Abstract
What makes an intellectual virtue a virtue? A straightforward and influential answer to this question has been given by virtue-reliabilists: a trait is a virtue only insofar as it is truth-conducive. In this paper I shall contend that recent arguments advanced by Jack Kwong in defence of the reliabilist view are good as far as they go, in that they advance the debate by usefully clarifying ways in how best to understand the nature of open-mindedness. But I shall argue that these considerations do not establish the desired conclusions that open-mindedness is truth-conducive. To establish these much stronger conclusions we would need an adequate reply to what I shall call Montmarquet’s objection. I argue that Linda Zagzebski’s reply to Montmarquet’s objection, to which Kwong defers, is inadequate. I conclude that it is contingent if open-mindedness is truth-conducive, and if a necessary tie to truth is what makes an intellectual virtue a virtue, then the status of open-mindedness as an intellectual virtue is jeopardised. We either need an adequate reliabilist response to Montmarquet’s objection, or else seek alternative accounts of what it is that makes a virtue a virtue. I conclude by briefly outlining some alternatives.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Not all versions of reliabilism, either about epistemic justification or the virtues, require truth-conduciveness in the actual world. For example, Sosa holds that the reliability of a cognitive disposition does not require that it attain truths in “highly unusual conditions”, just as the reliability of a car does not require that it start when submerged underwater. But for a trait to be a virtue it must be truth-conducive in “normal” circumstances, where reliability is indexed to environments (e.g. Sosa 2007, pp. 83-4). Following Comesaña (2002), we can call this a kind of “indexical reliabilism”. As Sosa notes, however, normality “is not just statistical normality” (2007, pp.83-4). But saying with any precision just exactly what an epistemically normal environment amounts to is a notoriously difficult problem. This has prompted people to develop alternative accounts of the truth-connection, or like Kwong, to defend actual world reliabilism. Simple actual world reliabilism avoids the problem of specifying what “epistemic normality” amounts to, since the relevant world of assessment is the one where the virtues are exercised, not counterfactual circumstances (normal or otherwise). Actual world reliabilism also has the advantage of giving a clear account of the value of the virtues in instrumental terms, since they are taken to be actually truth-conducive.
Scott Sturgeon is a philosopher who distinguishes what he calls the Reliability-Where problem from the Reliability-of-What problem that arises for process reliabilist theories of epistemic justification. Parallel issues arise here for reliabilist accounts of the intellectual virtues. For a discussion of these problems for reliabilism, see Sturgeon (2000), p. 96.
An anonymous referee suggested that Kwong’s characterization of the further conditions open-mindedness requires might blur the lines between open-mindedness and intellectual humility. Open-mindedness is close to, but distinct from, the virtue of intellectual humility. Being aware of one’s own biases and prejudices is very similar to the proper attentiveness to, and owning of, one’s intellectual limitations, which is the hallmark of Whitcomb et al.’s account of intellectual humility. See Whitcomb et al. (2017). It is an important open question what exactly both open-mindedness and intellectual humility amount to, as is the question of the extent to which they overlap or otherwise relate to one another. Thank you to the referee for pointing out this connection.
Wayne Riggs is an example of someone who develops this sort of rich notion of open-mindedness. Riggs argues that genuine open-mindedness requires that one takes challenges to ones own views seriously, and that doing so requires both self-knowledge and self-monitoring. Self-knowledge is required to know things like what one’s biases are, and what intellectual bad habits and weaknesses one has, etc. Self-knowledge is also required to know in what sorts of domains these distorting factors tend to operate. On Riggs’ view, self-monitoring is then required to put this self-knowledge into practice, by indentifying if one is in circumstances where one’s intellectual weaknesses tend to lead one astray. For a development of this account of open-mindedness, see Riggs (2010).
Thank you to an anonymous referee for raising this issue.
Thank you to an anonymous referee for this suggestion.
An anonymous referee suggested that Kwong does not, as far as they can see, intend his ways of handling recent objections raised by Carter and Gordon, Levy, and Cohen to resolve Montmarquet’s objection. This may be correct. I mean only to say that, intended by Kwong or not, what he does say does not give reliabilists the resources to reply to Montmarquet’s objection. If reliabilists can resolve this problem, they must look elsewhere for a solution. The referee also noted that we do not know why Kwong thinks Zagzebski’s responses are adequate in resolving Montmarquet’s objection. This is true: since we do not know Kwong’s reasons, the best we can do is examine Zagzebski’s reply, and determine if it is sufficient to block Montmarquet’s objection. This leaves open the possibility that Kwong might reply differently to the objection.
For the suggestion linking a character trait being a virtue with its thereby being a good making feature of the person who possesses it, see Whitcomb et al. (2017), p. 12. For discussion of the idea that for a character trait to be a virtue, the motivations that underlie it must make its possessor a good person, see Baehr (2011), ch. 6 and Battaly (2015), ch. 3.
Thanks to audiences at Lingnan University, Hong Kong, and the Bled Epistemology Conference, Slovenia. Thanks also to two anonymous referees for Synthese, and especially Rhiannon James for helpful discussion and written comments on earlier drafts of this paper.
References
Baehr, J. (2011). The inquiring mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Battaly, H. (2008). Virtue epistemology. Philosophy Compass, 3(4), 639–663.
Battaly, H. (2015). Virtue. Malden, MA: Polity Press.
Becker, K. (2008). Epistemic luck and the generality problem. Philosophical Studies, 139, 353–366.
Beebe, J. (2004). The generality problem, statistical relevance, and the tri- level hypothesis. Nous, 38, 177–195.
Carter, J. A., & Gordon, E. C. (2014). Openmindedness and truth. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 44, 207–224.
Cassam, Q. (2016). Vice epistemology. The Monist, 99, 159–180.
Cohen, S. (1984). Justification and truth. Philosophical Studies, 46, 279–295.
Comesaña, J. (2002). The diagonal and the demon. Philosophical Studies, 110, 249–66.
Comesaña, J. (2006). A well-founded solution to the generality problem. Philosophical Studies, 129, 27–47.
Conee, E., & Feldman, R. (1998). The generality problem for reliabilism. Philosophical Studies, 89, 1–29.
Goldman, A. (1979). What is justified belief. In G. Pappas (Ed.), Justification and knowledge. Dordrecht: D. Reidel.
Goldman, A. (1986). Epistemology and cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Greco, J. (2010). Achieving knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Heller, M. (1995). The simple solution to the problem of generality. Nous, 29, 501–515.
Kwong, J. M. C. (2017). Is open-mindedness conducive to truth? Synthese, 194, 1613–1626.
Lehrer, K., & Cohen, S. (1983). Justification, truth, and coherence. Synthese, 55, 191–207.
Montmarquet, J. (1987). Epistemic virtue. MIND, 96, 482–497.
Montmarquet, J. (1993). Epistemic virtue and doxastic responsibility. Roman and Littlefield: Lanham.
Riggs, W. (2010). Open-mindedness. Metaphilosophy, 41, 172–188.
Rowbottom, D. P. (2011). Popper’s critical rationalism: A philosophical investigation. New York: Routledge.
Sosa, E. (1980). The raft and the pyramid: Coherence versus foundations in the theory of knowledge. Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 5, 3–25.
Sosa, E. (1991). Knowledge in perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sosa, E. (2007). A virtue epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sturgeon, S. (2000). Matters of mind. London: Routledge.
Whitcomb, D., Battaly, H., Baehr, J., & Howard-Snyder, D. (2017). Intellectual humility: Owning our limitations. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 94, 509–539.
Zagzebski, L. (1996). Virtues of the mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Madison, B.J.C. Is open-mindedness truth-conducive?. Synthese 196, 2075–2087 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1571-0
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1571-0