Intellectual Humility, Confidence, and Argumentation (original) (raw)

Intellectual Humility and Assertion

Routledge Handbook on the Philosophy of Humility (eds.) M. Alfano, M. Lynch & A. Tanesini, (London: Routledge).

Recent literature suggests that intellectual humility is valuable to its possessor not only morally, but also epistemically—viz., from a point of view where (put roughly) epistemic aims such as true belief, knowledge and understanding are what matters. Perhaps unsurprisingly, epistemologists working on intellectual humility have focused almost exclusively on its ramifications for how we go about forming, maintaining and evaluating our own beliefs, and by extension, ourselves as inquirers. Less explored by contrast is how intellectual humility might have implications for how we should conduct our practice of asserting. The present entry aims to rectify this oversight by connecting these two topics in a way that sharpens how it is that intellectual humility places several distinctive kinds of demands on assertion, and more generally, on how we communicate what we believe and know.

INTELLECTUAL HUMILITY AND THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF DISAGREEMENT

Synthese, 2018

It is widely accepted that one strong motivation for adopting a conciliatory stance with regard to the epistemology of peer disagreement is that the non-conciliatory alternatives are incompatible with the demands of intellectual character, and incompatible with the virtue of intellectual humility in particular. It is argued that this is a mistake, at least once we properly understand what intellectual humility involves. Given some of the inherent problems facing conciliatory proposals, it is maintained that non-conciliatory approaches to epistemic peer disagreement are thus on much stronger dialectical ground than many suppose, including some defenders of this line. In particular, non-conciliatory proposals can resist the idea that epistemic peer disagreement directly weakens one's epistemic justification, as conciliatory views maintain. This means that the epistemic justification that our beliefs in this regard enjoy, and thus our knowledge, is more secure than conciliatory approaches to epistemic peer disagreement would suggest.

Using self-affirmation to increase intellectual humility in debate

Royal Society Open Science

Intellectual humility, which entails openness to other views and a willingness to listen and engage with them, is crucial for facilitating civil dialogue and progress in debate between opposing sides. In the present research, we tested whether intellectual humility can be reliably detected in discourse and experimentally increased by a prior self-affirmation task. Three hundred and three participants took part in 116 audio- and video-recorded group discussions. Blind to condition, linguists coded participants' discourse to create an intellectual humility score. As expected, the self-affirmation task increased the coded intellectual humility, as well as participants’ self-rated prosocial affect (e.g. empathy). Unexpectedly, the effect on prosocial affect did not mediate the link between experimental condition and intellectual humility in debate. Self-reported intellectual humility and other personality variables were uncorrelated with expert-coded intellectual humility. Implicati...

Intellectual Humility, Knowledge-How and Disagreement

A familiar point in the literature on the epistemology of disagreement is that in the face of disagreement with a recognised epistemic peer the epistemically virtuous agent should adopt a stance of intellectual humility. That is, the virtuous agent should take a conciliatory stance and reduce her commitment to the proposition under dispute (e.g., Elga 2007; Feldman 2004; Christensen 2007). In this paper, we ask the question of how such intellectual humility would manifest itself in a corresponding peer disagreement regarding knowledge-how. We argue that while it is relatively straightforward to recast this debate in terms of a reductive intellectualist account of knowledge-how (e.g., Stanley & Williamson 2001; Stanley 2011a; 2011b; Brogaard 2008; 2009; 2011), whereby knowledge-how just is a matter of having a particular propositional attitude, the issue becomes more complex once we turn to anti-intellectualist positions (e.g., Ryle 1945; 1949; Poston 2009; Carter & Pritchard 2013; 2014). On these views, after all, such a disagreement won’t be just a matter of disagreeing about the truth of a proposition. Accordingly, to the extent that some kind of conciliation is plausibly required of the virtuous agent in the face of a recognised peer disagreement, this conciliation will not consist simply in belief revision. We propose a novel way to address this problem. We claim that what is required of the epistemically virtuous agent when confronted with peer disagreement regarding knowing how to φ is that thereafter she should be disposed to employ her way of φ-ing across a narrower range of practical circumstances than beforehand. Moreover, just as an agent needs to call on her intellectual virtues in order to determine the extent of conciliation required in an ordinary case of epistemic peer disagreement, so the intellectual virtues will play an important role in determining this shift in dispositions to φ that occurs as regards epistemic peer disagreement about knowledge-how.

Disagreement, Intellectual Humility, and Reflection

Thinking about Oneself: The Place and Value of Reflection in Philosophy and Psychology, 2019

It is often suggested that responding to a disagreement with one's epistemic peer with anything less than conciliation (i.e., a downgrading of one's conviction in the contested proposition) is incompatible with the demands of intellectual humility. I argue that this is mistaken, and that on the most plausible conception of intellectual humility it can be entirely reasonable to stick to one's original judgement. What is required by intellectual humility, I claim, is further reflection on one's epistemic position with regard to the target proposition. Crucially, however, such reflection is not to be understood as being incompatible with continued conviction in the target proposition.

Virtuous Arguing Conviction Humility

Ethical Theory and Moral Practice

Can one enter into an argument with one's intellectual equals in good faith if one regards the matter in hand as already settled? Adopting such an attitude looks very much like taking a dogmatic stance, in that one is closing one's mind to counterarguments in advance. Dogmatism is, of course, an intellectual vice. Moreover, such dogmatism seems morally problematic, in that one is failing to treat one's adversary with due respect. While there is clearly something correct about this line of thinking-dogmatism, like all intellectual vice, is obviously to be avoided-it is also maintained that, properly understood, there need be nothing intellectually viceful about engaging in an argument where one regards the subject matter as settled. Related to this point, it is contended that someone who possesses the intellectual virtue of intellectual humility may well engage in arguments in just this fashion. The upshot is that one can consistently and properly argue with both conviction and intellectual humility.

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.

Educating for Intellectual Humility

Jason Baehr (ed.), Intellectual Virtues and Education: Essays in Applied Virtue Epistemology (London: Routledge, 2015), 54-70.

Many contemporary philosophical virtue theorists have begun to restore the sense of an intimacy between virtue, character, and ‘the good life’, and, in turn, philosophers of education explore the ways that educational practice could contribute to the cultivation of virtuous character. Certainly many philosophers and educationalists will agree with Ben Kotzee that it is ‘obvious’ that education ought to ‘form good intellectual character’ (2013: p.163). I am sympathetic to this claim, but also sensitive to the worries of those sceptics who ask about the practical, pedagogical, and philosophical issues it raises.. My purpose in this chapter is to contribute to the revival of aretaic conceptions of education, but in a way sensitive to those sceptics’ concerns. Specifically, I offer an account of the specific virtue of intellectual humility, then show its integral role in a range of familiar educational practices and concerns, and finally describe how certain entrenched educational attitudes and conceptions marginalise or militate against the cultivation and exercise of this virtue.

Knowledge, Assertion and Intellectual Humility

This paper has two central aims. First, we motivate a puzzle. The puzzle features four independently plausible but jointly inconsistent claims. One of the four claims is the sufficiency leg of the knowledge norm of assertion (KNA-S), according to which one is properly epistemically positioned to assert that p if one knows that p. We propose that rejecting (KNA-S) is the best way out of the puzzle. Our argument to this end appeals to the epistemic value of intellectual humility in social-epistemic practice.