Abstract
Intellectual humility plays a crucial role among intellectual virtues. It has attracted considerable attention from virtue epistemologists, who have offered a fair number of treatments. In this essay, I argue that, regardless of the difference among these treatments, they are beset by two problems: (1) they fall into a circular argument; (2) they fall into a self-referential contradiction. I then argue that a recent proposal by D. Pritchard allows us to avoid (1), but not (2). However, by combining this proposal with another reflection advanced by the same author while he discusses the Wittgensteinian notion of hinge commitments, it is possible to avoid (2). The thesis that emerges is that only a partial application of intellectual humility solves (2). Finally, I reinforce this thesis by rejecting an alternative solution to (2).
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Notes
Ian Church and Peter Samuelson, Intellectual Humility. An Introduction to the Philosophy and Science (London-New York: Bloomsbury Academy, 2017), p. 30.
Alessandra Tanesini, ‘Intellectual Humility as Attitude,’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 96 (2018), p. 399. The author insists that the collection of characteristics usually attributed to intellectual humility is heterogeneous (see p. 401). She focuses on modesty and self-acceptance, where the latter is the concern with one’s own limitations and is conceptually distinct from modesty. Their psychological unity, however, makes intellectual humility one single virtue.
According to James Spiegel, intellectual humility is ‘second-order open-mindedness.’ Properly speaking, so he argues, open-mindedness is a first-order attitude toward one’s beliefs, whereas intellectual humility regards the attitude we take toward ourselves as believers. See James Spiegel, ‘Open-mindedness and intellectual humility,’ Theory and Research in Education 10 (2012), pp. 27–38. Also, Spiegel applies Jonathan Adler’s characterization of open mindedness as a second-order attitude to intellectual humility. I will refer to Adler’s reflection below. See below, notes 38ff.
Wayne Riggs mentions views of open-mindedness from which it emerges that ‘to be open-minded is to be aware of one’s fallibility as a believer, and to be willing to acknowledge the possibility that anytime one believes something, it is possible that one is wrong.’ (Wayne Riggs, ‘Open-Mindedness,’ Metaphilosophy 41 (2010), p. 180). In other words, ‘open-mindedness seems nothing short of rationality itself’ (p. 179).
For Duncan Pritchard, open-mindedness and intellectual humility are not manifestations of one single virtue ‘as one can be open-minded without thereby being intellectually humble’ (‘Intellectual Humility and the Epistemology of Disagreement,’ Synthese (2018), online first, p. 7 n. 13).
Robert C. Roberts, and William Jay Wood, Intellectual Virtues: An Essay in Regulative Epistemology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 236.
Laura Garcia, ‘Being Unimpressed with Ourselves: Reconceiving Humility,’ Philosophia 34 (2006), p. 418.
See Julia Driver, Uneasy virtue (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2001).
Driver, Uneasy virtue, p. 115 note 5.
Driver, Uneasy virtue, p. 115 note 5.
Driver, Uneasy virtue, p. xiv.
Driver, ‘Modesty and Ignorance,’ Ethics 109 (1999), p. 828.
Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, 1123b3-4, tr. William D. Ross. In The Works of Aristotle, revised by L. Brown (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). Aristotle also says that there is a biunivocal relationship between wisdom and moral excellence: ‘It is impossible to be good in the full sense of the word without practical wisdom or to be a man of practical wisdom without moral excellence or virtue’ (1144b27-30).
Roberts and Wood, Intellectual Virtues, p. 241.
See Dennis Whitcomb, Heather Battaly, Jason Baehr, Daniel Howard-Snyder, ‘Intellectual Humility: Owning our Limitations,’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 94 (2017), p. 516.
Dennis Whitcomb, Heather Battaly, Jason Baehr, Daniel Howard-Snyder, ‘Intellectual Humility: Owning our Limitations,’ p. 517.
Dennis Whitcomb, Heather Battaly, Jason Baehr, Daniel Howard-Snyder, ‘Intellectual Humility: Owning our Limitations,’ p. 517.
Dennis Whitcomb, Heather Battaly, Jason Baehr, Daniel Howard-Snyder, ‘Intellectual Humility: Owning our Limitations,’ p. 518.
See Peter Hill et al., ‘A Few Good Measures.’ In Handbook of Humility: Theory, Research, and Applications, ed. by E. Worthington, D. Davis, and J. Hook (New York and London: Routledge, 2017), p. 119.
See Alessandra Tanesini, ‘Intellectual Humility as Attitude,’ p. 409.
Pritchard, ‘Intellectual Humility and the Epistemology of Disagreement,’ p. 6.
Pritchard, ‘Intellectual Humility and the Epistemology of Disagreement,’ p. 11.
Pritchard, ‘Intellectual Humility and the Epistemology of Disagreement,’ p. 9.
A convincing criticism has been addressed to this account: ‘The disposition to believe as one ought is either the disposition to believe virtuously or the disposition to believe responsibly; but nothing as general as these dispositions is identical with anything as specific as IH’ (Dennis Whitcomb, Heather Battaly, Jason Baehr, Daniel Howard-Snyder, ‘Intellectual Humility: Owning our Limitations,’ p. 512).
Church and Samuelson, Intellectual Humility. An Introduction to the Philosophy and Science, p. 7.
As is known, Aristotle never included humility in his table of virtues. For him, the humble person is ‘the servile,’ whereas magnanimity, which implies self-assurance and self-fulfillment, is the mean between the two extremes of humbleness and proudness (see Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, 1123a35ff.).
Tanesini, ‘Caring for Esteem and Intellectual Reputation,’ Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 84 (2018), p. 48.
As Pritchard has recently argued, however, ‘the epistemological import of disagreements (both of the ‘deep’ and the ‘epistemic peer’ kind) has been overstated’ (Pritchard, ‘Wittgensteinian Hinge Epistemology and Deep Disagreement,’ Topoi online first p. 8 n 18).
Church and Samuelson, Intellectual Humility. An Introduction to the Philosophy and Science, p. 274.
Church and Samuelson, Intellectual Humility. An Introduction to the Philosophy and Science, p. 285.
Church and Samuelson, Intellectual Humility. An Introduction to the Philosophy and Science, p. 4.
Dennis Whitcomb, Heather Battaly, Jason Baehr, Daniel Howard-Snyder, ‘Intellectual Humility: Owning our Limitations,’ p. 525.
Dennis Whitcomb, Heather Battaly, Jason Baehr, Daniel Howard-Snyder, ‘Intellectual Humility: Owning our Limitations,’ p. 525.
Pritchard, ‘Intellectual Humility and the Epistemology of Disagreement,’ p. 9. Here is Pritchard’s view in more detail: ‘According to the non-egotist-proposal, intellectual humility…will involve manifesting such dispositions as an openness to other people’s viewpoints, a willingness to listen to counterevidence, and the inclination to change one’s mind if the epistemic facts require it, where such dispositions are rooted in appropriate motivational states (i.e., genuine intellectual respect for others, and a love of the intellectual good more generally)’ (Ibid., p. 7).
Pritchard has researched on this in many publications, tracing back to Wittgenstein’s final notebooks published as On Certainty in 1969. For more on this, let me mention at least International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 6 (2016) 2–3, ed. by A. Coliva and D. Moyal-Sharrock, pp. 73–350, entirely devoted to hinge epistemology. This double issue contains essays by Pritchard, Annalisa Coliva, John Greco, Allan Hazlett, and others.
‘If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty.’ (Wittgenstein, On Certainty, ed. by Gertrude E. M. Anscombe and Georg H. von Wright (Oxford: Blackwell, 1969), § 250).
For more on this, see D. Pritchard, Epistemic Angst: Radical Skepticism and the Groundlessness of Our Believing (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2016), Chapter 4.
Allan Hazlet, ‘Higher-Order Epistemic Attitudes and Intellectual Humility,’ Episteme 9 (2012) 3, p. 205. See above, note 3.
See above, notes 3 and 5. The closeness in question is confirmed by the fact that a substantive aspect of intellectual humility that I have discussed here is shared with open-mindedness. William Hare sees this aspect as the meaning of open-mindedness: the open-minded person ‘is disposed to revise or reject the position he holds if sound objections are brought against it’ (William Hare, Open-Mindedness and Education (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1979), p. 9, cit. in Riggs, ‘Open-Mindedness,’ p. 178). Not everyone, however, agrees.
Jonathan Adler, ‘Reconciling Open-Mindedness and Belief,’ Theory and Research in Education 2 (2004), p. 130.
Riggs, ‘Open-Mindedness,’ p. 180.
Riggs, ‘Open-Mindedness,’ p. 181.
References
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Hare, W. (1979). Open-Mindedness and Education. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press.
Hazlet, A. (2012). Higher-Order Epistemic Attitudes and Intellectual Humility. Episteme, 9, 205–223.
Hill, P. et al. (2017). ‘A Few Good Measures.’ In Handbook of Humility. Theory, Research, and Applications, ed. by Everett Worthington, Don Davis, and Joshua Hook. New York and London: Routledge.
International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 6 (2016) 2–3, ed. by Annalisa Coliva and Danièle Moyal-Sharrock, 73–350.
Pritchard, D. (2016). Epistemic Angst: Radical Skepticism and the Groundlessness of Our Believing. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Pritchard, D. (2018). ‘Intellectual Humility and the Epistemology of Disagreement.’ In Knowledge and Justification: New Perspectives, ed. by Rodrigo Borges and Ernest Sosa. Synthese, special issue.
Pritchard, D. (2018). Wittgensteinian Hinge Epistemology and Deep Disagreement. Topoi online first, 1–9.
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Roberts, R. C., & Wood, W. J. (2007). Intellectual Virtues: An Essay in Regulative Epistemology. New York: Oxford University Press.
Spiegel, J. S. (2012). Open-mindedness and intellectual humility. Theory and Research in Education, 10, 27–38.
Tanesini, A. (2018). Caring for esteem and intellectual reputation. Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, 84, 47–67.
Tanesini, A. (2018). Intellectual humility as attitude. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 96, 399–420.
Withcomb, D., Battaly, H., Baehr, J., & Howard-Snyder, D. (2017). Intellectual humility: owning our limitations. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 94, 509–539.
Wittgenstein, L. (1969). On Certainty, ed. by Gertrude E. M. Anscombe and Georg H. von Wright. Oxford: Blackwell.
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Di Ceglie, R. Intellectual Humility with Partial Application. Philosophia 50, 437–449 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-021-00390-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-021-00390-y