On Alief and the Interpretation of the Implicit Association Test

Talia Morag (Deakin University )

In this paper I examine Tamar Gendler’s influential notion of alief, a mental state that is posited to explain behaviours, such as racist biased behaviours, that persist despite a person’s explicit contrary judgment. Taking into account Eric Mandelbaum’s critique of alief, we are left with a notion that corresponds precisely to what the Implicit Association Test is widely interpreted to test. I claim that what remains of aliefs is nothing other than quasijudgmentalism in the philosophy of emotion. If this is right then this account of implicitly biased behaviours is non-explanatory and should be rejected. We must conclude, then, that whatever the Implicit Association Test is testing for, it is not an alief. Finally I briefly outline a proposal for an alternative interpretation of what the test it testing for.

Bio:

Dr Talia Morag is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University. She works on philosophical psychology, especially the philosophy of emotions and the philosophical foundations of psychoanalysis. Recently her book Emotion, Imagination, and the Limits of Reason was published by Routledge (2016). She is the founding director of Psyche + Society, which organises public conversations about social issues from a philosophical perspective enriched by psychoanalytic insights.