Beliefs Without Judgments: A Plea for the Belief View of Implicit Attitudes

Implicit attitudes (IAs) are mental states that are responsible for discriminatory behaviour called 'implicit bias'. There is no agreement about the nature of IAs. Some argue that they don't differ from beliefs. This paper defends this view from the following objection: one is in a good epistemic position with respect to one's beliefs; if one believes that P, one tends to know that one believes that P. However, studies show that often people are not aware of having IAs. How can it be if IAs are beliefs? I address this objection by defending the claim that implicit beliefs constitute a special kind of belief — beliefs that are not accompanied by the relevant judgments. More precisely, if one implicitly believes that P, a tokening of this belief is not accompanied by judging that P. Since judging is a route to knowing one's beliefs, this route is blocked for implicit beliefs.