Abstract
Intellectual humility is a worthwhile virtue. Whitcomb et al. (Philos Phenomenol Res 94(3):520, 2017) recently propose a novel account of intellectual humility. According to this account, intellectual humility consists of proper attentiveness to and owning of one’s intellectual limitations. We argue that this account is in accordance with empirical work on intellectual humility, but it has two problems. It leaves open the possibility that one can be both intellectually humble and arrogant and that it does not adequately explain the strangeness associated with self-attribution of intellectual humility. Subsequently, we explore an interesting connection between intellectual humility and ignorance. Our view is that intellectual humility can lead to ignorance in the internalist sense, but this is acceptable, in that intellectual humility also gives rise to valuable epistemic standings, such as understanding and wisdom.
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Notes
Traditional epistemology discusses problems such as the nature of knowledge, the value of knowledge, and the nature and structure of epistemic justification. We can also call traditional epistemology ‘belief-based’ epistemology since beliefs are the primary objects of epistemic evaluation. On the contrary, virtue epistemology is agent-based epistemology in that agents are the primary objects of epistemic evaluation.
Typical virtue reliabilists are Ernest Sosa and John Greco. For Sosa, virtues are reliable faculties or skills. They are dispositions to attain more true beliefs than false ones. The reliability of a cognitive disposition does not require that it attain truths in highly unusual conditions. For more, see Sosa (1991).
For convenience, we occasionally use IH to mean intellectually humble in this paper as well. Contexts should indicate which IH we mean.
See Austin (1970, 185) for this distinction.
According to Whitcomb et al., this view is strong in predicting characteristic behaviours of an intellectually humble person. Also, it avoids problems that alternative views face. For our purpose, we will put these advantages aside. We don’t deny that this view is worthwhile and should be taken seriously.
It is easy to find other types pf limitations, such as physical or psychological limitations. One might be too short to play professional basketball, or one cannot run due to obesity.
Church (2017, 1078) also notices this problem.
Apart from explaining the strangeness, they also try to reduce the strangeness by considering some contexts where asserting one’s humility is not so strange. See Whitcomb et al. (2017, 535).
A case in point is the famous Duke of Devonshire. As Moore (2013, 245) puts it, the Duke of Devonshire once dreamt that he was speaking in the House of Lords. He was, in fact, speaking in the House of Lords but he didn’t thereby come to know that he was speaking in the House of Lords. What matters in the case is not the truth condition of knowledge but other condition (justification for instance) of knowledge.
In contemporary epistemology, radical scepticism can be motivated by this form of argument. The second claim is an instance of the closure principle, which can be put as follows:
If one knows that P and one knows that P entails Q, then one is in a position to know that Q.
See recent discussions of closure-based sceptical arguments in Pritchard (2015) and Wang (2014, 2017).
This result is reminiscent of contextualism in contemporary epistemology. This view holds that we lack everyday knowledge in the sceptical scenario, but we can retain knowledge in everyday contexts and what explains the difference is the shifted standard for knowledge. For example, see DeRose (1995). The owning-one’s-limitations account of IH seems to allow different appropriateness of limitations owning.
If one thinks that one has absolute authority on some matter, one would be regarded as extremely arrogant rather than humble.
This rational requirement has been discussed by Wright (2004, 194). He calls general assumptions of a project presupposition. For him, ‘P is a presupposition of a particular cognitive project, if to doubt P (in advance) would rationally commit one to doubting the significance or competence of the project’. Later on, he puts forth the idea of ‘entitlement of cognitive project’.
For more on this point, see Wang (2017, 219). In this paper, Wang constructs a Wittgensteinian modest transcendental argument. Here is the basic idea. To make our investigation possible, we have to rely on some undoubted assumptions. However, this fact alone does not mean that these assumptions are unwarranted.
Understanding requires not only true beliefs but also a grasp of how things are connected in a system. Wisdom can be understood as know-how, i.e., know how to live well.
Driver (1989, 378) advocates an ignorance-based account of modesty (humility). For her, one cannot make self-attribution of modesty because this virtue requires one to underestimate one’s self-worth. In saying that one is modest, one represents oneself as knowing that one is modest and hence one fails to underestimate one’s self-worth. Her discussion between modesty (humility) and ignorance motivates our thought here.
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This research is sponsored by Shanghai Pujiang Program (No. 18PJC015).
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Wang, J., Yang, X. Intellectual Humility and Owning One’s Limitations. Fudan J. Hum. Soc. Sci. 12, 353–369 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40647-019-00260-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40647-019-00260-8