A difficulty for cognitive psychologists is establishing a standard for correct (non-biased) cognition. Why do we count some cognitive outcomes as right and others as wrong?
Behaviourally, we might use cognitive bias to explain behaviour inconsistent with a known objective. We need to be sure, here, that we have correctly identified the objective, correctly described the behaviour, and correctly understood the actors perception of the relationship - and none of these judgements can be made unambiguously on purely empirical grounds (Kripke).
Also, how do we know that our assessment of a judgement as 'unbiased' is not, itself, biased?
The answer, of course, is to do with quality of argument - an unbiased judgement is one which is consistent with a certain linguistic computation, which preserves intelligibility. While it is possible to wonder whether our activity reflects a cognitive bias, it isn't possible to speculate, within a conversation, that the grounds of the conversation generate nonsense - this would make the speculation itself nonsense as well.
In the case of a (potential) interlocutor, we may have to choose between attributing cognitive bias or withdrawing interlocutor status - between saying 'your choice doesn't make sense' and finding that what they appear to say doesn't make sense.
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