we satisfactorily articulate the grounds for identifying them as bias? And crucially, what sorts of cognitions (...) are in fact being measured; what mental states or processes underpin such behavioural responses? In this paper, we outline some of the philosophical and empirical issues engaged when attempting to address these three questions. Our aim is to provide a constructive taxonomy of the issues, and how they interrelate. As we will see, any view about what implicit bias is may depend on a range of prior theoretical choices. (shrink)

I expand upon Kristie Dotson's concept of “epistemic violence” by identifying another type of epistemic violence that arises in the context of nonverbal communication. “Emotional misperception,” as I call it, occurs when the following conditions are met: A misreads B's nonlinguistic expression of emotion, owing to reliable ignorance, harming B.

By applying classical and contemporary insights of the phenomenological tradition to key findings within the literature on stereotype threat, this paper considers the embodied effects of everyday exposure to racism and makes a contribution to the growing field of applied phenomenology. In what follows, the paper asks how a phenomenological perspective can both contribute to and enrich discussions of ST in psychology. In answering these questions, the paper uses evidence from social psychology as well as first personal testimonies from members (...) of marginalized groups to argue that subjectively experienced racial oppression is embodied and thus has effects on selfhood that are harmful. More specifically, it makes the case that what are most often considered to be temporary or context-based consequences of ST are in fact more wide reaching and harmful than assumed in that the harms that result from suffering ST become a part of one’s identity, and thus a background lens through which one experiences the world. (shrink)

This article explores the necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for the recognition of a ground of unlawful discrimination. It is important not only to have a coherent understanding of the currently enumerated grounds, but also to have a theoretical framework that can assist in enumerating new grounds through the open-ended “other status” aspect of many legal frameworks. To that end, this article argues that personal characteristics that are generally morally irrelevant, and that are socially salient in that they carry with (...) them a prevalence of inequality-laden attitudes, amount to necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for recognizing a ground of unlawful discrimination. Other conditions, such as immutability and the presence of relative group disadvantage, will be assessed and dismissed as contingent but not necessary conditions. (shrink)

According to the doxastic wrongs thesis, holding certain beliefs about others can be morally wrongful. Beliefs which take the form of stereotypes based on race and gender and which turn out to be false and are negatively valenced are prime candidates for the charge of doxastic wronging: it is no coincidence that most of the cases discussed in the literature involve false beliefs. My aim in this paper is to show that the thesis of doxastic wrongs does not turn on (...) the truth-value or valence of beliefs. (shrink)

Resolving religious disagreements is difficult, for beliefs about religion tend to come with strong biases against other views and the people who hold them. Evidence can help, but there is no agreed-upon policy for weighting it, and moreover bias affects the content of our evidence itself. Another complicating factor is that some biases are reliable and others unreliable. What we need is an evidence-weighting policy geared toward negotiating the effects of bias. I consider three evidence-weighting policies in the philosophy of (...) religion and advocate one of them as the best for promoting the resolution of religious disagreements. (shrink)

The distinction between intentional and unintentional discrimination is a prominent one in the literature and public discourse; intentional discriminatory actions are commonly considered particularly morally objectionable relative to unintentional discriminatory actions. Nevertheless, it remains unclear what the two types amount to, and what generates the moral difference between them. The paper develops philosophically-informed conceptualizations of the two types based on which the moral difference between them may be accounted for. On the suggested account, intentional discrimination is characterized by the agent (...) viewing the content of an underlying discriminatory belief as a consideration that counts in favor of her action. This, it is argued, amounts to endorsing the discriminatory belief, which generates the particular moral severity of intentional discrimination. (shrink)

Progressive family policy regimes typically aim to promote and protect women’s opportunities to participate in the workforce. These policies offer significant benefits to affluent, two-parent households. A disproportionate number of low-income and impoverished families, however, are headed by single mothers. How responsive are such policies to the objectives of these mothers and the needs of their children? This chapter argues that one-size-fits-all family policy regimes often fail the most vulnerable household and contribute to intergenerational poverty in two ways: by denying (...) at-risk children adequate parenting, and by undermining their mothers’ legitimate interest in nurturing and caring for their own children. The capabilities of these mothers and the well-being of their children are better served by policies which recognise maternal caregiving as a productive and valuable occupation meriting equal respect and social support. (shrink)

In 2020, due to the Nightingale year and COVID‐19 crisis, nursing is in the public eye more than ever. Nurses often are being seen as compassionate helpers. The public image of nursing, however, also consists of stereotypes such as nursing being a ‘doing’ profession and care being a ‘female’ characteristic. Next to that, nursing is associated with images from the past, such as ‘the lady with the lamp’. Therefore, in the public eye at least, the nursing identity seems a simple (...) and straightforward enough construct, but nothing less is true. Looking at what a professional identity consists of, historic and social developments influence a group identity as a construct. In addition, individual, professional and contemporary societal moralities, including stereotypes, play its role. Nurses themselves reinforce stereotypes in order to fit into what is expected, even when they believe professional behaviour encompasses other features. They may do so individually as well as in a group context. But nursing actually seems to be better off when viewed upon as a diverse, autonomous profession. Moral values such as compassion motivate nurses to enter the profession. Research shows that if such values are addressed in daily practice, nursing could perhaps be saved from nurses leaving the profession because of feeling unfulfilled. Another aspect concerns the huge nursing body of knowledge. If seen as the ground on which nursing behaviour is standing, it would contribute to a different image of nursing than simplified stereotypes, which do not acknowledge the complex nature of the profession. This paper challenges the idea that the nursing identity is unchangeable and the notion that ‘a nurse will always be a nurse’. By doing so, the paper contributes to a debate on the supposed ‘true’ nature of the nursing identity and opens a discussion on the need for it to change. (shrink)

This article introduces a concept that I refer to as racialized forgiveness. Cases that exemplify certain conditions that I take as paradigmatic of the problem of racialized forgiveness include instances in which: who is forgiven or not is determined by the race of the offender; praise and criticisms of forgiveness are determined by the race of the victim; and praise and criticisms of forgiveness are, at least implicitly, racially self-serving. I argue that this practice is morally objectionable because of its (...) psychological origins, moral failures, and negative effects. Accordingly, in order to dodge these pitfalls, we need to practice forgiveness differently. (shrink)

We use generic sentences like ‘Blondes are stupid’ to express stereotypes. But why is this? Does the fact that we use generic sentences to express stereotypes mean that stereotypes are themselves, in some sense, generic? I argue that they are. However, stereotypes are mental and generics linguistic, so how can stereotypes be generic? My answer is that stereotypes are generic in virtue of the beliefs they contain. Stereotypes about blondes being stupid contain a belief element, namely a belief that blondes (...) are stupid. This belief is an attitude taken towards the same proposition expressed by the sentence ‘Blondes are stupid’, hence why we use the latter to articulate the former.This generic account of stereotypes can help us better understand their inner workings. I focus on one feature of generics, variability in the types of facts that can make them true, and argue that it can explain how stereotypes shape inferential patterns and thereby guide how we treat members of stereotyped groups. This feature, in turn, illuminates the harms caused by stereotyping and suggests some courses of action. (shrink)

If someone says, “Asians are good at math” or “women are empathetic,” I might interject, “you're stereotyping” in order to convey my disapproval of their utterance. But why is stereotyping wrong? Before we can answer this question, we must better understand what stereotypes are and what stereotyping is. In this essay, I develop what I call the descriptive view of stereotypes and stereotyping. This view is assumed in much of the psychological and philosophical literature on implicit bias and stereotyping, yet (...) it has not been sufficiently defended. The main objection to the descriptive view is that it fails to include the common-sense idea that stereotyping is always objectionable. I argue that this is actually a benefit of the view. In the essay's final part, I put forward two hypotheses that would validate the claim that stereotyping is always morally or epistemically wrong. If these hypotheses are false—which is very likely—we have little reason to build moral or epistemic defect into the very idea of a stereotype. Moreover, we must abandon the seemingly attractive claim that judging individuals based on group membership is intrinsically wrong. (shrink)

If someone says, “You’ve stereotyped me,” we hear the statement as an accusation. One way to interpret the accusation is as follows: you haven’t seen or treated me as an individual. In this essay, I interpret and evaluate a theory of wrongful stereotyping inspired by this thought, which I call the failure-to-individualize theory of wrongful stereotyping. According to this theory, stereotyping is wrong if and only if it involves failing to treat persons as individuals. I argue that the theory—however one (...) interprets it—is inadequate. Either the theory will not reliably identify all cases of wrongful stereotyping or it will fail to adequately explain why they are wrong. I conclude that it does not follow that we must entirely jettison the objection that stereotyping fails to treat persons as individuals. What follows is only that the objection must play a more circumscribed role in a theory of when and why stereotyping is wrong. (shrink)

Several recent authors have argued that children are subject to testimonial injustice in the same way as are women, Blacks, and several other social identity groups. Testimonial injustice is standardly conceptualized, following Miranda Fricker’s seminal account, as a wrongful credibility deficit. I argue that this concept of testimonial injustice is too narrow to capture testimonial injustice against children. There is good reason to think that children are less reliable testifiers than adults, so it is not necessarily wrong to assign a (...) credibility deficit to a child speaker, in the way it is wrong in the case of a female or black speaker. However, I argue that children are nevertheless subjected to testimonial injustice. Testimonial injustice against children is constituted primarily by a failure to actively inquire into assertions by children — that is, by a failure to patiently and reflectively engage in discourse with the child to discover what they may know. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Rima Basu and I have offered separate accounts of wokeness as an anti-racist ethical concept. Our accounts endorse controversial doctrines in epistemology: doxastic wronging, doxastic voluntarism, and moral encroachment. Many philosophers deny these three views, favoring instead some ordinary standards for epistemic justification. I call this denial the standard view. In this paper, I offer an account of wokeness that is consistent with the standard view. I argue that wokeness is best understood as ‘group epistemic partiality’. The woke person (...) does extra epistemic work before forming a negative belief about a member of an oppressed social group. Just as we do extra epistemic work when forming belief about our friends, so the woke person does for members of oppressed social groups. I first outline the account. I then raise questions about the scope of wokeness and belief formation. After this, I demonstrate that the group partiality view is consistent with the standard view in epistemology. The partiality view, therefore, should appeal to epistemologists who have adopted the standard view because it is consistent with ordinary standards of justification. I conclude that wokeness as a concept in epistemology should not be controversial for those who endorse the standard view. (shrink)

In this article, I argue in favor of an intersectional account of religious identity to better make sense of how religious subjects can be treated with epistemic injustice. To do this, I posit two perspectives through which to view religious identity: as a social identity and as a worldview. I argue that these perspectives shed light on the unique ways in which religious subjects can be epistemically harmed. From the first perspective, religious subjects can be harmed when their religion is (...) racialized or when their gender and dress are mistakenly thought to be predictive of their beliefs and practices. As an instance of this, I focus on the epistemic harms facing Muslim women who practice veiling. From the worldview perspective, religious subjects can be harmed when we, by contrast, underestimate the force of the connections between religion, race, and gender. Such connections can give rise to intersectionally rich theologies that can in turn be marginalized and denied credibility. To illuminate the worldview perspective, I focus on Christian abolitionist and feminist Sojourner Truth. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic paved the way for the emergence of the Boys’ Love (BL) theme and genre throughout various media platforms, causing disruptive visibility to the narratives and representation of gays (Andrada in an interview by Antonio, 2021; Ting, 2020). This disruption may have started a dialogue in social media, but this dialogue was only a limited attempt given that most of the discussions have stereotypical representations of gay men (Celso, 2020). This study analyzes how humor was applied in the (...) online comic, SariSari Story, and how humor is used in the portrayal of the gay characters in this online comic. The analysis uses Grice’s (2012) pragmatic framework of conversational maxims: quality, quantity, manner, and relation. Humor was indicated in the non-observance of one or more maxim(s), which, then, caused the implicatures. The study found that the most non-observed maxims were quantity, manner, and relation. The prominent type of humor present in the comic was the Freudian slip, where the slips contained sexual metaphors mostly associated with the characters’ sexual desires towards each other. As an example of the BL genre, the Sari-Sari Story online comic stereotyped its presentation of gay characters as hypersexual in their relationships with each other. In this, it deviated from the conventions of the Pinoy BL present in the mainstream media. (shrink)

In this brief essay, I will lay out the philosophical landscape concerning theories of racist humor. First, I mention some preliminary issues that bear on the question of what makes a joke racist. Next, I briefly survey some of the views philosophers have offered on racist humor, and on a view of sexist humor that is relevant for this discussion. I then suggest the debates could benefit from moving beyond the racist/non-racist binary most views presuppose. Finally, I conclude with suggestions (...) for further research. (shrink)

Critical notice of Puddifoot, Katherine. 2021. How Stereotypes Deceive Us. NY: OUP.--------- -/- Kathy Puddifoot makes a compelling and enlightening case for a striking pair of claims: 1) false stereotypes sometimes steer us to the truth, while 2) true stereotypes often lead us into error. This is a wonderful book, a seamless integration of epistemology with ethics, of philosophy with social science, and of “mainstream” or “Western analytic” approaches with marginalized and underappreciated contributions from critical social traditions, especially black feminism. (...) The integrations are so seamless, in fact, as to give the reader the impression that Puddifoot is simply picking up conversations already underway. Instead, she has done a tremendous service in bringing representatives from wide-ranging, often-siloed disciplines into dialogue. Another virtue of Puddifoot’s book is how thoroughly it maps out the actual and possible views and logical spaces revolving around each topic she addresses. How Stereotypes Deceive Us could therefore be used to introduce budding epistemologists to the field, as it offers clear and careful explanations of leading approaches to a range of topics, including virtue epistemology, theory of mind, and more. (shrink)

How should we interpret the popular objection that stigmatised subjects are not treated as individuals? The Eidelson View claims that stigma, because of its connection to stereotypes, violates an instance of the general requirement to respect autonomy. The Self-Presentation View claims that stigma inhibits the functioning of certain morally important capacities, notably the capacity for self-presentation. I argue that even if we are right to think that stigma violates a requirement to respect autonomy, this is insufficient to account for the (...) full weight of the charge that stigmatised subjects are not treated as individuals. We need the Self-Presentation View to explain a special threat to agency. I then address the worry that focusing on a concern with being treated as individuals opens the door to the suggestion that treating as superior can be just as morally troubling as stigma. This objection is fatal for the Eidelson View. But the Self-Presentation View has a number of resources for deflating the worry. We should not exclude the possibility of a moral symmetry between some cases of stigma and some cases of treating as superior. Rather, we should provide a nuanced account of the circumstances in which either phenomenon is detrimental for self-presentation. (shrink)

We use generic sentences like ‘Blondes are stupid’ to express stereotypes. But why is this? Does the fact that we use generic sentences to express stereotypes mean that stereotypes are themselves, in some sense, generic? I argue that they are. However, stereotypes are mental and generics linguistic, so how can stereotypes be generic? My answer is that stereotypes are generic in virtue of the beliefs they contain. Stereotypes about blondes being stupid contain a belief element, namely a belief that blondes (...) are stupid. This belief is an attitude taken towards the same proposition expressed by the sentence ‘Blondes are stupid’, hence why we use the latter to articulate the former. -/- This generic account of stereotypes can help us better understand their inner workings. I focus on one feature of generics, variability in the types of facts that can make them true, and argue that it can explain how stereotypes shape inferential patterns and thereby guide how we treat members of stereotyped groups. This feature, in turn, illuminates the harms caused by stereotyping and suggests some courses of action. (shrink)

Consider a terrible situation that too many women find themselves in: 85,000 women are raped in England and Wales alone every year. Many of these women do not bring their cases to trial. There are multiple reasons that they might not want to testify in the courts. The incredibly low conviction rate is one. Another reason, however, might be that these women do not want the fact that they were raped to become the most salient thing about them. More specifically, (...) they do not want it to be the thing that others attend to the most—that others find most noticeable and memorable. In this paper, I introduce the notion of ‘harmful salience perspectives’ to help to explain this and related phenomena. This refers either to attention on things that should not be salient, or not enough attention on things that deserve to be made salient. Following ideas within the feminist literature on objectification, I argue that we can be harmed when aspects of our identity that do not reflect our personhood—our agency, rationality, personality, and so on—are more prominent in the minds of others than aspects that do reflect our personhood. Crucially, these ways of attending do not need to implicate false beliefs and harmful ideologies to be harmful, but can be harmful in their own right. (shrink)