Bryan Chambliss Abstracts

Bryan Chambliss

Ph.D. Candidate
 Cognitive Science, Minor

  American Philosophical Association Meeting
  Washington, DC
                          January 6-9, 2016

Abstract

Conference Abstract: Implicit bias presents problems for reasons-­‐responsiveness accounts of the control condition for morally responsible action. While many actions that reflect implicit bias (hereafter biased actions) seem to be culpable wrongs committed by the agent, such actions plausibly violate this control condition. This renders the agent not responsible for these actions, suggesting the need to revise or supplement the account.

Tracing conditions represent one well-­‐known, but problematic, means of supplementing the account.   Andy Clark’s notion of ecological control provides an appealing alternative.  I re-­‐articulate ecological control by severing its connections to metaphysical claims about the extended mind.   So understood, we see that ecological control is best construed as supplementing the reasons-­‐responsiveness account of control, not as a competitor. Ecological control and tracing conditions remain importantly different, however, as agents often retain ecological control during biased actions, making possible an agent’s moral responsibility for biased behavior.

Abstract for Lay Audience

Moral responsibility for an action is typically understood to require exhibiting a requisite level of control over the performance of the action. This can be formalized by articulating a control condition that agents must meet in order to be responsible for performing some action. Most formulations of the control condition require that that mechanism by which an action is performed must be responsive to the agent’s reasons for acting. For example, if an agent recognizes a reason to not perform some action, but they couldn’t stop themselves from performing the action anyway, the mechanism that produces their action isn’t responsive to reasons, and hence the agent doesn’t meet the control condition when performing that action.

Implicit bias presents problems for such accounts of control, because the bias is triggered automatically and often operates outside of an agent’s conscious awareness. Thus, even if an agent has reasons to behave in a non-­‐biased way, they cannot shape their behavior into accordance with those reasons. Consequently, while many actions that reflect implicit bias seem to be wrongs culpably committed by the agent, such actions plausibly fail to meet the control condition, rendering the agent not responsible for these actions.

This suggests the need to revise our understanding of the kind of control over the performance of the action in question. I motivate a novel account of the kind of control required for morally responsible action that I call ecological control. The guiding idea is that while we might lack the ability to deliberately control our thought processes in a given situation, we often retain the ability to manipulate features of the environments in which we act. Thus, while agents cannot always deliberately control their patterns of thought, they can often enough manipulate their environment so as to exert sufficient control over their interaction with it.

For example, consider the impact of implicit racial bias on hiring decisions. Resumes submitted by job applicants with African-­‐American sounding names are reviewed less positively than identically qualified candidates with Caucasian sounding names. According to the ecological account I develop, an agent is responsible for their biased actions in such cases because even if they cannot control their expression of implicit bias through sheer effort, they could control for the expression of this bias by blinding the resumes. And this kind of ecological control is sufficient for some level of moral responsibility. To the extent that this example generalizes, agents often retain ecological control during biased actions, thus explaining how an agent might be morally responsible for their biased behavior. Ecological control makes for a more complete philosophical account of control, and also yields a better understanding of how agents are deeply embedded in the environments in which they act.