to give more support to my position: Joshua Greene has done a lot of interesting work that suggests that deontological judgments rely on system-1 thinking, whereas consequentialist judgments rely on system-2 thinking. In non-ethical contexts, these results would strongly suggest the presence of biases, especially if we consider situations were evolved heuristics are not goal-tracking.
Biases are only unconditionally bad in the case of epistemic rationality, and ethics is about action in the world, not massively rejecting truth. To expand:
Rationality is (at least) two different things called by one name. Moreover, while there is only one epistemic rationality, the pursuit of objective truth, there are many instrumental rationalities aiming at different goals.
Biases are regarded as obstructions to rationality … but which rationality? Any bias is a stumbling block to epistemic rationalism … but in what way would, for instance, egoistic bias be an impediment to the pursuit of selfish aims? The goal, in that case is the bias, and the bias the goal. But egotism is still a stumbling block to epistemic rationality, and to the pursuit of incompatible values, such as altruism.
That tells us two things: one is that what counts as a bias is relative, or context dependent. The other—in conjunction the reasonable supposition that humans don’t follow a single set of values all the time—is where bias comes from.
If humans are a messy hack with multiple value systems, and with a messy, leaky way of switching between them, then we would expect to see something like egotistical bias as a kind of hangover when switching to altruistic mode, and so on.
I think if you read all my comments here again, you will see enough qualifications in my points that suggest that I’m aware of and agree with the point you just made. My point on top of that is simply that often, people would consider these things to be biases under reflection, after they learn more.
Biases are only unconditionally bad in the case of epistemic rationality, and ethics is about action in the world, not massively rejecting truth. To expand:
Rationality is (at least) two different things called by one name. Moreover, while there is only one epistemic rationality, the pursuit of objective truth, there are many instrumental rationalities aiming at different goals.
Biases are regarded as obstructions to rationality … but which rationality? Any bias is a stumbling block to epistemic rationalism … but in what way would, for instance, egoistic bias be an impediment to the pursuit of selfish aims? The goal, in that case is the bias, and the bias the goal. But egotism is still a stumbling block to epistemic rationality, and to the pursuit of incompatible values, such as altruism.
That tells us two things: one is that what counts as a bias is relative, or context dependent. The other—in conjunction the reasonable supposition that humans don’t follow a single set of values all the time—is where bias comes from.
If humans are a messy hack with multiple value systems, and with a messy, leaky way of switching between them, then we would expect to see something like egotistical bias as a kind of hangover when switching to altruistic mode, and so on.
I think if you read all my comments here again, you will see enough qualifications in my points that suggest that I’m aware of and agree with the point you just made. My point on top of that is simply that often, people would consider these things to be biases under reflection, after they learn more.
My argument was that on reflection, not all biases are bad.