Alex Madva
Biographic Data
| ID | 1104052 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Alex Madva |
| GIVEN NAMES | Alex |
| FAMILY NAME | Madva |
| SIGNATURE | MADVA A |
| AFFILIATIONS | California State Polytechnic University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8222-5937 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 13 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 15 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Somebody Should Do Something
A novel and scientific approach to creating transformative social change—and the surprising ways that each of us can help make a real difference. Changing the world is difficult. One reason is that the most important problems, like climate change, racism, and poverty, are structural. They emerge from our collective practices: laws, economies, history, culture, norms, and built environments. The dilemma is that there is no way to make structural c…
Biases that won’t budge
This paper has two aims: first, to introduce a philosophical audience to research on implicit and explicit biases related to age; and second, to identify and explain ageist biases within social-scientific research. In the first case, evidence drawn from massive datasets, including both large language corpora and online tests with millions of participants, shows that implicit ageism has stayed remarkably persistent across time and space. This pers…
Change the People or Change the Policy? On the Moral Education of Antiracists
While those who take a "structuralist" approach to racial justice issues are right to call attention to the importance of social practices, laws, etc., they sometimes go too far by suggesting that antiracist efforts ought to focus on changing unjust social systems rather than changing individuals' minds. We argue that while the "either/or" thinking implied by this framing is intuitive and pervasive, it is misleading and self-undermining. We inste…
Duties of social identity? Intersectional objections to Sen’s identity politics
Amartya Sen argues that sectarian discord and violence are fueled by confusion about the nature of identity, including the pervasive tendency to see ourselves as members of singular social groups standing in opposition to other groups (e.g. Democrat vs. Republican, Muslim vs. Christian, etc.). Sen defends an alternative model of identity, according to which we all inevitably belong to a plurality of discrete identity groups (including ethnicities…
STEM Faculty’s Support of Togetherness during Mandated Separation
The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic initiated major disruptions to higher education systems. Physical spaces that previously supported interpersonal interaction and community were abruptly inactivated, and faculty largely took on the responsibility of accommodating classroom structures in rapidly changing situations. This study employed interviews to examine how undergraduate Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) instructors…
Social Connectedness in Physical Isolation
The COVID-19 outbreak spurred unplanned closures and transitions to online classes. Physical environments that once fostered social interaction and community were rendered inactive. We conducted interviews and administered surveys to examine undergraduate STEM students’ feelings of belonging and engagement while in physical isolation, and identified online teaching modes associated with these feelings. Surveys from a racially diverse group of 43 …
Individualism, Structuralism, and Climate Change
Scholars, journalists, and activists working on climate change often distinguish between “individual” and “structural” approaches to decarbonization. The former concern choices individuals can make to reduce their “personal carbon footprint” (e.g. eating less meat). The latter concern changes to institutions, laws, and other social structures. These two approaches are often framed as oppositional, representing a mutually exclusive forced choice b…
The Movement for Black Lives
The Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) has gained worldwide visibility as a grassroots social justice movement distinguished by a decentralized, nonhierarchical mode of organization. M4BL rose to prominence in part thanks to its protests against police brutality and misconduct directed at black Americans. However, its animating concerns are far broader, calling for a wide range of economic, political, legal, and cultural measures to address what it …
An Introduction to Implicit Bias
Because our knowledge-generating abilities are connected to our moral worth, we can wrong other people by treating them in ways that are disrespectful of their knowledge-generating abilities or place unjust epistemic burdens on them. Such wrongs are called “epistemic injustices.” Chapter 6 examines the ways in which implicit biases have been implicated in a range of epistemic injustices, including testimonial injustice, epistemic appropriation, a…
Individual and Structural Interventions
Given all that we have learned about bias and injustice, what can we do—and what should we do—to fight back? Chapter 12 introduces empirically-tested interventions for combating implicit (and explicit) bias and promoting a fairer world, from small daily-life debiasing tricks to larger structural interventions. Along the way, this chapter raises a range of moral, political, and strategic questions about these interventions, and stresses the import…
Introduction to Implicit Bias
Intersectionality as a Regulative Ideal
Appeals to intersectionality serve to remind us that social categories like race and gender cannot be adequately understood independently from each other. But what, exactly, is the intersectional thesis a thesis about? Answers to this question are remarkably diverse. Intersectionality is variously understood as a claim about the nature of social kinds, oppression, or experience ; about the limits of antidiscrimination law or identity politics ; o…
Understanding Implicit Bias
What is the status of research on implicit bias? In light of meta‐analyses revealing ostensibly low average correlations between implicit measures and behavior, as well as various other psychometric concerns, criticism has become ubiquitous. We argue that while there are significant challenges and ample room for improvement, research on the causes, psychological properties, and behavioral effects of implicit bias continues to deserve a role in th…
The Social Turn in Moral Psychology
Mark Fedyk argues persuasively for both the importance and the perils of interdisciplinarity in studies of ethical life. The book is dense with incisive argumentation and innovative proposals for integrating moral, social, and political philosophy with the psychological and social sciences. It will be of interest to aprioristically inclined normative and social theorists peeking over the fence at the empirical side of things, to experimentalists …
A Plea for Anti-Anti-Individualism
This essay responds to the criticism that contemporary efforts to redress discrimination and inequality are overly individualistic. Critics of individualism emphasize that these systemic social ills stem not from the prejudice, irrationality, or selfishness of individuals, but from underlying structural-institutional forces. They are skeptical, therefore, of attempts to change individuals' attitudes while leaving structural problems intact. I arg…
Why implicit attitudes are (probably) not beliefs
Ethical Automaticity
Social psychologists tell us that much of human behavior is automatic. It is natural to think that automatic behavioral dispositions are ethically desirable if and only if they are suitably governed by an agent’s reflective judgments. However, we identify a class of automatic dispositions that make normatively self-standing contributions to praiseworthy action and a well-lived life, independently of, or even in spite of, an agent’s reflective jud…
Why implicit attitudes are (probably) not beliefs
Ethical Automaticity
Social psychologists tell us that much of human behavior is automatic. It is natural to think that automatic behavioral dispositions are ethically desirable if and only if they are suitably governed by an agent’s reflective judgments. However, we identify a class of automatic dispositions that make normatively self-standing contributions to praiseworthy action and a well-lived life, independently of, or even in spite of, an agent’s reflective jud…
Ethical Automaticity
Social psychologists tell us that much of human behavior is automatic. It is natural to think that automatic behavioral dispositions are ethically desirable if and only if they are suitably governed by an agent’s reflective judgments. However, we identify a class of automatic dispositions that make normatively self-standing contributions to praiseworthy action and a well-lived life, independently of, or even in spite of, an agent’s reflective jud…
A Plea for Anti-Anti-Individualism
This essay responds to the criticism that contemporary efforts to redress discrimination and inequality are overly individualistic. Critics of individualism emphasize that these systemic social ills stem not from the prejudice, irrationality, or selfishness of individuals, but from underlying structural-institutional forces. They are skeptical, therefore, of attempts to change individuals' attitudes while leaving structural problems intact. I arg…
Why implicit attitudes are (probably) not beliefs
The Social Turn in Moral Psychology
Mark Fedyk argues persuasively for both the importance and the perils of interdisciplinarity in studies of ethical life. The book is dense with incisive argumentation and innovative proposals for integrating moral, social, and political philosophy with the psychological and social sciences. It will be of interest to aprioristically inclined normative and social theorists peeking over the fence at the empirical side of things, to experimentalists …
An Introduction to Implicit Bias
Because our knowledge-generating abilities are connected to our moral worth, we can wrong other people by treating them in ways that are disrespectful of their knowledge-generating abilities or place unjust epistemic burdens on them. Such wrongs are called “epistemic injustices.” Chapter 6 examines the ways in which implicit biases have been implicated in a range of epistemic injustices, including testimonial injustice, epistemic appropriation, a…
Individual and Structural Interventions
Given all that we have learned about bias and injustice, what can we do—and what should we do—to fight back? Chapter 12 introduces empirically-tested interventions for combating implicit (and explicit) bias and promoting a fairer world, from small daily-life debiasing tricks to larger structural interventions. Along the way, this chapter raises a range of moral, political, and strategic questions about these interventions, and stresses the import…
Introduction to Implicit Bias
Intersectionality as a Regulative Ideal
Appeals to intersectionality serve to remind us that social categories like race and gender cannot be adequately understood independently from each other. But what, exactly, is the intersectional thesis a thesis about? Answers to this question are remarkably diverse. Intersectionality is variously understood as a claim about the nature of social kinds, oppression, or experience ; about the limits of antidiscrimination law or identity politics ; o…
Understanding Implicit Bias
What is the status of research on implicit bias? In light of meta‐analyses revealing ostensibly low average correlations between implicit measures and behavior, as well as various other psychometric concerns, criticism has become ubiquitous. We argue that while there are significant challenges and ample room for improvement, research on the causes, psychological properties, and behavioral effects of implicit bias continues to deserve a role in th…
The Movement for Black Lives
The Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) has gained worldwide visibility as a grassroots social justice movement distinguished by a decentralized, nonhierarchical mode of organization. M4BL rose to prominence in part thanks to its protests against police brutality and misconduct directed at black Americans. However, its animating concerns are far broader, calling for a wide range of economic, political, legal, and cultural measures to address what it …
STEM Faculty’s Support of Togetherness during Mandated Separation
The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic initiated major disruptions to higher education systems. Physical spaces that previously supported interpersonal interaction and community were abruptly inactivated, and faculty largely took on the responsibility of accommodating classroom structures in rapidly changing situations. This study employed interviews to examine how undergraduate Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) instructors…
Social Connectedness in Physical Isolation
The COVID-19 outbreak spurred unplanned closures and transitions to online classes. Physical environments that once fostered social interaction and community were rendered inactive. We conducted interviews and administered surveys to examine undergraduate STEM students’ feelings of belonging and engagement while in physical isolation, and identified online teaching modes associated with these feelings. Surveys from a racially diverse group of 43 …
Individualism, Structuralism, and Climate Change
Scholars, journalists, and activists working on climate change often distinguish between “individual” and “structural” approaches to decarbonization. The former concern choices individuals can make to reduce their “personal carbon footprint” (e.g. eating less meat). The latter concern changes to institutions, laws, and other social structures. These two approaches are often framed as oppositional, representing a mutually exclusive forced choice b…
Duties of social identity? Intersectional objections to Sen’s identity politics
Amartya Sen argues that sectarian discord and violence are fueled by confusion about the nature of identity, including the pervasive tendency to see ourselves as members of singular social groups standing in opposition to other groups (e.g. Democrat vs. Republican, Muslim vs. Christian, etc.). Sen defends an alternative model of identity, according to which we all inevitably belong to a plurality of discrete identity groups (including ethnicities…
Change the People or Change the Policy? On the Moral Education of Antiracists
While those who take a "structuralist" approach to racial justice issues are right to call attention to the importance of social practices, laws, etc., they sometimes go too far by suggesting that antiracist efforts ought to focus on changing unjust social systems rather than changing individuals' minds. We argue that while the "either/or" thinking implied by this framing is intuitive and pervasive, it is misleading and self-undermining. We inste…
Somebody Should Do Something
A novel and scientific approach to creating transformative social change—and the surprising ways that each of us can help make a real difference. Changing the world is difficult. One reason is that the most important problems, like climate change, racism, and poverty, are structural. They emerge from our collective practices: laws, economies, history, culture, norms, and built environments. The dilemma is that there is no way to make structural c…
Biases that won’t budge
This paper has two aims: first, to introduce a philosophical audience to research on implicit and explicit biases related to age; and second, to identify and explain ageist biases within social-scientific research. In the first case, evidence drawn from massive datasets, including both large language corpora and online tests with millions of participants, shows that implicit ageism has stayed remarkably persistent across time and space. This pers…
Psychology (9 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · Social Psychology (8 works) · Epistemology (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Political science (6 works) · Law (4 works) · Political Philosophy and Ethics (4 works) · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment (4 works) · Computer Science (3 works)