Next Royal Institue of Philosophy Lecture at Barnes Philosophy Club, 'Are we morally responsible for our implicit biases?' by Prof Helen Beebee

Speaker Prof Helen Beebee and our two Speakers together Dr Yasemin J Erden from last month

 Paige our gallant events manager with someone's husband !

Some of our Philosophy Club members

        Professor Helen Beebee

Abstract:

There’s a lot of evidence from social psychology that we all harbour ‘implicit biases’: attitudes towards people based on their race, gender, weight, disability, etc. that we are often not aware of, or even that we actively and sincerely claim not to hold. These can have damaging effects, e.g. if a hiring panel judges a woman to be less suitable for a job than a man, or if a police officer judges a black youth to be more likely to be carrying drugs than a white youth. But if we acquire these attitudes unwittingly and are not aware of them, then it seems that the behaviour that they give rise to is not really within our control — so are we really to blame for such behaviour? I’ll argue that we are — at least some of the time.

Prof Helen Beebee