Implicit Biases and Habitual Cognition: Challenges for Moral Responsibility

Abstract This paper explores whether individuals can be held morally responsible for actions influenced by implicit biases, i.e., automatic, unconscious attitudes that perpetuate social stereotypes. Using racial bias as a central example, it argues that such dispositions challenge traditional accounts of moral responsibility, which typically rely on reflective awareness and volitional control. By distinguishing among attributability, accountability, and answerability, the paper critically examines existing approaches and develops an ecologically grounded framework that situates responsibility within the cognitive, environmental, and institutional contexts shaping agency, understanding implicit biases and biased behaviors through the lens of habitual cognition. This framework supports a nuanced conception of moral responsibility that incorporates both accountability and answerability, emphasizing moral self-cultivation alongside the transformation of the social conditions that sustain biases.