Should we trust our own eyes? Epistemic challenges from cognitive penetration and implicit bias.

We usually think that ‘seeing for ourselves’ is a proper way to decide a question. But how proper is this if what we see is biased by what we already (implicitly) believe? Our common sense conception of perception as one of our fundamental sources of knowledge and justification thus appears threatened by the empirical phenomena of cognitive penetration and implicit bias. In the worst case, perception simply reinforces our beliefs and biases rather than that it serves as an independent check for those beliefs and biases. This project investigates to what extent these worries are founded by looking in more detail at the challenges for perceptual justification raised by cognitive penetration and implicit bias, and the ways in which these challenges can be answered. Specifically, the project will (1) use empirical and philosophical research to assess the different types of influence of belief and bias on perception, (2) explicate the epistemic challenges that arise from this influence, and (3) investigate viable responses to these challenges. Given that this research is thus located at the intersection of empirical research, philosophy of mind, and epistemology, it can be expected that its results will be interesting to researchers from different scientific fields. Moreover, by taking into account the effects that implicit bias has on our perception of the world, the project also contributes to an important societal debate of how those effects can and should be diminished.