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Intellectual Humility and Humbling Environments

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Abstract

While there are many competing accounts and scales of intellectual humility, philosophers and psychologists are generally united in treating it as an epistemically beneficial disposition of individual agents. I call the research guided by this supposition the traditional approach to studying intellectual humility. The traditional approach is entirely understandable in light of recent findings that individual differences in intellectual humility are associated with various deleterious epistemic tendencies. Nonetheless, I argue that its near monopoly has resulted in an underestimation of important limitations of human cognition. In particular, it neglects the fact that intellectual arrogance can be both deeply recalcitrant and significantly beneficial for bounded cognitive agents whose reliance on one another is profound. I propose to integrate these insights into the study of intellectual humility by treating it as a collective virtue that gets manifested in the structure of epistemic environments. More specifically, it is an interactive virtue that harnesses and constrains intellectual arrogance to yield benefits for both individuals and collectives. I claim that this can happen only within humbling environments, such as forecasting tournaments and open institutional science.

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Notes

  1. For a survey of the mainstream accounts of intellectual humility, see (Snow 2019) and (Ballantyne 2021).

  2. This is the account of intellectual humility that I take for granted in this paper, though I believe that most alternative accounts fit squarely within the traditional approach.

  3. Alternatively, we might adopt a consequentialist conception of intellectual humility, according to which what counts as occupying the virtuous mean between intellectual arrogance and servility is determined entirely by the likely outcomes of our epistemic behaviour. See, for example, (Simmons et al. 2023).

  4. For an account of scaffolded virtues, see Bland 2024, § 6.2.2.

  5. I am sceptical that this is actually the case with intellectual laziness, and responsibilist traits more generally. The reasons for my scepticism are presented in (Bland 2024, §4.1).

  6. See (Vazire 2010) on the self-other knowledge asymmetry.

  7. Karabegovic and Mercier (2023) argue that the benefits of intellectual humility and arrogance are context-sensitive, which suggests the possibility of inducing intellectual humility by creating more environments in which it is socially advantageous.

  8. Although, some of our limitations go unnoticed because we lack the inclination and/or capacity to recognize evidence of their existence. These are what Ballantyne calls ‘tragic flaws’ (Ballantyne 2022).

  9. Bi et al. (2016) find a positive relationship between overconfidence and persistence in problem-solving.

  10. See also (Astola 2021) and (Bland 2022, 2024).

  11. See Nemeth 2011; Hewstone and Martin 2010; and Nemeth and Brilmayer 1987.

  12. This is true only in densely connected networks, i.e., networks in which information is widely shared. The flip-side of the Zollman effect is that in loosely connected networks, inflated priors make collectives less likely to converge on the truth.

  13. See also (Weisberg and Muldoon 2009).

  14. Of course, distal beliefs are connected to testable beliefs, such that changes in the latter can precipitate changes in the former. But, generally speaking, distal belief change is much more unusual and gradual, requiring extensive changes to testable beliefs.

  15. By punishing large errors, prediction markets generate more accurate aggregate results via what Page calls the fools rush out effect: incompetent forecasters stop wagering, which improves market performance (Page 2007, 232). Their rushing out, however, also means that their personal performance is unlikely to improve. Thus, while prediction markets can induce some measure of intellectual humility, they are not intellectually humbling environments in my sense of the term.

  16. Although, it should be noted, tenured positions are becoming relatively scarce in the modern post-secondary landscape.

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Neil Levy and two anonymous referees for this journal, whose insightful comments markedly improved this paper.

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Bland, S. Intellectual Humility and Humbling Environments. Rev.Phil.Psych. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-024-00732-1

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