Epistemic Autonomy and Intellectual Humility: Mutually Supporting Virtues

Abstract

ABSTRACTRecently, more attention has been paid to the nature and value of the intellectual virtue of epistemic autonomy. One underexplored issue concerns how epistemic autonomy is related to other intellectual virtues. Plausibly, epistemic autonomy is closely related to a number of intellectual virtues like curiosity, inquisitiveness, intellectual perseverance and intellectual courage to name just a few. Here, however, I will examine the relation between epistemic autonomy and intellectual humility. I will argue that epistemic autonomy and intellectual humility bear an interesting relationship to one another in that they are interconnected and mutually supporting intellectual virtues. In Sections 2 and 3 I will provide a brief overview of the predominant accounts of intellectual humility (Section 2) and epistemic autonomy (Section 3) in the literature. With an understanding of these intellectual virtues in hand, we will examine their relationship of mutual support in Section 4. Section 5 will explore a challenge to this relationship coming from the epistemology of disagreement, and Section 6 concludes.KEYWORDS: Intellectual humilityepistemic autonomyintellectual virtuedisagreement Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1. See Ebels-Duggan (Citation2014), Grasswick (Citation2018), Matheson and Lougheed (Citation2021), Roberts and Wood (Citation2007), and Zagzebski (Citation2013, Citation2015).2. However, see Wright (Citationforthcoming).3. See also Roberts and Cleveland (Citation2016) and Tangney (Citation2009) for similar accounts.4. See also Porter and Schumann (Citation2018).5. Samuelson et al. (Citation2015) have a similar view. They characterize intellectual humility as ‘holding a belief with the merited firmness’ and as ‘believing in accordance with the evidence without claiming to know more (or less) than what the evidence merits’. A somewhat similar view is defended by Alan Hazlett (Citation2012). Hazlett’s view concerns proper meta-beliefs. On his account, intellectual humility is ‘a disposition not to adopt epistemically improper higher-order epistemic attitudes, and to adopt (in the right way, in the right situations) epistemically proper higher-order attitudes’ (220). See also Gregg and Mahadevan (Citation2014) who see intellectual humility as a realistic assessment of one’s epistemic capabilities and Lavelock et al. (Citation2017) who claim that intellectual humility, ‘involves having an accurate view of self, evidenced by honest self-evaluation and willingness to accept one’s strengths and weaknesses’.6. Battaly notes that a deficiency of intellectual interdependence need not come with an excess of epistemic autonomy. Instead, subjects may simply give up on projects whenever it would be appropriate to think with others.7. Nathan King (Citation2021) also gives an account of the virtue of epistemic autonomy along these same lines. According to King, epistemic autonomy requires thinking for oneself while relying on others appropriately (94).8. This follows Matheson (Citation2022a).9. This is not to assume that there is not some sense in which there is a unity of the intellectual virtues. For a helpful discussion of versions of the intellectual unity thesis, see Wilson (Citation2021).10. See Matheson (Citation2022a, Citation2023).11. See Hills (Citation2009), Matheson (Citation2022b) and Zagzebski (Citation2007).12. For more on this point, see Fricker (Citation2006), Goldberg (Citation2021), Nickel (Citation2001) and Nguyen (Citation2018), and Matheson (Citation2022a).13. See Ballantyne (Citation2021, 5–6) and Leary and Terry (Citation2012).14. For an extensive discussion of the relationship between epistemic autonomy, thinking for oneself, and free-riding, see Matheson (Citationforthcoming. The sense of ‘free-riding’ relevant here comes with a desire to not be involved in inquiry even when one is capable of doing so well and has not less of a responsibility than others to put in the intellectual work.15. Alfano et al. (Citation2017, 25).16. See Hannon (Citation2021) and Whitcomb et al. (Citation2017).17. See Ballantyne (Citation2021), Lockheart et al. (Citation2016), and Sloman and Rabb (Citation2016).18. See Matheson (Citation2022b) for more on this point.19. For a summary see Frances and Matheson (Citation2018) and Matheson (Citation2015).20. See also Beebe and Matheson (Citation2022).21. See Enoch (Citation2010), Foley (Citation2001), and Wedgwood (Citation2010).22. While there are perhaps parallel moves that can be made from a steadfast perspective, my focus here will simply be on the conciliatory views.23. Special thanks to Nathan Ballantyne, Heather Battaly, James Beebe, Adam Green, Michael Hannon, Casey Johnson, Jason Kawall, Justin McBrayer, Thi Nguyen, Jamie Watson, Dennis Whitcomb, and Sarah Wright for helpful discussion and comments on versions of this paper.Additional informationFundingThis work was supported by the John Templeton Foundation under grant ID# 61802.Notes on contributorsJonathan MathesonJonathan Matheson is a professor of philosophy at the University of North Florida. His research interests are primarily in epistemology focusing on issues related to disagreement and epistemic autonomy. He is the author of The Epistemic Significance of Disagreement (Palgrave) and Why It’s OK Not to Think for Yourself (Routledge).