Evelyn Barker Memorial Lecture: Angela Smith
Implicit Biases, Moral Agency, and Moral Responsibility
Location
Library and Gallery, Albin O. Kuhn : Gallery
Date & Time
March 24, 2016, 4:00 pm – 5:30 pm
Description
EVELYN BARKER MEMORIAL LECTURE
Implicit Biases, Moral Agency, and Moral Responsibility
Angela Smith, Roger Mudd Professor of Ethics and Professor of Philosophy, Washington and Lee University
Is it appropriate to regard individuals as responsible, and perhaps also
blameworthy, for (the existence, operation, or influence of) implicit biases of
which they are not consciously aware? Angela Smith says that it is. She argues
that many of the attitudes we refer to via the label “implicit biases,” while
not under our conscious awareness or control, still involve exercises of
evaluative agency that we can appropriately be asked to justify. For this
reason, they are attitudes for which we are morally responsible. Dr. Smith argues
further that, because these implicit biases typically involve unexcused
violations of moral norms to which we are legitimately subject, we are also
morally blameworthy for them. However, given that these biases operate below
the level of reflective awareness, she suggests that we are generally less
blameworthy for implicit biases than for explicit biases.
Bio: Dr. Angela Smith joined the Department of Philosophy at
Washington and Lee University in 2009 after teaching for ten years at the
University of Washington in Seattle. In 2013 she was appointed to be the first
Roger Mudd Professor of Ethics and the first Director of the Roger Mudd Center
for Ethics. She teaches a variety of courses in moral and political philosophy
as well as ancient philosophy. Dr. Smith’s research interests concern the
connections between morality, moral agency, and moral responsibility. She has
published a number of articles exploring whether, and if so in what way, we are
morally responsible for our attitudes – for our desires, emotions, beliefs, and
other intentional mental states. More recently, she has written articles on the
moral importance of specific attitudes such as blame and tolerance, and she has
argued for the existence of robust attitudinal obligations to others.
Sponsored by the Philosophy Department, the Dresher Center for the Humanities, and the Psychology Department.
