Maintaining Reprehensibility for Epistemic Vice: Responsibility for Implicit Bias as Non-vicious Conduct

Abstract

Heather Battaly has argued that vice-epistemology has a Responsibility Problem. From analysing the 'card-carrying feminist' committing testimonial injustice due to implicit gender bias, Battaly argues that non-voluntarist vice-epistemologists are committed to either (1) counting some vices as blameworthy yet not reprehensible, or (2) holding agents equally responsible for cognitive defects as for implicit bias. This in turn implies that (2a) epistemic vices include certain cognitive defects or (2b) that implicit bias is excluded as epistemic vice. This paper aims to deflate the Responsibility Problem, by arguing that vice-epistemologists can embrace route (2b) without problematic implications. In applying Miranda Fricker's 'no-fault responsibility' to the card-carrying feminist case, I defend the following three claims: First, Battaly's analysis of the card-carrying feminist case is flawed, because it fails to acknowledge that the vice of testimonial injustice and implicit prejudice are conceptually distinct. Second, excluding implicit prejudice as a vice is actually compatible with Fricker's theoretical commitments. Third, contrary to what much of the literature seems to assume, it isn't that problematic to exclude (individual) implicit bias as a vice, or to assign equal responsibility for implicit prejudice as for cognitive defects like impaired vision.