Some Startling Consequences of How Stereotypes Deceive Us

This paper argues that Puddifoot’s arguments in How Stereotypes Deceive Us have more radical consequences than those argued for in the book. It does this by pointing out two problems for evaluating stereotypes via Evaluative Dispositionalism, Puddifoot’s view. The first problem concerns the very large number of dispositions associated with any stereotype, and the second the difficulty of evaluating a stereotype in isolation from other elements of a person’s psychology. The paper suggests that, when we take seriously Puddifoot’s arguments, we’ll end up concluding that it’s not possible to assess the epistemic worth of any individual belief or stereotype. We could still discuss the epistemic merits of how it was formed, and discuss the epistemic consequences that this belief or stereotype has for a particular person in a particular situation. But overall epistemic evaluations of stereotypes, or even acts of stereotyping, would be something that we should try to avoid.