Intellectual Humility: Owning Our Limitations (2017) (original) (raw)
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This special issue will consist of six full-length articles by leading and up-and-coming philosophers on the topic of intellectual humility, a topic which has attracted a growing interest in the recent philosophical literature. While it is widely in regarded that intellectual humility is among the intellectual virtues, a cluster of questions demanding increasing attention are: why this is so, what does possessing and exercising intellectual humility consists in, how it should be best understood as advancing our epistemic goals, and how it might connect with an appreciation of how the success of our inquiries depends importantly on features of our social and physical environment beyond our control. This volume will bring together a range of different philosophical perspectives on these and related questions to do with intellectual humility with an aim to contributing importantly to this important and recent debate.
Intellectual Humility: Owning Our Limitations
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 2015
In the preface to Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Robert Nozick wonders why philosophical writings seem so arrogant:. . .the usual manner of presenting philosophical work puzzles me. Works of philosophy are written as though their authors believe them to be the absolutely final word on their subject. But it's not, surely, that each philosopher thinks that he finally, thank God, has found the truth and built an impregnable fortress around it. We are all actually much more modest than that. For good reason. Having thought long and hard about the view he proposes, a philosopher has a reasonably good idea about its weak points; the places where great intellectual weight is placed upon something perhaps too fragile to bear it, the places where the unraveling of the view might begin, the unprobed assumptions he feels uneasy about. 1 Although Nozick does not use these words, we might say that, by his lights, most philosophical writings display an astounding lack of intellectual humility. In her widely-acclaimed book, I Don't Know, Leah Hager Cohen relates a conversation with her students about a "well-read" and "incredibly smart" colleague named "Mary". Mary routinely exhibits an unusual response when 1
Limitations-Owning and the Interpersonal Dimensions of Intellectual Humility
Scientia et Fides
According to one prominent account of intellectual humility, it consists primarily of a disposition to “own” one’s intellectual limitations. This account has been criticized for neglecting the interpersonal dimensions of intellectual humility. We expect intellectually humble persons to be respectful and generous with their interlocutors and to avoid being haughty or domineering. I defend the limitations-owning account against this objection. I do so in two ways: first, by arguing that some of the interpersonal qualities associated with intellectual humility are qualities expressive of virtues other than intellectual humility; and second, by arguing that, when properly described, the kind of limitations-owning characteristic of intellectual humility in fact is robustly interpersonal. The result is a considerably broader and richer notion of the limitations the owning of which is characteristic of intellectual humility.
Intellectual Humility – a Moral Construct, an Intellectual Virtue
SERIES VII - SOCIAL SCIENCES AND LAW, 2021
The present literature review brings together conceptualizations and study results obtained from extensive work that has been done on the virtue of Intellectual Humility (IH) for the pasts 9 years. While philosophers don't settle yet to a single point of view on intellectual humility, psychologists take a pragmatic stance on the construct and evaluate possible implications IH can have on personal, social, and professional levels. The term is being extended to organizations, teams and organizational culture and studied in the intricate relationships established in the corporate culture. Studies in leadership also provide an insight of how organizations can benefit from the vision and culture a humble leader promotes.
Intellectual Humility: An Interpersonal Theory (Published in Ergo)
In this paper, I will argue in contrast with much of the existing literature, that humility and intellectual humility are interpersonal (as opposed to personal) virtues. Also in contrast with what has been said before, I will further argue that the fruits of intellectual humility are external to the virtue holder. The paper begins with a review of the literature on humility and intellectual humility. I then offer my alternative account, answer some objections, and briefly propose a compromise position to appease those who are sympathetic to traditional conceptions.
Intellectual humility: an old problem in a new psychological perspective
Current Issues in Personality Psychology, 2021
Though having been emphasised by philosophers and theologians for centuries, it is only in the last few years that the concept of intellectual humility has been explicitly defined and studied by empirical psychology. However, it has been long enough to recognise the prominent role that being intellectually humble plays for humane functioning, both at an intra- and inter-individual level. Having started with a broader philosophical and historical context, the present paper discusses the psychological conceptualisations of intellectual humility. Then the recent empirical studies are reviewed, including four strands of research referring to personality traits, cognitive functioning, social relations and religiosity. After presenting selected results, the prospects of psychological research on intellectual humility are discussed, including the limitations and challenges of measurement techniques as well as possible directions for future studies.
Toward an understanding of collective intellectual humility
Trends in Cognitive Science, 2024
The study of intellectual humility (IH), which is gaining increasing interest among cognitive scientists, has been dominated by a focus on individuals. We propose that IH operates at the collective level as the tendency of a collective’s members to attend to each other’s intellectual limitations and the limitations of their collective cognitive efforts. Given people’s propensity to better recognize others’ limitations than their own, IH may be more readily achievable in collectives than individuals. We describe the socio-cognitive dynamics that can interfere with collective IH and offer the solution of building intellectually humbling environments that create a culture of IH that can outlast the given membership of a collective. We conclude with promising research directions.
Predictors and consequences of intellectual humility
Nature Reviews Psychology, 2022
In a time of societal acrimony, psychological scientists have turned to a possible antidote-intellectual humility. Interest in intellectual humility comes from diverse research areas, including researchers studying leadership and organizational behaviour, personality science, positive psychology, judgement and decision-making, education, culture, and intergroup and interpersonal relationships. In this Review, we synthesize empirical approaches to the study of intellectual humility. We critically examine diverse approaches to defining and measuring intellectual humility and identify the common element: a meta-cognitive ability to recognize the limitations of one's beliefs and knowledge. After reviewing the validity of different measurement approaches, we highlight factors that influence intellectual humility, from relationship security to social coordination. Furthermore, we review empirical evidence concerning the benefits and drawbacks of intellectual humility for personal decision-making, interpersonal relationships, scientific enterprise and society writ large. We conclude by outlining initial attempts to boost intellectual humility, foreshadowing possible scalable interventions that can turn intellectual humility into a core interpersonal, institutional and cultural value.
Personality and Individual Differences, 2018
Recent scholarship in intellectual humility (IH) has attempted to provide deeper understanding of the virtue as personality trait and its impact on an individual's thoughts, beliefs, and actions. A limitations-owning perspective of IH focuses on a proper recognition of the impact of intellectual limitations and a motivation to overcome them, placing it as the mean between intellectual arrogance and intellectual servility. We developed the Limitations-Owning Intellectual Humility Scale to assess this conception of IH with related personality constructs. In Studies 1 (n = 386) and 2 (n = 296), principal factor and confirmatory factor analyses revealed a three-factor model – owning one's intellectual limitations, appropriate discomfort with intellectual limitations, and love of learning. Study 3 (n = 322) demonstrated strong test-retest reliability of the measure over 5 months, while Study 4 (n = 612) revealed limitations-owning IH correlated negatively with dogmatism, closed-mind-edness, and hubristic pride and positively with openness, assertiveness, authentic pride. It also predicted openness and closed-mindedness over and above education, social desirability, and other measures of IH. The limitations-owning understanding of IH and scale allow for a more nuanced, spectrum interpretation and measurement of the virtue, which directs future study inside and outside of psychology.