Implicit Bias and the Requirement to Treat Others as Individuals

FEDERICO JOSÉ ARENA

Girona

Congreso; Workshop on Cognitive Bias and Evidential Reasoning - First Michele Taruffo Girona Evidence Week; 2022

Universitat de Girona

According to what might be call the enlightened view, discrimination in legal reasoning, including the assessment of evidence, may be avoided by replacing bias and others forms of dubious categorization by generalizations with statistical support. However, this solution has been conceived of as incompatible with the requirement of treating others as individuals, so that at the end of the day discrimination is not avoided. As a rejoinder, the advocates of the enlightened view claim that the requirement is unintelligible, because it is not possible to treat others without the help of generalizations. In this text I will try to offer a defense of the requirement even if it is not the case that it is applicable in all instances of evidential reasoning.