Natalia Washington and Daniel Kelly marries moral philosophy and cognitive psychology and posits that implicit biases, racism, sexism, homophobia are a result of psychological forces. But, the central ism of their paper is racism. They argue that due to psychological forces the mechanism of which are often hidden from our consciousness, and influences our behavior, must be taken into consideration when it comes to culpability. However, because the centrality of their argument rest primarily on the Implicit Bias Association Test that is claimed to measure ‘unconscious bias;’ which they have suggested is primarily the source of racism or could be, has significant implications in terms of moral responsibility and culpability. However, the Implicit Bias Association Test has increasingly come under scrutiny and its ability to test for “unconscious bias” is questioned. Moreover, there is not consensus within the field of psychology of there is actually a separate consciousness. And if it is unconscious how does one detect the ‘unconscious?’ How, does one detect something that we cannot empirically prove to exist? What are issues at hand if we are relying on a flawed test to combat injustice?
