CFP: Understanding Bias (Philosophical Psychology)

Guest editor: Dr Katherine Puddifoot (Durham)

CALL FOR PAPERS

Unintentional discrimination has been given a significant amount of attention in recent decades. A large amount of research has been motivated by quantitative psychological research that uses indirect measures to gather information about what have become known as ‘implicit biases’ or ‘implicit attitudes’. However, these quantitative psychological measures do not provide the sole source of knowledge about unintentional discrimination.

Philosophical work has highlighted how a diverse range of evidence and methods can be used to understand unintentional discrimination. Such evidence includes, for example, testimony from lived experience (eg., as in the literature on micro-aggressions) and insights from machine learning. There has also been a debate about whether human psychology or institutional/social structures should be the primary focus of attention for a better understanding of unintentional discrimination.

Sample research questions include:

• Are there sources of evidence or methods that can fruitfully be used to understand unintentional discrimination that have not previously been used?
• Should some sources of evidence or methodologies be prioritised over others?
• Are there any issues of justice/injustice surrounding the use of some evidence or methodologies instead of others?
• How, if at all, can insights gleaned using different methodologies and evidence-sources be integrated into a coherent picture of unintentional discrimination?
• What should happen if different approaches to unintentional discrimination yield different accounts of what unintentional discrimination is like? How is it possible to adjudicate between different accounts developed using different methodologies or evidence?

Confirmed contributors include:

• Saray Ayala-López (California State University, Sacramento) whose interests include structural and individual explanations of bias, including linguistic bias.
• Lauren Freeman (University of Louisville) whose interests include the topic of micro-aggressions.
• Jules Holroyd (University of Sheffield) who has research expertise in implicit bias, moral responsibility, and oppressive praise.
• Gabbrielle M. Johnson (Claremont McKenna College) whose research on bias in individual agents and social structures draws on machine learning, models of scientific inference, and statistical models of the perceptual system.
• Kevin J Lande (York University) whose research in philosophy of mind, psychology, and perception focuses on the structures of our mental states.
• Aness Webster (Durham University) who has expertise in value theory, and a research focus on the role of lived experience in philosophical theorising.
• Ella Whiteley (LSE) whose research intersects ethics, social philosophy, political philosophy, and philosophy of biology, with a specific focus on salience, attention bias, and gender.

THE LEX ACADEMIC ESSAY PRIZE

As part of the special issue "Understanding Bias", the Philosophical Psychology editorial team is delighted to announce the Lex Academic® Essay Prize. This prize will be awarded to the author of the best essay on the understanding of linguistic discrimination, a philosophical preoccupation of both the journal and Lex Academic. Benefits include:

• Editorial services on the prize-winning submission provided gratis by Lex Academic
• £1000 awarded to the author of the prize-winning submission
• Free access to the prize-winning submission granted by Philosophical Psychology for one year from the date of online publication

Eligible submissions may be on any of the advertised topics of the special issue so long as the predominant focus of the essay concerns linguistic discrimination. Topics may include – but are not limited to – the following:

• Intentional and unintentional linguistic discrimination
• Linguistic bias in philosophy and/or academia more generally
• Does Anglophone philosophy have a problem with linguistic bias?
• Are there sources of evidence or methods that can fruitfully be used to understand unintentional linguistic discrimination that have not previously been used?
• Are there any issues of linguistic justice/injustice surrounding the use of some approaches to academia over others?
• How, if at all, can insights gleaned using different methodologies and evidence-sources be integrated into a coherent picture of unintentional linguistic prejudice?
• What should happen if different approaches to linguistic discrimination yield different accounts of what linguistic discrimination is like? How is it possible to adjudicate between different accounts developed using different methodologies or evidence?
• Should some approaches to combatting unintentional linguistic discrimination be prioritised over others?
• Do the Barcelona Principles for a Globally Inclusive Philosophy go far enough? Do they go too far?
• What can institutes of higher education and related funding bodies do to help level the linguistic playing field in academia?

Lex Academic® is a specialist author services firm supporting thousands of academics and global institutions with the finest English academic copy-editing, indexing, and translation. Their mission is to level the playing field for international researchers in the social sciences, arts, and humanities.