Intellectual Dependability: A Virtue Theory of the Epistemic and Educational Ideal 9780367333690, 9780429324000

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Intellectual Dependability

Intellectual Dependability is the first research monograph devoted to addressing the question of what it is to be an intellectually dependable person—the sort of person on whom one’s fellow inquirers can depend in their pursuit of epistemic goods. While neglected in recent scholarship, this question is an important one for both epistemology—how we should conceptualize the ideal inquirer—and education—how we can enable developing learners to grow toward this ideal. The book defends a virtue theory according to which being an intellectually dependable person is distinctively a matter of possessing a suite of neglected virtues called “the virtues of intellectual dependability” that are themselves distinctively concerned with promoting epistemic goods in others’ inquiries. After defending the existence and educational significance of these virtues as a group, the book turns toward the project of identifying and conceptualizing several specific instances of these virtues in detail. Virtues discussed include intellectual benevolence, intellectual transparency, communicative clarity, audience sensitivity, and epistemic guidance. In each case, an interdisciplinary treatment of the nature of the virtue and its relationship to other virtues, vices, and personality features is offered, drawing especially on relevant research in Philosophy and Psychology. The book concludes with a chapter devoted to identifying distinctive ways these virtues of intellectual dependability are manifested when it is inquiring communities, rather than individuals, that occupy the position of intellectual dependence. By directing attention to the ideal of intellectual dependability, the book marks a novel turn of scholarly interest explicitly toward a neglected dimension of the ideal inquirer that will inform both epistemological theorizing and educational practices. T. Ryan Byerly is Senior Lecturer in the Philosophy Department at the University of Sheffield. He is the author or editor of several books, including Putting Others First: The Christian Ideal of Others- Centeredness (Routledge, 2019).

Routledge Studies in Epistemology

Edited by Kevin McCain, University of Alabama at Birmingham, USA and Scott Stapleford, St. Thomas University, Canada

Epistemic Duties New Arguments, New Angles Edited by Kevin McCain and Scott Stapleford The Ethics of Belief and Beyond Understanding Mental Normativity Edited by Sebastian Schmidt and Gerhard Ernst Ethno-Epistemology New Directions for Global Epistemology Edited by Masaharu Mizumoto, Jonardon Ganeri, and Cliff Goddard The Dispositional Architecture of Epistemic Reasons Hamid Vahid The Epistemology of Group Disagreement Edited by Fernando Broncano-Berrocal and J. Adam Carter The Philosophy of Group Polarization Epistemology, Metaphysics, Psychology Fernando Broncano-Berrocal and J. Adam Carter The Social Epistemology of Legal Trials Edited by Zachary Hoskins and Jon Robson Intellectual Dependability A Virtue Theory of the Epistemic and Educational Ideal T. Ryan Byerly

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Intellectual Dependability A Virtue Theory of the Epistemic and Educational Ideal

T. Ryan Byerly

First published 2021 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Taylor & Francis The right of T. Ryan Byerly to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this title has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-33369-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-32400-0 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by codeMantra

For all those who have been intellectually dependable for me over the years—a long list of teachers, colleagues, friends, and family.

Contents

Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction

1

PART I

1

The Intellectually Dependable Person

9

2

The Virtues of Intellectual Dependability

34

3

Educating for Intellectual Dependability

56

PART II

4

Intellectual Benevolence

83

5

Intellectual Transparency

105

6

Communicative Clarity

125

7

Audience Sensitivity

143

8

Epistemic Guidance

163

9

Being Intellectually Dependable for Groups

179

Index

201

Acknowledgments

There are many individuals and institutions who deserve my gratitude for their role in supporting this project. I thank many of them below. Yet there are no doubt others I have unintentionally overlooked, and I remain grateful for their contributions as well. The views expressed in this work are of course my own, and are not those of the individuals or institutions thanked below. The idea for this book project first germinated during my stay in residence at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in August of 2018. I was awarded a fellowship as part of the Epistemic Responsibilities of the University Project, itself funded by the Templeton World Charity Foundation, which supported my research on the place of intellectual virtues education in higher education curricula. While I had not planned to develop a book project on intellectual dependability at the time, the idea naturally occurred to me while spending focused time on research at the lovely facilities of the Abraham Kuyper Center at the VU. I benefitted from early conversations of the idea of the book project with René van Woudenberg and Jeroen de Ridder, and informal conversations about the project with Heather Battaly, Daniel Howard-Snyder, Ian James Kidd, and others at a summer seminar on Virtues in the University organized by the Kuyper Center. During the 2018–19 academic year, I continued working on the book project, drafting chapters, and submitting a book proposal. I returned to the VU in July 2019, where a workshop focused on the first two chapters of this book was held. I benefitted much from the discussion with the audience at these sessions. I am very grateful to the Kuyper Center and the Epistemic Responsibilities of the University Project for their role in supporting this project. During the 2018–19 and 2019–20 academic years, my work was also supported by an Academic Cross-Training Fellowship in Psychology, funded by the John Templeton Foundation. This fellowship supported a variety of research projects of mine, including this book project. My cross-training mentors were Peter Hill and Keith Edwards, both psychologists at Biola University. I am grateful to the John Templeton Foundation for the time for research afforded by this fellowship, and especially for the opportunity to learn more about psychological research relevant

x Acknowledgments to my interests in other-regarding intellectual virtues. I am grateful to my mentors for their support of my cross-training in general, and for the friendship they have shown me during our time working together. I hope that the chapters on Part II of this work reflect some of the cross-training in Psychology afforded by this fellowship opportunity. Megan Haggard (Psychology, Francis Marion University) and I were awarded a subgrant from the Self, Virtue, and Public Life Project at the University of Oklahoma for research commencing in August 2019. The award from this project, led by Nancy Snow and funded by the Templeton Religion Trust, supported our work on expansive otherregarding virtues and civic excellence. Part of this work was my research for this book. I am grateful to the Self, Virtue, and Public Life Project for supporting this research, and to Megan Haggard, from whom I have learned much about psychological constructs relevant to the intellectual virtues that are the focus of Part II of this book. It is only because of the generous support and flexibility of the Philosophy Department at the University of Sheffield that the funding listed above could be received and used to support my work on this book and other projects. The Philosophy Department, especially Department Heads Rosanna Keefe (2015–19) and Chris Bennett (2019–present) have been unwavering in their support of my research. I am also grateful to Niall Connolly, who performed my typical teaching and administrative duties in my place while I was on research leave for this project. I was privileged to give presentations based on the research for this book at three academic conferences. One was at a workshop on Civic Virtues, organized by Ian James Kidd and Christopher Woodward, held at the University of Nottingham in November 2019. One was at the Jubilee Centre Annual Conference in Oxford in January 2020. And the last was at the Joint Session of the Mind Association and Aristotelian Society in July 2020, held online because of the coronavirus pandemic. I am grateful to the audiences at these sessions for their insightful questions and discussion, and to the organizers of the conferences for the opportunity to share this work in progress. Three external referees for Routledge Press read my proposal and draft chapters for this book, and provided extremely helpful, supportive, and detailed feedback. Editor Andrew Weckenmann and Editorial Assistant Allie Simmons were supportive and flexible, especially when the coronavirus pandemic slowed my progress on this work. I am grateful for the support of all of those involved in reviewing and preparing this manuscript for publication. Finally, I am grateful to my family members—Meghan, Tommy, and Samuel—for their patience with me as I have worked on this book. They always seem to have confidence in me, even when I don’t, and that goes a long way toward helping me realize my goals, including the completion of this book.

Introduction

The life of inquiry is not a life of isolation, but a life lived out in community with fellow inquirers. When any one of us tries to answer a question or seeks to improve our own capacities for inquiry or subjects our thinking to critical scrutiny, we frequently rely upon the input of other people. We rely on them to share their perspectives with us, to teach us new skills, to challenge us with evidence we’ve overlooked, to model for us what excellent inquiry is. In these and other ways, we are ubiquitously dependent on our fellow inquirers when conducting our inquiries. And they too are often similarly dependent on us. An important but neglected question is: what does it take to be the sort of person who functions excellently when depended upon in these ways? What does it take to be an intellectually dependable person? This is the central motivating question of this book. The book provides an account of what it is to be an intellectually dependable person according to which possessing a suite of neglected intellectual virtues contributes distinctively to this ideal. The book then defends the value of educating for these virtues, and examines the nature and characteristic psychology of five of them in detail. The virtues together are called the “virtues of intellectual dependability”. By directing attention to these virtues of intellectual dependability, the book marks a novel turn in academic research toward focused treatment of a topic of interest to epistemologists and educators alike. By enriching our conception of what it is to be intellectually dependable, the book will enrich our conception of what it is to be an ideal epistemic agent, since being intellectually dependable is part of this ideal. Moreover, because being intellectually dependable is part of the epistemic ideal, it is important to ask how we might educate persons toward intellectual dependability, and whether doing so might be justified within formal education curricula. The book will argue that it is justified, and the discussion of the characteristic psychology of the virtues of intellectual dependability will point forward to strategies for educating for them. By addressing these topics, the research presented herein should be of interest to epistemologists (especially virtue epistemologists and social epistemologists), philosophers of education, and educators more broadly. Moreover,

2  Introduction because an adequate examination of these topics demands interdisciplinary study, especially drawing upon the disciplines of Philosophy and Psychology, the book should also have appeal to psychologists interested in topics such as education and intellectual virtue. It is a notable fact explored in more detail in Part II of this text that dominant approaches to personality, much like extant research in virtue epistemology, have in large part neglected the virtues of intellectual dependability in focus here. The remainder of this Introduction provides brief summaries of the book’s chapters. The chapters are grouped into two parts. In Part I, three chapters address the ideal of intellectual dependability and the virtues of intellectual dependability as a group. Part II turns attention to five individual virtues of intellectual dependability, providing accounts of their nature and characteristic psychology, comparing them to similar virtues and contrasting them with opposing vices, and explaining how they operate when directed toward dependent group inquirers. Chapter 1 explains the ideal of the intellectually dependable person that is the focus of the book and argues that the virtues of intellectual dependability would make a distinctive contribution to this ideal if they exist. The kind of intellectual dependability with which the book is concerned is a distinctively personal kind of dependability that is pertinent to cases in which we depend on other persons as members of the community of inquiry in our pursuit of epistemic goods. So understood, the ideal is not exhausted by features such as being a reliable source of true beliefs or being broadly knowledgeable or skilled. Rather, by contrasting this ideal with the ideal of the expert—an ideal that has received more attention from philosophers—it becomes apparent that achieving this ideal distinctively requires possession of the intellectual virtues. While all intellectual virtues are necessary for a person to reach the full ideal of intellectual dependability, it is argued that if there are virtues of intellectual dependability which are distinctively concerned with promoting others’ epistemic goods, these would make an especially salient contribution to the ideal. The chapter concludes by explaining why the topic of intellectual dependability and the virtues of intellectual dependability should be of interest to both social epistemologists and virtue epistemologists. Chapter 2 defends the claim that there is a distinct category of intellectual virtues that are uniquely other-regarding in that their concern is distinctively with promoting epistemic goods in others’ inquiries. It is an unfortunate fact about contemporary virtue epistemology that it has been largely inattentive to what would appear to be good candidates for such virtues. This chapter proposes that one justification for this inattention would be if all intellectual virtues are equally other-regarding—a view toward which some virtue epistemologists appear sympathetic given their seemingly equalizing affirmations that all intellectual virtues

Introduction  3 in the fullest expressions have other-regarding dimensions. It is argued here that while it may be true that all intellectual virtues in their fullest expressions have other-regarding dimensions, this does not negate the fact that some intellectual virtues are other-regarding in ways others are not. In particular, there are some intellectual virtues the possession of which requires the other-regarding motive to promote epistemic goods in others’ inquiries. These are the virtues of intellectual dependability. Chapter 3 defends the view that a complete education—particularly at the tertiary level—should include developing students’ intellectual dependability. Reasons to educate for intellectual dependability include the following. Intellectually dependable inquirers are better equipped to contribute to the fields of study in which they are trained, to contribute to collective democratic processes, and to fulfill the leadership roles prospective employers wish for graduates to fill. In each of these arenas, excellent functioning demands that one can be depended upon and not just that one can depend well on others or inquire well autonomously. Still, one may worry that educating for intellectual dependability problematically involves moral education in such a way as to undermine the autonomy of students. While the chapter grants that educating for intellectual dependability does involve moral education, it seeks to nonetheless defuse this objection and uphold intellectual dependability as an appropriate educational ideal that enhances, rather than undermines, students’ autonomy. Chapter 4, the first chapter in Part II, examines the nature and characteristic psychology of intellectual benevolence. Intellectual benevolence is conceptualized as a refined motivation to promote others’ epistemic goods as such for its own sake. The intellectually benevolent person is motivated to promote others’ epistemic goods not only by the value they accord to others’ attainment of epistemic goods, but also by the value they accord to epistemic unions such as epistemic friendship that are often promoted when one person promotes another’s epistemic goods. Intellectual benevolence is a foundational virtue within the ideal of intellectual dependability, in that it structures all of the other virtues of intellectual dependability just as conscientiousness or the love of knowledge structures the self-regarding intellectual virtues. The chapter compares intellectual benevolence so understood to similar virtues such as truthfulness and intellectual generosity, maintaining that intellectual benevolence is distinct from these and is a more cardinal virtue than they are. It also contrasts intellectual benevolence with a wide range of opposing vices, including epistemic malevolence, intellectual haughtiness and vanity, social vigilantism, and intellectual subservience, thereby illuminating its distinctive characteristic psychology. Chapter 5 examines the nature and characteristic psychology of intellectual transparency. Intellectual transparency is conceptualized as a tendency to faithfully share one’s perspective with others out of a

4  Introduction motivation to promote their epistemic goods for its own sake. The intellectual transparent person understands that sometimes—though not always—they are in a position to enhance others’ epistemic well-being by sharing the varied aspects of their own perspective with others effectively. They are skilled in understanding their perspective and communicating it to others, and they tend to deploy these skills when doing so will benefit others. The chapter compares intellectual transparency so understood to similar virtues such as honesty, sincerity, and intellectual humility, identifying both what these traits share in common and what makes intellectual transparency distinct. It also contrasts intellectual transparency with opposing vices such as intellectual grandiosity and intellectual timidity, which, unlike intellectual transparency, tend to lead their possessor to represent their perspective as being either stronger or weaker than it is. Chapter 6 examines the nature and characteristic psychology of communicative clarity. Communicative clarity is conceptualized as a tendency to resolve sources of confusion in one’s communications out of a motivation to promote others’ epistemic goods for its own sake. Commonly, exercising communicative clarity will involve eliminating or defining ambiguous words or phrases, eliminating or explaining ambiguous syntactic structures, and making explicit the epistemic relationships between sub-parts of one’s communications, such as paragraphs within a multi-paragraph communication. The chapter compares communicative clarity so understood to similar virtues, including intellectual attentiveness, carefulness, and thoroughness, identifying both what these traits have in common and what is distinctive of communicative clarity. It also contrasts communicative clarity with opposing vices such as obscurantism and perfectionism, showing how people can err by tending toward either deficient or excessive clarity in their communications. Chapter 7 examines the nature and characteristic psychology of audience sensitivity. Audience sensitivity is conceptualized as a tendency to fit one’s communications to the distinctive features of one’s audience, out of a motivation to promote their epistemic goods for its own sake. The relevant features of one’s audience include its distinctive needs, interests, views, abilities, and dispositions. Such sensitivity toward one’s audience is prompted by the sensitive person’s judgment, however inchoate, that which communications of theirs will most effectively promote the most valuable epistemic goods for their audience will depend in part on distinctive features of that audience. The chapter compares audience sensitivity so understood to similar virtues such as intellectual empathy and open-mindedness, identifying what these traits share in common and what is distinctive about audience sensitivity. It also contrasts audience sensitivity with opposing vices such as self-consciousness, judgmentalism, and vicious rhetoric, illuminating how the patterns of attentiveness

Introduction  5 (or lack thereof) to one’s audience characteristic of these traits differ from that of virtuous audience sensitivity. Chapter 8 examines the nature and characteristic psychology of a final virtue of intellectual dependability, epistemic guidance. Epistemic guidance is conceptualized as a tendency to aid others in making good decisions in inquiry. The epistemic guide is someone with broad knowledge of the dynamics of inquiry and decision points in inquiry. They pay attention to the dynamics of others’ inquiries, and they are good at helping others to understand the risks and benefits associated with making different decisions in their inquiries. The chapter compares epistemic guidance so understood to the virtue of intellectual practical wisdom, and contrasts it with opposing traits such as vicious epistemic paternalism, the need for closure, and intolerance for ambiguity. By doing so it brings out the distinctive features of epistemic guidance and highlights its role in the life of the intellectually dependable person. The final chapter, Chapter 9, attends to distinctive manifestations of the virtues of intellectual dependability when it is inquiring communities, rather than inquiring individuals, who are in the position of intellectual dependence. The virtues of intellectual dependability are relevant for these contexts of dependence just as they are for contexts in which it is inquiring individuals who are in a position of intellectual dependence. Yet, the virtues are manifested in distinctive ways in these contexts, because the features of dependent communities of concern to the intellectually dependable person—their needs, views, interests, abilities, and dispositions—can have a different ontology from comparable features of dependent individuals. Responding appropriately to the ontological form these features take in communities requires distinctive skills and concerns. This chapter illustrates how the manifestation of each of the virtues of intellectual dependability is shaped via attention to distinctive group-level features in contexts in which one is depended upon by a community. By opening focused inquiry into the ideal of intellectual dependability and the virtues of intellectual dependability this book can only make a beginning toward research in this area. But it is a beginning that is well past due, and one that promises to attract an interdisciplinary chorus of academic researchers in coming years, bringing them together to illuminate dimensions of epistemic excellence hitherto uncharted and forging new and ambitious directions for research and education. If this book accomplishes anything, I hope it accomplishes precisely this feat of stimulating future research and ultimately future growth toward intellectual dependability.

Part I

1

The Intellectually Dependable Person

Dependence, including dependence on other people, is a pervasive feature of the life of inquiry. When we are trying to find something out or improve our understanding or hone our investigative techniques, we are frequently at the mercy of a variety of factors not under our direct control, including the cooperation of our fellow human beings. In light of this pervasive dependence on others, it is of paramount importance for the life of inquiry that there are intellectually dependable people— roughly, people on whom others can depend in their inquiries. Without such people, the quality of our inquiries would often be put in jeopardy. It is the ideal of the intellectually dependable person that is the object of study in this book. The book’s basic question is: What is it to be an intellectually dependable person? This first chapter is concerned with clarifying the concept of this ideal and with examining the relationship between intellectual virtues and this ideal. In Section 1, I explain that this ideal is that of a person on whom others can depend as a fellow member of the community of inquiry. The intellectually dependable person is the sort of person on whom we can depend in those myriad ways in which we distinctively depend upon fellow inquirers when conducting our inquiries. In Section 2, I contrast this ideal with the related but different ideal of the expert, and argue that unlike the ideal of the expert this ideal is centrally constituted by the possession of intellectual virtues. I contend, moreover, that if there is a subset of distinctively other-regarding intellectual virtues that I call the “virtues of intellectual dependability,” they in particular make an especially important contribution to this ideal. I conclude the chapter by briefly noting why these virtues of intellectual dependability, upon which the remainder of the book largely focuses, should be of interest to both social epistemologists and virtue epistemologists.

1 The Ideal of the Intellectually Dependable Person Because the intellectually dependable person is one on whom others can depend in their inquiries, the subject of inquiry is a fitting place to begin the present discussion. Inquiry is typically conceived by philosophers as

10  The Intellectually Dependable Person activity aimed at achieving epistemic goods. Most paradigmatically, perhaps, it is concerned with “finding something out” or with answering a question (Hookway 2003: 194). The inquirer engages in activity oriented toward determining whether or not something is the case. As part of this activity, she may gather evidence, deliberate upon it, and ultimately form a judgment. Such activity is by nature dynamic rather than static; thus, inquiry is stretched out in time. Yet individual instances of inquiry may be relatively swift or more protracted. Ray’s inquiry into whether he left the bathroom light on may come to a quick terminus; Susan’s inquiry into effective treatments for Alzheimer’s may occupy her entire professional career. Understood in this way, it is tempting to think of legitimate inquiry as aiming at true belief. The inquirer, in seeking to find out whether something is the case, seeks to believe the truth on the matter in question. Ray seeks to believe the truth about whether the light is on; Susan seeks to believe the truth about which treatments for Alzheimer’s are effective. Yet no sooner have we stated this proposal than it becomes clear that true belief alone cannot be the only legitimate aim of inquiry. Or, more exactly, it cannot be that the exclusive aim of legitimate inquiry is to believe every (relevant) true proposition. For it is often the case that inquirers also wish to avoid error—they wish to avoid believing false propositions. Susan, for example, may well aim not only to believe of effective Alzheimer’s treatments that they are effective, but also to avoid believing of ineffective Alzheimer’s treatments that they are effective. Legitimate inquiries, then, can aim both at obtaining true beliefs and at avoiding false beliefs (cf. e.g., James 1897; Riggs 2003; Alston 2005). Nor is this all. Our legitimate aims as inquirers are plausibly quite diverse—conceivably as diverse as is the scope of epistemic goods itself. In addition to obtaining true beliefs and avoiding false beliefs, an inquirer may legitimately aim at attaining attitudes on the matter in question that are justified or rational from her own perspective. Such an aim may apply not only to the attitude of belief, but to the attitudes of disbelief and suspension of judgment. It may also apply to more fine-grained cognitive attitudes, such as degrees of belief, if these exist. The inquirer here aims for those attitudes she adopts—whatever they may be—to be justified or rational from her own perspective.1 The aims of inquiry we have thus far identified all pertain to goods exhibited via the inquirer’s relationship to isolated propositions. The inquirer believes a true proposition or does not believe a false proposition, or takes an attitude toward a proposition that is rational. Yet, inquirers may also legitimately aim to be related in epistemically valuable ways to objects other than isolated propositions. A chief candidate for such an aim is that of understanding (Grimm 2012). For example, Susan may aim to believe the truth and avoid believing falsehoods about effective Alzheimer’s treatments as part of a broader project best described

The Intellectually Dependable Person  11 as aiming to understand Alzheimer’s disease. Her aim in this broader project is not focused on attaining a certain kind of attitude toward an isolated proposition about Alzheimer’s disease, but is plausibly instead concerned with attaining a complex relationship toward a system of propositions, or even toward a non-propositional object—the disease itself. Inquirers may also aim for their inquiries to exhibit valuable dynamic features. They may aim to conduct their inquiries in a manner reflective of open-mindedness, or intellectual perseverance, or intellectual empathy, for example. Their aim here pertains less to the outcome of the inquiry—if indeed it has an outcome—than to the way in which it is conducted. In aiming for their inquiries to be conducted in these ways, inquirers aim for their inquiries to be conducted in accordance with what philosophers have come to call “intellectual virtues,” or “responsibilist intellectual virtues” more specifically. According to a common consensus I will follow in this book (cf. e.g., Montmarquet 1993; Zagzebski 1996; Baehr 2011; King 2014; Battaly 2015), these virtues are traits of character whereby their possessors are disposed to engage in a broad range of characteristic behaviors out of a motivation to attain epistemic goods for themselves or others, where these goods are conceived of as such and are pursued at least in part for their own sake. For example, the open-minded person is disposed to seek out and consider diverse perspectives on topics of inquiry out of a motivation to attain a better epistemic position on these topics for its own sake. Characteristic behaviors of the open-minded person involve seeking out and considering alternative perspectives; yet, to be fully intellectually virtuous, the open-minded person must engage in these behaviors ultimately out of a motivation to attain epistemic goods as such for their own sake. The intellectual virtues in this way have a “two-tiered psychological structure” (cf. Baehr 2011: 103–4): their possessor has a foundational motivation to attain epistemic goods, has reason to believe that engaging in certain patterns of action, feeling, and thought characteristic of an intellectual virtue are conducive to fulfilling this motivation, and is thereby motivated and disposed to engage in these distinctive patterns of action. My claim here is that it is legitimate for inquirers to aim for their inquiries to be conducted in intellectually virtuous ways, so understood, and indeed for themselves to become intellectually virtuous people. Much recent attention has been paid to the question of whether there is an empirical case for thinking that few if any people possess intellectual virtues or even intellectual characters at all, their intellectual behavior instead being better explained by features of their situations rather than by intellectual character traits (see, e.g., Alfano and Fairweather 2017). For my purposes, it is an important assumption that people do have malleable intellectual characters and they can become more or less intellectually virtuous. Otherwise it would be illegitimate for anyone to aim

12  The Intellectually Dependable Person to become intellectually virtuous. I will not however attempt to develop a novel defense of the existence of intellectual character or the appropriateness of pursuing intellectual virtue as an aim against this situationist challenge here, instead directing readers to the work of others (e.g., King 2014; Hill and Sandage 2016; Baehr 2017). It is worth noting that for my purposes, it is not a devastating problem if one of the central theses of “epistemic situationism” is true—namely, that possession of full-blown intellectual virtue is rare—as long as this rarity does not make it inappropriate to aim at growth toward these virtues. What is important for my purposes is only that it is appropriate to aim to conduct one’s inquiries in accordance with intellectual virtue, and indeed to aim for oneself to become (even if only every asymptotically) intellectually virtuous. Finally, and relatedly, and as suggested by the original gloss on inquiry as aiming at “achieving epistemic goods,” inquirers may legitimately aim at epistemic achievements. Achievements are commonly understood to be valuable outcomes of activity attributable to individuals or groups of agents on account of their competencies (Sosa 2007). So understood, the relevant epistemic achievements will be valuable outcomes of inquiry attributable to the inquirer or to groups of which she is a part on account of competencies possessed by her or by the group more broadly. The competencies in view may include the responsibilist intellectual virtues, but they may include other features as well. For example, they may include the so-called “reliabilist intellectual virtues,” which tend to be conceived of as a broader category of reliable belief-forming faculties which include such features as good eyesight or keen memory (Battaly 2015). According to one influential contemporary view, where the valuable outcome of an epistemic achievement so understood is that of true belief, this achievement will constitute the epistemic good of knowledge. On this view, what it is for an individual to know a claim is for her to hold a true belief in that claim where her arriving upon the truth in this matter is attributable to her competencies (e.g., Sosa 2007; Greco 2010). Or, on an extension of this view, it is for her to arrive upon the truth in a manner attributable to her own and others’ competencies (Green 2016). Yet, we needn’t affirm this view about the nature of knowledge to recognize the legitimacy of aiming at epistemic achievements so understood. Even if epistemic achievements do not constitute knowledge, it may still be legitimate to aim at them in our inquiries, given their value. Like the good of an intellectually virtuous inquiry, the good of epistemic achievement is a dynamic feature of inquiry. I have been going on now for several paragraphs identifying a variety of legitimate aims of inquiry. It is natural to wonder about the relationships between these aims. Are some more fundamental than others? For example, are some best understood as subsidiary or instrumental to others? Is there a single aim that is the only legitimate noninstrumental aim of inquiry, such that any other legitimate aims are only

The Intellectually Dependable Person  13 legitimate insofar as they are legitimate as instrumental to achieving this non-instrumental aim? I will not here undertake a lengthy and detailed defense of an answer to these questions. 2 The reason for this is that doing so is not necessary for my purposes in this chapter of explaining the ideal of intellectual dependability and defending the relevance of intellectual virtues for this ideal. What is essential for my purposes is only that the aims listed are indeed legitimate aims of inquiry, regardless of their relative levels of fundamentality. For example, it is immaterial for my purposes whether the good of holding justified attitudes is only legitimate as an aim of inquiry that is instrumental to the aims of holding true beliefs and avoiding erroneous ones, or whether it is legitimate as a non-instrumental aim of inquiry. What matters is just that the aims identified are widespread and legitimate aims of inquiry, which is rarely disputed. I will, however, return to the question of the relationships between these aims in Chapter 4, as in my view part of the virtue of intellectual benevolence is a sensitivity toward these relationships. In the same way that I am pragmatically suspending judgment here about the relationships between the legitimate aims of inquiry listed previously, I am also pragmatically suspending judgment about the exhaustiveness of this list. I make no claim that the legitimate aims of inquiry I have listed are the only legitimate aims. What is essential for my purposes, again, is only that the aims are among the legitimate aims of inquiry. My claims thus far can be summarized as follows. Inquiry requires dynamic activity aimed at achieving epistemic goods. These goods may include obtaining true belief, avoiding false belief, obtaining justified attitudes, acquiring understanding, conducting inquiries in accordance with responsibilist intellectual virtues, and obtaining epistemic achievements, and these goods may be sought legitimately either as instrumental or non-instrumental aims of inquiry. What is important for us to see next is a point about our widespread dependence in pursuing these aims. In pursuing inquiries with these varied aims, we are often if not always highly dependent upon factors which are in large measure beyond our control. For example, epistemologists have recently given much attention to the way in which any inquiry whatsoever is impossible without the inquirer’s pervasive reliance upon or trust in their own basic cognitive faculties (see, e.g., Zagzebski 2012, ch.2). The faculties in view may include faculties of perception, memory, intuition, and inference. According to some authors, we cannot acquire non-circular justification for the epistemic value of relying upon these faculties, as any attempt to acquire such justification would of necessity employ the faculties. If we are to get anywhere in our inquiries, we have to use the faculties we’ve got; but in doing so we are dependent upon what we’ve got, and the quality of what we’ve got is in significant measure beyond our

14  The Intellectually Dependable Person control (cf. Zagzebski 2012, ch.2). It’s not that we can’t do anything to improve the quality of our basic cognitive faculties, or to improve our use of them. We might even enlarge our faculties in a way by acquiring belief-forming mechanisms which pair together our native equipment with external enhancements, such as calculators or eyeglasses. But what is important for our purposes here is to notice that even in attempting to improve our cognitive faculties or our use of them in such ways, we must rely on these faculties. Dependence on our basic cognitive faculties for purposes of inquiry is inescapable. We are also heavily reliant upon the cooperation of the environments in which we conduct our inquiries. The literature on the Gettier problem (e.g., Hazlett 2015) is littered with examples of cases in which the cooperation or lack thereof of an inquirer’s environment makes a significant difference for the outcome of her inquiry. For example, a factor as mundane as the lighting conditions in which we employ our basic faculties of vision to view objects establishes limits in which we can employ these faculties to achieve epistemic goods. Often it is not up to us whether the environments in which we conduct our inquiries are hospitable to their success. Yet not all of our dependence is upon ourselves or upon impersonal others. A great deal of our dependence in inquiry is upon other people. And it is this dependence, or a certain dimension of this dependence, that is my primary focus in this chapter. There are different ways in which we can depend on other people in our inquiries. Not all of these ways are distinctively interpersonal. For example, in some domains such as Epidemiology it is other people who are among the chief objects of inquiry. We often depend upon others in our inquiries in these domains in a way analogous to our dependence on our environmental features more generally. We need their cooperation if our inquiries are to be successful. Yet in these cases we are not depending upon other people in a way we only depend on other persons. Our mode of relating to them in this case is as objects of inquiry, and objects of inquiry can include impersonal objects. On the other hand, we do often depend on other people in our inquiries in ways we only depend on other persons. When we do so, we depend on others as fellow inquirers. We depend on them as others who, like us, engage in activity with the aim of achieving epistemic goods. The availability of other such inquirers is potentially an extensive resource for enhancing the quality of our own inquiries. If only we are able to access the epistemic resources potentially afforded by our fellow inquirers, we may be able to enhance exponentially the scope and quality of our total cognitive perspective. While the world is a daunting place for an isolated inquirer, the availability of a community of fellow inquirers promises something analogous to the power of multiplying one’s epistemic self many times over. Through others, one can potentially conduct many

The Intellectually Dependable Person  15 more inquiries by proxy than one could by oneself, and even the inquiries one could conduct by oneself may be enhanced. Epistemologists are increasingly drawing attention to the ways in which we pervasively depend in our inquiries upon other people as fellow inquirers. The paradigmatic case of such dependence, and the case which has received the overwhelming majority of attention from contemporary philosophers, is the case in which we depend in our belief-formation on the testimony of a fellow inquirer (see, e.g., Goldman and Blanchard 2015, sect. 3). In the standard case of testimonial belief, a testifying other asserts a proposition, p, and the recipient of this testimony comes to believe p on the basis of having received this testimony. Philosophical debate abounds regarding norms governing when giving testimony is appropriate, when believing on its basis is appropriate, and which epistemic goods can be achieved via testimonially-based belief. But what is important for our purposes is not settling any of these debates. What is important for us is merely the observation that the testimony of fellow inquirers indeed does exert a very significant influence over the course of our inquiries. In depending on others for their testimony in this way, we depend upon them in a way we distinctively depend on fellow inquirers. It is fellow inquirers, and only fellow inquirers, upon whom we depend as sources of testimony in our inquiries. Even as we depend upon others offering us explicit testimony, we may also depend on others refraining from testifying to us. This is a kind of dependence on others that Sanford Goldberg (2010) has called “coverage.” Here an inquirer forms the belief that p on the basis of not having received testimony from fellow inquirers against p in a case in which such testimony would have been expected were p false. While there are no testifiers in this case, there are fellow inquirers who refrain from testifying, and their refraining exerts significant influence on the dependent inquirer. These cases may not be as common as cases of testimoniallyformed belief, but they are not unusual. Here again the quality of our inquiries is dependent upon the behavior of our fellow inquirers. When we depend on fellow inquirers to cover a proposition, we depend upon them in a way we distinctively depend upon fellow inquirers. Philosophers have given less attention to other ways in which we depend on others as fellow inquirers; yet there are many such ways. We can make a beginning toward uncovering further such cases of dependence by noting that the giving of testimony is itself plausibly understood as but one way of representing one’s epistemic state on a focal topic. Such a view is plausible if there is any kind of epistemic norm on the giving of testimony. For example, if knowledge is the norm of testimony (e.g., Turri 2016), such that it is appropriate to testify to a proposition only if one knows it, then by testifying one represents one’s epistemic state as one of knowledge. Yet, surely, there are ways of representing one’s epistemic state regarding a topic of inquiry that do not fit the mold of

16  The Intellectually Dependable Person paradigmatic testimony. For example, a person may represent themself as unsure about a target proposition, as having a good argument for the target proposition or against it or both, as having a mild intuition that it is correct, as seeming to remember it being false, and so on. Of course, representing one’s epistemic state in these ways typically will involve giving testimony. Only the testimony will not be testimony to the target proposition but rather—and in a way that is not exhibited in paradigmatic cases of testimony—directly to the speaker’s own epistemic state. What is important for us to note here is that just as we sometimes depend on others by believing their testimony to target propositions of inquiry, we also more generally depend on others to share their quite varied epistemic perspectives with us. The point of doing so is typically to better inform ourselves about topics of inquiry. We think it will benefit us to “have” others’ perspectives, even if these perspectives are not of the sort to license them to testify one way or another on a topic of inquiry. We depend on others to share their intuitions with us, to confront us with arguments, and to present us with evidence. In doing so, we again depend on them in ways we distinctively depend on fellow inquirers. Thus far, we have been considering cases of dependence in which those upon whom the inquirer depends have a (perhaps partial) perspective on the topic of inquiry and share that perspective in one way or another (even by not sharing it, as in the case of coverage) with the dependent inquirer. Yet, the ways in which we depend on others in our inquiries include cases of dependence in which those who are depended upon needn’t have any prior perspective on the topic of inquiry. They exercise influence over the dependent inquirer’s conduct of inquiry without needing to represent their perspective on the topic of inquiry. There are various ways in which such influence can be exercised, ranging from more to less direct. More direct influence may be exercised, for example, when a fellow inquirer who shares some general background and skills with us but has not studied our focal topic carefully examines an argument we are considering that bears on the topic, raising questions for us about its premises or inferences. Similarly, such direct input may be given regarding one’s use of a particular investigative method, or whether one’s investigation was conducted open-mindedly or fairmindedly in accordance with responsibilist intellectual virtue. It is not uncommon for researchers to seek out precisely such influence for their work, even sometimes aiming to get a more or less outside perspective. Here again is a way in which we depend on other people for our inquiries in a way we distinctively depend on fellow inquirers. Influence on the conduct of one’s inquiry needn’t come directly via comment on that particular inquiry, however. A less direct but no less important source of influence occurs when the way in which a person conducts inquiries (of a relevant type) more generally has been shaped historically by another inquirer. One way in which such shaping may

The Intellectually Dependable Person  17 occur, for example, is by modeling. Learning theorists have emphasized the enormous influence that models have on the behaviors we learn (Bandura 2002), and intellectual behaviors are no exception. As inquirers, we learn techniques, habits, skills, and even dispositions from other inquirers. This may come through direct, overt instruction or through more informal observation of another more mature inquirer. Here again, the dependence is of a kind only exhibited toward fellow inquirers. Finally, we must acknowledge an even less direct way in which the quality of our inquiries is dramatically influenced by fellow members of the community of inquiry. In gaining opportunities to learn from well-positioned fellow inquirers in all of the ways previously listed, we are often at the mercy of the generosity of others who view this learning as valuable. Fellow members of the community of inquiry who appreciate the value of an education sometimes use their resources to make educational opportunities available to other inquirers. They may do this even while exercising little direct control over the content of the education that is offered using these resources, and without any knowledge of whom the beneficiaries will be. Yet, even here, despite the distance between the dependent inquirer and the fellow inquirer on whom they depend, the latter exercises significant influence over the intellectual formation of the former, thereby influencing their inquiries. And here again the kind of dependence at issue is one only exhibited in cases in which we depend on fellow inquirers. Non-inquirers do not appreciate the value of education, and do not give generously of their resources to support educational opportunities for fellow inquirers. There is a broad spectrum of ways, then, in which in our inquiries we depend on fellow members of the community of inquiry as fellow members of the community of inquiry. We depend on fellow inquirers by forming beliefs on the basis of their testimony or its absence, by seeking to inform our own perspective with theirs, and by allowing them to influence the dynamic conduct of our inquiries more or less directly. Nor is it my intention to have identified an exhaustive list of those ways in which we depend on fellow inquirers. Yet, what is important for us to notice is that in all of these ways, we depend on others in ways that we do not depend on non-inquirers. We may of course depend on other inquirers for these purposes in ways that are indirect, as when we depend on them via artifacts they create such as written works or even software packages. Yet even here it is ultimately our fellow inquirers upon whom we are dependent. This idea that there are ways in which we depend in our inquiries on other people as fellow members of the community of inquiry is key to the way I will conceptualize the ideal of the intellectually dependable person in this book. The ideal of the intellectually dependable person is that of the person on whom others can depend in their inquiries in those ways that inquirers distinctively depend on fellow inquirers. The dependable

18  The Intellectually Dependable Person person is that person on whom others can depend as a fellow inquirer. Being intellectually dependable is about being the sort of person on whom others can depend, for example, in forming testimonially-based or coverage-based beliefs, in informing their perspective with that of others, and in shaping the dynamic conduct of their inquiries through the influence of fellow inquirers. I have defined the intellectually dependable person as that kind of person on whom others can depend in their inquiries as a fellow inquirer. Some readers may desire greater clarification of this notion of when we can, or cannot, depend on others. I think it is worth pointing out that, pre-theoretically, it is plausible that we all have a decent grasp of the relevant sense of “can”. After all, it is not uncommon even in everyday speech to distinguish between those who “can” or “cannot” be trusted for all manner of things, including providing testimony. We are likewise happy to speak of whether or not we “can” trust our vision or our research instruments. Thus, the relevant sense of “can” would appear to be one about which we have a decent working grasp, even if a precise definition were to prove elusive. In fact, however, this overlap with other similar uses of “can” may form an attractive starting point for identifying a more precise definition for the relevant sense of “can”. For, in the same way that we might define the sense in which we “can” depend on our vision or research instruments in terms of how well they tend to perform with respect to what it is we are depending on them for, we can also define the sense of in which we “can” depend on the dependable person in terms of how well this person tends to perform with respect to what it is we depend on them for. Whereas vision is depended upon for action-guiding visual representations and research instruments are depended upon for all manner of research purposes, the dependable inquirer is depended upon distinctively to fulfill all of those functions that we have been discussing now for several pages. They are depended upon as a fellow inquirer. Accordingly, a plausible proposal about in what sense the intellectually dependable person “can” be depended upon is that they tend to function well when depended upon as a fellow inquirer. They tend to perform excellently when depended upon, for example, to share their perspective and influence the conduct of dependent inquirers’ inquiries. They tend to fulfill well the role of being depended upon as an inquirer by fellow inquirers. In this sense they “can” be depended upon, and in this sense they are dependable. It is important to point out that there is a close relationship between a person’s being dependable in this sense and how dependence upon them tends to impact the quality of dependent inquirers’ inquiries. Namely, it tends to be better for the quality of dependent inquirers’ inquiries to depend on dependable rather than not-dependable people. The simple reason for this is that what it is we depend on fellow inquirers for are all

The Intellectually Dependable Person  19 things that aim at enhancing the qualities of our inquiries; yet, dependable people will tend to do all of these things better than not-dependable people. Thus, the qualities of our inquiries will be better off via dependence on the dependable than via dependence on the not-dependable. For example, the quality of the inquiry achieved by an inquirer who depends on a dependable person as a would-be source of testimoniallybased belief tends to be better than the quality of inquiry this inquirer would achieve by depending in this way on an otherwise similar but notdependable person. Specifically, the quality of the inquiry may be influenced insofar as there is a greater tendency for the inquirer to form true and avoid false beliefs, or to attain epistemic achievements, via reliance on the dependable inquirer as a would-be source of testimonially-based belief. Similarly, the quality of the inquiry achieved by an inquirer who depends on a dependable person for influencing the dynamic conduct of their inquiry will tend to be better than the quality of the inquiry they would achieve by depending on an otherwise similar but not-dependable person. Here the specific qualities of the inquiry most likely to be comparatively enhanced via dependence on a dependable person include better use of investigative methods and better display of responsibilist intellectual virtues. In both cases, dependence on the intellectually dependable person to fulfill functions for which we distinctively depend on fellow inquirers yields a comparatively better result for the dependent inquirer because the dependable person excels precisely in fulfilling these functions. At this point, a question that is likely to arise is: What does it take to tend to excel in fulfilling these functions? What does it take, that is, to be the sort of person who tends to fulfill with excellence the functions for which inquirers distinctively depend on fellow inquirers in their inquiries? If you, as a reader, are asking this question, then you are doing just what I would have hoped for as an author. In large measure, the rest of this book is devoted to answering this question. Beginning with the next section, I will argue that what this takes centrally involves possessing the responsibilist intellectual virtues, and a unique subset of these virtues that I call the “virtues of intellectual dependability” in particular. The remainder of this book is then concerned with examining these virtues as a group, and with examining several examples of them in chapter-length detail. It is my hope that by attending to these traits I will illuminate central features of what it is to be an intellectually dependable person.

2 The Intellectually Dependable Person and the Virtues of Intellectual Dependability In the previous section, I explained the basic nature of the ideal of intellectual dependability. According to the account offered there, the intellectually dependable person is the person on whom other inquirers can depend to fulfill those functions for which inquirers distinctively

20  The Intellectually Dependable Person depend on fellow inquirers. The intellectually dependable person tends to fulfill these functions with excellence, which has the implication that the inquiries of those who depend on them as a fellow inquirer tend to be of higher quality than they would otherwise have been. The question of the present section is: What does it take to be intellectually dependable in this sense? What are the central features in virtue of which a person is intellectually dependable? I will approach answering this question by comparing the ideal of the intellectually dependable person with a related ideal which has received far more attention from epistemologists—the ideal of the expert. These ideals are similar insofar as it is indeed common for inquirers to depend upon experts in their inquiries. In fact, it is plausible that dependence upon experts is among the most salient and important instances in which one inquirer depends upon another as a fellow inquirer. Moreover, some authors in the literature on expertise have examined questions that overlap with my focal question here regarding what it takes to be intellectually dependable. Their focus tends to be on questions about how to determine the trustworthiness of experts (cf. Goldman 2011; Watson 2018). Going still further, it is not uncommon for authors in the literature on expertise to discuss the way in which depending upon an expert can enhance the quality of one’s inquiries. Some have even argued that it is better for non-expert inquirers to take an expert’s view on topics regarding which they are experts while normatively screening off any other evidence of their own they have on these topics (Zagzebski 2012, ch.5). As the literature on expertise in this way engages with themes of interest to the present discussion, it should prove illuminating to compare the ideal of the intellectually dependable person with that of the expert. I will contend that while expertise can enhance one’s intellectual dependability within the domain of expertise, the intellectual virtues are more central to being intellectually dependable. Let us begin by considering what an expert is. An expert is typically understood to be a person who knows a lot. Yet, since nobody can know everything about every domain, expertise is understood to be relative to domains of inquiry. A person may be an expert in a certain field of chemistry or astrophysics or law, for example. In each case their expertise is in part a matter of their knowing a lot about the subject matter in question. One might take a stronger or weaker view about what the knowledge in question requires (cf. Goldman 2011). According to a weaker view, it requires only true belief and the absence of false belief. Thus, the expert chemist has a lot of true beliefs, and very few false beliefs, about chemistry. On a stronger view, the true beliefs must have a particular epistemic quality in addition to being true. For example, they must be justified true beliefs, or beliefs that constitute knowledge in the strict (as opposed to weak) sense. Similarly, one might maintain that being an expert requires not merely a sufficient number of individual true beliefs,

The Intellectually Dependable Person  21 but understanding of how these claims fit together (cf. Croce 2019; Scholz 2018). And it might be insisted that in addition to having a noncomparatively high number of such beliefs, one also has a comparatively larger number of them than non-experts do (cf. Coady 2012, who claims that comparatively greater true beliefs is sufficient for expertise). Beyond their knowledge, experts are typically understood to possess distinctive skills or abilities. The relevant skills or abilities will be domain-relative just as the knowledge is. The astrophysicist expert will have certain skills or abilities particularly relevant to doing or learning about astrophysics, for example. The skills or abilities that matter for purposes of expertise will be skills or abilities that enable their possessor to gain further epistemic goods within the domain in which they are an expert. So the skills or abilities of the astrophysics expert will be skills or abilities that enable them to gain further epistemic goods within the domain of astrophysics beyond those true beliefs they already have as an astrophysics expert. According to one highly influential view of expertise, these two features are exhaustively definitive of expertise. To be an expert in a given domain just is to have sufficient knowledge within that domain and to have sufficient possession of relevant skills or abilities for gaining further epistemic goods within that domain. Thus, Alvin Goldman writes that an expert “in domain D is someone who possesses an extensive fund of knowledge (true belief) and a set of skills or methods for apt and successful deployment of this knowledge to new questions in the domain” (2011: 115). Goldman (2018) proposes that it is in virtue of such features that experts have the capacity to fulfill certain services they are distinctively relied upon to fulfill, such as providing authoritative testimony. We might reasonably interpret him as claiming that it is the distinctive knowledge and skills of experts that put them in an epistemic position to fulfill the relevant functions.3 Of course, Goldman’s view is not the only view of expertise. But his work has been seminal within the still emerging philosophical area of expertise analysis, and many approaches to expertise that differ in their details from Goldman’s nonetheless share a common core in focusing upon individual epistemic achievements within the domain of expertise.4 For example, as noted above, Coady (2012) proposes to account for expertise entirely in terms of the greater stock of true beliefs the expert has in comparison to non-experts. Fricker (2006) proposes that the expert needn’t yet have a greater stock of true beliefs in the domain than is possessed by non-experts, but must have the epistemic capacities for attaining a greater stock of true beliefs; the expert must have knowledge and skills that put them in a position to attain such knowledge. Watson (2018) also rejects the requirement that the expert has more true beliefs than the non-expert, replacing it with the requirement that the expert has sufficient understanding of the terms, propositions, arguments, and

22  The Intellectually Dependable Person procedures of the domain—understanding that the person can apply when discharging epistemic activities in the domain. In all of these cases, the focus is on the individual’s epistemic achievements within the domain. The achievements specified by Goldman are probably best seen as logically stronger than those specified by others: meeting Goldman’s conditions requires meeting the others, but not vice versa. Given the influence of his approach and its similarity to other approaches, I suggest that it will be illuminating to compare Goldman’s conception of expertise with the conception of the intellectually dependable person. Our question here then concerns the relationship between being an expert so understood and being intellectually dependable. Given what we have seen about the nature of expertise and of intellectual dependability, this is a question about the relationship between domain-specific knowledge and skills, on the one hand, and the tendency toward excellent fulfillment of the functions for which we distinctively depend upon fellow inquirers in our inquiries, on the other. The question is about whether and to what extent possessing the knowledge and skills of an expert tends to make one better at fulfilling such functions as providing or not providing testimony on focal topics of others’ inquiries, sharing relevant arguments and intuitions with fellow inquirers, directly commenting on the dynamic conduct of others’ inquiries, modeling excellent inquiry, and offering material support for others’ educations. On the positive side, we might note that there is a case to be made that possessing the knowledge and skills of an expert can contribute to the extent to which one can be depended upon to fulfill at least some of the functions for which we distinctively depend on fellow inquirers. Chief among these functions is the function that receives the greatest amount of attention in the literature on expertise: the function of providing (or refraining from providing) testimony. In summary, there is a plausible case to be made that possessing the knowledge and skills of an expert can enhance one’s ability to fulfill with excellence the function of providing or not providing testimony on focal topics of others’ inquiries within the domain of one’s expertise. After all, it is not without reason that in criminal trials, it is often the testimony of experts in particular that is highly valued. We tend to think we are better off depending on experts for testimony on matters about which they are experts than we are depending on non-experts on these matters. This is presumably because having the knowledge and skills of the expert is relevant for how well one will tend to fulfill the function of providing or not providing testimony to fellow inquirers on topics within one’s domain of expertise (cf. Mizrahi 2013: 60). Being an expert can make one better at fulfilling this function than one would otherwise be. One can be more dependable as a source of testimony if one is an expert on the subject matter of that testimony. Yet, we must also acknowledge, on the other hand, that possessing the knowledge and skills of an expert is not sufficient to make one

The Intellectually Dependable Person  23 intellectually dependable. Indeed, it is not even sufficient to make one dependable as a source of testimony regarding topics within one’s domain of expertise. For being knowledgeable and skilled within a domain does not by itself make one disposed to communicate the knowledge one possesses in that domain to others who depend on one as a source of testimony. Nor does such knowledge by itself dispose one to communicate this knowledge in a way that is accessible to others and susceptible to their forming beliefs on its basis. As Goldman himself notes, “expertise alone does not guarantee the ability to teach others. The latter is, arguably, a separate skill” (2018: 4, fn.1). While being knowledgeable on a topic about which one is depended upon as a source of testimony can enhance the quality of the testimony one can give, the quality and indeed the existence of such testimony will also depend on whether one is disposed to communicate what one knows about the topic at all, and whether one is disposed to do so in a way that is clear and sensitive to one’s audience. We might put it this way. Having expert knowledge in a domain holds potential to enhance one’s dependability as a source of testimony on topics within that domain, but the potential it holds is only unlocked if one is disposed to communicate what one knows in the domain, and to do so in a way that is clear and sensitive to the audience to whom one is communicating. Now, there is a compelling case to be made that the extent to which one has the dispositions cited in the previous paragraph is in significant part a matter of possessing several of the responsibilist intellectual virtues. After all, being disposed to communicate what one knows with others who depend on one as a source of testimony, and being disposed to communicate clearly and with sensitivity to one’s audience are themselves plausible candidates for responsibilist intellectual virtues. For they are trait-like features that dispose their possessors to display a broad range of characteristic intellectual behaviors aimed at the promotion of epistemic goods. This case is only strengthened when we recognize that what we are after is ideal intellectual dependability, and therefore ideal dispositions to communicate what one knows clearly and with sensitivity and so on. To refer back to an earlier example, it may be that certain circumstances, such as being called upon to testify in a court of law, would make even the intellectually vicious temporarily disposed to communicate what they know in the ways necessary. But what is needed for the ideal of intellectual dependability is a broader, cross-situational disposition to perform such acts. What is needed is responsibilist intellectual virtues. Accordingly, there is compelling reason to think that responsibilist intellectual virtues have at least some role to play within the ideal of intellectual dependability, since they are necessary at least for fully unlocking the potential that expertise has to enhance one’s dependability as a source of testimony to claims within one’s domain of expertise.5

24  The Intellectually Dependable Person A similar pattern is also detectable when we turn to other ways in which expertise may be relevant for enhancing one’s intellectual dependability. Just as an expert’s superior knowledge in their domain of expertise enables them to offer better testimony on topics within that domain, an expert’s superior knowledge enables them to share more valuable arguments and evidence within that domain. Likewise, an expert’s superior skills enable them to better serve as a model for conducting inquiries in that domain. In these additional ways, expertise holds potential to enhance a person’s intellectual dependability within the domain of expertise. Yet, as before, this potential is plausibly only unlocked through possession of relevant dispositions, and it is plausibly only fully unlocked through possession of various intellectual virtues. The relevant dispositions will be ones whereby the expert is disposed to faithfully and accurately share their perspective, to identify relevant arguments and evidence in an accessible and sensitive manner, and to exhibit their skills in a way that enhances others’ ability to learn from them. Just as it is one thing to have knowledge and another to share it effectively with those who depend on one to do so, it is one thing to possess relevant evidence or arguments and another to share these effectively with those who depend on one to do so, and it is one thing to possess specialized skills of inquiry and another to exercise these in such a way that others can learn to do likewise by observing one’s use of them. In each case, the road from expertise to dependability will be paved via dispositions that are good candidates for intellectual virtues. In each case, being ideally dependable to fulfill the relevant functions, despite their domain-specificity, is not achieved by expertise alone, but only via a complement of relevant intellectual virtues. While the various dimensions of expertise have potential to enhance one’s ability to fulfill certain functions for which inquirers depend on fellow inquirers within the domain of expertise, this potential is only fully unlocked by the intellectual virtues. Moreover, we must observe that while the knowledge and skills constitutive of expertise are relevant for the extent to which one can be depended upon to fulfill the functions of a fellow inquirer within one’s domain of expertise, the same are not relevant outside of that domain. They are not relevant, for example, for the extent to which one can be depended upon as a source of testimony for topics outside of one’s area of expertise. Nor are they relevant for the extent to which one can be depended upon to faithfully and accurately share one’s perspective, to identify relevant arguments and evidence, and to guide others’ inquiries in domains outside the domain of expertise. Yet, the fact of the matter is that inquirers very much do depend on fellow inquirers to fulfill such functions in domains in which these fellow inquirers are not experts. Inquirers depend on non-experts to share their perspectives on focal topics of inquiry, to identify relevant evidence and arguments, and to provide guidance for their own dynamic conduct of inquiry. Part of the

The Intellectually Dependable Person  25 reason for this is simply practical: access to experts is not always available to us. Other times access to experts is possible, but it is far more demanding than access to non-experts whose potential influence on our inquiries we nevertheless tend to think will be positive. In fact, it would not be a surprise if for the vast majority of inquirers, their first consultation with a fellow inquirer when investigating a new topic was almost always a consultation with a non-expert. What the foregoing paragraph shows, then, is that there are functions which inquirers depend upon fellow inquirers to fulfill for which expertise is irrelevant. Inquirers depend on fellow inquirers to share their perspectives on topics on which they are not experts and to guide their conduct of inquiry in domains in which they are not experts. Fulfilling these functions well is not even partly a matter of being an expert in the relevant domains. Thus, again, there is reason to think that being an expert is not sufficient for being intellectually dependable. Even in the best cases one usually only ever fulfills the demands of being an expert within a single domain of inquiry. But achieving the ideal of intellectual dependability is a matter of being a certain kind of person who tends to fulfill with excellence a variety of functions across a spectrum of domains, including domains in which one is not an expert. While being an expert is not relevant for being intellectually dependable in those domains in which one is not an expert, possessing the intellectual virtues is. Intellectual virtues by their very nature are cross-situationally consistent and applicable across domains. A disposition to faithfully and accurately share one’s perspective with dependent inquirers may issue in testimony, for example, in domains or situations in which one has a strong epistemic standing or even expertise. Yet in domains in which one is ignorant or lacks expertise, the same disposition may issue in owning of one’s limitations, and in tentative and qualified presentations of relevant evidence or arguments rather than direct testimony. Likewise, clear communication and sensitivity to one’s audience are no less relevant for one’s dependability in cases of dependence in which one is not an expert than in cases of dependence in which one is. Thus, while expertise is not relevant for fulfilling with excellence those functions for which the ideally intellectually dependable person is depended upon in domains in which they are not an expert, intellectual virtues are relevant. They enhance these dimensions of intellectual dependability. Thus far, I have only shown that some of the intellectual virtues are relevant for the extent to which a person is intellectually dependable, either within a domain in which they are an expert or in domains in which they are not. But in fact it is not only some but all intellectual virtues that are relevant. Each and every intellectual virtue can enhance the extent to which one is intellectually dependable, whether within a domain in which one is an expert or in domains in which one is not. The simplest and most straightforward argument for this conclusion focuses

26  The Intellectually Dependable Person on the function of providing a model for inquiry for which inquirers distinctively depend on fellow inquirers. An inquirer will only provide an ideal model of inquiry for fellow inquirers if they are themselves fully virtuous. For part of what we depend on our fellow inquirers to model for us is virtuous inquiry itself. Possession of each intellectual virtue, and not only some of them, is therefore required for fulfilling the ideal of intellectual dependability. The fully intellectually dependable person is also fully intellectually virtuous. The foregoing observations about the ways in which expertise and intellectual virtue can each contribute to a person’s intellectual dependability reveal a sense in which the intellectual virtues are more fundamental to this ideal than is expertise. The intellectual virtues, and not expertise, can contribute all by themselves to the extent to which a person is intellectually dependable. The contribution of the intellectual virtues to a person’s intellectual dependability does not need to be unlocked by this person’s possession of expertise. For a person’s possessing of intellectual virtues all by itself enables them to fulfill with excellence a variety of functions for which inquirers distinctively depend on fellow inquirers in their inquiries—specifically, those functions for which we depend on non-experts. Yet, on the other hand, while expertise does have a contribution to make toward the ideal of intellectual dependability, it is a contribution that must be unlocked by the intellectual virtues or at least dispositions that resemble them in significant respects. Those functions for which we depend on fellow inquirers which expertise enables them to better fulfill are ones that expertise only better enables them to fulfill to the extent that it is accompanied by intellectual virtues. This way in which intellectual virtues and expertise are asymmetrically related to intellectual dependability is a way in which intellectual virtues have conceptual priority over expertise in an account of the ideal of intellectual dependability. Intellectual virtues are in this way more conceptually fundamental to the ideal. This conceptual fundamentality plausibly also has a consequence for the relative priority that intellectual virtues and expertise should receive from anyone who would seek to become intellectually dependable. Given the conceptual fundamentality previously noted, becoming intellectually virtuous will enhance one’s intellectual dependability whether or not one becomes an expert in anything. Moreover, there are independent reasons for thinking that becoming intellectually virtuous will aid one in becoming an expert if one pursues the opportunity to become one.6 But becoming an expert will not enhance one’s intellectual dependability whether or not one becomes intellectually virtuous. And becoming an expert will not generally tend to aid one in becoming intellectually virtuous if one pursues the opportunity to become such.7 Thus, one who sets out to become intellectually dependable is better served by pursuing intellectual virtue than expertise. In this second way, the intellectual

The Intellectually Dependable Person  27 virtues are more central to the ideal of intellectual dependability than is expertise. While all intellectual virtues can enhance a person’s intellectual dependability, and while the intellectual virtues on a whole are more central to the ideal of intellectual dependability than is expertise, there is a case to be made that if a particular subset of intellectual virtues exists then it is of special relevance to the ideal of intellectual dependability. The particular subset I have in mind, if it exists, would be a subset of intellectual virtues that are distinctively concerned with promoting epistemic goods in others’ inquiries as opposed to promoting epistemic goods in their possessor’s own inquiries. It might be, for example, that the domain of intellectual virtues divides into those that are exclusively concerned with promoting epistemic goods in the inquirer’s own inquiries and those that are exclusively concerned with promoting epistemic goods in other inquirers’ inquiries. Or, it might be that the domain divides into those that are in some way centrally concerned with promoting the inquirer’s own epistemic goods and those that are in this same way centrally concerned with promoting other inquirers’ epistemic goods. The subset of intellectual virtues with which I am concerned, if it exists, would be constituted by the latter category in either case. I’ll call this hypothetical subset the virtues of intellectual dependability. It is tempting to think that the several traits identified earlier in this section as candidates for intellectual virtues would be virtues of intellectual dependability if this subset of virtues indeed exists. These traits were all dispositions to share various aspects of one’s perspective with others or dispositions to influence others’ inquiries in various ways. What unites them, it would seem, is a distinctive concern to promote others’ epistemic goods. The disposition to communicate what one knows with dependent others, the disposition to do so with clarity, and the disposition to do so with sensitivity to the recipient’s intellectual needs, interests, and abilities, for example, are plausibly all intellectual virtues only insofar as they involve a motivation to promote others’ epistemic goods. Thus, they would seem to be united by a concern to promote others’ epistemic goods, making them good candidates for belonging to a supposed subset of virtues of intellectual dependability that are distinctively concerned with promoting epistemic goods in others’ inquiries. My contention here is that if there is a subset of virtues of intellectual dependability, then this subset of intellectual virtues makes an especially important contribution to the ideal of intellectual dependability, and as such deserves sustained attention within an academic investigation of this ideal. The basic reason for thinking that the virtues of intellectual dependability would make an especially important contribution to the ideal of intellectual dependability is as follows. What the ideal of intellectual dependability is all about is being the sort of person on whom others can depend for help in their inquiries. But if there is a subset

28  The Intellectually Dependable Person of virtues of intellectual dependability, then this subset of intellectual virtues is distinctively concerned with helping others in their inquiries. The virtues within this subset are, by virtue of their membership in the set, more concerned with helping others in their inquiries than are virtues that are not members of the set. So, the set of virtues of intellectual dependability, if it exists, is comprised of those intellectual virtues that are most concerned with what it is that the ideal of intellectual dependability is all about. For this reason, the virtues of intellectual dependability make an especially important contribution to the ideal of intellectual dependability, and are especially worthy of focus within an academic treatment of this ideal. This is not to deny the contribution to intellectual dependability that may be made by intellectual virtues that are not virtues of intellectual dependability. Indeed, we have already identified reason for thinking that there are virtues which are not excellent candidates for being virtues of intellectual dependability but which nevertheless can make a contribution to a person’s intellectual dependability. For example, traits such as open-mindedness or intellectual perseverance are often thought of as being exercised in an individual inquirer’s own private pursuit of epistemic goods in their own inquiries (see, e.g., Baehr 2011, ch.8; Battaly 2017). A person can consider with fairness alternative views on a matter in their own inquiries for the purpose of enhancing the quality of their own inquiries, or can persist in the face of obstacles to their own inquiries. Yet, these traits, even if candidates for not being virtues of intellectual dependability, can still contribute to a person’s intellectual dependability. For, as noted above, part of what we depend on fellow inquirers for is to model intellectual virtue for us. Thus, in at least this way, possessing these intellectual virtues remains relevant for securing the ideal of intellectual dependability. Moreover, as we will see in Chapter 2, there is reason to think that such traits, when possessed in their fullness, have other-regarding dimensions and as such can contribute more directly to a person’s intellectual dependability. And, furthermore, as I will discuss in Part II, some of these traits bear a special relationship to virtues of intellectual dependability, distinctively enhancing the latter. Thus, my present contention should not be understood as denying my previous claim that each and every intellectual virtue can contribute toward the ideal of intellectual dependability. Rather, it only proposes that if some intellectual virtues are more concerned than others with that with which intellectual dependability itself is concerned, then these virtues make an especially important contribution toward the ideal of intellectual dependability and deserve special focus in an academic treatment of this ideal. I have called the hypothetical subset of intellectual virtues that are distinctively concerned with that with which intellectual dependability is distinctively concerned—namely, promoting epistemic goods in others’ inquiries—the virtues of intellectual dependability.

The Intellectually Dependable Person  29

3 Conclusion The argument of this chapter has led us to direct our attention to the virtues of intellectual dependability—a supposed subset of intellectual virtues distinctively concerned with promoting epistemic goods in others’ inquiries. I began by explaining what is meant by the ideal of intellectual dependability with which this book is concerned. This is the ideal of a person on whom other inquirers can depend in their inquiries in those ways inquirers distinctively depend on fellow inquirers. I next argued that the responsibilist intellectual virtues are especially central to this ideal, more so even than is expertise. This is because possession of the intellectual virtues all by itself enhances a person’s intellectual dependability, but expertise can enhance a person’s intellectual dependability only in conjunction with their possession of intellectual virtues. I argued finally that if there is a subset of intellectual virtues distinctively concerned with promoting epistemic goods in others’ inquiries, these would be especially important for the ideal of intellectual dependability, since such virtues would be distinctively concerned with that with which intellectual dependability itself is distinctively concerned. By directing attention to the virtues of intellectual dependability, this chapter and indeed the book more broadly directs attention to a topic that should be of substantial interest to both social epistemologists and virtue epistemologists, but that has not been extensively explored by either. Social epistemologists have done much to direct the attention of epistemologists to the ubiquitous fact of dependence on fellow inquirers in the life of inquiry. Yet, thus far, they have not devoted sustained attention to the ideal of intellectual dependability or to the virtues of intellectual dependability. Rather than focusing broadly on those myriad ways in which inquirers distinctively depend on fellow inquirers in their inquiries, social epistemologists have tended to focus more narrowly on certain paradigmatic cases of dependence such as cases of testimoniallybased belief. Rather than attending at length to practical questions about how one can perform better when one is depended upon by others, social epistemologists have tended to focus more on practical questions about how one can perform better when one is dependent upon others. And rather than focus at length on the epistemic relevance of the virtuousness of those who are depended upon, social epistemologists have tended to focus on the epistemic relevance of the knowledge or justified beliefs of those who are depended upon. Insofar as social epistemology is fundamentally concerned with social features of epistemic life, however, it is clear that social epistemologists should take a substantial interest in the focal topics of this text. The work should therefore be of significant interest to them. Just as clearly, the work should be of interest to virtue epistemologists. Much of the most stimulating recent work in virtue epistemology

30  The Intellectually Dependable Person has been focused on developing accounts of specific intellectual virtues, often unfettered by the concerns of traditional epistemology (see, e.g., Roberts and Wood 2007, Battaly 2018, Part II). Yet, as I will discuss in further detail in the next chapter, it is a striking fact that within this work very little attention has been given to the ways in which intellectual virtues might promote epistemic goods in others’ inquiries. The focus has instead predominantly been on how intellectual virtues advance epistemic goods in the possessor’s own inquiries. Nonetheless, at the same time, it is not uncommon for virtue epistemologists to acknowledge that intellectual virtues can promote epistemic goods for other inquirers, and some authors (e.g., Kawall 2002) have even expressed sympathy for the idea that there are intellectual virtues distinctively concerned with promoting others’ epistemic goods—virtues of intellectual dependability, to use my terminology. It is just that little attention has been given to examining good candidates for such traits at length. Thus, again, the attraction of the present project, as well as its need, is clear from the perspective of contemporary virtue epistemology. My next tasks are to argue that there indeed are virtues of intellectual dependability, and then to argue that inculcating them in pupils is a justifiable aim within formal education. Thereafter, I turn to examine several candidates for virtues of intellectual dependability in chapter-length detail.

Notes 1 The kind of rationality or justification I have in mind here is thus “perspectival” (Kvanvig 2014) or “egocentric” (Foley 1992) in character. 2 For surveys of research on the topic, see (Pritchard 2007; Bondy 2015). 3 If we interpret him this way, it may enable us to halt an objection that Croce (2019) raises to his view. Croce objects that a person can have the kind of knowledge and skills identified by Goldman, and could even have understanding, but fail to have the “capacity” to help novices in relevant respects, because they fail to have a suite of “virtues that allow an epistemic subject to properly address a layperson’s epistemic dependency on them” (sect. 4). For example, such a person may be “unable to tailor their answer to the novice’s questions” (ibid). However, if we interpret Goldman’s view about the “capacity” to help novices in the way identified in the text, then it is plausible that such a person would have the capacity to help novices in the relevant way. They have the capacity to do so in the sense that their knowledge and skills put them in the epistemic position to do so, even if their broader character doesn’t dispose them to do so with excellence. 4 Quast (2018) provides a notable alternative. He offers a functional account of expertise in terms of the expert’s being sufficiently competent to complete a variety of demanding services for novices. On such a view of expertise, it may be that the expert must be intellectually dependable—at least within their domain—and so the ideal of the expert and the ideal of the intellectually dependable person will not come apart in quite the way proposed in the text. It is not my purpose here to argue against Quast’s account of expertise. I am willing, in particular, to be a pluralist about concepts of expertise (and I think Quast is as well), granting that Quast’s account may identify one

The Intellectually Dependable Person  31 such concept, and Goldman’s another. My aim in the text is to illuminate the nature of intellectual dependability by contrasting it with expertise as understood by one common approach exemplified by Goldman. 5 The argument of the text motivates not only the claim that the dispositions necessary for ideal intellectual dependability must exhibit the crosssituational robustness of intellectual virtues, but the claim that these traits must also exhibit the motivational features characteristic of the intellectual virtues. For, in order to achieve ideal intellectual dependability, it will not do for a person to have a suite of intellectual character traits that dispose them toward behaviors reflective of intellectual virtue but without the motivations characteristic of intellectual virtue. Such a suite of intellectual character traits would be less psychologically integrated, and therefore less stable, than would be the suite of intellectual virtues integrated by their shared motivational core. Thus, ideal intellectual dependability requires not only cross-situationally robust dispositions of the kind identified in the text, but dispositions with the motivations characteristic of the intellectual virtues. 6 Recall here the view discussed in Section 1 according to which knowledge requires the exercise of intellectual virtue. Even if this view is incorrect, the widespread appeal of the view evidences the attraction of the idea that intellectual virtues are instrumentally valuable as a route toward acquiring knowledge—which is, as we saw, a requirement for expertise. 7 This is simply because the knowledge and skills constitutive of the relevant expertise typically will not enhance one’s ability to acquire intellectual virtues. There may of course be isolated counterexamples, such as cases in which one becomes an expert in virtue theory or learning theory, and employs this expertise to grow in intellectual virtue.

References Alfano, Mark and Abrol Fairweather, eds. 2017. Epistemic Situationism. New York: Oxford University Press. Alston, William. 2005. Beyond Justification: Dimensions of Epistemic Evaluation. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Baehr, Jason. 2011. The Inquiring Mind: On Intellectual Virtues and Virtue Epistemology. New York: Oxford University Press. Baehr, Jason. 2017. “The Situationist Challenge to Educating for Intellectual Virtues.” In Epistemic Situationism, eds. Mark Alfano and Abrol Fairweather, 192–215. New York: Oxford University Press. Bandura, Albert. 2002. “Swimming Against the Mainstream: The Early Years from Chilly Tributary to Transformative Mainstream.” Behaviour Research and Therapy 42: 613–30. Battaly, Heather. 2015. Virtue. Cambridge: Polity Press. Battaly, Heather. 2017. “Intellectual Perseverance.” Journal of Moral Philosophy 44, 6: 669–97. Battaly, Heather, ed. 2018. The Routledge Handbook of Virtue Epistemology. New York: Routledge. Bondy, Patrick. 2015. “Epistemic Value.” In The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, eds. James Fieser and Bradley Dowden. Available at https://www. iep.utm.edu/ep-value/ Coady, David. 2012. What to Believe Now: Applying Epistemology to Contemporary Issues. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

32  The Intellectually Dependable Person Croce, Michel. 2019. “On What It Takes to Be an Expert.” Philosophical Quarterly 69, 274: 1–21. Foley, Richard. 1992. Working Without a Net: A Study of Egocentric Epistemology. New York: Oxford University Press. Fricker, Elizabeth. 2006. “Testimony and Epistemic Authority.” In The Epistemology of Testimony, eds. Jennifer Lackey and Ernest Sosa, 225–50. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Goldberg, Sanford. 2010. Relying on Others: An Essay in Epistemology. New York: Oxford University Press. Goldman, Alvin. 2011. “Experts: Which Ones Can You Trust?” In Social Epistemology: Essential Readings, eds. Alvin Goldman and Dennis Whitcomb, 109–36. New York: Oxford University Press. Goldman, Alvin. 2018. “Expertise.” Topoi 37, 1: 3–10. Goldman, Alvin and Thomas Blanchard. 2015. “Social Epistemology.” In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta. Available at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology-social/ Greco, John. 2010. Achieving Knowledge: A Virtue-Theoretic Account of Epistemic Normativity. New York: Cambridge University Press. Green, Adam. 2016. The Social Contexts of Intellectual Virtue: Knowledge as a Team Achievement. New York: Routledge Press. Grimm, Stephen. 2012. “The Value of Understanding.” Philosophy Compass 7, 2: 103–17. Hazlett, Allan, ed. 2015. “The Gettier Problem at 50.” Special Issue of Philosophical Studies 172, 1. Hill, Peter and Steven Sandage. 2016. “The Promising but Challenging Case of Humility as a Positive Psychology Virtue.” Journal of Moral Education 45, 2: 132–46. Hookway, Christopher. 2003. “How to Be a Virtue Epistemologist.” In Intellectual Virtue: Perspectives from Ethics and Epistemology, eds. Linda Zagzebski and Michael DePaul, 182–202. New York: Oxford University Press. James, William. 1897. The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kawall, Jason. 2002. “Other-Regarding Epistemic Virtues.” Ratio 15, 3: 257–75. King, Nathan. 2014. “Responsibilist Virtue Epistemology: A Reply to the Situationist Challenge.” Philosophical Quarterly 64, 255: 243–53. Kvanvig, Jonathan. 2014. Rationality and Reflection: How to Think about What to Think. New York: Oxford University Press. Mizrahi, Moti. 2013. “Why Arguments from Expert Opinion Are Weak Arguments.” Informal Logic 33, 1: 57–79. Montmarquet, James. 1993. Epistemic Virtue and Doxastic Responsibility. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Pritchard, Duncan. 2007. “Recent Work on Epistemic Value.” American Philosophical Quarterly 44, 2: 85–110. Quast, Christian. 2018. “Expertise: A Practical Explication.” Topoi 37, 1: 11–27. Riggs, Wayne. 2003. “Understanding Virtue and the Virtue of Understanding.” In Intellectual Virtue: Perspectives from Ethics and Epistemology, eds. Linda Zagzebski and Michael DePaul, 203–26. New York: Oxford University Press.

The Intellectually Dependable Person  33 Roberts, Robert and Jay Wood. 2007. Intellectual Virtues: An Essay in Regulative Epistemology. New York: Oxford University Press. Sosa, Ernest. 2007. A Virtue Epistemology: Apt Belief and Reflective Knowledge, Vol. 1. New York: Oxford University Press. Turri, John. 2016. Knowledge and the Norm of Assertion: An Essay in Philosophical Science. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers. Watson, Jamie. 2018. “The Shoulders of Giants: A Case for Non-Veritism about Epistemic Authority.” Topoi 37, 1: 39–53. Zagzebski, Linda. 1996. Virtues of the Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of Knowledge. New York: Cambridge University Press. Zagzebski, Linda. 2012. Epistemic Authority: A Theory of Trust, Authority, and Autonomy in Belief. New York: Oxford University Press.

2

The Virtues of Intellectual Dependability

Chapter 1 concluded by directing our attention toward a supposed subset of intellectual virtues distinctively concerned with promoting epistemic goods in others’ inquiries—a subset of virtues I called the “virtues of intellectual dependability”. I argued that if such virtues exist, they make a distinctive contribution toward the ideal of intellectual dependability, insofar as they are distinctively concerned with that with which this ideal itself is also distinctively concerned. The ideal of the intellectually dependable person, we saw, is the ideal of a person on whom others can depend as a fellow inquirer in their inquiries. As such, being an intellectually dependable person is distinctively a matter of functioning excellently in those contexts in which others depend on one to aid them in achieving epistemic goods in their inquiries. Since the virtues of intellectual dependability, if they exist, are distinctively concerned precisely with aiding others to achieve epistemic goods in their inquiries, these virtues, if they exist, are distinctively concerned with that with which the ideal of intellectual dependability itself is concerned. The present chapter attends to the case for thinking that there indeed is a subclass of virtues of intellectual dependability within the broader category of intellectual virtues. I will argue that there is a group of several intellectual virtues each of which is focally concerned with promoting epistemic goods in others’ inquiries in ways that other intellectual virtues are not. The remainder of this book will be devoted to investigating the educational significance of this group of virtues, and to investigating the nature and characteristic psychology of several candidates for such traits. I begin this chapter by identifying several initially attractive candidates for virtues of intellectual dependability, along with several initially attractive candidates for intellectual virtues that are not virtues of intellectual dependability. I demonstrate, further, that in the growing philosophical literature devoted to examining individual intellectual virtues, there has been very little attention given to candidates of the first type in contrast to candidates of the second type. In Section 2, I identify a view which, if correct, would justify this lack of attention to virtues of intellectual dependability. Indeed, the view would justify a complete lack of attention to such virtues, since according to the view there are no

The Virtues of Intellectual Dependability  35 virtues of intellectual dependability; rather, all intellectual virtues are instead equally other-regarding. While I do not claim that this view in fact explains the inattention given to good candidates for virtues of intellectual dependability, I show how authors in the literature on intellectual virtues have tended to stress the way in which all intellectual virtues are other-regarding in a way that appears to equalize the intellectual virtues in this regard rather than singling out one subclass as distinctively other-regarding. I show how the work of these authors can be read as presenting a challenge for the view that there are virtues of intellectual dependability distinctively concerned with promoting epistemic goods in others’ inquiries. In Section 3, I respond to this challenge, explaining in what sense I think the virtues of intellectual dependability are distinctively concerned with promoting epistemic goods in others’ inquiries, and defending this proposal against two salient objections. What emerges from the chapter, accordingly, is a defense of the idea that not all intellectual virtues are equally other-regarding, but instead there is a subclass of distinctively other-regarding intellectual virtues—the virtues of intellectual dependability—which has been especially neglected in contemporary treatments of intellectual virtues. A focused treatment of these virtues within an examination of the ideal of intellectual dependability is thereby justified.

1 Sparse Attention to Candidate Virtues of Intellectual Dependability One of the major growth areas within contemporary virtue epistemology over the last decade has been the attention given to individual intellectual virtues. Book chapters and journal articles devoted to examining the nature and value of specific intellectual virtues appear to proliferate indefinitely. There is also detectable a growing interest in producing written materials devoted to these individual traits for educational purposes—an interest to which we will return in Chapter 3. Yet, as I wish to demonstrate in the present section, remarkably little attention within this growing body of literature has been devoted to intellectual virtues that are good candidates for virtues of intellectual dependability. To fix our gaze on intellectual virtues that are good candidates for being virtues of intellectual dependability, I will briefly introduce each of the five traits that will be the focus of lengthier discussion in later chapters of this book. First, intellectual benevolence, like benevolence generally, is a refined motivation to promote others’ goods for its own sake. Yet, what makes it distinctively intellectual benevolence is that the goods with which it is concerned are distinctively epistemic goods. The intellectually benevolent person has a stable and refined motivation to promote epistemic goods in others’ inquiries. Next is intellectual transparency. This is a tendency to share one’s own perspective with other inquirers in

36  The Virtues of Intellectual Dependability order to enhance the quality of their inquiries. Sometimes this tendency is manifested in testifying to target propositions of inquiry, and sometimes by sharing evidence bearing on the other’s inquiry that doesn’t license such testimony. A third candidate trait is communicative clarity. This is a tendency concerned with eliminating or resolving sources of confusion in one’s communications to others. The clear communicator regulates their communications in these ways so that the recipients of their communications may better achieve epistemic goods. A fourth candidate virtue is sensitivity to one’s audience. The person characterized by this trait regulates their communications in light of the distinctive intellectual interests, needs, views, abilities, and tendencies of their audience in order to best advance the audience’s achievement of epistemic goods. A final candidate is epistemic guidance, a tendency to aid others in making good decisions in the dynamic conduct of their inquiries out of a motivation to promote their epistemic goods. The five aforementioned traits all appear to be good candidates for being virtues of intellectual dependability—virtues distinctively concerned with promoting epistemic goods in others’ inquiries. The paradigmatic manifestations that come to mind for these traits are all behaviors in which the trait’s possessor aims to promote some epistemic good in another’s inquiry. The clear communicator, for example, might carefully define terms so that recipients of their communication do not become confused, or the epistemic guide may flag another’s process of inquiry as having employed an unreliable method so as to offer a helpful corrective to this other. Indeed, the traits are all explicitly defined with reference to a common motivation to promote others’ epistemic goods, and they are not explicitly defined with reference to a motivation to promote epistemic goods in the possessor’s own inquiries. In these ways, these virtues appear to be focally concerned with promoting epistemic goods in others’ inquiries. Many other intellectual virtues do not appear to be equally good candidates for being virtues of intellectual dependability. Paradigmatic manifestations that come to mind of these traits don’t, or needn’t, involve aiming to promote epistemic goods in others’ inquiries. The traits do not seem to require being defined in terms of motivations to promote epistemic goods in others’ inquiries. I have in mind, for example, such candidate virtues as intellectual courage, intellectual cautiousness, intellectual thoroughness, intellectual autonomy, and open-mindedness. Intellectual courage, by way of illustration, is typically defined in terms of a disposition to overcome fears in the pursuit of epistemic goods (cf. King 2014). It might be exemplified, for example, where a person overcomes a fear of being embarrassed to ask a question that will enable them to gain knowledge. Open-mindedness, similarly, is typically defined in terms of a tendency to seriously engage with alternative perspectives on a topic of inquiry (cf. Baehr 2009). It may be exemplified, for example,

The Virtues of Intellectual Dependability  37 when a person gives a fair hearing to each of several competing views on a focal topic of inquiry, so as to enhance their chances of getting to the truth. What is important to notice here is that, at least at first glance, these intellectual virtues do not appear to be focally concerned with promoting others’ epistemic goods in the way the traits identified two paragraphs above do. As such, the former traits are prima facie good candidates for being virtues of intellectual dependability distinctively concerned with promoting others’ epistemic goods. It is noteworthy that in the growing philosophical literature devoted to examining individual intellectual virtues, the vast majority of virtues examined appear to fit in the second category above rather than the first. The vast majority are not good candidates for being virtues of intellectual dependability. For example, consider Robert Roberts’ and Jay Wood’s book Intellectual Virtues (2007), one of the earliest texts to offer a detailed treatment of several intellectual virtues. They include chapters devoted to eight virtues: love of knowledge, firmness, courage and caution, humility, autonomy, generosity, and practical wisdom. Of these, I would suggest that only intellectual generosity is a good candidate for being a virtue of intellectual dependability. Or consider Jason Baehr’s (2011) approach to classifying the intellectual virtues in terms of the inquiry-relevant challenge with which they are concerned. Baehr discusses groupings of virtues that are distinctively concerned with enabling their possessor to overcome challenges pertaining to initial motivation, sufficient and proper focusing, consistency in evaluation, intellectual integrity, mental flexibility, and endurance. In his recent pedagogically oriented book, Cultivating Good Minds (2015), he continues to use a similar classificatory scheme, devoting attention to nine intellectual virtues: curiosity, intellectual autonomy, intellectual humility, attentiveness, intellectual carefulness, intellectual thoroughness, open-mindedness, intellectual courage, and intellectual tenacity. I would suggest that none of these is a good candidate for being a virtue of intellectual dependability. Indeed, we might worry that Baehr’s classificatory system, if insisted upon, would threaten to define virtues of intellectual dependability out of existence. Another pedagogically focused text is Philip Dow’s Virtuous Minds (2013). Dow examines seven intellectual virtues: intellectual courage, intellectual carefulness, intellectual tenacity, intellectual fair-mindedness, intellectual curiosity, intellectual honesty, and intellectual humility. Of these, I would suggest that only intellectual honesty is a good candidate for a virtue of intellectual dependability. In fact, however, it is not consistently treated as such by Dow, who sometimes writes as if this virtue as he understands it is primarily a matter of being adequately motivated to get to the truth for oneself, rather than a matter of sharing one’s cognitive position with others (cf. here Carr 2014). Or, finally, consider a recent scholarly collection on virtue epistemology edited by Heather

38  The Virtues of Intellectual Dependability Battaly (2019), which contains chapters devoted to the following 12 virtues: open-mindedness, curiosity and inquisitiveness, creativity, intellectual humility, epistemic autonomy, deference, skepticism, epistemic justice, epistemic courage, intellectual perseverance, and understanding. Of these, it would be a stretch to claim there is any that is focally concerned with promoting epistemic goods in others’ inquiries. We find then in these cases little to no attention being given to good candidates for virtues of intellectual dependability. Of course, some readers may wish to challenge my judgments regarding which of these intellectual virtues is or is not a good candidate for being a virtue of intellectual dependability. I will not insist at length on my proposed judgments here. I will simply note that even those who would make a higher estimate than I have of how many good candidates for virtues of intellectual dependability there are in these lists are still bound to make an estimate that represents a very low percentage of the total number of traits attended to. The lack of attention given to good candidates for virtues of intellectual dependability that we find in these books containing several chapters on distinct individual virtues is not out of step with what is to be found in journal articles devoted to individual intellectual virtues or in books with fewer chapters devoted to intellectual virtues. The focus, whether in journal articles or in edited collections or monographs or even pedagogical resources, is overwhelmingly on intellectual virtues that are not good candidates for virtues of intellectual dependability. In fact, in some cases, we find extended treatments of intellectual virtues that we might have thought could be treated as virtues of intellectual dependability, but they are not treated in this way. This is true, for example, of the virtues of epistemic justice (Fricker 2007) and epistemic care (Dalmiya 2016). The former tend to be treated as dispositions governing how one interprets others’ communications, which may benefit others (e.g., by showing others appropriate respect), but they are not distinctively concerned with promoting epistemic goods in others’ inquiries any more than they are with promoting epistemic goods in one’s own inquiries. The latter is conceptualized as a virtue of being careful, which is being self-reflexive, “looping back to investigate whether we have investigated enough and adequately, and the readiness to change our conclusions (22),” which again is not distinctively concerned with promoting epistemic goods in others’ inquiries.1 Even in those rare instances in which a virtue is treated as distinctively concerned with promoting epistemic goods in others’ inquiries, as in the case of Roberts and Wood’s treatment of intellectual generosity, the trait is not presented as one of several traits distinctively concerned with this aim and as such uniquely contributing toward an ideal of intellectual dependability. Thus, what we can take away from this section is that if there are virtues of intellectual dependability, then an extended treatment of

The Virtues of Intellectual Dependability  39 them would make an important contribution to the growing enterprise of philosophical research on individual intellectual virtues. Such a treatment would help to fill a lacuna within this research area—one the importance of which mirrors the importance of the ideal of intellectual dependability itself. Insofar as this ideal is a valuable object of study, and insofar as the supposed virtues of intellectual dependability uniquely contribute toward this ideal but have not been given sustained attention within contemporary virtue epistemology, a work of virtue epistemology focused upon them would appear justified—if these virtues indeed exist.

2 The Virtues of Intellectual Dependability: A Challenge It is natural to wonder why philosophers researching individual intellectual virtues have given so little attention to good candidates for virtues of intellectual dependability. Why is it that, despite the surging growth of interest in this area of scholarship, research has not expanded to include a larger number of extended treatments of good candidates for virtues of intellectual dependability? My primary purpose in this section is to identify a view which, if true, would justify this lack of attention. Indeed, if true, it would justify a complete lack of attention to virtues of intellectual dependability. For according to the view I will discuss, there are no virtues of intellectual dependability. This is because all intellectual virtues are equally concerned with promoting epistemic goods in others’ inquiries; there is no distinct subclass of intellectual virtues specially concerned with this task. I do not claim that this view in fact explains the inattention given to virtues of intellectual dependability. However, I will illustrate how some authors in the literature on intellectual virtues have tended to affirm the other-regarding nature of all intellectual virtues in a way that appears to equalize them in this respect, giving the impression that these authors may be sympathetic toward the view discussed here. I will show, moreover, how these authors’ comments could at least be taken to provide a challenge for those who would dispute the view here under discussion. My purpose in the next section will be to respond to this challenge. My own take with respect to the question of why little attention has been given to good candidates for virtues of intellectual dependability is that there are multiple, non-exclusive potential sources of explanation for this, several of which are broadly sociological. Perhaps the most powerful source is simply the influence of traditional epistemology with its focus on the epistemic achievements of the individual inquirer (see Kvanvig 1991). Philosophers offering detailed accounts of individual intellectual virtues have often exhibited a concern to justify their project to traditional epistemologists (e.g., Zagzebski 1996; Roberts and Wood 2007; Baehr 2011). It may be that because of this orientation virtue epistemologists have tended to focus largely on intellectual virtues that are

40  The Virtues of Intellectual Dependability focally concerned with enhancing the quality of their possessor’s inquiries rather than the inquiries of the possessor’s fellow inquirers. Another potential source of explanation is the idea that virtues focally concerned with enhancing the quality of the possessor’s own inquiries are likely to be more commonly achieved than virtues of intellectual dependability (cf. Kawall 2002). Perhaps philosophers have simply been showing a preference to examine first those intellectual virtues most likely to touch the lives of the greatest number of people. And besides these potential sources there are likely several others. It is clearer what has not led to this inattention than what has led to it. In particular, it is clear that virtue epistemologists have not failed to attend to virtues of intellectual dependability because they think intellectual virtues cannot be other-regarding. To the contrary, with the exception of Julia Driver (2003), most every philosopher who has recently addressed the question of whether intellectual virtues can be other-regarding has answered affirmatively. James Montmarquet, an early advocate for responsibilist virtue epistemology, maintained that one of the most important classes of intellectual virtues was the class of “virtues of impartiality,” a class “necessary to sustain an intellectual community,” which included such traits as “the willingness to exchange ideas with and learn from” others (1987: 484). Roberts and Wood, as we saw, often write as if they conceptualize intellectual generosity as an intellectual virtue focally concerned with promoting excellence in others’ inquiries. They say in summarizing their chapter on the trait, “We have seen that this virtue is a glad willingness to give intellectual goods . . . to others” (2007: 304). Jason Baehr straightforwardly maintains that “intellectual virtues can, as such, be oriented toward the epistemic good or well-being of others—they can be aimed at others’ acquisition or share in the epistemic goods” (2011: 216, emphasis original). Heather Battaly similarly writes that “Intellectual virtues can be other-regarding” (2014: 84). And Nathan King clearly conceptualizes intellectual virtues in such a way that they can have other-regarding expressions, describing intellectual virtues as “traits of excellent cognitive character involving a motivation for acquiring, maintaining, or distributing intellectual goods” (2014: 3504, emphasis added). This widespread agreement that intellectual virtues can be otherregarding of course only makes more puzzling the inattention to virtues of intellectual dependability. If it is happily granted, or even stressed, that intellectual virtues can be other-regarding, why not attend to those intellectual virtues that are distinctively other-regarding? The view that is my focus here would provide a principled justification for not doing so—one not subject to the contingencies to which the sociological explanations referenced above are subject. According to this view, all intellectual virtues are equally other-regarding. As such, there are no virtues of intellectual dependability—no virtues distinctively concerned

The Virtues of Intellectual Dependability  41 with promoting epistemic goods in others’ inquiries. Such a view obviously poses a serious threat to devoting extended scholarly attention to virtues of intellectual dependability, regardless of the contingent interests of the audiences of this scholarship. And while it is not my claim here that this view has in fact been a primary source of the inattention given to good candidates for virtues of intellectual dependability, the proposal is not without some merit. For we can detect within the writings of several contributors to the literature on intellectual virtues a tendency to stress the other-regarding character of all intellectual virtues in a way that appears to equalize intellectual virtues with respect to their other-regarding character. Some of the comments these authors make in exhibiting this equalizing tendency, moreover, could be employed to construct a challenge for denying the view—a challenge to which I will respond in the next section. A prime example of this equalizing tendency is detectable in Jason Baehr’s (2011) excellent discussion of the distinction between moral and intellectual virtues. Baehr defends the conclusion that the intellectual virtues are a subset of the moral virtues, while also contending that a person can possess an intellectual virtue without thereby possessing a moral virtue. As part of his discussion, Baehr engages with Jason Kawall’s (2002) work calling for virtue epistemologists to devote attention to what he calls “other-regarding epistemic virtues”—a call that has much in common with the call to examine virtues of intellectual dependability given here. Baehr cites approvingly Kawall’s point that intellectual character traits appropriately aimed at epistemic goods can be virtues whether the epistemic goods toward which they aim are the possessor’s own or someone else’s. But, where Baehr “take[s] some issue with Kawall’s otherwise very good treatment” of intellectual virtues is with Kawall’s proposal that there is “a self/others-regarding distinction among intellectual virtues themselves” (2011: Appendix, fn.25). In what he takes to be opposition to such a distinction, Baehr instead repeatedly claims that “all intellectual virtues have an others-regarding dimension” (218). For Baehr, any intellectual virtue possessed “in its fullness,” or “maximally or perfectly” will have an others-regarding dimension (ibid). Baehr’s view that any intellectual virtue possessed in its fullness has an others-regarding dimension holds the key to his defense of the two conclusions with which he is concerned. He takes moral virtues to be by definition virtues that are other-regarding. For this reason, it follows that intellectual virtues are a subset of the moral virtues, given that in their fullness they have other-regarding dimensions. On the other hand, Baehr’s reasoning in defense of the conclusion that not every token of an intellectual virtue is a token of a moral virtue also appeals to this idea about fullness. The reason why not every token of an intellectual virtue is a moral virtue is “because, to possess an intellectual virtue V, one need not possess the full or complete range of motivational states proper to

42  The Virtues of Intellectual Dependability V, including any others-regarding motives” (2011: 218). One can possess intellectual virtues less than fully, and when this happens one may thereby possess intellectual virtues without possessing moral virtues. Now, nowhere in this discussion does Baehr come right out and explicitly affirm that all intellectual virtues are equally other-regarding. Yet, the way in which his comments about the other-regarding dimensions of intellectual virtues are applied without distinction across the entire domain of intellectual virtues yields a highly equalizing impression. It gives the impression that the intellectual virtues are on par with respect to their other-regarding character. All are such that it is in their fullness and only in their fullness that they are other-regarding. All are such that possessing them does not require possessing the full range of motivation states proper to them, including any other-regarding motives. All can be directed toward promoting others’ epistemic goods, but needn’t be. All can be possessed without the possessor thereby possessing a moral virtue. Thus, there is no justification for drawing a distinction among categories of intellectual virtues on the basis of the way or extent to which they are others-regarding, as Kawall had proposed. Similarly equalizing characterizations of the other-regarding dimensions of intellectual virtues can be found elsewhere. For example, Heather Battaly (2014), in her shorter discussion of the distinction between moral and intellectual virtues, discusses the equalizing aspects of Baehr’s view we have just noted and leaves them unchallenged despite challenging other aspects of Baehr’s views. According to her reconstruction of Baehr’s view, Baehr contends that since all intellectual virtues can aim at goods for others, they are a subset of the moral virtues. However, he also argues that intellectual virtues need not aim at goods for others. One can possess intellectual virtues when one aims at knowledge or truth for oneself. (186) The slippage from “all intellectual virtues” in the first sentence to “intellectual virtues” in the second and third sentences is interesting. Are we to read these latter sentences as suggesting that no intellectual virtues need aim at goods for others, and that one can possess just any intellectual virtue without aiming at epistemic goods for others? Affirmative answers would pose a threat to the existence of the virtues of intellectual dependability, if part of what makes them distinctively other-regarding is—as suggested in the previous section—that they do require a motivation to promote epistemic goods for others. Yet, regardless of the correct answers to these interpretive questions, it is clear that comments about the other-regarding character of intellectual virtues are again being made without distinguishing how this other-regarding

The Virtues of Intellectual Dependability  43 character might differ across categories of intellectual virtues. In explaining but not objecting to this view while objecting to other aspects of Baehr’s view, Battaly might be read as giving the impression that she does not object to this tendency to equalize the other-regarding dimensions of intellectual virtues. A third example comes from Nathan King. As we saw above, King characterizes the intellectual virtues, as a group, as “traits of excellent cognitive character involving a motivation for acquiring, maintaining, or distributing intellectual goods” (2014: 3504). While King doesn’t explicitly address the question of whether there are some virtues distinctively concerned with acquiring intellectual goods, others distinctively concerned with maintaining them, and others distinctively concerned with distributing them, his discussion may give readers the impression that he does not think this is the case. When it comes to the particular virtue of intellectual perseverance that is the focus of his essay, King certainly doesn’t emphasize any one of these motivations as more important than any of the others. For A to possess intellectually virtuous perseverance is for A to be “disposed to continue in A’s intellectual endeavors for an appropriate amount of time, with serious effort, in the pursuit of intellectual goods, and despite the presence of obstacles to A’s acquiring, maintaining, or disseminating these goods” (3507, emphasis added). Indeed, King claims explicitly that “it would be a mistake to think that the pursuit of as-yet-undiscovered truth is necessary for the exercise of intellectually virtuous perseverance.” Instead, in some cases “perseverance is expressed in the maintenance, or dissemination of already achieved epistemic goods” (3514, emphasis original). In each of these cases, it is tempting to form the impression that the author thinks that all intellectual virtues are equally other-regarding. At the very least, the authors do not express approval for the view that there is a distinction to be made between intellectual virtues that are distinctively other-regarding and intellectual virtues that are not, in contexts in which such an expression might have been expected. Moreover, a strategy can be detected from within these writings for defending the view that all intellectual virtues are equally other-regarding, whether the authors would themselves advance this strategy or not. The strategy is to illustrate how even paradigmatic cases of intellectual virtues that are not good candidates for being virtues of intellectual dependability have other-regarding dimensions when possessed in their fullness. Baehr, for example, argues that such virtues as curiosity and intellectual integrity are like this, while King argues that perseverance is like this. This fact that even good candidates for intellectual virtues that are not virtues of intellectual dependability have other-regarding dimensions poses a challenge for the view that there are virtues of intellectual dependability. If all intellectual virtues in their fullness do have other-regarding dimensions, then there can be no simple distinction between intellectual

44  The Virtues of Intellectual Dependability virtues that are other-regarding and intellectual virtues that are not. So, if there is to be a distinction between intellectual virtues on the basis of their other-regarding character, then the distinction must be drawn in some other way. The challenge is to identify what this other way would be. The challenge is to explain in what respect virtues of intellectual dependability are distinctively other-regarding, where this way in which they are distinctively other-regarding is sufficiently robust to justify giving special attention to them within a treatment of the ideal of intellectual dependability. In what robust way, then, are the virtues of intellectual dependability distinctively concerned with promoting epistemic goods in others’ inquiries?

3 The Distinctiveness of Virtues of Intellectual Dependability The work of the present chapter has led to a crescendo in which the key question which has arisen is whether there is a way to mark off the virtues of intellectual dependability as distinctively other-regarding in comparison to other intellectual virtues. In this section I face this question head on. I begin by developing a proposal for how to differentiate the virtues of intellectual dependability from other intellectual virtues with respect to their other-regarding character and explaining how this way of differentiating them provides a justification for giving them focused attention within an examination of the ideal of intellectual dependability. I then respond to two objections to my approach to differentiating these virtues from others on the basis of their other-regarding character. 3.1 The Virtues of Intellectual Dependability Require Other-Regarding Motives My proposal is that what sets the virtues of intellectual dependability apart from other intellectual virtues is that they require other-regarding motivations for their possession. More specifically, possessing any virtue of intellectual dependability will require a motivation to promote epistemic goods in others’ inquiries. Indeed, it will require a motivation to promote epistemic goods in others’ inquiries for its own sake. To be clear, the proposal is that such a motivation is required for the mere possession of these virtues—not just for their full or complete or perfect possession, as may be the case with other intellectual virtues, following Baehr’s proposal discussed in the previous section. To possess the virtues of intellectual benevolence or intellectual transparency or communicative clarity simpliciter requires a motivation to promote epistemic goods in others’ inquiries. This motivational requirement is not a feature alien to the virtues of intellectual dependability; it is not an independent quality of those who

The Virtues of Intellectual Dependability  45 possess these virtues. Rather it is partly constitutive of these virtues. It shapes them. Those who possess these virtues have the tendencies characteristic of these traits out of a motivation to promote epistemic goods in others’ inquiries (cf. here Montmarquet 1987: 484; Zagzebski 1996: 269; Baehr 2011: 103). The clear communicator, for example, is disposed to resolve sources of confusion in their communications out of a motivation to promote others’ epistemic goods. Now, if the virtues of intellectual dependability do, as I’m proposing, distinctively require for their possession motivations to promote epistemic goods in others’ inquiries, and if moreover they must be possessed out of such a motivation, then there is a sense in which these traits are conceptually central to the ideal of intellectual dependability—more central than are other intellectual virtues. For that with which the ideal of intellectual dependability is distinctively concerned—promoting others’ epistemic goods—is also that with which these intellectual virtues are distinctively concerned. To flesh out this idea a bit, we might contrast the ideal of the intellectually dependable person with other relevant epistemic ideals, such as the ideal autonomous inquirer or the ideal dependent inquirer. Just as the ideal of the intellectually dependable person can be defined with reference to excellent functioning when one is depended upon by fellow inquirers, the ideal autonomous inquirer and the ideal dependent inquirer can be defined with reference to excellent functioning in fulfilling a particular role in inquiry. For the ideal dependent inquirer, that role is the role of inquiring when one is dependent in one’s inquiry on fellow inquirers. The ideal dependent inquirer is the inquirer who tends to function excellently as an inquirer when depending in their inquiries on fellow inquirers. For the ideal autonomous inquirer, the relevant role is that of inquiring when one is neither depended upon by fellow inquirers nor dependent upon them. The autonomous inquirer is, in terms of the work of inquiry, functioning alone. The ideal autonomous inquirer is the inquirer who tends to function excellently as an inquirer when neither depended upon by nor dependent upon fellow inquirers. Now it should be clear that these ideals are not identical to one another. Fulfilling one of them is not the same thing as fulfilling others of them. One might tend to perform very well as an inquirer when depending on others in one’s inquiries, but not tend to perform very well when inquiring by oneself or when being depended upon by fellow inquirers in their inquiries. This is so despite the fact that there may be much overlap between the ideals. For example, much of what may make a person better as an autonomous inquirer may also make them better as a dependent inquirer or as a dependable member of the community of inquiry. Despite such overlap, it is plausible that in the case of each ideal there will be intellectual motivations and intellectual character traits distinctive of the ideal. For example, we might think that the intellectual

46  The Virtues of Intellectual Dependability motivations characteristic of the ideal dependent inquirer includes the motivation to enhance the quality of one’s inquiries via dependence on others. Such a person seeks to get as much out of others’ contributions to their inquiries as they can. Out of such a motivation, we might expect a person to adopt such tendencies as the tendency to interpret others’ communications charitably, to empathetically reconstruct others’ total perspectives, and to trust others’ conscientious attempts at inquiry. These character traits, when suitably regulated by the appropriate motivation, are themselves virtues distinctive of the ideal dependent inquirer; they are virtues most proper or fitting of this ideal. Notably, philosophers interested in the excellent functioning of dependent inquirers have indeed given some attention to such features of dependent inquirers— considerably more than they have given to features that distinctively contribute toward the excellence of those who are depended upon. We saw earlier that the virtues of epistemic justice and epistemic care have been conceived of in this way, and virtues of trust (e.g., Zagzebski 2012), charity (King and Garcia 2015), empathy (Linker 2011), and deference (Ahlstrom-Vij 2018) have been as well, as has the virtuous handling of others’ testimony more generally (Robertson 2015). When we turn to the ideal of the intellectually dependable person, it is plausible that their distinctive intellectual motivation is the otherregarding motivation to promote epistemic goods in others’ inquiries. For if being ideally intellectual dependable requires any motivations at all not required by the other epistemic ideals, it is this motivation. And it is indeed plausible, as already suggested briefly in Chapter 1, that being ideally intellectually dependable does require such a motivation. Such a motivation would, for example, regulate in a valuable way those behaviors characteristically exhibited by those who are intellectually dependable, such as sharing one’s perspective or flagging valuable or disvaluable features of the dependent inquirer’s inquiry. These behaviors would be engaged in out of a motivation to promote others’ epistemic goods, rather than, for example, a motivation to win arguments, make oneself appear dialectically superior, or sway others to one’s own manner of thinking independently of promoting what is good for them epistemically. As these cases illustrate, regulating one’s conduct when depended upon in accordance with a motivation to promote others’ epistemic goods enhances one’s intellectual dependability beyond what is achieved when such conduct is regulated by rival motivations. Moreover, such a motivation would not only shape tendencies to display such behaviors individually, but would unite any tendencies a person had to display such behaviors into a coherent whole. The person in whom any dispositions to engage in behaviors characteristic of the intellectually dependable person are each regulated by the motivation to promote epistemic goods in others’ inquiries possesses a unified and therefore more stable set of dispositions than does the person in whom

The Virtues of Intellectual Dependability  47 such dispositions are possessed in a piecemeal fashion. This person has a coherent and integrated psyche insofar as their dispositions toward dependent inquirers are concerned. Given its value in shaping a person’s dispositions toward dependent inquirers both individually and collectively, the motivation to promote others’ epistemic goods appears to be required by the ideal of intellectual dependability—and so distinctively required by it. Whereas the motivation distinctive of the ideal of intellectual dependability is the motivation to promote epistemic goods in others’ inquiries, the intellectual virtues distinctive of this ideal are the virtues of intellectual dependability—virtues such as intellectual transparency, communicative clarity, and epistemic guidance. Just as intellectual virtues such as interpretive charity or epistemic trust are plausibly distinctive of the ideal of the dependent inquirer, these virtues of intellectual dependability are distinctive of the intellectually dependable person. They are the intellectual virtues most proper or fitting of the intellectually dependable person. We might think of the virtues of intellectual dependability as those intellectual virtues which, in addition to the virtues most proper or fitting of the ideals of the autonomous inquirer and the dependent inquirer, are required in order for a person to reach the ideal of intellectual dependability. Possessing these virtues isn’t necessary for reaching the ideals of autonomous inquiry or dependent inquiry, but it is necessary for reaching the ideal of intellectual dependability. The virtues of intellectual dependability are distinctive of this ideal. An attractive story about what makes particular subsets of intellectual virtues distinctive of particular epistemic ideals is that these virtues are those that must be possessed out of the motivations distinctive of the respective ideal. At least this is a tempting story in the case of the virtues distinctive of the ideals of intellectual dependence and intellectual dependability. Traits such as interpretive charity and epistemic trust are virtues only insofar as they are possessed out of the motivations distinctive of ideal intellectual dependence. Likewise, traits such as communicative clarity and audience sensitivity are virtues only insofar as they are possessed out of the motivation to promote epistemic goods in others’ inquiries. Whereas virtues not distinctive of these ideals may or may not be possessed out of the motivations distinctive of these ideals, the virtues distinctive of the ideals must be possessed out of these motivations. For example, whereas intellectual perseverance, at least in its complete or perfect form, may be possessed at least in part out of a motivation to promote epistemic goods in others’ inquiries, communicative clarity cannot be possessed simpliciter without being possessed out of this motivation. In this way it and the other virtues of intellectual dependability are distinctive of intellectual dependability. Given that the virtues of intellectual dependability are in this way distinctive of the ideal of intellectual dependability, they have a certain

48  The Virtues of Intellectual Dependability conceptual priority for purposes of investigating the ideal. If we wish to understand this ideal, we do well to attend to those features distinctive of it—to what sets it apart from other relevant ideals. What sets this ideal apart from other relevant ideals such as the ideal dependent inquirer or the ideal autonomous inquirer are the virtues distinctive of it as compared with these others. Investigating these virtues is therefore justified within an effort to understand the ideal. This is especially the case given that the virtues shared in common between this ideal and others have received the lion’s share of attention within contemporary philosophical research on intellectual virtues. Thus, if the virtues of intellectual dependability really are distinctive of the ideal of intellectual dependability—if they really must be possessed out of the motivation that is distinctive of this ideal—then extended treatment of them within an examination of this ideal is justified. 3.2 Objections I’ve proposed that the virtues of intellectual dependability are distinctively other-regarding in the sense that they require for their possession the motivation to promote others’ epistemic goods for its own sake. In this section, I respond to two objections to this proposal. According to the first objection, the so-called virtues of intellectual dependability, when correctly understood, turn out to be no different from other intellectual virtues in terms of their motivational requirements. Just like intellectual perseverance or curiosity, these virtues can be possessed simpliciter despite an absence of other-regarding motivations, and it is only in order to be possessed fully or completely that their possession requires other-regarding motivations. Like other intellectual virtues, these virtues have both self-regarding and other-regarding dimensions. Possession of their self-regarding dimensions suffices for possession of the traits; it is only full or perfect possession of the traits that requires possession of their other-regarding dimensions. So, the proposed approach to differentiating virtues of intellectual dependability from other virtues on the basis of their other-regarding character, despite its promise, fails. Let’s see how the objection would work with some examples. According to the objection, communicative clarity is not as we might have thought exclusively a tendency to regulate one’s communications with others; it is also a tendency to regulate one’s communications to oneself. Likewise, intellectual transparency is equally a matter of sharing one’s cognitive perspective with oneself as it is a matter of sharing one’s cognitive perspective with others. And audience sensitivity is a matter of being sensitive to one’s own intellectual needs, interests, views, and abilities just as it is a matter of being sensitive to these features of others. According to the objection, when a person has the relevant self-regarding

The Virtues of Intellectual Dependability  49 tendencies and motivations of any of these traits, this suffices for possession of the virtues, just as in cases of other intellectual virtues. There may be a grain of truth to the objection, but I think it is largely mistaken. The grain of truth is that behaviors characteristic of the virtues of intellectual dependability can be displayed toward oneself with salutary effects. For various reasons people may face temptations to be less than honest with themselves or to block themselves off from accessing parts of their own cognitive perspective. In such cases, it may be salutary for their own inquiries if they behave in accordance with something like intellectual transparency toward themselves—if they are, as we might put it, intellectually self-transparent. Similarly, it is often important for purposes of regulating one’s own inquiries that one attends to various features of one’s inquiries, including the methods one  has used, the views toward which one is inclined, and the abilities one has or doesn’t have. We might even grant that, in a sense, the way one communicates with oneself in thought should be guided by one’s sensitivity toward such features. In such a case, it seems like what is being recommended is along the lines of a sensitivity toward oneself as one’s audience. And similar things might be said about the value of communicating clearly with oneself. Yet, even insofar as there is this grain of truth to the current objection, it does not suffice to threaten the proposed account of the difference between virtues of intellectual dependability and other virtues. Suppose we go so far as to grant that the virtues of intellectual dependability do have self-regarding dimensions. I propose that it remains plausible despite this concession to maintain that possessing these virtues requires possessing their other-regarding dimensions. For the person who communicates clearly only with themselves is not thereby a clear communicator. Nor does a person have the virtue of being sensitive to their audience if the only audience toward whom they are sensitive is an audience of one. Nor is a person transparent who is only self-transparent. We might put it this way: the fact that one tends to communicate clearly to oneself or shares one’s perspective with oneself or displays sensitivity toward one’s own inquiry-relevant features does not imply that one is the sort of person who tends to communicate clearly, share one’s perspective, or display sensitivity to one’s audience. Whether one is a clear communicator, is a transparent sharer of one’s perspective, or is sensitive toward one’s audience is too much a matter of how one regulates one’s conduct toward people other than oneself. This response by itself would be sufficient to defend the present proposal against this first objection. Yet, I think we may be able to go even further in responding to this objection. For we needn’t grant that the virtues of intellectual dependability have self-regarding dimensions in the first place, at least not in the ideal inquirer. In the ideal inquirer, those self-regarding functions that the objection highlights as appropriate

50  The Virtues of Intellectual Dependability for the virtues of intellectual dependability seem either unnecessary or more appropriately achieved via other virtues. For example, the function of being self-transparent seems unnecessary within the ideal inquirer, insofar as this function appears to assume a kind of divided self within the inquirer. Even the function of communicating clearly with oneself appears to assume such a division between a giver and recipient of communication within the self, when presumably within the ideal inquirer there is simply a thinker. Of course, part of what makes this thinker an ideal inquirer is that their thinking is clear thinking, but such clear thinking is plausibly a matter of other intellectual virtues, such as thoroughness or cautiousness. Similarly, insofar as careful attention to one’s own inquiry-relevant features is appropriate in the ideal inquirer, this again seems to be an appropriate “job,” so to speak, of other intellectual virtues, such as intellectual humility (Whitcomb et al. 2017) or vigilance (Roberts and West 2015). Thus, while the virtues of intellectual dependability might be directed toward the self of an unideal inquirer with salutary effects, their possession by the ideal inquirer appears to be entirely a matter of possessing their other-regarding dimensions. Despite some truth to this first objection, then, the virtues of intellectual dependability are not just like all other intellectual virtues in that they can be possessed (albeit imperfectly) when their self-regarding dimensions are possessed and only fully possessed when their otherregarding dimensions are possessed. Within the ideal inquirer, they have no self-regarding dimensions; and, even in cases where tendencies characteristic of these virtues can be directed toward oneself with salutary effects, possessing these self-regarding tendencies does not suffice for possessing the virtues of intellectual dependability. Possessing the virtues of intellectual dependability distinctively requires possessing the motivation distinctive of intellectual dependability—the motivation to promote epistemic goods in others’ inquiries. A second objection to this proposal for distinguishing the virtues of intellectual dependability from other virtues doesn’t focus on their similarity to other intellectual virtues, but instead focuses on ways these traits might be possessed without being possessed out of the proposed motivation to benefit others’ inquiries. The basic idea is that the tendencies characteristic of the clear communicator or the communicator who is sensitive to their audience and so on can be possessed out of motivations other than the motivation to benefit others’ inquiries, and when they are the relevant traits are still possessed. Thus, possessing these tendencies out of the motivation to benefit others’ inquiries is not necessary for possessing the traits, as the proposal would have it. Let us again attend to how the proposal would work with some specific examples. Take communicative clarity and audience sensitivity, since we’ve already begun commenting on them. We’ve seen that being a clear communicator is in part a matter of tending to regulate one’s

The Virtues of Intellectual Dependability  51 communications in such a way as to enable one’s audience to resolve sources of confusion within these communications. A clear communicator, for example, might make relevant distinctions, define key terms, and organize their communications such that they are easy to follow. The idea of the present objection is that such tendencies needn’t be had out of a motivation to promote others’ epistemic goods. Instead, for example, a person might manifest such tendencies out of an aim to win people to their side in debates, or out of an aim to influence others’ views or behaviors, each of which may be independent of a motivation to benefit these others in their inquiries. Here we might even think of the skilled sophist or con-artist. If they wish to influence others effectively in the way they desire, they’ll need to communicate in a way that doesn’t render their audiences too confused to follow them. Indeed, more broadly, we might imagine the objector maintaining that clear communication is a skill that can be possessed out of a variety of motivations, not just the motivation to benefit others’ inquiries. Similar comments are in store for audience sensitivity. Again, a sophist or con-artist is likely to be much more effective if they regulate their communications with their audiences in light of their understanding of distinctive features of their audiences. Knowing, for example, which objections might occur to an audience and which might not, or how the audience treats various sources of evidence, and regulating one’s communications to this audience in light of this knowledge is of benefit not only for those who aim to benefit their audience’s inquiries, but for those who aim to manipulate their audiences. Thus, being sensitive to one’s audience does not require the proposed motivation to benefit others’ inquiries. As with the first objection, I think there’s a grain of truth to this objection, but again it fails to show that the virtues of intellectual dependability cannot be distinguished in terms of the characteristic motivation to benefit others’ inquiries. The grain of truth is that actions and tendencies overlapping significantly with the actions and tendencies characteristic of those who possess the virtues of intellectual dependability can be undertaken by people who are not motivated to promote epistemic goods in others’ inquiries. As the examples illustrate, a person can employ clarifying definitions or selectively attend to objections on the basis of knowledge of their audience, or even tend to engage in such behaviors, out of motivations other than the motivation to benefit others’ inquiries. In fact, I go still further (so, perhaps there’s something more than a grain of truth to the objection): it may even be perfectly acceptable to grant that a person who has such tendencies possesses a trait of communicative clarity or audience sensitivity. We might appropriately describe such a person as a clear communicator or as someone who is sensitive to their audience. What would not be correct, however, is to claim that such a person possesses the virtue of communicative clarity or the virtue of audience

52  The Virtues of Intellectual Dependability sensitivity. Following other recent virtue epistemologists (e.g., King 2014; Battaly 2017), I distinguish between possessing the traits of communicative clarity or audience sensitivity or intellectual transparency and so on from possessing the virtues of communicative clarity or audience sensitivity or intellectual transparency and so on. As suggested in the previous sub-section, it makes a difference which motivations regulate a person’s dispositions for inquiry. A disposition to regulate one’s communications in light of one’s understanding of one’s audience out of a motivation to persuade that audience is a very different thing from a disposition to regulate one’s communications in light of one’s understanding of one’s audience out of a motivation to promote that audience’s epistemic goods. Indeed, the difference here is precisely the sort of difference to make a difference for whether or not the trait in view is a virtue (cf. Hursthouse 1999: 11). A disposition of the former sort is not one we admire, whereas a disposition of the latter sort is; it is people with dispositions of the latter sort rather than the former sort that we want to depend on. It is by virtue of possessing dispositions of the latter sort and not the former sort that a person reaches closer to the ideal of being an intellectually dependable person. The motivations that regulate a person’s dispositions for inquiry not only make a difference for the abstract question of whether or not their traits are virtues, these motivations also make a difference for which behaviors a person will tend to exhibit across contexts. Compare, for example, a person in whom the tendency to resolve sources of confusion in their communications is regulated by a motivation to win arguments with a person in whom the tendency to resolve sources of confusion in their communications is regulated by a motivation to promote others’ epistemic goods. Imagine these people are in a situation in which they do not have firm views about a topic under discussion. The latter individual will still be disposed to resolve sources of confusion in communicating whatever unresolved perspective they have on the topic so as to improve their audience’s epistemic position. If the former individual’s disposition regulates their communications at all, it will only be because they have elected to defend a side on the issue which they don’t in fact endorse. These individuals will clearly be behaving quite differently. Indeed, more generally, we should expect that the former individual will engage in clarifying behaviors only when doing so suits their purposes of winning arguments, whereas the latter will do so when doing so suits their purpose of promoting others’ epistemic goods. In any circumstances in which engaging in clarifying behaviors would serve one of these purposes but not the other, or in which clarifying behaviors of a certain kind would serve one purpose but not the other, we should expect these individuals to exhibit different behaviors. And a similar story can be told about the differences in behavior we might expect to be displayed by those who possess non-virtuous versions of the other traits

The Virtues of Intellectual Dependability  53 of intellectual dependability versus those who possess the other virtues of intellectual dependability. Of course, there are motivations other than those I have surveyed out of which a person might exhibit behaviors overlapping with those characteristic of the virtues of intellectual dependability. I can’t hope to examine all such motivations here in detail. Yet it would appear that the argumentative strategies employed here can be repurposed to other cases of this kind, including cases involving less clearly problematic motivations. For example, we might imagine that some people develop skills in exhibiting clarifying behaviors or sensitivity to their audiences out of a motivation to solicit the best possible feedback about their ideas. They aren’t motivated viciously to manipulate others; they are genuinely motivated to achieve epistemic goods for themselves, and out of this motivation they tend to present their ideas clearly and with sensitivity to their audiences, so that their audiences might better help them refine their ideas. While I think it would be a mistake to count the kinds of traits exhibited by such a person as vices, I also think it is reasonable to think that they fail to hit the mark of the intellectual virtues of clarity or audience sensitivity if they do not include the other-regarding motivation to promote others’ epistemic goods for their own sake. For a person who aims to refine their ideas through receiving feedback from others but doesn’t aim as part of this process to promote others’ understanding of these ideas is missing a step in the process. There is a kind of irrationality in aiming for others to provide you with feedback on your ideas without aiming for others to first adequately understand those ideas. Moreover, if you aim for others to understand those ideas but only as a means to the end of refining your own ideas, you seem to be treating your epistemic goods as more important than others’ epistemic goods just because they are yours—to be committing a kind of epistemic egoism (cf. Zagzebski 2012, ch.3). You are failing to exhibit a sensitivity to salient epistemic values that it is reasonable to think is a hallmark of epistemic virtues governing the kind of conduct in which you are engaging. While you may possess a trait of clarity or audience sensitivity, it isn’t the intellectual virtue of clarity or audience sensitivity. Moreover, as with the other traits identified above, your traits will differ from the virtues in their cross-situational manifestations. Specifically, you will tend to engage in clarifying or audience sensitive behaviors when doing so seems a reasonable route to refining your ideas, but not in a variety of other circumstances in which doing so would do more to promote others’ epistemic goods than your own. Tending to exhibit these kinds of behaviors across the wide array of contexts in which doing so will benefit others’ epistemic well-being is characteristic of the virtuous versions of these traits. Neither of the present objections, then, threatens the proposal of this chapter that the virtues of intellectual dependability can be distinguished in terms of the requirement that in order to be possessed they must be

54  The Virtues of Intellectual Dependability possessed out of a motivation to promote epistemic goods in others’ inquiries. This account of the virtues of intellectual dependability provides a way to distinguish these virtues as distinctive to the ideal of intellectual dependability, and thereby provides justification for awarding them focused attention within an examination of this ideal. The present objections do, however, highlight for us something that we must keep in mind in the next chapter. In the next chapter we turn to the topic of whether it is appropriate to educate for the virtues of intellectual dependability. We must keep in mind as part of that discussion that there are traits that are similar in certain respects to the virtues of intellectual dependability but that are not these virtues. The aim of that chapter will not merely be to show that it is appropriate to educate for self-directed versions of the virtues of intellectual dependability or traits of intellectual dependability that are not motivated by benefiting others’ inquiries. Instead, the aim must be to argue that it is appropriate to educate for these virtues that require for their possession the motivation to promote epistemic goods in others’ inquiries. To the business of defending this argument I now turn.

Note 1 To be clear, my claim here is not that these authors have somehow misanalyzed their target virtues, but rather that one might have thought that, in addition to the versions or types of epistemic justice and epistemic care on which these authors legitimately focus, there is also room for theorizing about other types of epistemic justice or epistemic care that are good candidates for virtues of intellectual dependability.

References Ahlstrom-Vij, Kristoffer. 2018. “The Epistemic Virtue of Deference.” In The Routledge Handbook of Virtue Epistemology, ed. Heather Battaly, 209–20. New York: Routledge Press. Baehr, Jason. 2009. “The Structure of Open-Mindedness.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 41, 2: 191–213. Baehr, Jason. 2011. The Inquiring Mind: On Intellectual Virtues and Virtue Epistemology. New York: Oxford University Press. Baehr, Jason. 2015. Cultivating Good Minds: A Philosophical and Practical Guide to Educating for Intellectual Virtues. Available at intellectualvirtues.org Battaly, Heather. 2014. “Intellectual Virtues.” In The Handbook of Virtue Ethics, ed. Stan van Hooft, 177–87. New York: Routledge Press. Battaly, Heather. 2017. “Intellectual Perseverance.” Journal of Moral Philosophy 14, 6: 669–97. Battaly, Heather, ed. 2019. The Routledge Handbook of Virtue Epistemology. New York: Routledge Press. Carr, David. 2014. “The Human and Educational Significance of Honesty as a Moral and Epistemic Virtue.” Educational Theory 64, 1: 1–14.

The Virtues of Intellectual Dependability  55 Dalmiya, Vrinda. 2016. Caring to Know: Comparative Care Ethics, Feminist Epistemology, and the Mahabharata. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dow, Philip. 2013. Virtuous Minds: Intellectual Character Development. Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press. Driver, Julia. 2003. “The Conflation of Moral and Epistemic Virtue.” Metaphilosophy 34, 3: 367–83. Fricker, Miranda. 2007. Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hursthouse, Rosalind. 1999. On Virtue Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kawall, Jason. 2002. “Other-Regarding Epistemic Virtues.” Ratio 15, 3: 257–75. King, Nathan. 2014. “Perseverance as an Intellectual Virtue.” Synthese 191, 15: 3501–23. King, Nathan and Robert Garcia. 2015. “Toward Intellectually Virtuous Discourse: Two Vicious Fallacies and the Virtues that Inhibit Them.” In Intellectual Virtues and Education: Essays in Applied Virtue Epistemology, ed. Jason Baehr, 202–20. New York: Routledge Press. Kvanvig, Jonathan. 1991. The Intellectual Virtues and the Life of the Mind: On the Place of the Virtues in Contemporary Epistemology. Savage, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Linker, Maureen. 2011. “Do Squirrels Eat Hamburgers? Intellectual Empathy as a Remedy for Risidual Prejudice.” Informal Logic 31, 2: 110–38. Montmarquet, James. 1987. “Epistemic Virtue.” Mind 96, 384: 482–97. Roberts, Robert and Jay Wood. 2007. Intellectual Virtues: An Essay in Regulative Epistemology. New York: Oxford University Press. Roberts, Robert and Ryan West. 2015. “Natural Epistemic Defects and Corrective Virtues.” Synthese 192, 8: 2557–76. Robertson, Emily. 2015. “Testimonial Virtue.” Education Studies 52, 4: 363–72. Whitcomb, Dennis, Heather Battaly, Jason Baehr, and Dan Howard-Snyder. 2017. “Intellectual Humility: Owning Our Limitations.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 94, 3: 509–39. Zagzebski, Linda. 1996. Virtues of the Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of Knowledge. New York: Cambridge University Press. Zagzebski, Linda. 2012. Epistemic Authority: A Theory of Trust, Authority, and Autonomy in Belief. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

3

Educating for Intellectual Dependability

The previous chapters have been devoted to articulating the ideal of the intellectually dependable person and to identifying the virtues of intellectual dependability. I have articulated the ideal of the intellectually dependable person as the sort of person on whom others can depend as a fellow member of the community of inquiry, and I have argued that central to achieving this ideal is possessing a suite of distinctively other-regarding intellectual virtues such as intellectual benevolence, intellectual transparency, communicative clarity, audience sensitivity, and epistemic guidance. In this chapter, I turn to the topic of educating for intellectual dependability. More specifically, my topic is educating with the aim of enabling learners to more closely approximate ideal possession of the virtues of intellectual dependability. There are several questions about educating for intellectual dependability in this sense that are worthy of attention. One question concerns the possibility of educating for intellectual dependability. Can the virtues of intellectual dependability be taught? Another concerns the justifiability of educating for intellectual dependability. Is helping learners to grow in their possession of the virtues of intellectual dependability a justifiable educational aim? And there are also questions about how to teach for intellectual dependability. Supposing educating for intellectual dependability is at least sometimes justifiable and possible, how might it be best achieved? Are there general strategies that can be employed to help learners grow toward ideal possession of each of the virtues of intellectual dependability? Are there effective pedagogical strategies distinct to each of the several virtues of intellectual dependability? My focus in this chapter is on the question of justification. Specifically, I aim to argue that educating for intellectual dependability is justified within the kind of formal, public education commonly provided in today’s democratic states. I have in mind specifically formal, public education systems in which provision is available from what is often called primary school through secondary school and on to higher education. The structure of my argument will be to identify several aims that are commonly adopted with reason within these educational systems, and to argue that educating for intellectual dependability is conducive toward securing these aims, without being in some other way objectionable. In

Educating for Intellectual Dependability  57 this way, I intend to make a broad appeal on behalf of the value of educating for intellectual dependability. Not every reader will agree that each of the aims cited is itself a justifiable aim of the kinds of educational systems I have in mind, but many readers will agree that at least some of the aims cited are justifiable aims. Thus, if the arguments I offer are cogent, then this should provide many readers with reason to think that educating for intellectual dependability is justified. While I will not discuss questions about the possibility of educating for intellectual dependability or about pedagogical strategies for educating for intellectual dependability in this chapter, I direct the interested reader to my previously published work on the topic of educating for intellectual virtues in general (Byerly 2019) and I note that I will occasionally broach the topic of educating for the several virtues of intellectual dependability in the later chapters of this book devoted specifically to these traits.

1 Intellectual Dependability and the Epistemic Aims of Education For ease of presentation, I will divide the educational aims discussed into the categories of epistemic and social aims. I recognize from the outset, however, that there is overlap between these categories and the categories themselves may not be homogenous.1 Under the heading of the epistemic, philosophers have typically included many of the potential aims of inquiry discussed in Chapter 1. Thus, for example, knowledge, understanding, true belief, justified belief, rationality, and intellectual virtue have all been treated as appropriate subjects of epistemology. Among these potential epistemic aims, some have been identified as also constituting justifiable aims of education. In this section, I will discuss four of these epistemic aims, arguing that educating for intellectual dependability is conducive toward each. 1.1 Intellectual Virtue Perhaps the most obvious and least interesting argument in favor of educating for intellectual dependability runs as follows. Educating for intellectual virtue is a justified epistemic aim of education; but educating for the virtues of intellectual dependability is conducive toward educating for intellectual virtue; so, educating for the virtues of intellectual dependability is justified. The argument is relatively uninteresting because it may seem unlikely that it would be taken by anyone to provide evidence for its conclusion unless they are antecedently inclined to agree with this conclusion. The premise that educating for intellectual virtue is a justified epistemic aim of education already contains within it in a problematic way the idea that educating for the virtues of intellectual dependability is justified, it seems, since part of what it is to educate for intellectual virtue

58  Educating for Intellectual Dependability is to educate for the virtues of intellectual dependability. Or, at least, once a person realizes that “intellectual virtue” in this premise must be understood so as to include the virtues of intellectual dependability, they are not likely to be any more strongly inclined to grant the truth of this premise than they are to grant the truth of the argument’s conclusion. Nonetheless, the argument is worth discussing briefly for two reasons. First, it is worth noting that the idea that intellectual virtue is a justified aim of education has recently been the subject of significant scholarly discussion. Jason Baehr (2013, 2016, 2019), Randall Curren (2018), and Duncan Pritchard (2013) are among those who have defended the justifiability of educating for intellectual virtue. Harvey Siegel (2017), too, has expressed sympathy with the value of educating for intellectual virtue, though he also expresses concern that the justification available for educating for intellectual virtue is weaker than the justification for educating for critical thinking, and perhaps is ultimately inadequate. The fact, then, is that intellectual virtue is currently gaining currency as a justifiable educational aim. Thus, the argument above is worth attending to simply because it may well be cogent, even if relatively uninteresting. Yet, a second reason for attending to the argument is that it may not be as uninteresting as it seems. We saw in Chapter 2 that the virtues of intellectual dependability, as distinctively other-regarding intellectual virtues, have gone woefully unattended to by contemporary virtue epistemologists. We saw also that the reason for this inattention does not have to do with the fact that these virtue epistemologists would not consider these traits to be intellectual virtues given their considered views. Indeed, given their considered views, they likely would regard these traits as intellectual virtues (and perhaps also as moral virtues). But if indeed their considered views would imply that these traits are intellectual virtues, but such traits have not been in the forefront of their thinking when they have been discussing intellectual virtues and education, then the argument presented at the outset of this section may prove somewhat illuminating for them. It may function to bring to the forefront of their thinking a suite of traits that they might otherwise have overlooked when considering the topic of educating for intellectual virtue, highlighting for them that their considered views imply that educating for these traits is justified just as is educating for the intellectual virtues that have been their focus. So, one potential epistemic aim of education that could lead at least some readers to conclude that educating for the virtues of intellectual dependability is justified is the aim of intellectual virtue. 1.2 Critical Thinking A second potential epistemic aim of education that may provide justification for educating for intellectual dependability is the aim of critical thinking. Critical thinking of the kind in view is typically regarded as

Educating for Intellectual Dependability  59 having two components: a reasons assessment component and a thinking dispositions component (for a recent authoritative treatment, see Siegel 2017). The reasons assessment component requires competence in assessing the support that candidate reasons provide for candidate conclusions. It includes, for example, skills in formal and informal logic. The thinking dispositions or critical spirit component is concerned with the learner’s disposition to apply the skills of reason assessment and to act on the basis of applying these skills. A learner who acquires the critical spirit will be disposed to assess reasons well and to act on the basis of their competent assessment of reasons. So understood, critical thinking has enjoyed widespread support as a justified aim of education. Siegel, who uses “reason” and “rationality” as synonyms for “critical thinking,” writes that No other proposed aim of education—knowledge, happiness, community, civic-mindedness, social solidarity, docility and obedience to authority, creativity, spiritual fulfillment, the fulfillment of potential, etc.—has enjoyed the virtually unanimous endorsement of historically important philosophers of education that reason and rationality have. (2003: 305–6) Of course, not everyone who has endorsed critical thinking as an aim of education has conceptualized it in exactly the same way. In particular, of relevance to the current discussion is that there is some controversy about the extent to which there is overlap between the critical spirit or thinking dispositions component of critical thinking and the intellectual virtues. Some critical thinking scholars have argued that the critical spirit is best conceptualized in terms of intellectual virtues (see, e.g., Bailin and Battersby 2016), while others such as Siegel (2017) have argued that it is important to keep thinking dispositions and intellectual virtues separate, maintaining that educating for thinking dispositions is better justified than is educating for intellectual virtues. I am personally quite sympathetic with the arguments that have been given for thinking that insofar as critical thinking and intellectual virtue are distinct aims, intellectual virtue is the superior educational aim. Jason Baehr, for example, writes: Critical thinking, as conceived of by Siegel and others, is about the assessment of reasons, evidence, and arguments. As such, it addresses only one dimension of the cognitive life. While this dimension is broad and important, critical thinking thus conceived neglects other important intellectual activities—activities that are also important vis-à-vis the aims of education. In addition to wanting our students to become good reasoners, we also want them to become competent

60  Educating for Intellectual Dependability at imagining innovative solutions, entering into perspectives very different from their own, paying close attention, noticing important details, and formulating good questions. (2019:456) I would only hasten to add in the present context that we also want our students to become competent at communicating clearly and with sensitivity to their audiences, sharing their perspectives transparently and offering guidance to fellow inquirers when they are positioned to do so. My own sympathy, then, is to view intellectual dependability as a key ingredient of an epistemic aim of education that may well be broader and more ultimate than the aim of critical thinking, and to think that insofar as critical thinking is conceptualized as not including the virtues of intellectual dependability, it misses out on something important educationally. Nonetheless, these contentions are not my main focus in this section. Rather than argue that the virtues of intellectual dependability are components of an educational aim that is superior to critical thinking, I wish instead to grant for the sake of argument the superiority of critical thinking as an educational aim and to defend the conclusion that educating for intellectual dependability is conducive toward educating for critical thinking. This conclusion may come across as somewhat surprising, given that it has often been the other-regarding dimensions of intellectual virtues in particular that have been eschewed as not being part of the ideal of critical thinking. For example, in the 1990 Delphi Report commissioned by the American Philosophical Association, it was found that the majority of experts agreed that a person could achieve the ideal of critical thinking while still “us[ing] this skill to mislead and exploit a gullible person, perpetrate a fraud, or deliberately confuse and confound, and frustrate a project” (Facione 2018: 13). In the view of the majority, it appears that being intellectually dependable is not part of being a critical thinker. Despite granting here that the virtues of intellectual dependability are not a part of the ideal of critical thinking, I nonetheless seek to maintain that educating for the virtues of intellectual dependability is conducive toward educating for critical thinking. The key idea of my argument is one that I borrow from Deweyan and feminist epistemologists (e.g., Dewey 1989: 112; Code 1991; Westlund 2012). It is the idea, roughly, that our so-called internal processes of reasoning are dependent upon our social experience with interlocutors. We learn how to represent to ourselves in our internal dialogues divergent perspectives on a topic and to bring these perspectives into epistemically fruitful interaction via our repeated interactions with distinct individuals who represent alternative perspectives on topics and bring these perspectives into epistemically fruitful interaction with one another. As Westlund argues, the “disposition to hold oneself answerable

Educating for Intellectual Dependability  61 to external, critical perspectives,” which is partially constitutive of the sort of intellectual autonomy central to critical thinking, “is intimately tied to a capacity for symmetrically shared or ‘joint’ deliberation” (2012: 59). We learn how to “think for ourselves”—a favorite idiom of advocates of the educational ideal of critical thinking—by thinking together. Now one way in which this idea might be thought to justify educating for intellectual dependability is that it reveals that in order to be a critical thinker, I must at least learn to be intellectually dependable toward myself within my own internal dialogues of reason. I must be motivated to promote my epistemic goods, I must practice being transparent to myself when representing to myself each side of an issue, I must communicate clearly to myself, and so on. But this way of attempting to justify educating for intellectual dependability appears not to go as far as we might like. It appears to only justify educating for being dependable toward oneself in one’s own internal dialogues of reason. There is, however, another way in which the foregoing observations provide justification for educating for the broader sort of intellectual dependability that is in view here. For, if we wish to aid learners to become critical thinkers, what the foregoing observations indicate is that it will be conducive toward this purpose if we populate their learning environments with interlocutors who are intellectually dependable. Students will learn better to how to think for themselves if they are surrounded by instructors and peers who model intellectual dependability for them. They will learn better how to represent for themselves diverse perspectives on topics of importance if they experience those who hold such diverse perspectives representing their perspectives well, aiming to promote the epistemic goods of their hearers, to share their perspectives transparently, to communicate their ideas clearly and with sensitivity to their audiences, and so on. It is the intellectual behaviors of the thought that is done together that they will learn to repeat in their thought that occurs in isolation (cf. Lipman 2003; Grandy 2007). Accordingly, if we wish to train up a critical thinker, we are wellserved by training their peers to be intellectually dependable. Even if the ultimate epistemic aim of education is to train learners to think for themselves, teaching them to be intellectually dependable is conducive toward achieving this aim. 1.3 Apprenticeship Whereas intellectual virtue and critical thinking are more individualistic aims of education, the third and fourth aims I will discuss are more social. A third aim identified by some philosophers of education pertains to apprenticeship. Especially at higher levels of education, educators aim to train learners to be their apprentices—to become their peers, doing well what they themselves do (Robertson 2009: 12). This apprenticeship may

62  Educating for Intellectual Dependability involve a more research-oriented training or a more teaching-oriented training, if not both. Regarding research-oriented training, philosophers of education have long emphasized the way in which education serves as an initiation for students into social practices of inquiry within particular domains of knowledge (see, e.g., Peters 2007). As Luntley explains this idea of initiation, “the pupil’s education involves a gradual joining-in in the enterprise of managing our shared inheritance, not just an absorption of it” (2010: 42). As such, it is justifiable for students to learn how to become competent contributors to the furtherance of knowledge, particularly within domains in which they acquire a specialism. It is appropriate to educate such students so that they are able to contribute well to coordinated attempts to enhance collective human understanding. Regarding teaching-oriented training, it must be granted that it is surely a justifiable aim of education to ensure its own self-perpetuation. As such, it is justifiable for teachers to teach students to become competent teachers. After all, the justifications available for educating in general do not tend to be time-sensitive, as if they would justify educating students of one generation but not another merely because they are members of different generations. In the absence of radical social change, we can assume that if educating is justified as all, then educating for the continued practice of education is justified. Yet, educating for intellectual dependability is conducive toward achieving both of these apprenticeship aims. Educating students to be intellectually dependable is conducive toward enabling them to make the kinds of contributions we would want them to make as researchers. A researcher who is concerned with advancing others’ epistemic goods, who is disposed to communicate their research perspective transparently and clearly, with sensitivity to their audience and with the ability to guide their audience in the territory of their expertise is more capable of making excellent contributions to research than a researcher who lacks these features. Elgin (2011) has recently stressed the centrality of such education to science education in particular, given its robustly collaborative aim to achieve collective understanding of nature. She writes: In publishing her research, a scientist issues an open invitation to the scientific community to accept her results. She gives its members her assurance that they can count on her; anyone is welcome to depend on her findings and, she intimates, can do so with confidence. (2011: 253) In making these intimations—in issuing this invitation for the trust of her fellow scientists and others—the scientist takes on an obligation to exhibit intellectual dependability in the conduct of her research. As such, science education ought to inculcate such dependability. Elgin writes,

Educating for Intellectual Dependability  63 “Learning to do scientific research is learning to do honest, truthful, careful research. It is not learning to do research, with honesty, truthfulness, and conscientiousness tacked on as afterthoughts” (259). Whether in the sciences or in other academic areas, doing good research involves doing research in an intellectually dependable way. Of course, we can imagine researchers who receive accolades for their research but who lack some or many of the features of intellectual dependability, or who indeed epitomize quite opposed traits. Perhaps they are not so much concerned if the conclusions of their research are false and mislead readers. Perhaps they hide aspects of their perspectives so as to avoid having to deal with objections that they know threaten their views. Perhaps they leave crucial aspects of their arguments intentionally ambiguous in an effort to “get by” reviewers. Perhaps they capitalize on known vulnerabilities in their peers’ judgments about research quality in order to get their work published or promoted or funded, rather than addressing and helping to correct such vulnerabilities. Yet, even if research conducted in such a manner receives accolades, we can equally maintain that it is not the sort of research that we want (or should want) our apprentices to produce. This is part of the reason for the disappointment among academics regarding the discovery of widespread “sloppy” or fraudulent science (Harris 2017). When we aim for our students to become competent contributors to the furtherance of knowledge in our domains of inquiry, these are not the kinds of contributions we aim for them to make. Rather, we aim for them to contribute to the furtherance of knowledge in a manner reflective of intellectual dependability. This is true not only of research accomplishments that will likely be regarded primarily as “theirs,” but also more broadly of their contributions to collective inquiry, however little acclaim might attach to these. We want them, as our peers and fellow academics, to display intellectual dependability toward us, so that our individual research will be improved and so that the fields in which we work may be epistemically enhanced. We want them to be the sorts of fellow inquirers on whom we can depend in our inquiries as individual researchers and as an academic community. As such, educating for intellectual dependability is conducive toward achieving the research-oriented apprenticeship aims of education. It is also conducive toward achieving the teaching-oriented apprenticeship aims of education. Perhaps nowhere is the need for intellectual dependability more visible than in the role of teacher. We expect teachers to be concerned to promote the intellectual well-being of students. We expect them to discriminate between the value of students coming to hold true beliefs on a subject of instruction and their coming to hold true and justified beliefs on that subject, preferring the latter (Roberts 2009: 18). We expect them to have a sensitive understanding of students’

64  Educating for Intellectual Dependability abilities and interests, modifying their teaching in order to accommodate these features of learners (Noddings 2007: 50–1). We expect them to submit themselves to the tribunal of their students’ reason, transparently explaining when appropriate the reasons why they hold the views they are teaching students (Siegel 2017). We expect them to guide students in the ways of inquiry, to help them avoid mistakes, and to help them achieve successes (Curren 2017: 21). We expect them to accessibly model excellence in inquiry. In all of this—which is, to acknowledge what is often not sufficiently appreciated, extremely demanding—teacher apprentices will be well-served if they are taught to be intellectually dependable. To a certain extent, much as the intellectual virtues that have received the lion’s share of attention from contemporary virtue epistemologists may be thought of as the “character traits of a good thinker or learner” (Baehr 2016: 117), the virtues of intellectual dependability may be thought of as the virtues of the good teacher. Recent scholarship by philosophers of education has sought to draw attention to the idea that there may very well be virtues that are especially important for teachers to possess (cf. Sockett 2012; Cooke and Carr 2014). The present argument suggests that among these virtues are the virtues of intellectual dependability. I began this section by noting that the apprenticeship aim of education is one that takes on increasing importance the higher up we go in educational levels. One might worry that, given this fact, the arguments given in this section will only provide justification for educating for intellectual dependability at higher levels of education, particularly in settings in which students are being educated to become researchers or teachers. While I think the arguments may provide special justification for educating for intellectual dependability in these settings, it would be a mistake to think that they do not provide justification for educating for intellectual dependability in earlier and less specialized educational settings. For we must recognize that it would be unrealistic to expect learners who have received no previous education for intellectual dependability to effectively acquire it de novo at these higher and more specialized levels of education. When we talk about educating for intellectual dependability, we are talking about shaping a person’s character. If we wait until they have reached the highest and most specialized levels of education before we start trying to do this shaping, we have waited too long. While it is not my primary purpose here to comment on the pedagogical questions of the extent to which education for intellectual dependability should be sought at each level of education and how it might best be achieved across these levels, I take it that if educating for intellectual dependability is justified by the apprenticeship aims of education, then educating for intellectual dependability is not justified only at the highest and most specialized educational levels, but is justified to some extent at lower and less specialized levels as well.

Educating for Intellectual Dependability  65 1.4 Intellectual Cooperation The previous sub-section indirectly highlighted the value of certain kinds of intellectual cooperation: cooperation between students and teachers aimed at student learning, and cooperation within the research community aimed at furthering human knowledge or understanding. These phenomena are but two examples of the more widespread good of intellectual cooperation. Some philosophers of education have thought that a justifiable epistemic aim of education is to enable students to be intellectually cooperative, whether within academia or outside of it (e.g., Kotzee 2013: 163). Many of the activities of our daily lives, from our work to our home life to our hobbies, involve cooperative application of our intellectual powers in the pursuit of goods for ourselves and others. Those who have been taught to be intellectually cooperative are better positioned to flourish in these activities than those who are not. So pervasive and significant is the need for good intellectual cooperatives, in fact, that Edward Craig (1999) has developed an account of knowledge based upon the existence of this need. He notes, “Human beings need true beliefs about their environment, beliefs that can serve to guide their actions to a successful outcome. That being so, they need sources of information that will lead them to believe truths” (11). What we look for in a good informant, writes Craig, is “someone who has the following property: if he tells us that p, we shall thereupon believe that p” (13). The concept of knowledge, he proposes, “is used to flag approved sources of information” of this sort (11). Those who know are the ones we can believe when they tell us something. Whether we are inclined to agree with Craig’s account of knowledge or not, we cannot dispute his recognition of the significance of the need for intellectual cooperatives. Only I might stress here that our needs for intellectual cooperation extend beyond needs for people we can rely upon as sources of testimony for target propositions of inquiry. Our needs for others’ intellectual cooperation include fulfilling all of those roles we identified in Chapter 1 when discussing the myriad ways in which we depend on fellow inquirers. We need others who will share their perspectives transparently with us, who will help us to review our processes of reasoning, who will support our development as inquirers, and so on. My proposal here is that educating for intellectual dependability is conducive toward educating for intellectual cooperativeness. Part of what it is to be intellectually cooperative is to be intellectually dependable. A person who is not concerned to promote others’ epistemic goods, who does not tend to share their perspective transparently, who does not communicate with others clearly and with sensitivity to their distinctive intellectual features, and who does not help others navigate epistemic risks is not likely to cooperate very well with others in intellectual

66  Educating for Intellectual Dependability endeavors. By contrast, the person who is concerned to promote others’ epistemic goods, who does share their perspective transparently, who communicates with clarity and sensitivity to their audience, and who helps their audience navigate epistemic risks is precisely the sort of person with whom we want to cooperate intellectually. Of course, we can imagine many “successes” of life coming to a person who, in their intellectual interactions with others, does not display the virtues of intellectual dependability, much as we can imagine a researcher achieving accolades for their research without manifesting these traits. For example, there are those who make money and scale the career ladder by lying, defrauding, deceiving, misrepresenting themselves or others; ducking questions; manipulating; and so on. But again this is not what we want from those with whom we must engage in intellectual cooperation in our life’s endeavors. If we are justified in educating students to become good intellectual cooperatives, we are justified in educating students to manifest the virtues of intellectual dependability.

2 Social Aims of Education In discussing epistemic aims of education, I have moved from more individualistic epistemic aims to more social epistemic aims. I now continue discussing social aims of education, focusing on aims that are often distinguished from epistemic aims of education, despite recognizable overlap with these. 2.1 Fulfilling Needs for Relationship Some philosophers of education have maintained that among the justifiable aims of education is the aim of enabling students to satisfy their needs for relationship. That there is a fundamental psychological need to experience mutually affirming relationships is thoroughly attested in the psychological literature. A relatively early statement of this need was offered by Baumeister and Leary, who defined the need to belong as a “pervasive drive to form and maintain at least a minimum quantity of lasting, positive, and significant interpersonal relationships” in which “frequent, affectively pleasant interactions” take place in a context of a “temporally stable and enduring framework of affective concern for each other’s welfare” (1995: 497). An example of more recent research that incorporates the need for relatedness and that is often cited in literature on education is research on self-determination theory. In this research, the need for relatedness is identified alongside needs for competence and self-determination as one of three basic psychological needs the fulfillment of which is required for subjective well-being (Ryan and Deci 2017). Philosopher Kimberly Brownlee has argued that so strong is the human need for achieving personal relationship goods that humans

Educating for Intellectual Dependability  67 are best thought of as having a right to adequate interpersonal contact, since in the absence of adequate social connections “we tend to break down mentally, emotionally, and physically” (2016: 55). There are different ways in which one might argue that enabling learners to fulfill their need for relatedness is a justifiable aim of education. Randall Curren exemplifies two such routes in his work. One approach is to argue that the overarching aim of education is to enable the flourishing of students. In general, Curren proposes that the aims of any cooperatively formed institutions will be to “collectively provide the necessities for living well that individuals cannot provide themselves.” In the specific case of educational institutions, their purpose must be “promoting forms of personal development that are essential to living well” (2018: 474–5). Thus, if education can enable students to fulfill their needs for relatedness beyond their capacities for fulfilling this need without education, then educating students in this way is justified because of its contribution to promoting the flourishing of students. Another route to defending the justification of educating for relational fulfillment is based on the instrumental value of ensuring the satisfaction of students’ basic needs. Curren (2017) maintains that there is significant instrumental value in ensuring that education is provided in a needs-supportive environment; for if an educational environment is not needs-supportive then it is unlikely that any other aims of education will be achieved. When students’ (or anyone else’s) basic needs are not satisfied, this will serve as an obstacle to achieving much of anything with them—including developing their characters, which is Curren’s focus. Thus, educating with the aim of fulfilling students’ needs for relationship is justified instrumentally because this is necessary for achieving whatever other educational aims we might have. I propose here that educating students to be intellectually dependable is conducive toward enabling them to fulfill their needs for relationship. Curren in some places expresses his commitment to the value of educating students to fulfill their need for relatedness in terms of schools having an obligation to “nurture friendships” among students (2017: 28). But part of what is involved in being a good friend, I suggest, is being intellectually dependable. What we want in a friend is someone who (among other things) genuinely cares about our intellectual wellbeing, is capable of sharing themselves transparently with us, communicates with us clearly and with sensitivity to our distinctive interests and abilities, and is capable and disposed to offer us guidance when we are trying to figure things out. These ideas are confirmed in the philosophical literature on friendship. In good friendships, friends exhibit concern for one another’s well-being for its own sake (Helm 2017, sect. 1.1), disclose themselves to one another (Thomas 2013), play an active role in shaping each other (Cocking and Kennett 1998), and share in practical

68  Educating for Intellectual Dependability deliberation (Sherman 1987). In all of this, the friendship is enhanced by each party’s being intellectually dependable. Curren, citing several recent works, writes that “The ethical prerequisites for fulfilling social potential well and satisfying one’s relational need imply that human beings are not able to experience psychological well-being or live happy lives unless they care about other people and exhibit basic social virtues” (2017: 20). My suggestion here is that among these basic social virtues are the virtues of intellectual dependability. Educating students to acquire the social—as well as intellectual— virtues of intellectual dependability is conducive toward enabling them to satisfy their needs for relationship, and in this way may be justified as an aim of education. 2.2 Effective Contributions to Cooperative Society Another commonly recognized aim of education is enabling learners to make effective contributions to our cooperative societies. Most frequently, perhaps, the kinds of effective contributions in view are contributions made through the learner’s participation in our cooperative economies through their paid work. Certainly, it has become an increasingly pressing expectation of educational institutions that they will prepare graduates to excel in their careers—particularly in societies in which education is not fully subsidized by the state. But, as Harry Brighouse notes, there are “numerous contributions to the flourishing of the community as a whole that garner little public recognition in a capitalist economy, but are no less important for that fact.” He concludes, An education system is obliged to equip children to contribute to society in these and other ways, not only because the activities are valuable for others but also because those who engage in them derive a sense of self-worth from making such contributions. (2009: 38–9) On Brighthouse’s view, children have a right for parents and teachers to enable them to make effective contributions to cooperative society both through their paid work and through voluntary activities such as minding their neighbors’ children or coaching a kids’ soccer team. Brighthouse emphasizes that in preparing learners to make such contributions we are preparing them to make contributions to cooperative activity. He writes, “Even capitalist economies are essentially cooperative; nobody makes a contribution that would be worth the income he derives from it if others were not also contributing in other valuable ways” (37–8). In order to contribute to such cooperative activity, learners will have to depend on others, and they themselves will be depended on by others. To contribute well, they will need to be prepared to depend

Educating for Intellectual Dependability  69 well on others, and they will need to be prepared to function well when depended upon. The importance of being prepared to function well when depending on others and when being depended upon by them is confirmed by the kinds of skills and abilities that employers claim to be seeking in graduates. Among the most desired qualities identified by employers are excellence in leadership and teamwork, both of which require excellent functioning in contexts of mutual dependence. Also highly valued are communication skills, which again facilitate one’s ability to depend on and be depended upon by others. 2 The increasing value placed on abilities to contribute well to collaborative work in these ways is likely reflective of a cultural shift toward a more service-driven economy in which personal and social skills have rapidly become dramatically more important for determining relative life chances. In the UK, there has been cross-party recognition of the importance of providing children with “adult-led team-building activities that teach cooperation, self-discipline and the like” in order to close what is recognized across the political spectrum as a social mobility gap (Curren 2017: 8). My proposal here is that educating learners to be intellectually dependable is conducive toward enabling them to function excellently in contexts in which they are expected to effectively contribute to collaborative work. Unsurprisingly, the idea is that being intellectually dependable helps one function well when depended upon by others as a contributor to cooperative activity. Concern for fellow team members’ intellectual well-being, a disposition to share one’s perspective transparently with fellow team- members, to communicate with them clearly and with sensitivity to their abilities and interests, and to offer guidance when well-placed to do so are all highly desirable qualities of a teammate. This is especially so when the team is tasked with intellectually demanding labor, as is often the case in the kinds of cooperative activities that learners will participate in as contributors to their economies and communities as adults. One somewhat formal way of making this argument appeals to the idea of process gains as conceptualized by social psychologists. Process gains are gains in effectiveness that result when a group rather than an individual works on a task. One kind of process gain is process gain in ability, which may result if group members’ abilities to perform a task are enhanced by working with their fellow group members. For example, we might imagine a group that is completing a brainstorming task that performs better at this task than the individuals do when performing the task alone because the individuals are able to help one another brainstorm better than they would in isolation. What is important for us to notice here is that when teams are composed of intellectually dependable team members, this helps to maximize such process gains in ability. After all, enhancing the quality of others’ inquiries is a hallmark of the

70  Educating for Intellectual Dependability intellectually dependable person. Thus, especially in cases where a team is working on a task that involves collective inquiry or intellectual labor of some sort, team members will function better as team members if they are intellectually dependable. By educating students for intellectual dependability, we enhance their capacity to contribute well to cooperative society. 2.3 Democratic Citizenship A final commonly recognized aim of education in democratic states is to prepare students to participate in democratic citizenship. The kind of participation envisioned may differ from one theorist to another, and may also differ based on the exact structure of the democracy. Whereas Amy Gutmann (1987) emphasizes educating students to exercise critical deliberation among good lives, William Galston (1989) emphasizes educating students to hold their elected representatives accountable. Yet, whether we see the participation in democratic citizenship at which education aims as requiring a more direct engagement in deliberating about policies and institutions or a less direct engagement in evaluating and electing representatives, it will remain true that participating in democratic citizenship will involve exercising capacities to collectively shape the society in which one lives. Basic to democratic education, as Gutmann puts it, is that “all citizens should be educated so as to . . . share in self-consciously shaping the structure of their society” (2003: 408). Democratic citizens’ capacity to shape society, as already suggested, is a capacity they most effectively exercise together. One person thinking through publicly debated issues for themselves and casting a vote on the basis of their reasoned deliberation makes only one vote’s difference. What makes much greater difference is when individuals exercise their capacities for democratic citizenship within social networks. As the political scientist Robert Putnam puts it, “civic virtue is most powerful when embedded in a dense network of reciprocal social relations” (2000: 19). Education for democratic citizenship, then, is largely a matter of enabling learners to function well within a collectively deliberating society whose members can learn from one another and influence one another in making decisions together that make a difference. While there is great power to bring about positive change through exercising civic virtue within social networks, the dependence of democratic citizens on one another in such networks also reveals a vulnerability of democracies that has recently been exploited for much ill. In their book Computational Propaganda, Samuel Woolley and Philip Howard document a disturbing and growing worldwide phenomenon involving the “use of algorithms, automation, and human curation to purposefully manage and distribute misleading information over social media networks” (2018: 4) such as Facebook and Twitter. These social networks

Educating for Intellectual Dependability  71 characteristically enable the rapid spread of information, and this ability has been harnessed by bad political actors in order to quickly mislead public opinion and misguide civic action in such headline cases as the 2016 presidential election in the United States. The spread of misinformation is facilitated by “bots”—highly automated accounts on these social media platforms, often created for the purpose of spreading misleading information and designed to mimic human users. Bots are becoming increasingly sophisticated and difficult to distinguish from genuine users. Some estimates have found that nearly half of all web traffic is generated by bots (Zeifman 2015). But bots and bad political actors are not the only problem. Human users are themselves prone to (un)wittingly spread the misinformation they are fed on social media to those within their networks. In a recent study during the 2018 US mid-term elections, it was found that social media users in fact shared more “junk” news than professional news overall, and that the amount of “junk” news shared had increased since the 2016 presidential election (Marchal et al. 2018). The problem is getting worse, and individual citizens are not making it better. It is generally thought that the solution to this problem must lie in significant part with reforming social media platforms. Part of the reason for this, as Regina Rini (2017) explains, is that believing the misinformation one sees in one’s social media feeds may often be perfectly rational. Social media users who are duped by this misinformation may well be duped through no significant fault of their own. She writes: The model is like this: I read a story on social media, shared by one or two of my co-partisan friends. The story is shocking, and I am vaguely aware that my friends’ communicative intentions are ambiguous. Maybe they aren’t really putting their imprimatur on this story. But I know that these friends share my partisan affiliation, hence many of my normative values. They wouldn’t lie to me, right? They would exercise reasonable judgment about balancing confidence in important information, right? They wouldn’t be confused about the relevance of this information to assessing a candidate’s character, right? Not always right, of course. But right often enough that trusting my co-partisans is reasonable. Hence, despite some qualms over the bent ambiguity of their testimony, I find myself starting to believe the stories they transmit. (54) And in so believing, Rini contends, she and the many, many other social media users in such situations would be epistemically reasonable. “Fake news,” she concludes, “is a bad side effect of an individually reasonable epistemic practice” (ibid). Since individuals are not at epistemic fault, the

72  Educating for Intellectual Dependability solution to the problem must be more social in nature: it must involve reforming social media platforms themselves. While I am sympathetic both with Rini’s suggestion that believing misinformation in one’s social media feed may often not be unreasonable and with her recommendation that the solution to the problem of fake news proliferation on social media is in significant part social, I think there is an individual component of the solution as well that her arguments overlook. Rini tends to focus on evaluating the epistemic practices of recipients of fake news on social media, asking what is reasonable for them to believe about the reports they receive. But individuals also engage in significant epistemic practices when they distribute or “share” stories via social media, including fake news stories. As Rini’s article very helpfully points out, sharing in its various guises— including the notoriously ambiguous “retweet”—presents a significant interpretation problem for its recipients. Moreover, the phenomenon I have been describing regarding the proliferation of fake news via social media is also now wellknown. Thus, we may very well expect that an intellectually dependable epistemic agent on social media would exercise significant care in their social media sharing practices—more care than would a person who is not intellectually dependable. Having a tendency to resolve ambiguities in their communications so as to promote others’ epistemic goods, they will be alert to the ambiguities that social media sharing presents and will attempt to resolve ambiguities in their sharing. Being aware of the vast amount of fake news circulating over social media and concerned to promote and not injure the epistemic well-being of others, they will be very careful in the selection of stories they redistribute. Being sensitive to the distinctive predicament in which recipients of information shared on social media are placed, they will regulate their sharing and commenting practices so as to accommodate the unique vulnerabilities of those dependent upon them on social media. An intellectually dependable person is precisely the sort of person we all need more of within our social media networks. If more social media users—including the bad political actors who originate fake news stories in the first place—were more intellectually dependable, this would help to reduce the threat to democracy currently plaguing social media platforms. An intellectually dependable person is a significant civic asset to those social networks to which they belong—whether these networks exist largely virtually on social media or not. To borrow an idea from the previous sub-section, an intellectually dependable person is well-positioned to contribute to process gains in democratic citizenship ability and to reduce process losses in democratic citizenship ability within these networks. An intellectually dependable person is precisely the sort of person needed on a democratic “team.” As such, states and their citizens have a significant interest in educating students to become intellectually dependable people.

Educating for Intellectual Dependability  73

3 Intellectual Dependability and Autonomy In this chapter, I have argued that educating for intellectual dependability is justified because doing so is conducive toward achieving a wide variety of other commonly recognized aims of education. Educating students for intellectual dependability better enables them to exhibit intellectual virtue, to become critical thinkers, to become teacher or researcher apprentices in the traditions of inquiry, and to engage in intellectual cooperation; it better enables them to satisfy their needs for relationship, to contribute effectively to their cooperative societies via paid work and volunteering, and to contribute well to their democracies as citizens. By arguing this way, I am following a pattern of argument that one often encounters in the philosophical literature on the aims of education. Siegel, for example, defends critical thinking as a justifiable aim of education on the basis of its conduciveness toward treating students with respect as persons, enabling them to be self-sufficient adults, preparing them to participate in the traditions of inquiry, and enabling them to engage well in democratic deliberation (2003: 307–8). Before concluding, however, I should pause to respond to an objection that latches on to this very pattern of argument. The objection is that educating for something is not justified just because it is conducive toward achieving some other justified educational aims if educating for it is in some other way problematic. The ends may not justify the means if there is something problematic with the means apart from their being conducive toward achieving the particular good ends in view. To be specific to the topic in view here, the objection is that educating for intellectual dependability may not be justified, despite its conduciveness toward securing the varied justified aims of education discussed in this chapter, if educating for intellectual dependability is in some other way objectionable. Of course, an immediate question about this objection in the present case is: what would be otherwise problematic with educating for intellectual dependability? Perhaps the most obvious way that a means to a justifiable end may be problematic is if the means is sufficiently bad in itself. If helping someone become intellectually dependable were bad in itself, then we might reasonably object to it as a justifiable means to the educational aims outlined above. But helping someone become an intellectually dependable person is not bad in itself; indeed, it is quite plausibly good in itself. That is, it is good for its own sake, even apart from its conduciveness toward ends such as those identified in this chapter, to help someone become an intellectually dependable person. The virtues of intellectual dependability are, after all, virtues. How else, then, might educating for intellectual dependability be problematic? Perhaps the most compelling thought is not that helping someone become intellectually dependable is bad in itself, but that educating

74  Educating for Intellectual Dependability for intellectual dependability within formal educational systems wrongs students, even if it makes them better off. The best way to develop this objection of which I am aware involves a certain kind of prioritizing of the treatment of students as autonomous within educational systems. Education is not for educators to govern students, shaping them into certain desirable kinds of people, but it is for liberating students to govern themselves. One does find authors in philosophy of education who appear to endorse this sort of self-governance ideal for education, and even authors who use this conception of the ideal of education to argue against educating for intellectual virtue generally, despite recognizing the value of the latter. Siegel has argued for the superiority of critical thinking to intellectual virtue on precisely these grounds. He writes, An education guided by the ideal of CT [critical thinking] is the only one that . . . strives to foster [students’] autonomy, independent judgment, and right to question, challenge, and demand reasons for what is taught (including CT itself). . . if we are serious about treating students with respect, then what they become and what dispositions and virtues they value, possess, and manifest is importantly up to them. (2017: 102–3) Likewise, it could be argued, if we educate students for the virtues of intellectual dependability, we do not sufficiently leave it up to them whether they become intellectually dependable. We infringe rather than foster their autonomy, hindering them from being able to rule themselves. I am broadly sympathetic with the response to Siegel that Jason Baehr has given. He writes: It is no more (or less) plausible to think that students should be left to decide which traits of intellectual character are worth cultivating than it is which forms of reasoning are worth engaging in. Just as there may be a time and place for students to question the objectivity or efficacy of critical thinking, so might there be a time and place for them to question the merits of curiosity, intellectual honesty, carefulness, thoroughness, tenacity—even intellectual autonomy. However, in the same way that it would be a mistake to make it ‘optional’ whether students leave our courses disposed to employ modus ponens rather than “affirm the consequent,” we should hardly be indifferent about whether they depart disposed to think or reason in ways that are honest vs. dishonest, careful vs. sloppy, open-minded vs. closed-minded, and so on. (2019: 452)

Educating for Intellectual Dependability  75 By way of application to the virtues of intellectual dependability in particular, the idea is that aiming to foster in students any desirable sort of autonomy is not in tension with educating for these virtues; the only sort of autonomy that would be threatened by educating for such virtues is a sort of autonomy this is undesirable as an educational outcome. To extend this point somewhat further in the present context, I wish to draw attention to a certain ambiguity in conceptualizing the ideal of self-governance that is not always recognized. The ambiguity is between an individualistic reading of self-governance and a collectivistic reading of self-governance. It is natural, and I think correct, to interpret Siegel’s concern with student autonomy as a concern with students’ ability to govern themselves as individuals. More specifically, it is concerned with students being “able to determine for themselves the worthiness of candidate beliefs, judgments, values, and actions” (2003: 312). Expressed in terms of governance, Siegel’s concern is with individualistic self-governance; indeed, he grants the individualistic orientation of the critical thinking ideal explicitly. Yet, there is also a collectivistic reading of the ideal of self-governance, according to which our aim should be to enable students as a group to govern themselves as the next generation of human persons. Our concern is not only to enable them each as individuals to competently assess and act on reasons; we also aim to enable them to collectively assess and act on reasons together. Many of the aims of education surveyed in this chapter are ones that involve the exercise of such collective self-governance. When we educate students to contribute as researchers to communities of inquiry, to contribute effectively as team members through paid or voluntary work, or to exercise their citizenship responsibilities in shaping society, we educate them to participate in processes of collective self-governance. When appropriately conceptualized as an educational ideal, autonomy should be understood to include these collective dimensions. But, if it is, then educating for intellectual dependability is educating for autonomy. Specifically, educating for intellectual dependability enables students to contribute well to those aspects of life in which collective self-rule is exhibited. On final analysis, Siegel and others who advocate individualistic educational ideals may be willing to conceive of these ideals in expansive ways so that they include being well-oriented to contribute to such processes of collective self-rule. Siegel does seem to make a comparable move when confronted with an objection to the individualism of the critical thinking ideal from the opposite direction of epistemic dependence. Some would argue that thinking for oneself cannot be the fundamental epistemic aim of education because people are pervasively dependent on others; they need to be taught to manage their dependence on others well (cf. e.g., Robertson 2009). Siegel (2003: 313) seems to grant that students do need to be educated to manage

76  Educating for Intellectual Dependability this dependence well, but he contends that managing one’s dependence on others well is itself an exercise of the sort of rationality that is characteristic of critical thinking. In a similar vein, he might contend that managing well others’ epistemic dependence on oneself is likewise an exercise of critical thinking. Being a critical thinker on such a conception may include being well-disposed to contribute to processes of collective self-rule. If Siegel or others wish to depart from the majority view of the Delphi Report and conceive of their favored individualistic educational ideals in broad terms so that they include dispositions to exercise an expansive sort of rationality in managing one’s dependence on others and others’ dependence on oneself, I will not vociferously object. The point I wish to make here is only that educating for this more expansive sort of ideal will involve educating for the virtues of intellectual dependability. We should not suppose that by teaching students the techniques or values of reason assessment alone we will somehow thereby have taught them to be intellectually dependable. Just as there are distinctive aspects of excellence in depending well on others intellectually that students must be taught, there are distinctive aspects of being dependable for others intellectually that students must be taught. These include the virtues of intellectual dependability. By teaching these we not only promote the various aims surveyed in this chapter, but we also foster in students the sorts of autonomy we should want to foster in them rather than hindering these. Most distinctively, we foster their ability to contribute to their generation’s collective intellectual autonomy.

4 Conclusion This chapter has presented an argument for thinking that educating for the virtues of intellectual dependability is justified. The argument should have broad appeal, because it aims to show that educating for the virtues of intellectual dependability is conducive toward fulfilling a wide variety of commonly accepted educational aims. Moreover, I have sought to show that educating for intellectual dependability is conducive toward achieving these aims without also being problematic in some other way. Specifically, I have sought to rebut a challenge to the justification of educating for intellectual dependability which maintains that educating for intellectual dependability violates students’ intellectual autonomy. Quite to the contrary, I have maintained that educating for intellectual dependability is conducive toward fostering students’ autonomy—specifically, their collective autonomy—in addition to being conducive toward achieving the varied aims of education surveyed throughout this chapter. Many readers should therefore take educating for the virtues of intellectual dependability to be a justified aim of education.

Educating for Intellectual Dependability  77

Notes 1 Against the homogeneity of epistemic aims, see (Cohen 2016). 2 Surveys of what employers claim to be seeking from graduates tend to be reported at regular intervals in venues such as Forbes.com and Insidehighered.com, and recent examples of these confirm the claims made here. Another source confirming these claims comes from the National Association of Colleges and Employers survey on “career readiness”, which identifies all of the qualities listed here as among the top qualities sought by employers. The results of this survey are available at https://www.naceweb.org/ career-readiness/competencies/career-readiness-defined/.

References Baehr, Jason. 2013. “Educating for Intellectual Virtues: From Theory to Practice.” Journal of the Philosophy of Education 47: 248–62. Baehr, Jason. 2016. “Is Intellectual Character Growth a Realistic Educational Aim?” Journal of Moral Education 45, 2: 117–31. Baehr, Jason. 2019. “Intellectual Virtues, Critical Thinking, and the Aims of Education.” In The Routledge Handbook of Social Epistemology, eds. Peter Graham, Miranda Fricker, David Henderson, Nikolaj Pedersen, and Jeremy Wyatt, 447–57. New York: Routledge. Bailin, Sharon and Mark Battersby. 2016. “Fostering the Virtues of Inquiry.” Topoi 35, 2: 367–74. Baumeister, Roy and Mark Leary. 1995. “The Need to Belong: Desire for Interpersonal Attachments as a Fundamental Human Motivation.” Psychological Bulletin 117, 3: 497–529. Brighouse, Harry. 2009. “Moral and Political Aims of Education.” In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Education, ed. Harvey Siegel, 35–51. New York: Oxford University Press. Brownlee, Kimberly. 2016. “Ethical Dilemmas of Sociability.” Utilitas 28, 1: 54–72. Byerly, T. Ryan. 2019. “Educating for Intellectual Virtue in Logic & Critical Thinking Classes: Why and How.” Teaching Philosophy 42, 1: 1–27. Cocking, Dean and Jeanette Kennett. 1998. “Friendship and the Self.” Ethics 108: 502–27. Code, Lorraine. 1991. What Can She Know?: Feminist Theory and the Construction of Knowledge. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Cohen, Stewart. 2016. “Theorizing about the Epistemic.” Inquiry 59, 7–8: 839–57. Cooke, Sandra and David Carr. 2014. “Virtue, Practical Wisdom and Character in Teaching.” British Journal of Educational Studies 62, 2: 91–110. Craig, Edward. 1999. Knowledge and the State of Nature: An Essay in Conceptual Synthesis. New York: Oxford University Press. Curren, Randall. 2017. “Why Character Education?” Impact: Philosophical Perspectives on Education Policy 24: 1–40. Curren, Randall. 2018. “Virtue Epistemology and Education.” In The Routledge Handbook of Virtue Epistemology, ed. Heather Battaly, 470–82. New York: Routledge. Dewey, John. 1989. Freedom and Culture. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books.

78  Educating for Intellectual Dependability Elgin, Catherine. 2011. “Science, Ethics, and Education.” Theory and Research in Education 9, 3: 251–63. Facione, Peter. 2018. “Critical Thinking: What It Is and Why It Counts.” Measured Reasons. Available at https://www.insightassessment.com/Resources/ Importance-of-Critical-Thinking/Critical-Thinking-What-It-Is-and-Why-ItCounts/Critical-Thinking-What-It-Is-and-Why-It-Counts-PDF Galston, William. 1989. “Civic Education in the Liberal State.” In Liberalism and the Moral Life, ed. Nancy Rosenblum, 89–102. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Grandy, Richard. 2007. “Constructivisms and Objectivity: Disentangling Metaphysics from Pedagogy.” In Philosophy of Education: An Anthology, ed. Randall Curren, 410–16. Oxford: Blackwell. Gutmann, Amy. 1987. Democratic Education. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Gutmann, Amy. 2003. “The Authority and Responsibility to Educate.” In A Companion to the Philosophy of Education, ed. Randall Curren, 397–411. Oxford: Blackwell. Harris, Richard. 2017. Rigor Mortis: How Sloppy Science Creates Worthless Cures, Crushes Hopes, and Wastes Billions. New York: Basic Books. Helm, Bennett. 2017. “Friendship.” In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward Zalta. Available at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/friendship/ Kotzee, Ben. 2013. “Introduction: Education, Social Epistemology, and Virtue Epistemology.” Journal of Philosophy of Education 47, 2: 157–67. Lipman, Matthew. 2003. Thinking in Education, 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Luntley, Michael. 2010. “On Education and Initiation.” Journal of Philosophy of Education 43, 1: 41–56. Marchal, Nahema, Lisa Maria Neudert, Bence Kollanyi, and Philip Howard. 2018. “Polarization, Partisanship and Junk News Consumption on Social Media during the 2018 US Midterm Elections.” Available at https://comprop. oii.ox.ac.uk/research/midterms2018/ Noddings, Nel. 2007. “Caring as Relation and Virtue in Teaching.” In Working Virtue: Virtue Ethics and Contemporary Moral Problems, eds. Rebecca Walker and Philip Ivanhoe, 41–60. Oxford: Clarendon. Peters, Richard. 2007. “Education as Initiation.” Reprinted in Philosophy of Education: An Anthology, ed. Randall Curren, 55–67. Oxford: Wiley. Pritchard, Duncan. 2013. “Epistemic Virtue and the Epistemology of Education.” Journal of Philosophy of Education 47, 2: 236–47. Putnam, Robert. 2000. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon and Shuster. Rini, Regina. 2017. “Fake News and Partisan Epistemology.” Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 27, S2: 43–64. Robertson, Emily. 2009. “The Epistemic Aims of Education.” In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Education, ed. Harvey Siegel, 11–34. New York: Oxford University Press. Ryan, Richard and Edward Deci. 2017. Self-Determination Theory: Basic Psychological Needs in Motivation, Development, and Wellness. London: Guilford Press.

Educating for Intellectual Dependability  79 Sherman, Nancy. 1987. “Aristotle on Friendship and the Shared Life.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 47: 589–613. Siegel, Harvey. 2003. “Cultivating Reason.” In A Companion to the Philosophy of Education, ed. Randall Curren, 305–19. Oxford: Blackwell. Siegel, Harvey. 2017. Education’s Epistemology: Rationality, Diversity, and Critical Thinking. New York: Oxford University Press. Sockett, Hugh. 2012. Knowledge and Virtue in Teaching and Learning. New York: Routledge. Thomas, Laurence. 2013. “The Character of Friendship.” In Thinking about Friendship: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, ed. Damian Calouri, 30–46. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Westlund, Andrea. 2012. “Autonomy in Relation.” In Out from the Shadows: Analytical Feminist Contributions to Traditional Philosophy, eds. Sharon Crasnow and Anita Superson, 59–81. New York: Oxford University Press. Woolley, Samuel and Philip Howard, eds. 2018. Computational Propaganda: Political Parties, Politicians, and Political Manipulation on Social Media. New York: Oxford University Press. Zeifman, Igal. 2015. “2015 Bot Traffic Report: Humans Take Back the Web, Bad Bots Not Giving Any Ground.” Available at www.incapsula.com/blog/ bot-traffic-report-2015.html

Part II

4

Intellectual Benevolence

Beginning with this chapter, the book as a whole will now move in a more concrete direction. Whereas the first three chapters were concerned more abstractly with the virtues of intellectual dependability as a group and with the way in which these contribute as a group to the ideal of the intellectually dependable person, the chapters in the second part of this book are concerned with particular candidates for virtues of intellectual dependability. This chapter begins by examining a candidate virtue that is arguably foundational for all of the virtues of intellectual dependability—namely, intellectual benevolence. The main purposes of the chapter are to illuminate the nature of intellectual benevolence and to examine its relationship to other traits and features of personality of interest to philosophers and psychologists. Section 1 develops a guiding conceptualization of intellectual benevolence. Section 2 addresses its relationship to similar virtues, and Section 3 addresses its relationship to opposing vices. Together, the sections should provide a useful initial exploration of the nature of intellectual benevolence and its place in the life of the intellectually dependable person.

1 A Guiding Conceptualization of Intellectual Benevolence Responsibilist virtue epistemologists have tended to be united in holding the view that at the foundation of many if not all intellectual virtues is a virtuous motivation for epistemic goods. This foundational motivation structures other intellectual virtues and ultimately accounts for their value. While the other intellectual virtues have their own distinctive motivations and characteristic behaviors and psychology, these distinctive features are ultimately oriented toward fulfilling the basic, virtuous motivation for epistemic goods. If they were not, then the traits in question would not retain their status as intellectual virtues. As Heather Battaly summarizes the view, responsibilists contend that all intellectual virtues require an underlying motivation for truth, understanding, or other epistemic

84  Intellectual Benevolence goods. . . . This underlying motivation for epistemic goods— common to all of the intellectual virtues—is said to spawn motivations that are distinctive of each individual virtue. (2019: 118–9) My proposal here is that intellectual benevolence may be profitably understood as the other-regarding equivalent of this foundational motivation that responsibilist virtue epistemologists have had in view. It is a refined motivation to promote others’ epistemic goods as such for its own sake. This foundational motivation structures the other virtues of intellectual dependability and accounts for their value. While the other virtues of intellectual dependability have their own distinctive motivations and characteristic behaviors and psychology, these distinctive features are ultimately oriented toward fulfilling the basic virtuous motivation to promote others’ epistemic goods that constitutes intellectual benevolence. If they were not, then the traits would not retain their status as virtues of intellectual dependability. Given this proposed relationship between intellectual benevolence and the virtuous motivation for epistemic goods that has been a focus for responsibilist virtue epistemologists, we may learn about the former by examining the accumulated scholarly wisdom regarding the latter. Here I wish to highlight four features of the virtuous motivation for epistemic goods that are also applicable to intellectual benevolence as I am conceiving of it here. After doing so and thereby arriving upon a more detailed conceptualization of intellectual benevolence, I discuss the relationship between intellectual benevolence and some similar virtues and opposing vices that have been or could be of interest to philosophers or psychologists studying intellectual character. The first feature of the virtuous motivation for epistemic goods I wish to note is the pluralism of the objects of this motivation. Typically, responsibilist virtue epistemologists have not insisted that this motivation is aimed at just one epistemic good, but have instead suggested that there may be multiple distinct epistemic goods to which it is sensitive. James Montmarquet, who is perhaps most restrictive regarding the objects of the foundational motivation for epistemic goods, which he calls “conscientiousness,” nonetheless includes at least attaining true belief and avoiding false belief among its objects (1992: 336). Linda Zagzebski conceptualizes this foundational motivation as aimed at what she calls “cognitive contact with reality,” which she intends to subsume at least attaining true belief, avoiding false belief, acquiring knowledge, and achieving understanding (1996: 167). Jason Baehr conceives of this foundational motivation as encompassing a positive psychological orientation toward epistemic goods, which include attaining familiar cognitive ends such as “truth, knowledge, evidence, rationality, and understanding” as well as fulfilling one’s epistemic obligations or duties, together with an

Intellectual Benevolence  85 aversion from a similarly diverse range of epistemic bads (2011: 93, 110). Robert Roberts and Jay Wood conceive of the motivation as a “love of knowledge,” where their conception of knowledge is defined so as to include “the richly intertwined bundle of understanding, acquaintance, and propositional knowledge” (2007: 153). In a parallel way, my proposal here is that there is a plurality of epistemic goods which form the objects of intellectual benevolence. Intellectual benevolence is a motivation to promote the several different epistemic goods for others, including others having true beliefs, justified beliefs, and understanding. Nor is intellectual benevolence exclusively concerned with promoting the epistemic value of others’ propositional attitudes or complexes of propositional attitudes; it is also concerned with promoting epistemic value in the dynamic conduct of others’ inquiries. The intellectually benevolent person will be motivated to promote others’ use of investigative methods and forms of reasoning known to be reliable, their avoidance of investigative methods and forms of reasoning known to be unreliable, and their inquiring in accordance with intellectual virtue and not in accordance with intellectual vice. In this way, intellectual benevolence is a motivational orientation concerned with the holistic epistemic well-being of others. Recognizing this first feature leads naturally to a discussion of the second. Namely, the virtuous motivation for epistemic goods central to responsibilist virtue epistemology, aimed as it is at a plurality of epistemic goods, does not aim at these haphazardly, but rather in a refined way in accordance with a mature conceptualization of epistemic value. In this way, the virtuous motivation for epistemic goods is partly cognitive, in that it involves judgments about what is of value in inquiry and about the relative weights of these values. The person who has a virtuous motivation for epistemic goods is motivated by them as such, and their motivation to attain them is refined in accordance with their understanding of the relative value of these goods in the life of inquiry. As Heather Battaly puts it, responsibilits think that intellectual virtues require true, or at least justified, beliefs about what is (and is not) epistemically valuable. To put this point in Aristotelian terms: having an intellectual virtue requires having a true, or justified, ‘conception’ of the epistemic good. (2019: 118) Robert Roberts and Jay Wood are especially clear in explicating this point. In their discussion of the foundational virtue of love of knowledge, they note that this virtue arises via the refinement of the sort of natural desire to know famously observed by Aristotle: In the very young infant the appetitive orientation of which Aristotle writes is perhaps an indiscriminate penchant for sensory stimulation

86  Intellectual Benevolence and the activities that promote it. But discriminations soon emerge, and the appetite becomes exploratory—the child wants to know things, to understand how things work. It is as though she is asking questions, thus focusing her desire for knowledge in very personally particular ways (this is what I want to know). And with further maturity, crucial distinctions come to guide the child’s epistemic activities. She wants true perceptions and beliefs, not false ones; she wants well-grounded beliefs, not vagrant, floating ones; she wants significant rather than trivial, relevant rather than irrelevant, knowledge; she wants deep rather than shallow understanding; and she wants knowledge that ennobles human life and promotes human well-being rather than knowledge that degrades and destroys; she wants to know important truths. (2007: 154–5) For Roberts and Wood as well as for other virtue responsibilists, possessing the full virtue of the foundational motivation for epistemic goods requires developing this sort of mature and discriminating conception of epistemic value. In a similar way, intellectual benevolence is also not a haphazard motivation to promote a plurality of epistemic goods for others, but rather a refined motivation to promote these epistemic goods in accordance with a mature conceptualization of epistemic value. Intellectual benevolence is partly cognitive, involving judgments about what is of value in inquiry and about the relative weights of these values. The intellectually benevolent person judges the objects of intellectual benevolence to be valuable, and they tend to judge the more epistemically valuable goods to be more valuable. Of course, there continues to be some controversy among epistemologists regarding the exact number and nature of epistemic goods, their relation to one another, and their relative values, as noted in Chapter 1. And I do not wish to conceptualize intellectual benevolence here in such a way as to require that in order to possess it one needs be a professional epistemologist with completely formed views on all of these matters. Nor, for that matter, have responsibilist virtue epistemologists who conceptualize the foundational motivation for epistemic goods as involving a conception of epistemic value wished to restrict this virtue to formally trained epistemologists. As Battaly puts it in a footnote, “One need not be a theorist to have a conception of the epistemic good” (2019: 125, n.7). One way to avoid this requirement is to focus in our conceptualization of intellectual benevolence (and likewise, the conceptualization of the motivation for epistemic goods) on less controversial cases of judgments regarding epistemic value and relative epistemic value. For example, even if different epistemologists will offer different accounts of why the various epistemic goods included in the plurality of epistemic goods

Intellectual Benevolence  87 referenced above have the value they do, they will tend to agree that they are of epistemic value. Thus, we can safely suggest that the intellectually benevolent person will judge it to be valuable that others acquire true beliefs, justified beliefs, and understanding, and that they inquire using reliable and not unreliable methods and in accordance with intellectual virtue and not intellectual vice. Likewise, we can rely in our conceptualization of intellectual benevolence on comparatively uncontroversial judgments regarding relative epistemic value. The intellectually benevolent person can safely be expected to judge, for example, that a justified true belief is of greater value than an unjustified true belief, other things being equal, and that it is of greater value to possess understanding of an entire domain of inquiry than to possess a few disparate items of knowledge within it, other things being equal. They can be expected to judge that it is better, other things being equal, to help someone acquire the skills and virtues necessary for acquiring understanding within a domain than to provide them with a true belief in that domain that they could get on their own with such skills and virtues. We might then define intellectual benevolence in such a way that the cognitive component required for possessing the virtue can be satisfied when a person possesses this much of a mature, accurate conception of epistemic value. Yet, to recall a point borrowed from Baehr in Chapter 2, we can allow that a person can possess a virtue without possessing it in its fullness. Thus, we could allow that while developing the sort of detailed and thorough perspective on epistemic value that might be in reach for the professional epistemologist may not be necessary for possessing the virtue of intellectual benevolence, it may be relevant for possessing the virtue in its fullness. There is also another way to avoid demanding too much in the cognitive requirement of intellectual benevolence (and the motivation for epistemic goods). For most mature adults and even for younger people, the comparatively uncontroversial judgments regarding epistemic value represented in the previous paragraph will be the ones that are epistemically justified from their own perspective. Accordingly, we might propose that being intellectually benevolent requires that one tends to judge to be valuable what one is epistemically justified in judging to be epistemically valuable, and that in cases where other things are equal, one tends to judge to be of greater value what one has reason to believe is of greater epistemic value. In this way, the virtue of intellectual benevolence will be guided by its possessor’s justified conception of what is valuable in the life of inquiry. This proposal parallels Baehr’s conception of the virtuous positive orientation towards epistemic goods as one in which “an intellectually virtuous person will love what she has good reason to believe is an epistemic good and hate what she has good reason to believe is an epistemic bad” (Battaly 2019: 119). While I myself prefer conceptualizing intellectual benevolence and character traits more generally in

88  Intellectual Benevolence accordance with this second approach (cf. Byerly 2019a), I will not insist on it here. Although I will sometimes use language reflective of it below, I invite readers more attracted to the first approach to consider how to reformulate these expressions. I have gone on now for several pages about what we might call the cognitive dimension of intellectual benevolence, proposing that this involves the benevolent person’s having a true or at least justified conception of what is epistemically valuable in others’ inquiries that can be reasonably expected of a maturely developed personality. What I now wish to note is that this cognitive dimension of intellectual benevolence must be complemented by an emotional dimension and a volitional dimension—which takes us to our third and fourth features of the responsibilists’ motivation for epistemic goods. The responsibilist motivation for epistemic goods is often conceived as involving emotion dispositions. The person who has this virtuous motivation won’t just judge it to be valuable for them to acquire true beliefs, understanding, and the like, but their emotions will appropriately complement these judgments. They will tend to be pleased when they acquire understanding and displeased when they cannot. They will tend to be excited by the prospect of learning and disappointed when experiencing confusion. They will tend to be happier about acquiring new skills and virtues for inquiry than they would be about acquiring some true beliefs luckily. Responsibilist virtue epistemologists tend to conceptualize the intellectual virtues, like the moral virtues, as including dispositions of cognition, emotion, and volition. Consistent with this conception, they will include a role for emotion dispositions in the foundational motivation for epistemic goods. Jason Baehr, for example, includes these within his conception of the positive psychological orientation toward epistemic goods and negative psychological orientation toward epistemic bads definitive of this foundational motivation. The positive orientation toward epistemic goods will include “what one loves, desires, or identifies with,” while the negative orientation toward epistemic bads will include “what one ‘hates,’ is repelled by, repudiates, and so on” (2011: 96). He notes approvingly Thomas Hurka’s conception of “loving” the good as involving “being positively oriented toward it in one’s desires, actions, or feelings” (ibid, emphasis added). Roberts and Wood, similarly, conceive of the love of knowledge as a concern for epistemic goods, which is partly emotive in nature. They note that the virtuously intellectually motivated person “will feel emotional discomfort when his desire for [epistemic goods] is frustrated” (2007: 156). The foundational motivation for epistemic goods is therefore partly emotive. A parallel emotional orientation will characterize the intellectually benevolent person. Their judgments regarding what is of absolute and comparative value in others’ inquiries will be complemented by

Intellectual Benevolence  89 fitting emotions. They will tend to be glad when learning about others’ acquisitions of true belief, understanding, and intellectual virtue, and disappointed when learning of others’ false beliefs, misunderstandings, and intellectual vice. They will be excited by the prospect of promoting epistemic goods in others, and worried by the prospect of causing others epistemic harm. They will be happier about leading others to acquire a justified true belief than an unjustified true belief, and happier still about helping others to achieve broad understanding. More generally, they will tend to experience positive emotions directed toward others’ acquisition or maintenance of epistemic goods, and they will tend to experience negative emotions directed toward others’ failure to acquire or maintain epistemic goods, and the intensity of their emotions will tend to co-vary with the value of the objects of these emotions. Likewise, both the responsibilists’ motivation for epistemic goods and the virtue of intellectual benevolence include volitional components. Indeed, it is in virtue of these components that the traits are thought of primarily as motivations. The responsibilists’ virtuous motivation for epistemic goods requires motivation for the epistemic goods that are judged to be valuable, and comparatively stronger motivation for the epistemic goods that are judged more valuable. The person who is virtuously motivated by epistemic goods tends to seek them, tries to get them, and wants to have them. They want them for their own sake—at least, they want them for the sake of the value they contribute to the life of inquiry, independently from what further value they might have (cf. Baehr 2011: 99). They may also seek these goods for the sake of other values to which they are conducive. Roberts and Wood go so far as to claim that “in the epistemically virtuous person the disposition of caring about the intellectual goods will derive in part from a disposition of caring about other goods such as justice, human well-being, and friendship” (2007: 158). Yet, the intellectually virtuous motivation to acquire epistemic goods must not be structured by a more ultimate motivation which is itself vicious. Baehr illustrates this point in his discussion of a fictional scientist who “does extremely careful and thorough research over the course of his career, but whose work is motivated primarily by a desire to win a Nobel Prize and all the professional accolades that come therewith” (2011: 105). Baehr claims that the scientist’s character traits cannot be considered intellectual virtues . . . Indeed, if the motives in question were the dominant ones in the scientist’s life as a whole, we might reasonably think of him as rather defective qua person. (106) Again, the same applies in the case of intellectual benevolence. Intellectual benevolence, which I initially glossed as a foundational motivation

90  Intellectual Benevolence to promote others’ epistemic goods, must most certainly include a volitional component. The intellectually benevolent person is motivated to promote for others those goods they judge to be valuable in the life of inquiry, and is more strongly motivated to promote those goods they judge to be of greater value in this life. They want to help, to give, to guide others in ways that will lead to their acquisition or maintenance of these goods. They tend to seek ways to benefit others’ inquiries. They do this because they are motivated to promote excellence in others’ inquiries for its own sake. They may also wish to promote goods in others inquiries for the sake of other goods to which they are conducive. Yet, their motivation to promote goods in others’ inquiries must not be structured by a more ultimate motivation which is itself vicious. The final point of comparison I wish to make between the virtue of intellectual benevolence and the responsibilists’ motivation for epistemic goods is the point anticipated at the outset of this section regarding the way in which the motivation for epistemic goods structures other intellectual virtues. As Jason Baehr puts this point, intellectual virtues structured by this motivation have a “two-tiered psychological structure”: At a basic or fundamental level, all intellectual virtues involve, as we have seen, a positive orientation toward epistemic goods. . . . However, each intellectual virtue also has its own characteristic psychology. That is, each virtue involves certain attitudes, feelings, motives, beliefs, actions, and other psychological qualities that make it the virtue it is and on the basis of which it can be distinguished from other intellectual virtues. . . . Finally, on the present model, the characteristic psychology of each individual virtue is ‘rooted in’ or ‘flows from’ the more fundamental positive orientation toward epistemic goods. (2011: 103) Or, to recall Battaly’s language from the outset of the chapter, the psychological features distinctive of the various individual virtues are “spawned” from the foundational motivation for epistemic goods. In parallel fashion, I propose that intellectual benevolence is a foundational, refined motivation to promote others’ epistemic goods that structures the virtues of intellectual dependability. These virtues, as argued in Chapter 2, are distinctively concerned with promoting others’ epistemic goods in that they require for their possession the motivation to promote others’ epistemic goods. Indeed, they are possessed “out of” this motivation in the sense that this motivation structures these virtues. The psychological orientations distinctive of these virtues are ultimately oriented toward fulfilling this foundational motivation. What we are learning in this chapter is that this foundational motivation which structures these virtues is the virtue of intellectual benevolence. While this

Intellectual Benevolence  91 virtue can be thought of as primarily a motivation to promote others’ epistemic goods, a full conceptualization of it requires reference to its cognitive and affective elements in addition to its volitional elements. It is as much a robust multi-track disposition as the other virtues of intellectual dependability that it structures. A closely related point about the relationship between intellectual benevolence and the other virtues of intellectual dependability can be made if we borrow Daniel Russell’s (2009) conception of the cardinality of the virtues. On Russell’s conception, there is a natural structuring of the virtues according to which some virtues are more cardinal than others, while the less cardinal virtues can often be thought of as specializations of the more cardinal virtues. Russell’s key example is the more cardinal virtue of generosity and the less cardinal virtue of magnificence. Whereas generosity is constituted by a virtuous tendency to use one’s resources to benefit others quite generally, magnificence is a narrower, more specialized virtuous tendency to promote public goods through large-scale expenditure. Russell’s explanation for why generosity is more cardinal than magnificence is that the reasons characteristic of magnificence “ascend” to the reasons characteristic of generosity. If a magnificent person were asked why they took their characteristic reasons for acting magnificently—say, because people in their position ought to support their communities—are reasons in the first place, they will end up citing the reasons characteristic of generosity—that it is good to benefit others with one’s resources when one can. In a similar way, I will suggest that the other virtues of intellectual dependability that will be the focus of Chapters 5 through 8 are less cardinal than intellectual benevolence and are specializations of it. The reasons characteristic of these virtues will ascend to those characteristic of intellectual benevolence, and these virtues can be thought of as intellectual benevolence specialized to some narrower domains of activity. On the basis of the foregoing comparison between intellectual benevolence and the responsibilists’ motivation for epistemic goods, we can offer the following summary account of the nature of intellectual benevolence. Intellectual benevolence is a multi-track, positive orientation towards others’ epistemic goods and negative orientation toward others’ epistemic bads. These orientations each involve dispositions of cognition, emotion, and motivation sensitive to what is of absolute and comparative value in others’ inquiries. The intellectually benevolent person tends to make justified judgments about what is good and bad in others’ inquiries and about which goods and bads in others’ inquiries are better or worse than others. They tend to experience positive emotions directed towards what they judge to be good in others’ inquiries, and negative emotions toward what they judge to be bad in others’ inquiries, and the intensity of these emotions tends to co-vary with the perceived values of their objects. Finally, the intellectually benevolent person is

92  Intellectual Benevolence motivated to promote what they judge to be good in others’ inquiries, and motivated to prevent what they judge to be bad in others’ inquiries, and the intensity of these motivations tends to co-vary with the perceived value of their objects. Thus, intellectual benevolence is a refined holistic concern with others’ intellectual well-being. By conceptualizing intellectual benevolence in this way, I have left several significant questions about its nature unanswered. In particular, there are some live debates among epistemologists of intellectual character that I have not taken a stand on here. For example, I have not addressed whether virtues such as intellectual benevolence must be acquired in such a way that their possessors are responsible for possessing them—a point of contention between personalist and responsibilist virtue epistemologists. Nor have I addressed whether virtues such as intellectual benevolence can be possessed apart from reliable success in achieving their aims—a point over which responsibilists have differed from one another. My abstaining from entering into such debates is intentional. For, I wish to offer a basic account of intellectual benevolence that may be refined in directions attractive to parties on either side of these debates. I would encourage adherents of each of these perspectives to consider how the basic characterization of intellectual benevolence offered here can be filled in from their own preferred perspectives on these issues.1

2 Intellectual Benevolence and Similar Virtues Having offered an account of the basic nature of intellectual benevolence, I now wish to further illuminate this virtue by considering its relationship to several other traits—both virtues to which it is similar and vices to which it is opposed. I begin with a virtue that Roberts and Wood call “truthfulness”. They describe this trait as “a love of the intellectual goods as they may be lodged in other people by way of one’s own communication.” The truthful person has a concern that what one tells the other be true, not just in some legalistic sense of being a true proposition, but that what one is communicating actually become a true belief or correct understanding lodged in the other person. (2007: 165) Truthfulness is conceptualized by Roberts and Wood as the otherregarding component of the broader virtue they call “love of knowledge” described earlier in this chapter. So understood, truthfulness is closely related to intellectual benevolence. Yet, they are not quite the same trait. Notably, truthfulness appears to be exclusively concerned with governing a person’s communicative acts. Perhaps even more narrowly, it may be that it is concerned only with cases in which a person offers testimony to a target

Intellectual Benevolence  93 proposition or set of propositions of another’s inquiry, or at least to cases in which one “tells” another something. In either case, it is certainly narrower in focus than intellectual benevolence as conceived above. The latter governs not just what a person tells others, but the whole range of communicative acts one engages in with others aimed at advancing their epistemic goods, including the questions one asks and the instructions one gives. Indeed, more broadly, intellectual benevolence concerns a person’s orientation toward others’ epistemic goods quite generally, and not only toward epistemic goods toward which their own communicative acts may be conducive. The intellectually benevolent person is cognitively, affectively, and volitionally oriented toward others’ epistemic goods whether these goods are promoted by their own acts of communication or not, and likewise cognitively, affectively, and volitionally oriented away from others’ epistemic bads whether these bads may be prevented by their own communicative acts or not. It is natural to think that, if truthfulness is a virtue, it is a virtue that is itself structured by the more fundamental virtue of intellectual benevolence. As Roberts and Wood describe truthfulness, it seems clear enough that the virtuously truthful person must possess truthfulness out of the foundational motivation for others’ epistemic goods characteristic of intellectual benevolence. The virtuously truthful person’s truthfulness is motivated by their intellectual benevolence. Truthfulness is among the two-tiered psychologically structured virtues that takes as its definitive ultimate motive—the motive of intellectual benevolence—and takes as its definitive proximate motive—the characteristic motive of truthfulness—to communicate truthfully. While Roberts and Wood’s truthfulness is not the same as intellectual benevolence, their discussion of truthfulness as the other-regarding dimension of the love of knowledge raises a difficult question for us here. Namely, is intellectual benevolence best thought of in the way Roberts and Wood have thought of truthfulness as the other-regarding dimension of a broader positive orientation toward epistemic goods? Perhaps Roberts and Wood would take my comments about the differences between intellectual benevolence and truthfulness as a friendly corrective to their comments about the other-regarding dimension of the love of knowledge. Perhaps they would propose that intellectual benevolence is part of this broader virtue. If so, would they be right? I find this to be a difficult question to answer, and I am not sure that much of consequence stands or falls with the answer. Regardless of how the question is answered, I think it is important to be able to maintain two points. First, it is important to maintain that intellectual benevolence is a virtue and that the self-regarding motivation to acquire epistemic goods that responsibilists have had in view is a virtue, and that there are other intellectual virtues that can be possessed out of each of these. If we do not accept these claims, then we will not be able to maintain the view articulated in Chapter 2 and reiterated above regarding

94  Intellectual Benevolence the relationship between the self-regarding and other-regarding motivations for epistemic goods and the possession of other intellectual virtues. Second, it is important to allow that intellectual benevolence and the virtuous self-regarding motivation for epistemic goods may typically derive from different sources in human personality. For example, the self-regarding motivation for epistemic goods may derive from the motivation for competence or mastery, and may be driven primarily by aspects of personality pertaining to conscientiousness. This is suggested by the close relationships between love of learning and mastery orientation (see, e.g., Peterson and Seligman 2004: 166–7) and between mastery orientation and conscientiousness (see McCabe et al. 2013) in psychological research. By contrast, intellectual benevolence may derive from more general prosocial motives, and may be driven by aspects of personality pertaining to agreeableness. This is suggested by psychological research on knowledge-sharing, which has been found to be driven primarily by prosocial intentions (Rhee and Choi 2017), which are in turn most strongly linked with the basic personality construct of agreeableness (Habashi et al. 2016). If we think of the virtuous self-regarding and other-regarding motivations for epistemic goods as perfections of some kind of natural virtue or inclination, as Roberts and Wood have expressed sympathy for doing (cf. 2007: 153–4, 164–5), then we may need to recognize that the pathways toward achieving them may be quite different and fairly independent from one another. This seems to me to push in the direction of treating the virtues as two separate virtues. Yet, I can also see that in a mature personality these traits may become integrated as ways in which the person is oriented in favor of epistemic goods, despite their having arisen via different developmental pathways. So, while I won’t take a firm stand here on whether intellectual benevolence is best conceived of as part of a broader positive orientation toward epistemic goods, I do suggest that it is best viewed as a virtue that can develop relatively independently from the virtuous self-regarding motivation for epistemic goods (and vice versa), that it can generate other intellectual virtues such as the virtues of intellectual dependability independently from its relationship to the self-regarding motivation for intellectual goods (and vice versa), and that it is a virtue in its own right whether or not it is part of a larger virtue in tandem with the virtuous self-regarding motivation for epistemic goods (and vice versa). A second similar intellectual virtue with which intellectual benevolence can be compared is intellectual generosity. Generosity in general and intellectual generosity in particular have received only a small amount of attention in recent philosophical literature. As Christian Miller observes in a recent article on generosity, I would have expected a lot of interest by analytic philosophers in this character trait. Not so. As far as I can tell, there have only been

Intellectual Benevolence  95 three articles in mainstream philosophy journals going back at least to the 1970s on generosity. (2018: 216) Yet the small literature on generosity and intellectual generosity can enable us to differentiate between it and intellectual benevolence in at least three ways. First, it is commonly maintained that acts characteristics of generosity are not morally required, but are supererogatory, going beyond the call of duty. Perhaps acting generously is an imperfect duty in the Kantian sense, with it being morally required of people that they behave generously on some occasions, but no particular acts of generosity are morally required. Miller proposes along these lines that for an act to be generous, the actor must not believe that the act is morally required. He writes, “An action is generous for an agent to perform only if, subjec-tively, the agent takes the action to be morally optional” (2018: 228). While Miller is concerned primarily with generosity simpliciter, presumably he would say the same about intellectual generosity. Intellectual generosity is a tendency that involves promoting others’ epistemic goods in circumstances where doing so is not (believed to be) morally required. If it is true of intellectual generosity that its characteristic acts are supererogatory, or are believed to be supererogatory, then this will allow us to identify one difference between intellectual generosity and intellectual benevolence. For, intellectual benevolence by contrast is concerned more broadly with promoting others’ epistemic goods or preventing their epistemic bads, regardless of whether doing so is morally required or is supererogatory. There may indeed be ways of promoting others’ epistemic goods or preventing their epistemic bads that are morally required. For example, it may be a moral requirement of a certain kind of epistemic justice that a teacher gives their students equal opportunity to develop their minds. Treating them otherwise would be a violation of fairness. If so, then giving one’s students equal opportunity to develop their minds could be motivated by intellectual benevolence, but not by generosity. Similarly, it has long been maintained that to lie or to otherwise deliberately mislead others, whether in certain particular circumstances or in general, is a grievous moral wrong (cf. Williams 2002, ch.5). If so, then it may be morally required that one not lie and that one not deliberately deceive in such cases. Doing what it takes to refrain from lying or deliberately deceiving in such cases, then, would not be a manifestation of intellectual generosity, but could be a manifestation of intellectual benevolence. So this is one way in which intellectual benevolence and generosity appear to come apart: intellectual benevolence is concerned more broadly with any case in which one has opportunity to promote another’s epistemic goods or prevent their epistemic bads,

96  Intellectual Benevolence whereas intellectual generosity is concerned more narrowly with cases in which one can promote others’ epistemic goods in a supererogatory fashion. A second potential difference between intellectual generosity and intellectual benevolence is that characteristic acts of generosity involve giving in order to promote another’s good. Indeed, as Roberts and Wood note, “Paradigmatically, generosity is a disposition to give property” (2007: 293). In conceiving of intellectual generosity, we might not wish to confine it to cases in which property is redistributed. For it is awkward to conceive of epistemic goods such as knowledge or true belief as property that is redistributed—after all, when they are given away, they are also retained by the giver. Moreover, we may wish to allow that what can be given in cases of intellectually generous acts can be quite varied, including not only knowledge, but time, commentary, questions, and so on. Yet, even if we conceive of intellectual generosity as characteristically manifested in these various ways, it remains that it is characteristically manifested in acts of giving. Generosity has to do with making use of one’s resources in order to benefit others. As Roberts and Wood put it, “Generosity is a disposition to give valuable things— material goods, time, attention, energy, concessions, credit, the benefit of a doubt, knowledge—to other persons” (286). Yet, intellectual benevolence can be manifested in cases in which one decides not to give or not to employ one’s resources. For example, imagine a wealthy donor who has long supported a media outlet, and who becomes increasingly concerned that the media outlet is producing material that is causing the public epistemic harm. If reforming the media outlet’s practices seems sufficiently out of reach, the donor might decide out of a concern for the epistemic well-being of the public to withdraw their support of the organization. Doing so could be an act of intellectual benevolence. Yet, it does not appear to be an act of intellectual generosity if generosity is characteristically manifested in giving or making use of one’s resources. In this case, the donor aims to improve others’ epistemic well-being by refraining from giving, by refraining from using their resources. Or, to take a slightly more homey case, consider the social media user who, out of a concern that sharing a link may do their friends more epistemic harm than good, refrains from sharing it. Here again the act may be characteristic of intellectual benevolence, but not of intellectual generosity if intellectual generosity requires acts of giving. Thus far, we have observed potential differences between intellectual generosity and intellectual benevolence that involve ways in which the former is more narrowly focused than the latter. But, in addition to being more narrowly focused, it may also be that intellectual generosity requires a more refined specialization of skill in the area of its operation than does intellectual benevolence. Intellectual benevolence, as conceptualized above, involves a basic orientation of a person toward others’

Intellectual Benevolence  97 epistemic goods and bads. It is a foundational, positive attraction toward others’ epistemic goods in one’s judgments, affections, and volitions and negative aversion away from others’ epistemic bads in one’s judgments, affections, and volitions. Generosity, by contrast, is commonly thought to require more specialized skill. As Roberts and Wood put it, “The giver must aim to make his gifts into real benefits by considering appropriate beneficiaries, gifts, times of giving, and so forth” (2007: 286). Generosity, in a phrase, requires skill in giving. Putting these differences together enables us to discern a pattern in the relationships between intellectual benevolence, on the one hand, and truthfulness and intellectual generosity, on the other. The latter virtues are each more narrowly focused on a smaller domain of intellectual activities than the former, and they each involve greater specialization of skill within these areas than intellectual benevolence requires in its broader domain of activities. They are, in this way, specializations of intellectual benevolence—refinements of it within particular domains—of the sort we envisioned earlier when discussing Russell’s conception of the cardinality of the virtues. Each of the latter virtues can be possessed out of intellectual benevolence; each is a way that we might expect intellectual benevolence to develop in particular directions. This pattern of relationship is just what we should have expected, if intellectual benevolence is to stand to these other distinctively other-regarding intellectual virtues in much the way that the foundational motivation for epistemic goods is thought to stand to other intellectual virtues that have been the focus of responsibilist virtue epistemology.

3 Intellectual Benevolence and Opposing Vices Having noted the relationship of intellectual benevolence to the similar virtues of truthfulness and intellectual generosity, I now turn to contrast intellectual benevolence with some opposing vices. I begin with what is perhaps the most naturally opposing vice—a vice that Jason Baehr (2010) has called “epistemic malevolence.” As Baehr himself observes, benevolence and malevolence in general tend to be contrasted with each other. His interest is to investigate whether there is a sensible conception of the vice of epistemic malevolence that parallels the vice of malevolence simpliciter or moral malevolence. Baehr defines malevolence as a disposition to oppose the good, and so defines epistemic malevolence as a disposition to oppose the epistemic good. While he wishes to allow that there are impersonal forms of malevolence and epistemic malevolence that involve opposition to impersonal goods, he also notes that there are personal versions of each that involve opposition to others’ share in goods, including epistemic goods. Personal epistemic malevolence, then, is a dispositional “opposition to another person’s share in knowledge or to her epistemic well-being as

98  Intellectual Benevolence such” (2010: 204). More carefully, personal epistemic malevolence is a disposition to oppose what one should be aware of as another’s epistemic goods, whether one in fact takes these to be the other’s epistemic goods or not (201). The epistemically malevolent person makes what they do or should regard as others’ epistemic goods out to be their enemy. Such an orientation toward others’ epistemic goods is, as expected, as strongly contrasted with intellectual benevolence as possible. This is especially so if we imagine the fullest sort of personal epistemic malevolence. This sort of malevolence would involve a unified aversion to all others’ epistemic goods and attraction to all others’ epistemic bads in one’s judgments, affections, and volitions. Where the benevolent person judges that it is good to promote what they have reason to believe is someone else’s good, tends to be pleased by the promotion of such goods, and is motivated to promote these goods, the epistemically malevolent person judges of such goods that they are not to be promoted, tends to be displeased by them, and is motivated to obstruct them. The fully personally epistemically malevolent person has a psychologically integrated orientation to oppose what the intellectually benevolent person has a psychologically integrated orientation to promote. While the contrast between intellectual benevolence and epistemic malevolence could hardly be starker, intellectual benevolence also contrasts more subtly with several other intellectual vices. Some of these distinctively involve deficient motivations toward others’ epistemic goods, some of them distinctively involve defective motivations toward others’ epistemic goods, and some can be manifested either in deficient motivations for others’ epistemic goods or in defective motivations for them. Often, people are deficiently motivated toward others’ goods because they are too strongly motivated by their own goods. They are egoistic or self-focused to a greater or lesser extent, treating their own interests as more valuable or more important than others’ interests for purposes of deciding what to do. Distinctively epistemic orientations of this kind can be imagined. At the extreme is the person who places no value on others’ epistemic goods, but who does value their own epistemic goods. Such a person may not be epistemically malevolent, positively oriented toward others’ epistemic bads and opposed to their goods, but neither will they be positively oriented toward others’ epistemic goods and opposed to others’ epistemic bads. Roberts and Wood describe the vices of haughtiness and selfish ambition along these lines. Whereas haughtiness is “a disposition to treat others as hardly worthy of one’s attention or respect,” “selfish ambition is a disposition to advance one’s own long-term interests to the exclusion or detriment of others’ interests” (2007: 237). There are of course less extreme self-focused orientations. A person may value others’ epistemic goods and be motivated to promote them to some extent, yet be so much more strongly motivated to promote

Intellectual Benevolence  99 their own epistemic goods that they end up being willing to do others epistemic harm out of selfish concern. Relatedly, a person may be motivated to be epistemically superior to others, even if they are not opposed to others’ epistemic goods as such. Alessandra Tanesini sometimes describes arrogance in this way, writing that “arrogant individuals want to be superior to other people” (2018: 214). We should expect the intellectually benevolent person to be quite different. Plausibly, the fully intellectually benevolent person will reject a sort of epistemic egoism according to which their epistemic goods are more valuable than others’ just because they are theirs. Indeed, as a person who values and is motivated to promote others’ epistemic goods, the fully intellectually benevolent person may be slightly more strongly motivated to promote others’ epistemic goods than their own. They may manifest the epistemic equivalent of what I have elsewhere called “others-centeredness,” a tendency to put others’ interests ahead of one’s own (Byerly 2019b). Ultimately, the justification for doing this would likely be that they both value others’ epistemic goods equally to their own, and they value the goods of epistemic cooperation that are promoted in greater measure when they promote others’ epistemic goods than when they promote their own. I don’t wish to claim that to be intellectually benevolent, a person must be epistemically others-centered in this way. But I do suggest that intellectual benevolence will incline a person more in this direction than in the contrary direction characteristic of self-focused vices such as arrogance. An interesting feature of intellectual arrogance, shared with some other intellectual vices, is that while it can manifest characteristically in a deficient motivation to promote others’ epistemic goods, it can also manifest a motivation to promote others’ epistemic goods that is defective. Out of a desire to maintain their epistemic superiority over others, a person may seek to make others pervasively dependent upon themselves for epistemic goods. This may involve a motivation to give others true beliefs or knowledge, and so to provide them with certain epistemic benefits. But it also involves a motivation to do others epistemic harm in making them dependent upon oneself for these goods, rather than fostering their autonomy to achieve these goods for themselves. The intellectual vice that Roberts and Wood call “vanity” can in this same way manifest either in a deficient motivation for others’ epistemic goods or in a defective motivation for them. Vanity, as they conceive of it, is an excessive desire to be well-regarded on account of one’s intellectual accomplishments (2007: 237). Out of such a desire, one may very well aim to do epistemic harm to others, or to prevent their epistemic goods, or to outdo them epistemically, so as to come off looking epistemically superior and therefore accumulating greater epistemic appreciation. Equally, however, such a desire may lead one to try to continually position oneself as others’ epistemic benefactor, so as to always come off looking like one is in a position of epistemic superiority.

100  Intellectual Benevolence By contrast, the intellectually benevolent person is not characterized by a motivation to be epistemically superior to others or by an excessive motivation to be well-regarded in virtue of their own intellectual accomplishments. Rather, as suggested above, they value and appreciate others’ epistemic goods, perhaps as much as they do their own. They won’t be inclined to do others down in order to preserve their superiority or the positive attention of others, but will be inclined to do others epistemic good for its own sake, perhaps as strongly or more strongly than they are inclined to do themselves epistemic good. Moreover, they will have a mature and discriminating conception of the diversity of epistemic values and a motivation to promote others’ epistemic goods in a way that is sensitive to this conception. They will not promote others’ true beliefs or knowledge in order to sacrifice the more important good of developing others’ autonomy. So, whether these flexible vices involve a deficient motivation to promote others’ epistemic goods or a defective motivation to promote them, they will contrast with intellectual benevolence. Finally, there are vices that distinctively involve defective motivations to promote others’ epistemic goods. These are vices that characteristically incorporate a motivation to promote some epistemic goods of others, but out of a vicious motive. One example of such a vice is the character trait of “social vigilantism” discussed by psychologists Saucier and Webster (2010). The social vigilante is conceived of as someone who thinks their views are superior to others’ views, and who desires to impress their views on others. The desire is ostensibly aimed at securing epistemic benefits for others, since in coming to see things the way the vigilante does, they will—so the vigilante thinks—come to be holding more accurate views. Social vigilantes “feel responsible to impress and propagate their beliefs onto others for the betterment of society” (Saucier and Webster 2010: 19). Social vigilantism of this sort has been found to be correlated with narcissism and dogmatism. At first glance, it may not seem that there is a strong tension between social vigilantism and intellectual benevolence. After all, if the social vigilante really believes that their beliefs are epistemically superior to others’ beliefs and aims to impress these epistemically better beliefs on others, we might be tempted to think they are just being benevolent, even if misguided. The idea that social vigilantism and intellectual benevolence may not be so far apart is also suggested by the fact that we might expect highly intellectually benevolent people to respond positively to some of the items used to measure social vigilantism, such as “Those people who are more intelligent and informed have a responsibility to educate the people around them who are less intelligent and informed” (Saucier and Webster 2010: 22, Table 1). Yet, I think that when we think more carefully about the profile of judgments, affections, and volitions of the social vigilante, we will see that there is indeed a significant contrast between them and the intellectually benevolent person.

Intellectual Benevolence  101 Compare first the affective profiles of a social vigilante and an intellectually benevolent person. We saw above that the intellectually benevolent person will tend to experience positive emotions such as joy or gladness when others attain epistemic goods. Will the social vigilante? It isn’t clear that they will. What is more likely is that they will experience positive emotions when others change their views to match the vigilante’s views. This suspicion is confirmed when we look at the items used to measure social vigilantism. No item taps a tendency to experience positive emotions directed toward others’ attainment of epistemic goods. However, there is an item tapping positive emotional experience induced through exercising epistemic authority over others: “I like to imagine myself in a position of authority so that I could make the important decisions around here” (Saucier and Webster 2010: 22, Table 1). We may expect similar patterns in vigilantes’ profiles of judgment and volition. Rather than judging it good for others to attain epistemic goods, they will characteristically judge it good for others to share their own views, and rather than being motivated to promote others attaining knowledge or understanding, they will be characteristically motivated to bring it about that others agree with them. These differences with the intellectually benevolent person are again borne out by the items used to measure the construct. For example, there is an item, “If everyone saw things the way that I do, the world would be a better place,” which taps the vigilante’s judgment profile; there is no comparable item suggesting that the vigilante would judge the world a better place if others attained more epistemic goods independently of the vigilante’s role in producing them. In parallel fashion, the questionnaire includes the items “I need to win any argument about how people should live,” “I feel as if it is my duty to enlighten other people,” and “I feel a social obligation to voice my opinion” (ibid). These tap a motivation to influence others’ views with one’s own. But there are not comparable items tapping a motivation to promote others’ epistemic goods independently of doing so by impressing upon them one’s own views. Observing these significant differences between social vigilantism and intellectual benevolence leads me to a more general conclusion. While there are some vices, such as epistemic malevolence or haughtiness, that are so strongly opposed to intellectual benevolence that it is hard to imagine their possessors mistakenly thinking of themselves as intellectually benevolent people, other vices such as social vigilantism are different. The social vigilante, and perhaps also people who possess a variety of arrogance or vanity that leads them to promote some epistemic goods for others, may be deluded into thinking that they are behaving benevolently. These vices may be especially difficult for their possessors to detect; they maybe “stealthy” to borrow a term from Quassim Cassam (2019). Yet there remain significant differences between the cognitive, affective, and volitional profiles of the intellectually benevolent person

102  Intellectual Benevolence and those who possess these vices. The better we can sort between these profiles, the better we will be able to sort those who possess these vices from the intellectually benevolent. One final intellectual vice that can be contrasted with intellectual benevolence I will call epistemic subservience. As I am conceiving of it, it is the mirror opposite of the kind of selfish ambition and haughtiness described by Roberts and Wood. Rather than being consumed by their own epistemic goods to the neglect of others’ epistemic goods, the epistemically subservient person tends to become consumed with others’ epistemic goods to the neglect of their own. They are so strongly motivated to promote others’ epistemic goods that they neglect their own self-development. They habitually enter into patterns of self-destructive behavior out of a concern to secure epistemic benefits for others. They are not epistemically others-centered in the potentially virtuous sense described above, but excessively concerned for others’ epistemic goods to a neglect of their own goods. As in the case of social vigilantism, here again we may at first glance think that there is a good bit in common between the intellectually benevolent person and the epistemically subservient person. It would seem that they both are likely to judge others’ epistemic goods to be valuable, to take pleasure in others attaining epistemic goods, and to be motivated to promote others’ epistemic goods. Yet, again, I contend that when we look closely, we will see that the cognitive, affective, and volitional profile of the epistemically subservient person will diverge from that of the intellectually benevolent person. Begin again with the affective profile. The intellectually benevolent person is positively affectively oriented toward others’ epistemic goods and negatively affectively oriented toward others’ epistemic bads. How about the epistemically subservient person? I suggest that, like the vigilante, what they will distinctively take pleasure in is their promoting of others’ epistemic goods, rather than the attaining of these goods per se. Their personality is such that they, like the vigilante, have developed a need that promoting others’ epistemic goods can satisfy. Their need is different from that of the vigilante. They don’t need others to conform to their views for the need to be satisfied. Yet they do need to benefit others for the need to be satisfied. They may even need to expend themselves in the service of furthering others’ epistemic goods to feel at ease. This affective profile is not part of the affective profile of the intellectually benevolent person, who is affectively oriented toward others’ epistemic goods for their own sake, regardless of whether the attainment of these goods requires expending themselves to the point of self-harm. Similar comments apply to the cognitive and volitional profile of the epistemically subservient. The subservient person is likely to judge it valuable for them to be involved in promoting others’ epistemic goods, perhaps especially where doing so threatens their own well-being to some

Intellectual Benevolence  103 extent. They are likely to be motivated to hide in the shadows while others benefit from their intellectual labor. They are motivated to abandon their own good in pursuit of promoting others’ epistemic goods. These are not the same as the cognitive and volitional profiles of the intellectually benevolent person. The latter judges the attainment of others’ epistemic goods to be valuable—perhaps as valuable as their own, though not more so. They judge this attainment to be valuable independently from whether it is promoted by their own activity, and independently from whether this activity is extremely self-sacrificial. Likewise, they are motivated to promote others’ epistemic goods for its own sake, and not for the sake of endangering their well-being in service to others. There may be many cases where promoting others’ epistemic goods does little to threaten a person’s own well-being. It can be expected that in such cases the intellectually benevolent will be motivated to promote the other’s epistemic goods; this can’t be comparably expected from the epistemically subservient. Intellectual benevolence contrasts with a range of opposing vices, all of which differ significantly from it in their cognitive, affective, and volitional profiles. Some intellectual vices are opposed to intellectual benevolence because they involve deficient motivation to promote others’ epistemic goods. These include haughtiness and some forms of intellectual arrogance or selfish ambition. Other intellectual vices involve a motivation to promote others’ epistemic goods that is in some way defective. These include some forms of intellectual arrogance, as well as social vigilantism and what I have called epistemic subservience. In contrast with these vices, the virtue of intellectual benevolence is an integrated psychological orientation favoring others’ epistemic goods and disfavoring their epistemic bads that is neither deficient nor defective.

Note 1 For a helpful, brief survey of these and other dividing lines among epistemologists of intellectual character, see (Battaly 2019).

References Baehr, Jason. 2010. “Epistemic Malevolence.” Metaphilosophy 41, 1: 189–213. Baehr, Jason. 2011. The Inquiring Mind: On Intellectual Virtues and Virtue Epistemology. New York: Oxford University Press. Battaly, Heather. 2019. “A Third Kind of Intellectual Virtue: Personalism.” In The Routledge Handbook of Virtue Epistemology, ed. Heather Battaly, 115–27. New York: Routledge. Byerly, T. Ryan. 2019a. “Epistemic Subjectivism in the Theory of Character.” Thought 8, 4: 278–85. Byerly, T. Ryan. 2019b. Putting Others First: The Christian Ideal of Others-Centeredness. New York: Routledge.

104  Intellectual Benevolence Cassam, Quassim. 2019. Vices of the Mind: From the Intellectual to the Political. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Habashi, Meara, William Graziano, and Ann Hoover. 2016. “Searching for the Prosocial Personality: A Big Five Approach to Linking Personality and Prosocial Behavior.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 42, 9: 1177–92. McCabe, Kira O., Nico W. Van Yperen, Andrew J. Elliot, and Marc Verbraak. 2013. “Big Five Personality Profiles of Context-Specific Achievement Goals.” Journal of Research in Personality 47: 698–707. Miller, Christian. 2018. “Generosity: A Preliminary Account of a Surprisingly Neglected Virtue.” Metaphilosophy 49, 3: 216–45. Montmarquet, James. 1992. “Epistemic Virtue and Doxastic Responsibility.” American Philosophical Quarterly 29, 4: 331–41. Peterson, Christopher and Martin Seligman. 2004. Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rhee, Young Won and Jin Nam Choi. 2017. “Knowledge Management Behavior and Individual Creativity: Goal Orientations as Antecedents and In-group Social Status as Moderating Contingency.” Journal of Organizational Behavior 38, 6: 813–32. Roberts, Robert and Jay Wood. 2007. Intellectual Virtues: An Essay in Regulative Epistemology. New York: Oxford University Press. Russell, Daniel. 2009. Practical Intelligence and the Virtues. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Saucier, Donald A. and Russel J. Webster. 2010. “Social Vigilantism: Measuring Individual Differences in Belief Superiority and Resistance to Persuasion.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 36, 1: 19–32. Tanesini, Alessandra. 2018. “Arrogance, Anger and Debate.” Symposion: Theoretical and Applied Inquiries in Philosophy and Social Sciences 5, 2: 213–27. Williams, Bernard. 2002. Truth and Truthfulness: An Essay in Genealogy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Zagzebski, Linda. 1996. Virtues of the Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of Knowledge. New York: Cambridge University Press.

5

Intellectual Transparency

This chapter is concerned with a second candidate for a virtue of intellectual dependability—namely, intellectual transparency. As explained in Chapter 4, this virtue, along with all of the other remaining candidates for virtues of intellectual dependability I will discuss, is thought to be possessed out of the foundational motivation of intellectual benevolence that was the focus of that chapter. Possessing the motivation of intellectual benevolence is necessary for possessing the virtue of intellectual transparency, and the motivation of intellectual benevolence structures this latter virtue. Still, intellectual transparency is a virtue in its own right, with its own characteristic psychology, including characteristic affective, behavioral, motivational, and cognitive elements. It is this distinctive psychology of intellectual transparency that is the main focus of this chapter. Section 1 develops a guiding conceptualization of intellectual transparency, while Section 2 addresses its relationship to similar virtues and Section 3 addresses its relationship to opposing vices discussed in extant philosophical and psychological scholarship.

1 A Guiding Conceptualization of Intellectual Transparency Imagine an intellectually benevolent person, virtuously motivated to promote others’ epistemic goods. Such a person may notice that one of the primary ways in which they can promote others’ epistemic goods is by granting these others access to their own perspective on topics of these others’ inquiries. By enabling these others to gain access to their perspective, the intellectually benevolent person may enhance the value of these others’ inquiries. In developing a virtuous cognitive, affective, motivational, and behavioral orientation toward enhancing others’ inquiries via sharing one’s perspective with them, the intellectually benevolent person will have developed the virtue I am calling intellectual transparency. Intellectual transparency, then, can be defined summarily as a tendency to faithfully share one’s perspective on topics of others’ inquiries with these others out of a motivation to promote their epistemic goods.

106  Intellectual Transparency The cognitive, affective, motivational, and behavioral features of intellectual transparency will overlap significantly with those of intellectual benevolence, given the way in which the latter structures the former. For example, both intellectual benevolence and intellectual transparency characteristically involve tendencies to judge that others’ attainment of various epistemic goods is good, and to judge that promoting others’ attainment of epistemic goods is good. Likewise, both intellectual benevolence and intellectual transparency characteristically involve tendencies to experience positive affect directed toward others’ achievements of epistemic goods and toward one’s having promoted others’ epistemic goods. And both incorporate a motivation to promote others’ epistemic goods for its own sake. Yet intellectual transparency, like the other virtues of intellectual dependability I will discuss, also has its own additional distinctive cognitive, affective, motivational, and behavioral features. For example, in addition to the cognitive tendencies highlighted in the previous paragraph, intellectual transparency includes the tendency to judge that it is good to promote others’ epistemic goods specifically via sharing one’s own perspective with them. A person cannot possess the virtue of intellectual transparency without having a cognitive tendency of this kind, though they might possess intellectual benevolence without possessing this specific kind of cognitive tendency. Likewise, in addition to the affective tendencies shared in common with intellectual benevolence, intellectual transparency also incorporates a tendency to experience positive affect directed toward one’s having promoted others’ epistemic goods by having shared one’s perspective with them. Again, one cannot possess the virtue of intellectual transparency without possessing an affective tendency of this kind, though one might possess intellectual benevolence without possessing such a tendency. And, similarly, intellectual transparency distinctively incorporates a motivation to promote others’ epistemic goods specifically via sharing one’s perspective with them, whereas intellectual benevolence does not require such a motivational tendency. The preceding comments about the distinctive cognitive, affective, and motivational tendencies of intellectual transparency versus intellectual benevolence are illustrative of a general pattern. Intellectual transparency is, so to speak, intellectual benevolence specialized to the particular domain of promoting others’ epistemic goods via sharing one’s perspective with them. Indeed, the language of “specialization”, which I borrow from Dan Russell (2009), is quite appropriate here. Intellectual transparency stands in much the same relationship to intellectual benevolence as magnificence stands to generosity, according to Russell. Whereas magnificence is a specialization of the more cardinal virtue of generosity to the particular domain of giving large sums for public benefit, intellectual transparency is a specialization of the more

Intellectual Transparency  107 cardinal virtue of intellectual benevolence to the particular domain of promoting others’ epistemic goods via sharing one’s perspective with them. As a specialization of intellectual benevolence, intellectual transparency incorporates cognitive and affective features similar to those of intellectual benevolence, but specialized to its own particular domain. These include the features identified above—the tendency to judge it good to promote others’ epistemic goods via sharing one’s perspective with them, the tendency to experience positive affect when promoting others’ epistemic goods via sharing one’s perspective with them, and the motivation to promote others’ epistemic goods via sharing one’s perspective with them. But they also include additional specialized features of this kind. For example, they include an aversion toward failing to promote others’ epistemic goods via sharing one’s perspective with them, a tendency to judge it bad to fail to promote others’ epistemic goods via sharing one’s perspective with them when one is able to do so, and a tendency to experience negative affect when failing to promote others’ epistemic goods via sharing one’s perspective with them. A useful way of summarizing the comments offered thus far on the distinctive psychology of intellectual transparency involves making use of the distinction between the proximate and ultimate motivations of a virtue. The idea is that there are some intellectual virtues that are possessed out of an ultimate motivation that constitutes another intellectual virtue, yet they also have their own distinctive motivations, which are their proximate motivations. The proximate motivations are had out of the more ultimate motivation constitutive of the other intellectual virtue. For example, open-mindedness involves the proximate motivation to seriously and fairly engage with relevant alternative perspectives on topics of one’s inquiries, where this proximate motivation is rooted in the more ultimate motivation to achieve epistemic goods for its own sake. In the present case, the distinctive affective, cognitive, and motivational features I have thus far been describing can be thought of as together constituting the proximate motivation of intellectual transparency, where this proximate motivation is itself held out of the more ultimate motivation that is intellectual benevolence. So, one of the major features of the distinctive psychology of intellectual transparency is its distinctive proximate motivation to promote others’ epistemic goods via sharing one’s perspective with them. I will also here highlight two additional features of the distinctive psychology of intellectual transparency. Both of these features can be thought of as distinctive skills that the intellectually transparent person tends to put to use in their efforts to achieve their proximate motivation. One set of skills is concerned with identifying what the transparent person’s own perspective is, and the other is concerned with enabling others to access this perspective. Since both sets of skills are concerned with how the intellectually transparent person engages with their perspective, and

108  Intellectual Transparency since I have also characterized the intellectually transparent person’s proximate motivation using the notion of their perspective, it is fitting for me to begin by commenting on what is here meant by the term “perspective.” I intend to use the term “perspective” with a very wide berth. Suppose a fellow inquirer is attempting to discern whether p. If an intellectually transparent person knows p or knows ¬p, then—unsurprisingly— this knowledge is part of their perspective. As such, we could expect, defeasibly, that the intellectually transparent person would be willing to provide testimony to p or to ¬p consistent with their knowledge, as this would be a way of sharing this aspect of their perspective with their fellow inquirer that could enhance this inquirer’s inquiry. Indeed, a review of literature in social epistemology would suggest that this is the paradigmatic case of sharing one’s perspective with others in order to promote their inquiries. Yet, here, I intend to include much more within the scope of the intellectually transparent person’s perspective than their knowledge of target propositions of fellow inquirer’s inquiries or their knowledge of the negations of these propositions. Indeed, I wish to include any accessible aspect of their own mental states that bears on their own attitude or lack thereof toward p and that is relevant for improving their fellow inquirer’s inquiry into whether p. There are a great many such aspects. As we noted in Chapter 1, sharing one’s ignorance with others can sometimes be as helpful to their inquiries as sharing one’s knowledge. If a fellow inquirer has good reason to think that if p were true, then you would know it, then their finding out that you are ignorant of whether p is the case can provide them with evidence that can improve their inquiry into whether p. The intellectually transparent person’s perspective on topics of others’ inquiries therefore may include their ignorance of the target propositions of these inquiries. Likewise, the evidence the intellectually transparent person possesses regarding p or its negation may be relevant to improving their fellow inquirer’s inquiry into p. If they are aware, for example, of arguments for p or arguments for not-p, then sharing these with a fellow inquirer may improve their inquiry into whether p. They may likewise have objections to a fellow inquirer’s arguments for p or to their arguments for not-p that they can share with this fellow inquirer. Or they may have questions or reservations about the publicly available evidence concerning p. Or they may make distinctions in their thinking about the topic of inquiry that could help improve their fellow inquirer’s thinking on the topic. Or they may have private intuitions or experiences bearing on whether p. Or it may be that, in their own case, they have decided to adopt a particular standard of evidence to apply to the case of p which determines for them what level of evidence is required to assent to p, but which not all fellow inquirers will share. These varied features are all aspects of a person’s

Intellectual Transparency  109 mental states that may bear on their own attitude or lack thereof toward p, the sharing of which may be relevant for improving a fellow inquirer’s inquiry into whether p. They may therefore all be part of what I intend to include within the intellectually transparent person’s perspective. The intellectually transparent person has a tendency to share these varied aspects of their perspective with fellow inquirers out of a motivation to promote the epistemic value of these fellow inquirers’ inquiries by so doing. In order to share these varied aspects of their perspective with fellow inquirers in a way that will best enhance their inquiries, the intellectually transparent person needs skills that will enable them to identify these features of their perspective, and to distinguish between them. They need, for example, to be able to distinguish between cases when they are highly confident of a view, and cases when they are less confident. They need to be able to identify when they suspend judgment on a topic, and when they take a view. They need to be able to distinguish cases where they are aware of an argument in favor of a view from cases where they are aware of an argument against its negation. They need to be skilled at discerning when their views on a topic are based on shareable arguments and when they are based on something else. They need to be able to identify the questions, experiences, and intuitions they have that are relevant for others’ inquiries. They need, in a phrase, skill in acquiring self-knowledge of their perspective on topics of others’ inquiries. This kind of skill in accessing the details of one’s own perspective does not come entirely automatically. It requires the exercise of sophisticated capacities for cognitively demanding self-reflection. It requires encountering one’s own perspective with self-honesty, being willing to accept what one finds within. It requires that one not hide or disguise aspects of one’s perspective from oneself. It requires a willingness to see one’s perspective for what it is so that one may communicate this perspective to others whose inquiries may thereby be enhanced. But skill in achieving such self-knowledge is not enough. The intellectually transparent person also needs skill in communicating this self-knowledge to dependent inquirers. They need skill in enabling their fellow inquirers to access the relevant features of their perspective. This will include having facility with a vocabulary that will enable them to aid their fellow inquirers in making the same kinds of distinctions they themselves must make in gaining relevant self-knowledge. For example, whereas gaining the requisite self-knowledge requires the intellectually transparent person to be able to distinguish between cases where they suspend judgment and cases where they take a view, communicating this self-knowledge requires facility with a vocabulary that will enable the dependent inquirer to distinguish between cases where the intellectually transparent person suspends judgment and cases where they take a view. Likewise needed is facility with a vocabulary for presenting and

110  Intellectual Transparency distinguishing between different levels of confidence and different kinds of evidence. Some aspects of one’s perspective are especially difficult to share and require communication via more demanding mechanisms. This is the case, for example, with aspects of one’s perspective such as one’s intuitions or experiences, or how one sees things. Arguably, part of what makes communicating these aspects of one’s perspective especially difficult is that their content is not purely propositional. There is something it is like to have them, and one cannot get others to experience what this is like merely by lodging a proposition in their head. One instead needs somehow to induce something of what the experience is like in the other, perhaps by sharing a narrative with the other that will enable them to have direct contact with what the experience is like (cf. Stump 2010). In its fullness, intellectual transparency will require skills for this kind of especially difficult communication of one’s perspective to others. The intellectually transparent person, then, is someone with welldeveloped capacities for identifying their own perspective and for enabling others to access this perspective, whose exercise of these capacities is regulated by their proximate motivation to promote others’ epistemic goods by sharing their perspective with them, and who is ultimately motivated by others’ epistemic goods in a manner reflective of intellectual benevolence. They recognize that sharing their knowledge, ignorance, evidence, experiences, and so on with others can sometimes improve the quality of others’ inquiries. So they make these aspects of themselves open to these others, skilfully enabling others to access the varied aspects of their perspectives in order to enhance their inquiries. As the metaphor of transparency would suggest, they tend to make the relevant aspects of their inner life easily visible to others, out of a motivation to enhance these others’ inquiries.

2 Intellectual Transparency and Similar Virtues We can further illuminate the nature of intellectual transparency and its place in the life of the intellectually dependable person by comparing it with similar virtues and opposing vices that have been or could be of interest to philosophers or psychologists. In this section, I focus on two similar virtues: honesty and sincerity. Contemporary philosophers have had little to say about honesty. As Wilson puts it, “honesty has been surprisingly neglected in the recent drive by virtue theorists to account for specific virtuous traits” (2018: 262). But this is beginning to change with a few recent works devoted to this virtue. Here I will focus my comments on recent papers by Christian Miller (2017) and Alan Wilson (2018). Miller’s and Wilson’s accounts are very similar in that they conceive of honesty as an orientation toward deception or misrepresentation. What

Intellectual Transparency  111 distinguishes the accounts is primarily that Miller defines honesty in behavioral terms, whereas Wilson defines honesty in motivational terms. On Miller’s account, honesty is “centrally, a character trait concerned with reliably not intentionally distorting the facts” (2017: 244). On Wilson’s account, “the trait of honesty centrally involves a deep motivation to avoid deception” (2018: 273). There are several ways in which we may expect intellectual transparency to overlap with honesty so conceived. First, we should expect that the intellectually transparent person will be averse to misleading others—especially regarding their own perspective. It is of great importance to the intellectually transparent person that they share their perspective with others faithfully, particularly where doing so will enhance these others’ inquiries. As such, they will be averse to deceiving others about their perspective, especially where access to their perspective could enhance the value of others’ inquiries. In this way, we can expect overlap between intellectual transparency and the motivational tendency that Wilson takes to be constitutive of honesty. Second, we should expect that intellectual transparency is conducive toward the kind of behavioral disposition that Miller has in mind, particularly if we take on board a potential amendment to Miller’s account toward which he himself seems favorable. The amendment I have in mind replaces “the facts” in the quotation above with “the facts as the agent sees them” (2017: 246). On this revised account, the behavioral manifestation characteristic of honesty is that the agent reliably refrains from intentionally distorting the facts as they see them. However, what I wish to highlight here is that an intellectually transparent person is more likely than their counterpart to manifest such behavior, other things being equal. As a person who is motivated to share their perspective with others in order to enhance the value of their inquiries, and who is skilled in discerning their perspective and communicating it to others, an intellectually transparent person is more likely than their counterpart to refrain from intentionally distorting the facts as they see them. For if they were to intentionally distort the facts as they see them, this would miscommunicate their perspective, potentially doing harm to others’ inquiries. Thus, we can expect that intellectual transparency is conducive toward refraining from the kind of distortion Miller has in mind, especially where such distortion is liable to harm others in their inquiries. Finally, we might also expect there to be overlap between intellectual transparency and honesty as Miller and Wilson conceive of it in terms of the introspective skills typical of the trait’s possessor. Arguably, to refrain from distorting the facts as one sees them, an agent will be wellserved if they are skilled in developing a reasonably thorough grasp of how they in fact see things. Not having a thorough grasp of how they see things would make them liable to distorting how they see things. Or, to

112  Intellectual Transparency put the point slightly differently, we might expect that the person who is disposed to refrain from distorting the facts as they see them is disposed to refrain from distorting these facts to themselves just as much as they are to others. Likewise, we might expect that the person who is motivated to avoid deceiving others would, on account of this motivation, try to develop skills that will enable them to develop a thorough grasp of their own perspective. By developing these skills, they would be better able to tell whether what they communicate to others is liable to deceive them by their own lights. As such, it would seem that introspective skills enabling one to identify and distinguish between the varied features of one’s own perspective would be expected of the honest person. Perhaps these skills are required for possessing honesty, or perhaps they are conducive toward possessing it or enhancing it. Of course, part of the point of the foregoing sub-section was that these skills are constitutive of intellectual transparency. Thus, here again we have an anticipated area of overlap between honesty and intellectual transparency: these traits overlap in that it is to be expected that their possessors have strong skills for gaining relevant self-knowledge. Nonetheless, despite overlapping in these ways, there are several potential ways to distinguish between honesty and intellectual benevolence. Not all philosophers will accept that all of these ways of distinguishing between these traits I propose are apt, but most will accept that at least some of them are. Identifying these potential points of difference between intellectual transparency and honesty will help to uncover ways the traits may be related conceptually. One potential difference between honesty and intellectual transparency is that the former may not be, or may not always be, an intellectual virtue. Specifically, what I have in mind is that honesty may not always incorporate a concern for promoting epistemic goods as an ultimate motivation, whereas intellectual transparency does require an ultimate motivation to promote epistemic goods. Both Miller and Wilson appear attracted to the view that honesty may be compatible with multiple, distinct motivations, and needn’t be motivated ultimately by advancing others’ epistemic goods for its own sake. Wilson proposes, more specifically, that there may be a version of honesty that is an intellectual virtue and a version of honesty that is not an intellectual virtue. The latter, he suggests, might be characterized as a motivation to avoid deception out of “an underlying motivation to ensure fairness” (2018: 276)—to give to others what is due them. These comments about the possible importance of fairness or of giving others their due for honesty suggest a second potential distinction between honesty and intellectual transparency. It may be that, even as an intellectual virtue, honesty is to be defined in terms of deontic concepts, whereas intellectual transparency is not. The idea here is that honesty, as an intellectual virtue, is ultimately concerned with avoiding

Intellectual Transparency  113 doing epistemic wrongs to others by deceiving or misleading them. The honest person tends to avoid distorting the facts out of a concern to not wrong others in their capacities as inquirers in these ways—to not treat them unfairly. If this is how we are to understand the intellectual virtue of honesty, then it appears to regulate its possessor’s activity in a narrower range of cases involving misrepresenting one’s perspective than intellectual transparency does. Whereas honesty so conceived regulates its possessor’s activity only in cases where misrepresenting their perspective would wrong others or would involve failing to treat them fairly, intellectual transparency will regulate its possessor’s activity even in cases where misrepresenting their perspective wouldn’t rise to the level of wrongdoing. Intellectual transparency will incline its possessor away from doing any sort of epistemic harm to others through failure to faithfully represent one’s own perspective. The last difference I will highlight between intellectual transparency and honesty focuses on the fact that honesty appears to have to do principally with avoiding certain kinds of activity, whereas intellectual transparency characteristically includes positive engagement in relevant activities in addition to this kind of avoidance. Even if we imagine that, as an intellectual virtue, honesty inclines its possessor to refrain from misrepresenting their perspective in any cases in which this would do others epistemic harm, and not only in cases in which it would wrong others as inquirers, honesty so conceived would only half-way overlap with intellectual transparency. For the intellectually transparent person is not only characteristically disposed not to misrepresent their perspective, and characteristically averse to misrepresenting their perspective; they are also characteristically positively disposed toward faithfully representing their perspective out of a motivation to thereby promote epistemic goods in others inquiries. The intellectually transparent person is characteristically motivated not only by avoiding doing others epistemic harm, but by doing others epistemic good via faithfully sharing their perspective. These potential differences between honesty and intellectual transparency suggest that, while these virtues overlap in certain important ways, they are not the same trait. Some versions of honesty may not be intellectual virtues at all, while intellectual transparency is by definition an intellectual virtue. Moreover, versions of honesty that are intellectual virtues are plausibly viewed as subordinate to intellectual transparency in much the way that magnificence is plausibly viewed as subordinate to generosity. For, just as the reasons distinctive of magnificence ascend to the reasons distinctive of generosity, the reasons distinctive of intellectually virtuous honesty will ascend to the reasons distinctive of intellectual transparency. If we asked a person who was virtuously motivated not to wrong or harm others by misrepresenting their perspective why they were motivated in this way, it seems reasonable to anticipate that they may answer that they are motivated in this way because they regard it

114  Intellectual Transparency as good to promote others’ epistemic well-being via sharing their perspective with others faithfully. As such, while there is overlap between the virtue of honesty and the virtue of intellectual transparency, there is reason to think that intellectual transparency is the more cardinal virtue, at least if we are thinking of honesty as an intellectual virtue concerned with avoiding deception or misrepresentation.1 A second virtue to which intellectual transparency is closely related is the virtue of sincerity. Bernard Williams develops an account of the virtue of sincerity in his book Truth and Truthfulness (2002). Williams begins with the proposal that sincerity is “a disposition to make sure that one’s assertion expresses what one actually believes” (96). He argues, however, that this focus on assertion is too narrow, because sincerity must govern not only the contents of one’s assertions but also one’s implicatures. He writes, “the speaker has beliefs which are not expressed in his assertion, and also, very significantly, the hearer will come to believe more than the speaker said.” This observation leads Williams to raise the guiding question: “We have to ask what beliefs, and how much of one’s beliefs, one may be expected to express in a given situation” (97). As this guiding question would suggest, Williams’s conception of the virtue of sincerity is that of a disposition to communicate those of one’s beliefs that one can be expected by others to communicate to them. The kind of expectation Williams has in mind is normative, rather than an epistemic expectation. The sincere person is the person who tends to communicate to others those of their beliefs that they are required to communicate to others, rather than those of their beliefs that others anticipate they will communicate. As such, both lying and misleading are commonly violations of sincerity, and they are often equally bad violations of it. Yet there are also contexts in which neither lying nor misleading is a violation of sincerity because those who are relying upon the sincere person to express their beliefs do not have the normative standing to demand that they express the relevant beliefs. This is how Williams addresses the case of the Nazi at the door, for example. Because sincerity requires sensitivity to which beliefs the sincere person is required to communicate, it demands good judgment and cannot be neatly captured using a rule. “What the disposition needs to be for us,” he writes, “involves a modern notion of what people deserve” (122)— specifically, what they deserve for us to communicate to them of our beliefs. The sincere person is someone who knows well that “Not everyone, certainly, equally deserves the truth” (117), but in varying contexts others deserve more or less of the truth about what one believes. The sincere person is the person who tends to communicate those of their beliefs to others that these others deserve to have access to. Understood in this way, there is significant overlap between sincerity and intellectual transparency—even more so than between intellectual transparency and honesty as defined above. Sincerity, like honesty and

Intellectual Transparency  115 intellectual transparency, will tend to require that one not misrepresent one’s perspective on topics of others’ inquiries. Yet, moving beyond honesty as conceptualized above, sincerity also more positively will require, like intellectual transparency, that one reveals one’s relevant beliefs to others. Moreover, Williams nicely captures that part of the skill involved in communicating one’s beliefs to others is skill in recognizing and utilizing the broad repertoire of communicative capacities beyond the content of one’s assertions. Communicating one’s beliefs to others well requires having a handle of the many mechanisms of communication of ordinary conversations and using these to make one’s views plain. The intellectually transparent person, like the sincere person, will have a command of these mechanisms. Still, there are at least two important ways in which intellectual transparency and sincerity so defined differ from one another. First, like honesty as defined above, sincerity as defined by Williams appears to be defined using deontic concepts in a way that intellectual transparency is not. Sincerity for Williams is about fulfilling one’s duties in communicating one’s beliefs to others. It is about giving to others the access they deserve to one’s beliefs. Intellectual transparency will involve giving others such access as well. Yet it may go further. The intellectually transparent person is motivated to promote others’ epistemic goods by sharing their perspective with these others. This may lead them to grant others access to their perspective beyond what these others deserve. This isn’t to say that the virtuously intellectually transparent person will be led by their transparency to share aspects of their perspective with others that they shouldn’t share with them, as in the case of the Nazi at the door. But it is to say that we might expect the virtuously intellectually transparent person to sometimes do more than merely fulfilling their duties in revealing their beliefs to others. If sharing their beliefs will benefit others’ inquiries and there aren’t comparably strong reasons against sharing these beliefs, we might expect the intellectually transparent person to share them. In this way, intellectual transparency leads one to share one’s beliefs in a wider set of circumstances than sincerity does. Intellectual transparency is also concerned with communicating a much broader range of features of one’s perspective than sincerity is. Sincerity, as conceptualized by Williams, is concerned exclusively with communicating one’s beliefs. Intellectual transparency also governs the communications of one’s beliefs, but it governs the communication of the many other varied features of one’s perspective as well. It governs the communications of one’s doubts, reasons, intuitions, questions, distinctions, evidence-thresholds, and so on. While some of these features may be explicable in terms of belief, so that we might stretch sincerity to apply to them, certainly not all are easily reducible to belief in this way. Thus, intellectual transparency is concerned with communicating more of a person’s perspective than sincerity is.

116  Intellectual Transparency As with the case of honesty, these differences between intellectual transparency and sincerity suggest that intellectual transparency is a more cardinal virtue than sincerity. The reasons of sincerity ascend to the reasons of intellectual transparency. The virtuously sincere person is motivated to act by the fact that communicating their beliefs to others will give to these others something they deserve to know, thereby respecting their epistemic rights. If asked why they are motivated by this fact in the first place, they would plausibly answer that they are so motivated because they judge it to be good to promote others’ epistemic goods by sharing one’s perspective with them. So, sincerity, like intellectually virtuous honesty, is a virtue closely related to intellectual transparency which is less cardinal than the latter. Finally, I wish to briefly compare intellectual transparency to a set of similar virtues concerned with self-knowledge. I emphasized above that intellectual transparency involves the exercise of skill in identifying and distinguishing the various aspects of one’s perspective. Several other virtues also incorporate such skills of self-knowledge. One example is intellectual humility, as characterized by Whitcomb et al. (2017). According to these authors, intellectual humility is a tendency to take “the right stance toward one’s intellectual limitations” (517). These limitations include gaps in knowledge (e.g. ignorance of current affairs), cognitive mistakes (e.g. forgetting an appointment), unreliable processes (e.g. bad vision or memory), deficits in learnable skills (e.g. being bad at math), intellectual character flaws (e.g. a tendency to draw hasty inferences), and much more besides. Taking the right stance to them involves being appropriately sensitive to them—aware of them—and owning them. In owning these limitations, the intellectually humble person characteristically exhibits dispositions to: (1) believe that one has [these limitations]; and to believe that their negative outcomes are due to them; (2) to admit or acknowledge them; (3) to care about them and take them seriously; and (4) to feel regret or dismay, but not hostility, about them. (520) Another closely related example is a virtue Roberts and West call “self-vigilance.” The self-vigilant person “appreciates her vulnerability to natural epistemic defects, is on the watch for cues to the working of these possible error-makers, and intelligently acts to correct for them” (2015: 2557). Roberts and West take their own cue from recent work in cognitive psychology which has illuminated the many biases and heuristics to which humans commonly fall prey to the detriment of their

Intellectual Transparency  117 thinking. They suggest that the seemingly endless list of these problematic patterns of thought stems from a small cluster of basic error-prone tendencies, and the virtue of self-vigilance can help a person to overcome these tendencies in order to perform better as an epistemic agent. Both these examples of virtues of self-knowledge overlap in an important way with intellectual transparency. Namely, they each involve skills in appreciating aspects of one’s perspective, like intellectual transparency does. Yet they are more narrowly focused than intellectual transparency, in that they are concerned with limitations—or, in the case of self-vigilance, with natural epistemic defects more specifically. And, they both are conceptualized as motivated by the agent’s aim to achieve epistemic goods for themself. While intellectual transparency differs from these virtues of self-knowledge in important ways, my suspicion is that these latter virtues will facilitate intellectual transparency. People who are highly intellectually humble or highly self-vigilant will be more likely to also be highly intellectually transparent. Their virtues in attending to their limits and susceptibilities to natural epistemic defects will better enable them to represent their perspective faithfully to others. Moreover, in a person who is both intellectually transparent and possesses these virtues of self-knowledge, these virtues of self-knowledge will likely be extended to include other-regarding motivations. Their possessor will not only tend to monitor their susceptibility to natural epistemic defects or to own their limitations in order to better advance their own epistemic goods, but will do so in order to better advance others’ epistemic goods by better sharing their perspective with these others. Also deserving mention here is a broader disposition of self-knowledge that receives more attention from psychologists than from philosophers: the disposition of mindfulness. Dispositional mindfulness is conceptualized as a tendency with two main components: The first component involves the self-regulation of attention so that it is maintained on immediate experience, thereby allowing for increased recognition of mental events in the present moment. The second component involves adopting a particular orientation toward one’s experiences in the present moment, an orientation that is characterized by curiosity, openness, and acceptance. (Bishop et al. 2004: 232) Thus, mindfulness is a disposition to focus one’s attention on the varied aspects of one’s present experience with curiosity, openness, and acceptance. Recently, there has been a significant surge of interest in the relationship between such mindfulness and other character strengths. Evidence is growing that mindfulness enables the development of various strengths

118  Intellectual Transparency and virtues that are emphasized in positive psychology (Shogren et al. 2017). The virtues to which mindfulness is conducive include the intellectual character strengths of wisdom as defined in the Values-in-Action inventory: creativity, curiosity, love of learning, and judgment. I would suggest here, in line with the remarks above about intellectual humility and self-vigilance, that mindfulness may also enable intellectual transparency. This is especially so given that the focus of mindfulness would appear to include a broader range of the elements of a person’s perspective than these other virtues include. It is noteworthy that mindfulness is not typically treated as an intellectual virtue. What motivates mindful attention may be quite varied, though it often includes aims pertaining to equanimity or personal development of some kind. It would appear, however, that the kinds of skills involved in exercising mindfulness can be exercised with distinctively intellectual motivations. And these intellectual motivations can include the motivation characteristic of intellectual transparency. A person may engage in mindful attention directed toward their perspective in order to better promote others’ epistemic goods via faithfully sharing their perspective with them. A tendency to do just this is part of what is involved in the virtue of intellectual transparency.

3 Vices Opposed to Intellectual Transparency The nature of intellectual transparency and its place in the life of the intellectually dependable person can also be illuminated by contrasting it with some of the vices that are in tension with it. One way to get a handle on some of the vices that are in tension with intellectual transparency is by considering two broad and opposing ways in which one can fail to make one’s perspective transparent to others. One of these ways is by presenting one’s perspective as having a greater epistemic quality than it in fact has, and the other is by presenting one’s perspective as having a lesser epistemic quality than it in fact has. Presenting oneself as knowing more than one does about topics of others’ inquiries is a paradigmatic way of presenting one’s perspective as having a greater epistemic quality than it in fact has. Yet one can also oversell one’s perspective, so to speak, in other ways. One can present oneself as having understanding of a subject when in fact one only has isolated instances of propositional knowledge. One can present oneself as having multiple, independent sources of support for a view when in fact the sources of support are not independent. One can present oneself as more confident than one in fact is. One can present oneself as believing something one doesn’t in fact believe. One can act as if one is aware of a body of evidence bearing on a topic when one is not in fact aware of any such body of evidence. One can present oneself as having inquired more virtuously than one in fact has, and so on. Tending toward

Intellectual Transparency  119 overselling one’s epistemic position in such ways across a wide variety of contexts is in significant tension with intellectual transparency. Certain character vices are partially constituted by a tendency to oversell one’s perspective in ways such as these. For example, Roberts and Wood, in discussing the many vices opposed to humility, briefly identify the vices of grandiosity and pretentiousness. Grandiosity they define as “a disposition, in thought and self-presentation, to exaggerate one’s greatness” (2007: 236). Intellectual grandiosity would be a disposition toward exaggerating one’s intellectual greatness in particular. Such a disposition clearly involves a tendency to oversell one’s perspective in ways such as those identified above across a wide range of contexts. While Roberts and Wood don’t go into further detail about the nature of grandiosity, the focus on greatness suggests that intellectual accomplishments and intellectual character may be among the aspects of the grandiose person’s perspective they most frequently exaggerate. Intellectual transparency is in tension with this tendency to exaggerate one’s intellectual greatness. It is also in tension with intellectual pretentiousness. Roberts and Wood define pretentiousness as “a disposition to claim, in action and demeanor, higher dignity or merit than one possesses” (ibid). As an intellectual vice, the focus of pretentiousness would be on claiming higher intellectual dignity or intellectual merit than one possesses. Again, this would seem to include a tendency to oversell the epistemic quality of one’s perspective, presenting it as having greater merit than it in fact has. It isn’t difficult to imagine a person claiming to know more than they do, or presenting themselves as being aware of bodies of evidence they aren’t aware of, and so on, out of the disposition to present themselves as having a more meritorious epistemic position than they in fact do. Intellectually grandiose or intellectually pretentious people will likely be tempted to engage in what philosopher Harry Frankfurt (2005) calls “bullshitting.” What is essential to the bullshitter, according to Frankfurt, is that they engage in communicative activity under the pretence of contributing to truth-aimed activity, but with deficient motivation to contribute toward advancing these truth-aims. The bullshitter doesn’t care adequately whether what they say is true, or more generally about its epistemic status. Following Max Black, Frankfurt observes that this is often because the bullshitter is pretentious. In these cases, “the orator intends [his] statements to convey a certain impression of himself. . . . What he cares about is what people think of him” (2005: 20). Rather than aiming to present their perspective faithfully so as to advance others’ epistemic goods, the pretentious bullshitter is motivated to present their perspective in such a way as to convey to others a favorable impression of themselves—a high intellectual dignity or merit or greatness, to use Roberts and Wood’s language. Black’s account of “humbug,” which Frankfurt takes to be roughly equivalent to bullshit, brings out the

120  Intellectual Transparency contrast with intellectual transparency nicely. For Black, humbug is “deceptive misrepresentation, short of lying, especially by pretentious word or deed, of somebody’s own thoughts, feelings, or attitudes” (1983: 143). The intellectually transparent person will tend to avoid bullshitting and humbug, being more concerned to advance others’ epistemic goods by sharing their perspective faithfully than they are to artificially inflate others’ impressions of them by overselling their perspective. The present point about the connection between bullshit and the motivation to inflate others’ impressions of oneself suggests another vice that can issue in overselling of one’s perspective: intellectual vanity. On Roberts and Wood’s account, vanity is “an excessive concern to be well regarded by other people, for the social importance their regard confers on oneself” (2007: 237). Intellectual vanity is such a “hypersensitivity” to others’ views of one’s intellectual qualities. A person who is hypersensitive to ensuring that others think well of their intellectual qualities may well be inclined to present the epistemic quality of their perspective as better than it in fact is. They may present themselves as knowing things they don’t know, as having inquired more virtuously than they in fact have, as being aware of evidence they aren’t aware of, in order to inflate others’ impressions of their epistemic excellence. In this way, the vice of vanity may give rise to the vices of intellectual grandiosity or intellectual pretentiousness that include tendencies to oversell one’s perspective to others. Interestingly, however, intellectual vanity can also be a source of the opposite tendency in tension with intellectual transparency—the tendency to undersell one’s perspective on topics of others’ inquiries. This role for vanity may be less obvious than the role it can plan in fostering vices of overselling one’s perspective, but it too is a possibility. One way to deceptively create or maintain a positive intellectual reputation is to present oneself as getting things right that one might not in fact have right. To do this, one might misrepresent one’s perspective in the ways we’ve been concentrating on thus far, such as acting like one knows things one doesn’t know. But another way to deceptively create or maintain a positive intellectual reputation is to present oneself as not getting wrong things one might in fact have wrong. One might, for example, present oneself as not taking a stand on a controversial issue that one in fact does take a stand on; or one might present oneself as being less confident than one in fact is; or one might refrain from raising an objection one has to a view others are considering when given the opportunity. These ways of underselling one’s perspective can be motivated by the excessive concern with one’s intellectual reputation characteristic of intellectual vanity. Out of a concern not to be perceived as having made a mistake or in some other way possessing a faulty or deficient epistemic standing, a person may tend to present the epistemic quality of their perspective as being inferior to what it in fact is, rather than presenting it faithfully.

Intellectual Transparency  121 A tendency to undersell one’s perspective can arise from other motivations as well. In a recent paper, Alessandra Tanesini (2018) highlights how both the vices of intellectual servility and intellectual timidity can manifest in underselling of one’s perspective. For Tanesini, intellectual servility consists in a cluster of strong negative attitudes toward one’s intellectual features, based on comparing these features with relevant features of others, that serve the social-adjustive aim of securing one’s acceptance by an elective social group. As Tanesini notes, it is a regrettable fact that “portraying oneself as inferior to others is an effective strategy of gaining their social acceptance” (30). When gaining the acceptance of a group that regards one as inferior is an important aim, it can become a tempting strategy to put oneself down both publicly and in one’s own thinking and to conform to the group’s negative judgments of oneself as inferior. Tanesini writes that the person who succumbs to this temptation by becoming intellectually servile is typically “full of doubts about their intellectual abilities” (28). They “may tend to humiliate themselves and belittle their achievements. They tend to explain away any accomplishments that are truly theirs” (ibid). One of Tanesini’s interests is to explain why the temptation toward such servility may be especially prominent among people who have been subjected to repeated humiliation or oppression. For an oppressed person, becoming servile may be part of a “strategy of accepting one’s lower social status and seeking the approval of those who subordinate one by humiliating oneself, whilst praising, and parroting them” (30). The strategy “achieves its goal at a high psychological cost since it promotes the development of vicious traits of character” (ibid). What I wish to point out here is that the tendency toward underselling one’s perspective partially constitutive of such servility is in tension with the tendency to represent one’s perspective faithfully that is partially constitutive of intellectual transparency. In representing their perspective, the intellectually transparent person is primarily motivated by enhancing others’ epistemic goods, and not by a desire to be accepted by others who regard them as inferior. As such, they tend to represent their perspective faithfully, rather than underselling it. One of the tragic truths brought out by Tanesini’s work is the important role that social conditions play in making it possible for intellectual virtue to be formed. Being in a good position to develop the virtue of intellectual transparency depends in part on not being in an environment that is hostile toward representing one’s perspective faithfully. Persons who are in an environment in which sharing their perspective faithfully would result in social exclusion and rejection and harsh treatment by others who regard them as inferior have their chances of developing the virtue of intellectual transparency injured, and they may be tempted instead to develop the opposing vice of intellectual servility. Intellectual timidity is a different vice that can likewise result in underselling one’s perspective. Tanesini proposes that, like intellectual

122  Intellectual Transparency servility, intellectual timidity is a cluster of negative attitudes toward one’s intellectual features, and these negative attitudes are again based on comparisons of these features with relevant features of others. Yet, in the case of intellectual timidity, these attitudes are driven by the goal of preserving one’s self-esteem rather than by the goal of achieving social acceptance. Tanesini describes timid individuals as those who are fearful of being exposed as less able or competent than others may initially presume. These people are risk averse; they accept the cost of being thought to have nothing to say to avoid any possibility of making fools of themselves. Their propensity is to shy away from the limelight and be quiet. These same individuals, if asked, may justify their approach by mentioning their (alleged) relative lack of ability, competence, or skill. (32) Where the servile individual’s conformity to others’ negative judgments of them is aimed at winning these others’ acceptance, the timid individual’s “self-silencing” is aimed at preventing others’ explicit rejection, which the timid perceive as a threat to their self-esteem. Tanesini proposes that the timid will tend toward developing “fatalism about their inferiority which in turn causes them to lose any motivation they may have had to improve” (33). Such timidity will characteristically manifest in underselling one’s perspective: The fear and anxiety about others’ opinions of oneself that is characteristic of those who are timid, when combined with their negative assessment of their own abilities, results in a disposition not to speak one’s mind, but to bite one’s tongue. (ibid) Earlier, I proposed that a person may, out of vanity, undersell their perspective. They may present their perspective as epistemically weaker than it is in order to avoid being thought to have made a mistake or otherwise exhibited epistemic fault, leading to being thought of less well by others. That kind of case may seem initially quite like the present case in which timidity leads to self-silencing. In both cases, a person tends toward sharing less of their perspective out of a concern that doing so may lead to them being poorly regarded by others. But there are important differences between the cases. One difference is that in the case of timidity the explanation for the suppression of the person’s perspective appeals in part to their having negative attitudes about their intellectual features, whereas in the case of vanity this is not so. The timid person tends to evaluate their intellectual features negatively, and this partially explains why they demur from divulging these features to others. The

Intellectual Transparency  123 vain, by contrast, will tend to evaluate their intellectual features positively. Yet, in circumstances in which they perceive that sharing these features with others may risk damaging their reputation, they may shy away from sharing what in their own estimation are positive features. In this way, the vain person’s own attitudes toward their intellectual features play little role in regulating their representation of their perspective, and what regulates their presentation of their perspective is just what they anticipate regarding others’ attitudes toward it, whereas for the timid person their attitude toward their intellectual features is one of the aspects of their personality that drives their suppression of their perspective. This is one way in which suppression of one’s perspective is more characteristic of timidity than of vanity. Intellectual transparency stands in tension with intellectual timidity so understood. The intellectually transparent person’s orientation toward sharing their perspective is regulated primarily by their motivation to promote others’ epistemic goods, rather than by their concern to avoid being regarded poorly by others. It is not part of intellectual transparency that the transparent person evaluates their own intellectual features negatively, nor is it part of intellectual transparency that a person tends toward fatalism about their prospects for improving themselves. Rather, as emphasized in the previous sub-section, intellectually transparent people tend to embrace themselves with the openness and acceptance characteristic of mindfulness, being willing to identify both their good and bad intellectual features as such and to share these faithfully with others so as to better enhance their epistemic goods. Developing this kind of orientation toward one’s intellectual features is not easy, and, as Tanesini highlights, an important support for its development is that one inhabits a hospitable environment—one relatively free from harsh judgments about one’s intellectual features and accompanying rejection. In this way, one person’s development of intellectual transparency will depend on others’ exhibition of the virtues of intellectual dependability more generally. Contrasting intellectual transparency with these opposing vices reveals the myriad ways in which one’s tendency to communicate one’s perspective to others may be regulated by aims other than the aims definitive of intellectual transparency—to promote others’ epistemic goods. One’s communication of one’s perspective can be motivated by the aim of leading others to regard one as great or as possessing higher merit than one in fact possesses, by the aim of being well-regarded by others more generally, by the aim of conforming to others’ perceptions of one as inferior in order to gain their acceptance, or by the aim of avoiding others’ explicit rejection due to one’s inferior intellectual qualities. In all these cases, the varied motivations lead to patterns of communicating one’s perspective that are markedly different from the pattern of faithful communication characteristic of the intellectually transparent person. Moreover, we have

124  Intellectual Transparency learned that an important part of developing intellectual transparency is inhabiting a hospitable environment in which overselling or underselling one’s perspective is not incentivized through the humiliation or oppression of those who share their perspectives faithfully.

Note 1 It has been part of my thinking about virtues for several years that there may be multiple versions of virtues such as honesty (cf. Byerly 2014). Thus, I remain open to the idea that some versions of honesty might be conceptualized more expansively than honesty is conceptualized by Miller and Wilson. Indeed, I wouldn’t object strongly to the idea that intellectual transparency may be one such version of honesty. If it is, however, then it isn’t the version of honesty that has been receiving attention from virtue theorists thus far.

References Bishop, Scott, Mark Lau, Shauna Shapiro, Linda Carlson, Nicole Anderson, James Carmody, Zindel Segal, Susan Abbey, Michael Speca, Drew Verting, and Gerald Divins. 2004. “Mindfulness: A Proposed Operational Definition.” Science and Practice 11, 3: 230–41. Black, Max. 1983. The Prevalance of Humbug, and Other Essays. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Byerly, T. Ryan. 2014. “The Values and Varieties of Humility.” Philosophia 42, 4: 889–910. Frankfurt, Harry. 2005. On Bullshit. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Miller, Christian. 2017. “Honesty.” In Moral Psychology, Volume 5: Virtues and Character, eds. Walter Sinnot-Armstrong and Christian Miller, 237–73. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Roberts, Robert and Jay Wood. 2007. Intellectual Virtues: An Essay in Regulative Epistemology. New York: Oxford University Press. Roberts, Robert and Ryan West. 2015. “Natural Epistemic Defects and Corrective Virtues.” Synthese 192, 8: 2557–76. Russell, Daniel. 2009. Practical Intelligence and the Virtues. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Shogren, Karrie, Nirbhay Singh, Ryan Niemiec, and Michael Wehmeyer. 2017. “Character Strengths and Mindfulness.” In Oxford Handbooks Online. Available at https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/ oxfordhb/9780199935291.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199935291-e-77 Stump, Eleonore. 2010. Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tanesini, Alessandra. 2018. “Intellectual Servility and Timidity.” Journal of Philosophical Research 43: 21–41. Whitcomb, Dennis, Heather Battaly, Jason Baehr, and Daniel Howard-Snyder. 2017. “Intellectual Humility: Owning Our Limitations.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 91, 1: 1–31. Williams, Bernard. 2002. Truth and Truthfulness: An Essay in Genealogy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Wilson, Alan. 2018. “Honesty as a Virtue.” Metaphilosophy 49, 3: 262–80.

6

Communicative Clarity

We now turn to a third candidate for a virtue of intellectual dependability: communicative clarity. In turning to this virtue, we shift out attention to a virtue with a different proximate focus than intellectual transparency. Whereas the proximate focus of intellectual transparency is the perspective of the intellectually dependable person, the proximate focus of communicative clarity is the intellectually dependable person’s communications. Communicative clarity is a tendency that regulates how a person communicates what they communicate. It is a tendency to communicate clearly out of a motivation to thereby promote others’ epistemic goods. As such, the proximate focus of communicative clarity is on one important way in which the intellectually dependable person can be connected to their epistemic beneficiaries—via their communications. In the next two chapters, we will then shift our attention further in the direction of these beneficiaries. The candidate virtues we will examine there—audience sensitivity and epistemic guidance—have as their proximate focus features of those who reap epistemic benefits from the intellectually dependable person. In this way, we will have examined candidate virtues of intellectual dependability that concentrate on features of the intellectually dependable person, their connection to their beneficiaries, and these beneficiaries themselves, thus achieving a certain breadth of coverage of the variety of virtues characteristic of the intellectually dependable person. My approach in this chapter will follow the same structure as the previous two chapters. I begin in Section 1 by developing a guiding conceptualization of communicative clarity. Then, in Section 2, I compare communicative clarity to similar virtues, and in Section 3 I contrast it with opposing vices.

1 A Guiding Conceptualization of Communicative Clarity I stated above that communicative clarity is a tendency to communicate clearly out of a motivation to thereby promote others’ epistemic goods. To better understand what this tendency involves, then, we could examine what clear communication is, and how a motivation to promote

126  Communicative Clarity others’ epistemic goods regulates efforts to communicate clearly. I will begin with the latter topic, and then return to the former. In the previous chapter, we explored the way in which intellectual benevolence serves as the ultimate motivation of intellectual transparency, which has its own distinctive proximate motivation to promote others’ epistemic goods by sharing one’s perspective with them. Much the same relationship obtains between the virtue of communicative clarity and intellectual benevolence. The ultimate motivation of communicative clarity is to promote others’ epistemic goods. A person who possesses the virtue of communicative clarity will value others’ epistemic goods for their own sake, will be motivated to promote them, will tend to experience positive affect when they are present and negative affect when they are absent, and will tend to judge that it is good when they obtain and that it is good to promote them. Yet the virtuously clear communicator will also have their own distinctive proximate motivation, which will focus on the manner in which they communicate. The virtuously clear communicator recognizes that in order to advance others’ epistemic goods via communicating with them, their communicative intentions need to be understood adequately by the recipient of their communication. Because of this, they recognize the importance of communicating in a way that facilitates others’ understanding of their communicative intentions. A very important ingredient in facilitating others’ understanding of one’s communicative intentions is to ensure that one’s communications are sufficiently clear. In this way, the virtuously clear communicator’s motivation to promote others’ epistemic goods leads them to be motivated to communicate clearly. The distinctive proximate motivation of communicative clarity includes motivational, affective, and cognitive elements. It includes the motivation to promote others’ epistemic goods via communicating clearly with them, and the motivation to communicate clearly. It includes tendencies to experience positive affect when communicating clearly and when advancing others’ epistemic goods via communicating clearly, and tendencies to experience negative affect when failing to communicate clearly and failing to advance others’ epistemic goods via communicating clearly. The virtuously clear communicator is motivated to be understood correctly and to not be misunderstood, and tends to experience positive affect when being understood and negative affect when being misunderstood. They tend to judge that it is good to advance others’ epistemic goods via communicating clearly with them, and that it is good to communicate clearly. This distinctive proximate motivation is required for a person to possess the virtue of communicative clarity, but not the virtue of intellectual benevolence. Like intellectual transparency, we can conceptualize communicative clarity as intellectual benevolence specialized to a narrow domain—the domain of the manner in which one communicates.

Communicative Clarity  127 Communicative clarity, like intellectual transparency, is a subordinate virtue to intellectual benevolence, which is more cardinal than communicative clarity. The reasons for engaging in clear communication ascend to the reasons of intellectual benevolence. As a virtue of intellectual dependability, communicative clarity is shaped by the ultimate motivation of intellectual benevolence. The efforts the virtuously clear communicator makes to communicate clearly are oriented toward promoting others’ epistemic goods. If greater clarity is needed to promote others’ epistemic goods via one’s communications, then the virtue of communicative clarity will incline its possessor toward pursuing greater clarity in their communications. If greater clarity is not needed in order to promote others’ epistemic goods via one’s communications, then the virtue of communicative clarity will not incline its possessor toward pursuing greater clarity in their communications. In this way, being a virtuously clear communicator is not merely concerned with possessing a set of skills for communicating clearly and deploying these skills as one wishes. It is concerned with deploying these skills when, and only when, and to the extent that deploying them will better enable one to advance others’ epistemic goods via ensuring greater clarity in one’s communications. While the proximate focus of communicative clarity is on one’s communications, the virtuously clear communicator also retains an eye on the recipients of these communications. For whether a communication is clear is relative to its recipients: a communication that would be clear to some would not be clear to others. The virtuously clear communicator’s exercise of skills for clarifying their communications is not regulated merely by an abstract aim of promoting some undefined others’ epistemic goods, but by the particular aim to promote the particular epistemic goods of the particular recipients of their communications. Here again, the virtue of communicative clarity is shaped by the ultimate motivation of intellectual benevolence, which also attends to the particular goods of its beneficiaries. Thus far, I have been describing the motivations of communicative clarity, focusing on its proximate motivation to communicate with a level of clarity suitable for promoting others’ epistemic goods via one’s communications. But what is clear communication to begin with? What makes a communication clearer, or less clear? My proposal is that clear communication is communication in which potential sources of confusion in the communication are eliminated or resolved. These sources of confusion are elements of the communication apt to lead its recipients to misunderstand the communicator’s communicative intentions. There are many potential sources of confusion of this sort at the various levels of communication, from individual words and phrases to statements to larger structures composed of statements. The clear communicator is attentive to these varied potential sources of

128  Communicative Clarity confusion, skilled at eliminating or resolving these sources of confusion, and tends to deploy their skills in eliminating or resolving these sources of confusion in a way that is regulated by the proximate and ultimate motivations of communicative clarity. Words and phrases can lead to confusion when the communicator’s intended meaning for these terms does not match the meaning the recipient of the communication attaches to them. This kind of mismatch of meaning is especially likely to occur in cases where words or phrases are regularly used with multiple, distinct meanings. Paradigmatic examples include the various “isms”: liberalism, libertarianism, and the like. There are also more mundane examples of terms with different meanings in different contexts, such as “bat” and “bank.” If a communicator does not somehow specify which of the various meanings of these terms they have in mind, the recipients of their communication are prone to misunderstand them. Sometimes the meanings of one’s terms can be specified adequately by the context of their usage, as when one says that “The child hit the ball with the bat.” Other times, it is best to explicitly state how one is understanding a term. This can frequently be a good option when one is dealing with “isms,” for example. The clear communicator is alert to these kinds of potential sources of confusion in their communications arising at the level of individual words and phrases, and tends to eliminate these sources of confusion by removing them or resolving them, deploying skills of identifying their intended meaning for such ambiguous terms. Similar comments apply to sources of confusion arising from ambiguous syntactic structures such as those that can lead to amphibole. The structure of one’s sentences can also be a source of confusion. Generally speaking, more complicated sentence structures are more demanding on the recipients of one’s communications, and when more is demanded of the recipient of one’s communications these recipients are more likely to misunderstand one’s meaning. As such, there is some reason to avoid unnecessarily complex sentence structures, in order to better ensure that one’s communications are understood by one’s audience. Of course, ill-formulated, ungrammatical sentences can be even worse on the recipient. The virtuously clear communicator has a command of the rules governing communication and tends to abide by these insofar as doing so enables them to better advance others’ epistemic goods via their communications. Zooming out still further, there are many ways in which the larger structures composed by one’s statements can lead to confusion for the recipients of these communications. One’s recipients can become confused about which of one’s points is one’s main point. They can become confused about whether one intended to provide an argument for one’s view or not. They can become confused about how many arguments one intended to provide for one’s view, whether these arguments are independent from one another, and how one assesses their evidential force.

Communicative Clarity  129 They can confuse one’s view with neighboring, subtly different views. They can become confused about how one’s view is supposed to apply to particular cases. They can become confused about whether parts of one’s communications are intended to add to the content of the communication or are merely repetitive and so on. Virtuously clear communicators are alert to these potential sources of confusion in their communications, and they tend to exercise skills in eliminating or resolving these sources of confusion so as to better advance others’ epistemic goods via achieving clarity in their communications. This will often involve distinguishing their views from other views with which they could easily be confused. It will often involve offering illustrative examples of how their views apply to particular cases. It will often involve restating and emphasizing their main point in contrast to what is not their main point. It will often involve offering explanations of how the arguments they give are related to each other. It will often involve refraining from including extraneous information, and otherwise ensuring that one has not unreasonably enhanced the cognitive load demanded upon one’s recipients. Empirical research confirms that exercising these kinds of skills leads the recipients of one’s communications to consider one a clearer communicator. San Bolkan (2017) recently sought to develop a new 20-item other-report measure of instructor clarity that incorporated a factor structure focusing on specific instructor behaviors that facilitate clear communication. Summarizing the resultant five-factor model for instructor clarity, he writes this: The first factor [which is reverse scored] is disfluency and refers to instructors who have a difficult time explaining class concepts in a simple manner, who cannot create examples to explain course concepts, and who deliver course lessons in a convoluted fashion. The second factor [also reversed], working memory overload, refers to learning situations where the pace of instruction outstretches students’ ability to absorb course material. The third factor was labeled interaction and indicates that clear instruction must include working with students to determine their levels of comprehension and adjusting class lectures to adapt to student understanding. The fourth factor [reversed] was a function of providing superfluous information (coherence). Superfluous information may reflect a lack of clarity because it might confuse students and direct their focus to unimportant aspects of their course lessons. Finally, the fifth factor represented a well-structured and organized presentation of information (structure). (31) Bolkan found that higher scores on this five-factor scale for instructor clarity were highly correlated with shorter scales measuring instructor

130  Communicative Clarity clarity more directly without the use of specific behavioral items, and they also predicted better educational experiences for students. Instructors who tended to communicate in these specific ways were perceived to communicate more clearly, and they better enhanced the learning experience of their students. Most often, the virtuously clear communicator will address potential sources of confusion in their communications by simply eliminating them altogether. This occurs, for example, when one provides an explicit definition for a key term one is using, or states up front and emphatically what one’s main point is. In other more rare cases, it may be wise not to eliminate a potential source of confusion altogether, but better to allow it to linger in order to pique the recipient’s interest. One may, for example, state an aspect of one’s view in a paradoxical way—a way that sounds like it couldn’t be correct. This can lead one’s recipients to focus on this aspect of one’s communication and consider it deeply for themselves. However, the virtuously clear communicator can be expected to resolve these sources of confusion in their communications, at least when they take their audience to be adequately receptive to seeking out their resolution. In doing so, they eventually clarify what they allow temporarily to be unclear. This kind of tactic has been employed by some of the world’s most remarkable teachers—for example, Jesus Christ in his use of parables. The virtue of communicative clarity, then, can be conceptualized as a tendency to attend to potential sources of confusion in one’s communications and to eliminate or resolve these out of a motivation to thereby promote others’ epistemic goods. The virtuously clear communicator aims to communicate in a way that their recipients will understand so that these recipients will be better positioned to thereby reap epistemic benefits. They are skilled in removing and resolving sources of confusion at the various levels of communication, and they exercise these skills in accordance with their motivation to promote others’ epistemic goods.

2 Communicative Clarity and Similar Virtues We can further illuminate the nature of communicative clarity and its place in the life of the intellectually dependable person by comparing it with similar virtues. In this section, I focus on its relationship to a trio of virtues discussed by Jason Baehr in his book Cultivating Good Minds (2015). The trio of virtues are attentiveness, intellectual carefulness, and intellectual thoroughness. Baehr sees these traits as “virtues that keep the learning process on track” (93) as opposed to virtues such as curiosity or intellectual humility that are especially helpful for initiating the learning process. Of the three, attentiveness is especially foundational, because it is conducive toward the other two. Baehr describes the attentive person as someone who is “quick to notice and is capable of

Communicative Clarity  131 giving sustained attention to important details” (95). In connection to intellectual carefulness, he observes that “If I am not attentive, I will be especially vulnerable to errors—to intellectual carelessness. Conversely, one of the best ways to avoid mistakes is to be fully aware of and attentive to what one is doing” (95–6). Likewise, attentiveness facilitates thoroughness, because “an attentive person is well positioned to notice and probe important details” (96). Intellectual carefulness, as already suggested, is concerned with avoiding intellectual errors. Baehr describes the intellectually careful person as follows: An intellectually careful person takes pains to avoid making intellectual mistakes. However, to do this effectively, she needs to know what counts as a mistake and to be mindful of situations in which she is susceptible to making them. Thus an intellectually careful person also has a grasp of the rules of good thinking and related intellectual activities; and this awareness comes to mind when she finds herself in danger of violating these rules. (105) The rules in view here are those that are germane to the kind of intellectual activity in which the intellectually careful person is engaged. Baehr notes that there may be many different intellectual activities governed by different rules. The intellectually careful person is the sort of person who tends to attend to and abide by the rules of those intellectual activities in which they are engaged so as to avoid making mistakes in those intellectual activities. One of Baehr’s examples of how the intellectually careful person will tend to follow the rules of their elected intellectual activities is especially instructive for our purposes. He asks us to “imagine a student working on an important term paper for his English class” (106). Supposing that this student writes the paper in accordance with intellectual carefulness, Baehr describes him as follows: As he puts his thoughts on paper, he is mindful of the rules of grammar, mechanics, and spelling. And his writing adheres to these rules: he uses proper sentence construction, his subjects and verbs agree, he makes appropriate use of commas and apostrophes, doesn’t make any spelling errors, and so on. Here intellectual carefulness looks like a sensitivity and adherence, not to logical or mathematical rules, but to the basic principles of good writing. (106) Now, Baehr does not come out and say it, but this example—together with what we know about Baehr’s views regarding the other-regarding

132  Communicative Clarity features of intellectual virtues more generally, as discussed in Chapter 2—suggests that Baehr thinks that intellectual carefulness can govern intellectual activities aimed at promoting others’ epistemic goods, just as it can govern intellectual activities aimed at promoting one’s own epistemic goods. True enough, the task of writing in this example is likely primarily aimed at promoting the writer’s epistemic goods, since the writer is a student. However, among the epistemic goods that are presumably aimed at in the writing task are the cultivation of the other-regarding dimension of intellectual carefulness—carefulness in how the student communicates. Among the things the teacher who assigns the writing task hopes for, ultimately, is that the student may develop tendencies to be careful in their communication so as to avoid leading others into epistemic mistakes. This other-regarding dimension of full intellectual carefulness, as well as its self-regarding dimension, overlaps in important ways with communicative clarity, as I will explain momentarily. Baehr is even clearer about the other-regarding dimension of intellectual thoroughness. His descriptive account of intellectual thoroughness explicitly incorporates an other-regarding dimension. He writes, An intellectually thorough person desires and conveys deep understanding. She desires an explanation of what she is curious about— not simply a series of isolated facts. And when she conveys what she knows, she also tends to explain rather than merely regurgitate information. (96) In a similar vein, he later writes, An intellectually thorough person is disposed to probe for deeper meaning and understanding. She is unsatisfied with mere appearances or easy answers. Similarly, when she communicates what she knows, she explains herself. She refrains from giving superficial or cursory accounts of things. (117) These remarks at the very least suggest that possessing intellectual thoroughness in its fullness involves possessing an other-regarding intellectual thoroughness. It involves having a tendency to communicate one’s knowledge thoroughly, presumably out of a motivation to promote others’ epistemic goods—especially the good of understanding. Communicative clarity overlaps with the trio of attentiveness, intellectual carefulness, and intellectual thoroughness in important ways. We observed above that part of what is required for communicative clarity is attentiveness or alertness to potential sources of confusion in one’s communications. Such alertness is likely to be facilitated by the virtue

Communicative Clarity  133 of attentiveness. This is especially so if we conceptualize attentiveness, when possessed in its fullness, as incorporating other-regarding elements like those we have discussed in the case of intellectual carefulness and intellectual thoroughness. Presumably, in much the way that one can be a careful or thorough communicator, one can also be an attentive communicator. Attentiveness in one’s communications is likely to facilitate communicative clarity, because communicative clarity requires attentiveness to potential sources of confusion in one’s communications. Intellectual carefulness overlaps with communicative clarity in similar ways. Consider first the self-regarding dimension of intellectual carefulness. The kind of sensitivity to causes of mistakes in inquiry characteristic of intellectual carefulness is likely to facilitate the kind of sensitivity to sources of confusion characteristic of communicative clarity. After all, often what leads us to make mistakes in our inquiries is that we are confused in one way or another. Having a command of the ways that we could have become confused about things can help us to aid others in not becoming confused in those ways. It can help us to ensure that when we communicate to others about these topics of inquiry, we do so in such a way as to eliminate or remove from our communications the sources of confusion that we might have encountered in our own inquiry into the subject. Thus, the self-regarding dimension of intellectual carefulness likely facilitates communicative clarity. The other-regarding dimension of intellectual carefulness has an even stronger conceptual relationship to communicative clarity. This other-regarding dimension of intellectual carefulness can be conceptualized as a tendency to communicate in a way that is alert to and avoids leading others to make intellectual errors. Being a clear communicator is plausibly part of what it takes to be a careful communicator, so understood. The clear communicator is alert to certain kinds of errors their communications could lead others to make—errors arising from sources of confusion in one’s communications. They tend to exercise skill in eliminating or resolving these sources of others’ errors. As such, they act in accordance with the other-regarding dimension of intellectual carefulness. It may even be tempting to think that communicative clarity is a subordinate virtue to other-regarding intellectual carefulness. After all, while both these virtues are concerned with avoiding communicating in a way that leads others to make intellectual errors, the remit of errors with which intellectual carefulness is concerned is presumably larger than that of communicative clarity. Communicative clarity is concerned only with eliminating errors stemming from sources of confusion in one’s communications. But, one’s communications can lead others into error in other ways than by being unclear. For example, we would expect the careful communicator to not only communicate clearly what they communicate, but we would expect their carefulness to regulate what they

134  Communicative Clarity choose to communicate in the first place. A careful communicator will not be satisfied with clearly asserting views they take to have a precarious epistemic status, for instance. Thus, in addition to being partially constitutive of the other-regarding dimension of intellectual carefulness, it may be tempting to think that communicative clarity is a unique specification of this virtue and is subordinate to it. Yet, to draw this conclusion would be too swift. One reason for this is that the virtuously clear communicator does not merely aim at preventing their communications from leading others to make mistakes. Instead, more positively, they aim to communicate in such a way that others understand them, so as to advance these others’ epistemic goods. As noted above, the clear communicator recognizes that in order to secure epistemic benefits for others via one’s communications, these communications must be adequately understood; to be adequately understood, they must be sufficiently clear. Thus, they aim to make their communications sufficiently clear for their recipients so that these recipients can reap epistemic benefits from them. In this way, communicative clarity is not exclusively concerned with preventing others from making intellectual errors. By contrast, intellectual carefulness, both in its self-regarding dimension and its other-regarding dimension, is exclusively concerned with avoiding error. This is part of what is distinctive of the virtue, according to Baehr. Thus, while clear communication is partially constitutive of careful communication, the virtue of communicative clarity is not subordinate to the other-regarding dimension of the virtue of intellectual carefulness. It remains to assess the relationship between communicative clarity and intellectual thoroughness. First, the relationship between selfregarding intellectual thoroughness and communicative clarity is similar to that between self-regarding intellectual carefulness and communicative clarity. Self-regarding intellectual thoroughness is likely to facilitate communicative clarity, because by being thorough in our own investigations we discover important facets of the topics of our inquiries that could be a source of confusion for ourselves or others. By discovering these features, we are better positioned to exercise the skills of communicative clarity in regulating our communications so as to avoid confusing others about these facets of the topic of inquiry. While self-regarding intellectual thoroughness does not parallel communicative clarity by incorporating a sensitivity to sources of error that mirrors the sensitivity to sources of confusion constitutive of communicative clarity, it nonetheless facilitates the latter by enabling its possessor to better identify some of these sources. What about the other-regarding dimension of intellectual thoroughness? This we can conceptualize as a tendency to communicate what one knows thoroughly out of the aim of advancing others’ understanding. So understood, it would appear that communicative clarity is partially

Communicative Clarity  135 constitutive of other-regarding intellectual thoroughness, just as it is partially constitutive of other-regarding intellectual carefulness. For just as one cannot communicate carefully without communicating clearly, one cannot communicate thoroughly in such a way as to advance others’ understanding without communicating clearly. However, it may be too strong to claim that clarity full-stop is partially constitutive of other-regarding intellectual thoroughness. This is because thoroughness governs only those instances of communication in which one seeks to convey understanding of something one knows, and not all of one’s communications. Thus, it may be more accurate to say that what is partially constitutive of other-regarding intellectual thoroughness is not domain-general communicative clarity, but a domain-specific variety of communicative clarity. One cannot tend to communicate what one knows thoroughly in a way that advances others’ understanding unless one tends in these specific circumstances to communicate in accordance with clarity. Indeed, many of the behaviors we identified earlier as characteristic of communicative clarity are important for thorough communication. This is especially the case regarding behaviors focused on clarifying larger structures composed of one’s statements. For example, the thorough communicator can be expected to exhibit clarity in distinguishing their view from other views with which it could be confused; in using illustrative examples; and in explaining whether they are arguing for their view, how many arguments they are giving for it, and how these arguments are related. A tendency to employ these skills characteristic of communicative clarity in the contexts characteristic of other-regarding intellectual thoroughness is part of what it is to possess the latter virtue. So, a domain-specific variant of communicative clarity is partially constitutive of other-regarding intellectual thoroughness. And, of course, this domain-specific variant of communicative clarity is facilitated by the more domain-general communicative clarity. Being a clear communicator in general will facilitate one’s communicating in accordance with clarity in the contexts distinctive of other-regarding intellectual thoroughness. This section has helped us to locate the virtue of communicative clarity alongside other intellectual virtues that can involve a focus on how one communicates to others. An important lesson of the section is that communicative clarity is in a certain sense foundational to intellectually dependable communication. One cannot communicate in a virtuously thorough way, or in a virtuously careful way, without communicating in a virtuously clear way, though one could communicate in a virtuously clear way that was not fully reflective of virtuously careful or virtuously thorough communication. The virtues of intellectual carefulness and intellectual thoroughness, unlike communicative clarity, involve self-regarding dimensions in addition to other-regarding dimensions. While Baehr does not claim this explicitly, the same may be true of the

136  Communicative Clarity virtue of attentiveness. We have seen that the self-regarding dimensions of these intellectual virtues are likely to facilitate communicative clarity, while communicative clarity, or a domain-specific variant of it, is partially constitutive of the other-regarding dimensions of intellectual carefulness and intellectual thoroughness. Each of these virtues has its own distinctive motivation, despite their overlap. Attentiveness aims at grasping important details; intellectual thoroughness aims at achieving deep understanding for oneself or others; and intellectual carefulness aims at avoiding errors for oneself or others. The distinctive aim of communicative clarity is to ensure that one’s communicative intentions are sufficiently clear as to be understood by their recipients so as to promote their epistemic goods. Without achieving the aim of this virtue, little else by way of epistemic benefit can be achieved via one’s communications.

3 Communicative Clarity and Opposing Vices The nature of communicative clarity and its place in the life of the intellectually dependable person can also be illuminated by contrasting this virtue with opposing vices. Perhaps the vices that come most readily to mind as opposed to communicative clarity are vices that tend to engender or are partially constituted by deficiency of clear communication. For example, whereas in the previous section we saw that both the self-regarding and the other-regarding dimensions of attentiveness and carefulness are likely to support or be supported by communicative clarity, we would similarly expect that vicious inattentiveness and carelessness would stymie communicative clarity. People who are generally inattentive or careless in intellectual endeavors, or who are inattentive or careless particularly when it comes to their communication with others, are unlikely to achieve the virtue of communicative clarity. Yet there are also additional ways that a person can tend toward deficient clarity in their communications with others, even without being inattentive or careless regarding how they communicate. Indeed, some vices can lead a person to attentively and carefully (albeit not virtuously) communicate in systematically unclear ways. One of these vices is often called “obscurantism.” There is a small literature in philosophy concerned with obscurantism as a vice of communication. Contributors to this literature have tended to conceptualize obscurantism as by definition involving a tendency toward deficiency of clarity in communication, where this deficiency is aimed at impressing the recipients of the communication and leading them to think that the communicator has something of deep significance to communicate. For example, Buekens and Boudry (2015) contrast obscurantism both with “the intellectual virtue of clarity” (128) and with bullshit of the sort we discussed briefly in the previous chapter. In a

Communicative Clarity  137 passage where they present the distinctiveness of obscurantism in contrast to each of these, they write: The bullshitter’s pronouncements can be crystal clear; it is just that he does not care about commitments that come with the language game of assertoric language use. Obscurantism, on the other hand, seems to apply, first and foremost, to the content of what is being asserted: although often presented with utmost seriousness and intellectual bravado, it is never quite clear what the obscurantist is getting at. (127) We saw in the previous chapter that bullshit (on the model envisioned here and there) contrasts with intellectual transparency because the bullshitter is not properly motivated to faithfully share their own perspective. They may communicate clearly enough what they communicate—it’s just that their communications don’t reflect an attempt to faithfully contribute toward truth-aimed inquiry. They are lacking in sincerity. Buekens and Boudry are here highlighting that obscurantism differs from bullshit in these ways. The obscurantist may well aim to contribute to truth-aimed inquiry, and they likewise often do aim to represent their own perspective on topics of inquiry. What is distinctive of their case is that they tend toward deficient clarity in communicating this perspective. This tendency toward deficient clarity of communication is, for the obscurantist, typically motivated by an aim of leading the recipient of their communication to think that the obscurantist has something deep or profound to contribute—or at least something deeper or more profound than they in fact have to contribute. As Buekens and Boudry put it, “The charge of obscurantism suggests a deliberate move on behalf of the speaker, who is accused of setting up a game of verbal smoke and mirrors to suggest depth and insight where none exists” (126). Bryan Magee (2014) agrees, emphasizing the way in which this aim can become disconnected from the subject matter of the communication: What such a person wants, as a rule, is to impress the reader – and sometimes himself. Even worse is his attitude to the subject matter, namely a relegation of its importance. A writer who dresses up unclear thought in colourful rhetoric and wide-ranging allusion in order to persuade his readers that the thought is profound and the thinker a genius is using his subject matter for an end unconnected with itself. (460) Magee suggests that philosophers Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel had some susceptibility to this vice. He writes, “They had been shown by

138  Communicative Clarity Kant’s example that a thinker who is exceedingly difficult to read may, partly for that reason, win a reputation for profundity; and because they coveted this reputation for themselves they deliberately expressed themselves obscurely” (459). Whether we agree with this diagnosis of these particular philosophers or not, Magee’s description of the case serves to illuminate what obscurantism tends to look like in those who are characterized by it. The contrast with the virtuously clear communicator is sharp. Whereas obscurantists tend toward deficient clarity out of an aim of enhancing their intellectual reputation, virtuously clear communicators tend toward sufficient clarity out of an aim of ensuring that others understand them adequately for their epistemic goods to be advanced. Stuart Hampshire brought out the contrast when discussing the example of Bertrand Russell in his conversation with Bryan Magee as recorded in Magee’s Modern British Philosophy (1986): It’s a question of not obfuscating – of leaving no blurred edges; of the duty to be entirely clear, so that one’s mistakes can be seen; of never being pompous or evasive. It’s a question of never fudging the results, never using rhetoric to fill a gap, never using a phrase which conveniently straddles, as it were, two or three notes and which leaves it ambiguous which one you’re hitting. Russell’s prose excludes even the possibility of evasion and of half truth . . . there’s always this extraordinary nakedness of clear assertion. His doctrines and arguments stand out in a hard, Greek light which allows no vagueness. (26) While the language of complete exclusion of vagueness and the like here may be too strong and is likely hyperbolic, it is true enough that the virtuously clear communicator contrasts starkly with the obscurantist in their tendencies toward pomposity, evasiveness, blurriness, rhetorical fill, straddling, and the like. Whereas these form the toolkit of the obscurantist, they are shunned by the virtuously clear communicator because their use tends to harm others’ ability to adequately understand the communicator. Inattentiveness, carelessness, and obscurantism tend to lead one toward deficient clarity in one’s communications. But there is also an opposite temptation toward excessive clarity that can get in the way of communicating with sufficient clarity that the recipients of one’s communications understand one adequately for their epistemic goods to be advanced. One way that succumbing to this temptation may manifest is in excessive pedantry—in the incessant clarification of details whose clarification is unimportant for purposes of advancing others’ epistemic goods via one’s communications. This can lead to cognitive

Communicative Clarity  139 overload for these recipients, which in turn ironically leads to a diminished perception of clarity in one’s communications, as evidenced by the empirical research cited earlier in this chapter. Succumbing to this temptation may also manifest in the communicator being reluctant to communicate in the first place, as they may struggle to identify a way of presenting their ideas that meets their own overly demanding standards for clarity. In each case, succumbing to the temptation toward excessive clarity ends up harming one’s ability to advance others’ epistemic goods via clear communication. The virtuously clear communicator hits a mean between this extreme tendency toward clarity and the deficient tendencies toward clarity characteristic of inattentive, careless, and obscure communicators. Jason Baehr (2015) warns about a vice of this kind that he contrasts with the virtue of carefulness. “Within an educational context,” he writes, “an excess of intellectual carefulness is also quite common” (108). Such excessive carefulness, Baehr suggests, is “tied, in fact, to the problem of perfectionism familiar to many teachers.” He offers the following example: Think of the student who is obsessed with not making mistakes or with getting anything less than an A on an assignment. This student’s concern with avoiding errors is rooted in fear—a fear that seems tied to the student’s self-image or self-esteem. (109) This idea of a unified tendency to be excessively concerned with making mistakes, fearful of making them, motivated by a drive to achieve perfection and a tendency to tie one’s own self-esteem to whether one has performed perfectly is reflected well in recent psychological measures of perfectionism. Feher and colleagues (2020) recently developed a three-factor model of perfectionism, which includes the factors of rigid perfectionism, self-critical perfectionism, and narcissistic perfectionism. It is the first two factors that are relevant here. Summarizing the psychological literature on these topics, Feher and colleagues describe the first two of these factors as follows: Rigid perfectionism is defined as demanding flawless performance from the self. It contains the facets self-oriented perfectionism and self-worth contingencies. Self-oriented perfectionism reflects the importance placed on, as well as striving toward, perfection. Self-worth contingencies . . . [reflect] the link between one’s selfworth and meeting personal standards of perfection. . . . Self-critical perfectionism was operationalized . . . [as] concern over mistakes (overly negative reactions to perceived mistakes and failures), doubts

140  Communicative Clarity about actions (pervading uncertainty and dissatisfaction of one’s performance), self-criticism (overly self-critical responses to perceived absence of perfection), and socially prescribed perfectionism (a propensity to believe that others demand perfection from oneself). (2) Feher and colleagues found that rigid and self-critical perfectionism were highly correlated, and were predictive of negative outcomes such as stress and depression. Perfectionism of this sort, of course, is a very broad personality tendency. Yet, as Baehr’s comments suggest, we can imagine more narrow versions of perfectionism or excessive carefulness. These may be restricted to the domain of academic performance, as in Baehr’s example. Or they may be restricted to, or at least include, the domain of one’s communications with others. A perfectionistic tendency of this latter kind that incorporates rigid and self-critical perfectionist orientations toward how one communicates to others is especially opposed to the virtue of communicative clarity. The virtuously clear communicator’s motivation in communicating is not to communicate flawlessly so as to preserve or enhance their sense of self-worth by achieving their own self-imposed standards of perfection for communication. Rather, what motivates their tendency toward clear communication is their concern to be adequately understood by the recipients of their communications so that they can thereby advance these others’ epistemic goods. This will lead them to be concerned about mistakes in their communications that lead others toward significant misunderstandings of their communicative intentions. But it does not involve and needn’t lead to the kind of fear of making mistakes in their communications that would be characteristic of perfectionism in this domain. Some philosophers, in their remarks championing clarity and precision, especially in the conduct of professional philosophy, flirt with advocating this sort of perfectionism. For example, Timothy Williamson writes that “Pedantry is a fault on the right side” (185). Bryan Magee, in his work advocating clarity, writes that “one should try to be as clear as possible” (460). He claims, further, that If one is to make something fully clear to others one must first make it fully clear to oneself. This means thinking it through to the bottom, to the point where one has a complete grasp of its presentational structure. (454) Valerie Hobbes (2015) objects to Magee here on the basis that demanding full clarity of understanding on one’s own part prior to efforts to communicate this understanding to others is unrealistic and does not

Communicative Clarity  141 reflect the way in which our ideas tend to be clarified by the very process of trying to present them and negotiating an understanding of them within our communities. As she puts it, “communication, in its various forms, helps to shape and sharpen thought” (139). What is key for present purposes is the observation that in order to communicate with sufficient clarity as to be adequately understood by others so that one can advance their epistemic goods with one’s communications, one needn’t always have thought things “through to the bottom” beforehand. To demand otherwise of oneself risks a stultifying perfectionism that gets in the way of clear communication rather than facilitating it. The virtue of communicative clarity, then, like many other virtues, is a kind of mean between extremes. Part of what helps to secure its place in this mean space between vices such as obscurantism, on the one hand, and perfectionism, on the other, is its distinctively other-regarding character. What regulates the virtuously clear communicator’s tendency to communicate clearly is their motivation to thereby have their communicative intentions adequately understood by their audience so as to promote the latter’s epistemic goods. The motivations that regulate the extent of clarity employed in the communications of the perfectionist and the obscurantist are quite different. The obscurantist aims to secure or enhance their intellectual reputation by leading others to think they have something profound to contribute, and as a result tends toward deficient clarity in their communication. The perfectionistic communicator is motivated by meeting their own excessive standards for perfect communication, rather than by communicating in such a way as to promote others’ epistemic goods, and as a result tends to communicate with excessive clarity or to stultify their efforts to communicate. By contrast, the tendency toward virtuously clear communication lays an essential foundation for any other virtuous communication that advances others’ epistemic goods, such as virtuously thorough or careful communication.

References Baehr, Jason. 2015. Cultivating Good Minds: A Philosophical and Practical Guide to Educating for Intellectual Virtues. Available at intellectualvirtues. org Bolkan, San. 2017. “Development and Validation of the Clarity Indicators Scale.” Communication Education 66, 1: 1–18. Buekens, Filip and Maarten Boudry. 2015. “The Dark Side of the Loon: Explaining the Temptations of Obscurantism.” Theoria: A Swedish Journal of Philosophy 81, 2: 126–42. Feher, Anita, Martin Smith, Donald Saklofske, Rachel Plouffe, Claire Wilson, and Simon Sherry. 2020. “The Big Three Perfectionism Scale—Short form (BTPS-SF): Development of a Brief Self-Report Measure of Multidimensional Perfectionism.” Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment 38, 1: 37–52. doi:10.1177/0734282919878553

142  Communicative Clarity Hobbes, Valerie. 2015. “Looking Again at Clarity in Philosophy: Writing as a Shaper and Sharpener of Thought.” Philosophy 90, 1: 135–42. Magee, Bryan. 1986. Modern British Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Magee, Bryan. 2014. “Clarity in Philosophy.” Philosophy 89, 3: 451–62.

7

Audience Sensitivity

We turn now to a fourth candidate for a virtue of intellectual dependability: audience sensitivity. We saw in the previous chapter that some of the virtues of intellectual dependability, such as intellectual transparency, have a certain focus on the dependable person’s own perspective, while others, such as communicative clarity, have a focus on the dependable person’s communications. We also saw that possessing and exercising the virtue of communicative clarity is in part a matter of attending to the perspectives of the recipients of one’s communications, because whether a communication is sufficiently clear depends upon features of the recipient. Thus, we might say that the virtue of communicative clarity involves a primary focus on the dependable person’s communications, but also some attention to the recipients of these. With the virtue of audience sensitivity, we move still further in the direction of a virtue that characteristically involves attending to the features of dependent others. As we will see, possessing and exercising this virtue involves careful attentiveness to intellectually dependent others, along with attentiveness to how one communicates with these others given one’s grasp of their distinctive features. I will continue with my pattern of developing a guiding conceptualization of the target virtue in Section 1, followed by comparing it with similar virtues in Section 2 and contrasting it with opposing vices in Section 3.

1 A Guiding Conceptualization of Audience Sensitivity Imagine an intellectually benevolent person, virtuously motivated to promote others’ epistemic goods, who is in a position to advance the epistemic goods of some particular other via communicating with them. Perhaps they have a question about the other’s views or methods of inquiry that if asked could lead the dependent other to gain deeper understanding or to revise their views or methods of inquiry in an epistemically fruitful way. Or perhaps they have some knowledge or evidence to share that could contribute to the other’s gaining important true beliefs. If they wish to benefit this particular other via their communications, they will need to attend to the particular features of this

144  Audience Sensitivity other as a recipient of their communications—as their audience. They will need to be sensitive to the distinctive features of their audience liable to make a difference for how their communications will be received, and they will need to regulate their communications in light of a grasp of these distinctive features. What I have in mind by the virtue of audience sensitivity is a tendency to do just this out of an intellectually benevolent motivation. In a sentence, audience sensitivity is a tendency, out of intellectual benevolence, to attend to the distinctive features of one’s audiences, and to fit one’s communications to these audiences in light of one’s grasp of these distinctive features. The reason why it is important for an intellectually benevolent communicator to attend to the distinctive features of their audience and to fit their communications to their audience is straightforward. Whether or not, and to what extent, one’s communications will benefit one’s audience depends upon salient features of this audience. The relevant features include the audience’s epistemic needs, their intellectual interests, their perspective, their abilities, and their intellectual tendencies. While audiences do sometimes share such features in common, such that it is not necessary to alter what and how one communicates from one audience to the next, it is equally clear that many audiences do differ in these features in ways that make it important to alter what and how one communicates depending upon these features of the audience—important, anyway, if one aims to advance the epistemic goods of these audiences. While brief, the preceding discussion already enables us to comment on the relationship between audience sensitivity and intellectual benevolence, and to identify the distinctive proximate motivation of audience sensitivity, in conformity with the pattern exhibited in the previous two chapters. While audience sensitivity shares with intellectual benevolence a motivation to promote others’ epistemic goods, it distinctively requires a motivation to promote others’ epistemic goods via fitting one’s communications to the distinctive features of one’s audiences. In common with intellectual benevolence, audience sensitivity involves valuing others’ epistemic goods for their own sake, being motivated to promote them, tending to experience positive affect when they are present and negative affect when they are absent, and tending to judge that it is good when they obtain and that it is good to promote them. Yet, distinctively, audience sensitivity involves being motivated to promote others’ epistemic goods via fitting one’s communications to one’s audiences, tending to experience positive affect when engaging in this activity and negative affect when failing to do so, and tending to judge that engaging in such activity is good and failing to do so is bad. Audience sensitivity, like intellectual transparency and communicative clarity, is a specialization of intellectual benevolence within a particular domain—the domain of regulating one’s communications in light of one’s grasp of relevant features of one’s audiences. Audience sensitivity, like intellectual

Audience Sensitivity  145 transparency and communicative clarity, is a subordinate virtue to intellectual benevolence, which is more cardinal than audience sensitivity. The reasons for engaging in communication that is virtuously sensitive to one’s audience ascend to the reasons of intellectual benevolence. Like the other virtues of intellectual dependability, audience sensitivity involves both distinctive motivations and distinctive skills. We have already seen that audience sensitivity requires the distinctive proximate motivation to fit one’s communications to one’s audiences. We should note, however, that this motivation to fit one’s communications to one’s audiences itself generates a motivation to attend to the particular features of one’s audiences liable to make a difference for how one’s communications are received. The virtuously audience-sensitive person, then, has twin motivations to attend to relevant distinctive features of their audiences, and to fit their communications to their audiences in light of their grasp of these features. Talk of “motivation” here is, as in previous chapters, shorthand for a complex of complementary motivational, affective, and cognitive tendencies. The twin motivations of audience sensitivity are complemented by twin skill sets. The virtuously audience-sensitive person is not only motivated to attend to relevant features of their audiences, but they are skilled in doing so. They have a mature understanding of which features of their audiences are liable to make a difference for how their communications are received. More specifically, they have an understanding of which of these features are liable to influence the extent to which receipt of their communications will promote the recipients’ epistemic goods. They are also skilled in attending to these features, that is, paying attention to them. On the other side, they have skills in fitting their communications to their audiences in light of their grasp of their audiences’ features. These skills of fitting regulate both their selection of what to communicate and their selection of how to communicate what they communicate—both the content and manner of communication. They have a mature understanding and know-how as to what content and manner of communication will best promote their audiences’ epistemic goods, given the audience’s distinctive features. It is not easy to state in a short and crisp way the content of the knowhow or understanding involved in these skills of attending and fitting. But one way to shed light on the skills of attending and fitting involved in audience sensitivity is to identify some of the most common examples of the distinctive features of audiences that do influence the way in which communications are received, and to highlight ways in which a grasp of these features may lead a virtuously audience-sensitive person to regulate their communications. This will be my approach here. A first relevant feature of audiences is their epistemic needs. Audiences can differ with respect to what they most need to know, which evidence they most need to be exposed to, which questions they most

146  Audience Sensitivity need to consider, which skills for inquiry they most need to develop, and so on. The relevant needs are to be understood here as what is objectively strongly in the audience’s interest, rather than in terms of what is subjectively of interest to them. Audiences might be mistaken about what they most need. A virtuously audience-sensitive person is sensitive to what really are the epistemic needs of their audiences, paying attention to what these needs are, and they select what and how they communicate in light of their grasp of their audiences’ needs. Generally speaking, the audience-sensitive person will tend to prioritize communicating in such a way as to best fulfill their audiences’ needs. They will tend to favor fulfilling their audiences’ more significant needs over their less significant needs, if they are in a position to do so. As an illustration, we might consider an instructor providing feedback to a pupil, whether in formal education or in vocational training. Instructors tasked with providing feedback have to make choices about what to provide feedback about and about how to provide this feedback. Instructors who display audience sensitivity toward their pupils will regulate the content and manner of their feedback in part in light of their grasp of their pupils’ epistemic needs. They will, for example, consider the areas of growth in knowledge and skills for inquiry most necessary for the pupil’s flourishing as an inquirer in the relevant field, and prioritize providing feedback related to these areas, communicating this feedback in such a way as to signal its importance to the pupil. Because pupils will differ with respect to their needs for growth in knowledge and skills for inquiry in the field, instructors who display audience sensitivity toward their pupils will provide different feedback to different pupils. As another example, consider an audience’s intellectual interests. Here what I have in mind is the more subjective idea of what an audience finds to be of interest. While an audience-sensitive person will be more concerned to promote the fulfillment of their audiences’ epistemic needs than to advance their pursuit of their intellectual interests, they will also exhibit concern for advancing their audiences’ pursuit of their intellectual interests. One reason for this is that an audience’s intellectual interests are liable to make a difference for whether and to what extent the communications they receive promote their epistemic goods. If an audience finds it difficult to relate a communication to their intellectual interests, they may be more likely to disregard the communication, thereby foregoing epistemic benefits it could have provided them if they had attended to it. Audience-sensitive people are alert to this, and tend to favor communicating to their audiences in a way that advances their pursuit of their intellectual interests where they can. The virtuously audience sensitive tend to care about what their audiences care about. Because different audiences have different intellectual cares and concerns, this leads the virtuously audience sensitive to alter the content and manner of their communication when confronted with different audiences.

Audience Sensitivity  147 As an illustration, we might imagine a person who has some expertise on some topic, say, immigration. Such a person may be invited by multiple, distinct groups to provide an address to these groups on the topic of their expertise. But the groups may take an interest in this topic for very different reasons. Perhaps one group is a group of immigrants, another a group of policymakers, and another a group of urban planners. If the expert is virtuously sensitive to their audiences, attending to their audiences’ particular intellectual interests and fitting their communications to their audiences in light of their grasp of these interests, this may lead them to alter the content and manner of their communication to these different audiences. Consider a third feature: an audience’s perspective. Here as elsewhere in this book I am intending to use the language of perspective in a broad manner, aiming to include within it such things as the audience’s beliefs, subdoxastic cognitive commitments, evidence, intuitions, and so forth. But let us just concentrate for the moment on the audience’s beliefs. Which beliefs an audience has can make a difference for the extent to which their receipt of a communication advances their epistemic goods. This is especially the case with communications that are argumentative in the sense that they aim to lead an audience to revise their beliefs. For whether people will be inclined to revise their beliefs will depend in part on which other beliefs they have, and indeed on their perspective more broadly. The more strongly a proposed belief-revision appears to conflict with an audience’s perspective, the more they will resist this revision, thereby foregoing epistemic goods that might have come by it. Audience-sensitive people are alert to this fact about audiences, and as such they pay attention to their audiences’ perspectives. Where possible, we may expect that an audience-sensitive person, if they are engaged in argumentative communication, will seek to offer argumentative communications less strongly in conflict with their audiences’ beliefs or perspectives. As an illustration, we might consider a phenomenon that is sometimes called the fallacy of “begging the question.” While there is a narrow sense of begging the question that involves employing a conclusion as a premise in an argument for that conclusion, there is a broader conception of begging the question that is my focus here. On this broader conception, begging the question involves employing a premise in an argument for a conclusion where one has strong evidence that one’s audience rejects that premise. This sort of begging the question may not always be avoidable. But, where it is avoidable, we might expect that a person who is virtuously sensitive to their audience would avoid it. Motivated to promote their audiences’ epistemic goods—in this case, by convincing them to revise their beliefs—they will prefer to offer arguments that favor belief-revision that employ premises their audience does not reject. More generally, where possible, if an audience-sensitive

148  Audience Sensitivity person aims with their communications to lead their audience to adopt changes in their perspective, they will tend to try to do this in a way that makes good sense from within their audiences’ own perspective or one very near to it. Move to a fourth feature: audiences’ abilities. Audiences differ in their abilities for inquiry, including their abilities to interpret and evaluate complex communications. These differences can make a difference for the extent to which a communication will yield epistemic benefits for an audience. Audiences with more limited abilities for interpretation and evaluation may need simpler presentations of content, or more assistance in interpretive and evaluative work than more advanced audiences, if they are to accurately understand what is being communicated and benefit from it epistemically. At the same time, it can be good for audiences to be challenged to develop their abilities, rather than having all interpretive and evaluative work done for them. A person who is virtuously audience sensitive will fit their communications to their audience’s abilities, not communicating in such a way as to make interpretation and evaluation out of reach for their audience, but also where appropriate challenging their audiences to develop intellectual autonomy. One example that illustrates this kind of attentiveness to the abilities of one’s audience is attentiveness to differences in audiences’ abilities to concentrate on details for extended periods of time. Some audiences are more capable of concentrating on details for extended periods of time than others. If concentrating on details is necessary for an audience to receive an epistemic benefit, it may be important to treat audiences with different abilities for concentrating on details differently. Audiences highly capable of concentrating for extended periods of time may be able to consume larger portions of the required communication at once. Audiences less capable of concentrating for extended periods of time may need to proceed by processing smaller chunks of the communication, and may need content to be presented in an unusual or engaging manner to pique their attention. We should expect that virtuously audience-sensitive individuals will attend to their audiences’ concentration abilities and modify their communications to fit these abilities of their audiences. The final feature of audiences I will discuss are their intellectual tendencies. The tendencies I have in mind are tendencies to engage in various kinds of intellectual behaviors in response to different kinds of elements that may be contained in communications. There are many such tendencies with respect to which audiences can differ and which can make a difference for the extent to which a communication promotes epistemic goods for an audience. Audiences can differ, for example, with respect to how they tend to evaluate the claims of authorities, how they tend to respond to objections to their views, how they tend to make inferences about what the communicator believes or doesn’t

Audience Sensitivity  149 believe, to what extent they tend to take others at their word, what level of evidence they tend to require in order to take on a belief, and so on. A virtuously audience-sensitive person will be alert to the intellectual tendencies of their audience, and will fit their communications to their audience in light of their grasp of these tendencies so as best to promote the audience’s epistemic goods. Take, for illustrative purposes, an example concerning audiences’ tendencies to trust expert opinion. Some audiences are more strongly inclined to trust expert opinion while others are more reluctant and tend only to do so when they have an adequate grasp of the reasons supporting this opinion. Being sensitive to these differences in their audiences, a virtuously audience-sensitive person who is in a situation in which it is important for the epistemic well-being of their audience to believe the relevant expert opinion may employ different strategies with different audiences. With the more trusting audience, they may simply cite the relevant expert opinion, while with the more reluctant audience they may cite relevant reasons supporting this opinion as well, or attempt to convince their audience that in this particular case the audience’s typical reasons for hesitancy in trusting experts do not apply. In this way they will display an attentiveness to their audiences’ intellectual tendencies with respect to expert opinion, and will fit their communications to their audience so as best to promote their epistemic goods. Virtuously audience-sensitive people, then, will attend to their audiences’ epistemic needs, intellectual interests, perspectives, intellectual abilities, and intellectual tendencies, among other features, and will fit their communications to their audiences so as to best promote their epistemic goods given their grasp of these features. While I have sought to illustrate how this attending and fitting may be realized with some fairly straightforward examples, it is important to observe that in practice the work of attending to these features and fitting one’s communications to them can be extremely challenging. This is for a variety of reasons. First, in practice, for each of the kinds of features identified above, there are multiple instances of the feature to attend to. Even in an individual person, epistemic needs are many, as are intellectual interests, the elements that make up their relevant perspective(s), and their relevant intellectual abilities and tendencies. Multiple needs, interests, beliefs, evidence bases, and intellectual abilities and tendencies may be apt to make a difference for how a communication is received. Moreover, attempting to fit one’s communications to some of these features may sometimes frustrate fitting them to others of these features, as we saw when discussing securing epistemic needs versus fostering the pursuit of intellectual interests. The virtuously audience-sensitive person will be inclined to attend to all these features and regulate their communications so as to best promote the audience’s epistemic goods given their total grasp of these features.

150  Audience Sensitivity Second, in practice a communicator’s knowledge of their audience’s relevant features is often quite restricted. The relevant features of one’s audience are not immediately discernible to a communicator, and some of them are not even easily discerned by the audience members themselves. Identifying them requires a base of evidence regarding the audience’s own intellectual activities or regarding the audience’s similarity to other known audiences. Yet, in many cases, a communicator may have very limited evidence of either kind. Third, one’s audience may be what rhetoricians call a “composite” audience—an audience of multiple individuals who differ from one another with respect to many of the relevant features. Communicating to a composite audience of this kind presents special challenges to the communicator who wishes to manifest sensitivity to their audience. Some rhetoricians have advocated a buck-shot approach in these cases, in which the communicator attempts to express their communication in multiple ways, some of which will fit some members of the audience and others of which will fit other members (Tindale 2013). Another (not mutually exclusive) strategy is to seek to identify relatively common ground across the diverse audience and to fit one’s communications to this relatively common ground. And things can get even more difficult, because identifying who one’s audience is in the first place can be a difficult task, as recent work in rhetoric has emphasized (Tindale 2013). Consider Plato’s dialogues. Who was Plato’s audience? Perhaps there were some particular identifiable individuals, or a group such as a school, for whom he originally wrote. But certainly there is a straightforward sense of the term “audience” in which these recipients of the dialogues make up only a tiny minority of Plato’s audience. That audience includes the many thousands who read the dialogues year after year more than two millennia after their construction. We might wonder whether Plato would need to exhibit sensitivity to these audience members in order to possess and exercise the virtue of audience sensitivity. The Plato example helpfully reveals that it is not always a straightforward matter to identify whom one’s audience is, much less what their distinctive features are that may influence the reception of one’s communications. While I make no pretentions to settle the issue of “audience identity” being debated among rhetoricians, I suggest that for our purposes the audience be thought of as those the communicator has reason to believe will be among the recipients of their communications. The virtuously audience-sensitive person is someone who attends to the distinctive features of those they have reason to believe will be in receipt of their communications, and fits their communications to these audiences. Priority of attending and fitting goes to those the communicator has more reason to believe will be in receipt of their communications, rather than those they have less reason to believe will be, other things being equal.

Audience Sensitivity  151 Even identifying whom one’s audience is is not always easy. And once one’s audience has been identified, it is no simple matter to discern what the relevant distinctive features of this audience are. Audience sensitivity is a demanding virtue. It requires that its possessor is inclined to attend to and to fit their communications to the distinctive features of their audiences liable to make a difference for the receipt of their communications out of a motivation to promote their epistemic goods.

2 Audience Sensitivity and Similar Virtues We can further illuminate the nature and role of audience sensitivity by comparing it with other intellectual virtues to which it is similar. As a virtue that has a significant proximate focus on attending to distinctive features of others, audience sensitivity overlaps with a number of other intellectual virtues which share this proximate focus. I will concentrate my discussion in this section on some of these virtues. In recent epistemology, it has primarily been authors writing from a feminist or liberatory perspective who have stressed the epistemic significance of attending to epistemic others in their particularity. The paradigm for this attending is often based on the epistemic dimension of domestic labor historically performed by women. Stressing the way in which this labor involves attentiveness to others in their particularity, Daukas (2019) writes: Domestic labor often involves touching, holding, smelling; it is bodily, located in a particular place and time in relation to particular situations and particular others. It involves sensitivity and attentiveness to particular individuals’ differing affective states and needs. It is cultivated through empathetic caring: it enables us to know others by imaginatively placing ourselves in their positions to see, feel, and care about things as they see, feel, and care about them. (383) This perspective emphasizes that at least part of what is involved in being an ideal epistemic agent is to excel in the distinctive intellectual virtues exercised paradigmatically through domestic labor, which involve attentiveness to others in their particularity. Sometimes the intellectual virtues stressed by feminist or liberatory epistemologists are narrowly focused on features pertaining specifically to social positioning, epistemic power, and so on. This is the case, for example, with the much-discussed virtue of hermeneutical justice proposed by Miranda Fricker (2007). On Fricker’s conception, hermeneutical justice is a sensitivity to the possibility that a communicator’s relative unintelligibility may be due to the communicator’s being comparatively disadvantaged in their possession of hermeneutical resources due to

152  Audience Sensitivity their social positioning. This virtue, then, involves an attentiveness specifically to the social positioning of others, and in particular to a way in which this social positioning may result in a disadvantage in their possession of resources for understanding and rendering intelligible to others their experiences and perspectives. It regulates how one receives testimony from such others, as those in possession of the virtue will, due to this sensitivity, be less prone to lower their credibility judgments of such others due to their perceived unintelligibility. Nancy Daukas (2019) proposes that all feminist or liberatory intellectual virtues properly conceived have this sort of narrow focus. Contrasting liberatory virtues with conventional intellectual virtues, she writes: Liberatory virtues enable us to recognize the injustice in [existing social] arrangements, subvert them, and replace them with arrangements that better serve the public goods. They enable agents to recognize the culturally inherited prejudices that undergird the existing unjust social hierarchy, counter-evidence to those prejudices, and circularity in attempts to defend them. They include capacities and traits that enable and motivate agents to envision and implement alternative social arrangements that prevent and counteract oppression. (387) On this model, liberatory intellectual virtues do not merely involve attentiveness to the particularity of others, but they involve attentiveness to particular dimensions of others’ particularity—namely, those dimensions pertaining to others’ social identities and positionalities. Because of this, Daukas is unwilling to accept that the conceptualizations of intellectual virtues such as open-mindedness or humility offered by conventional virtue epistemologists adequately capture a liberatory conception of these virtues. The liberatory revisioning of these virtues involves reorienting them toward addressing liberatory concerns. Not all writers in this area focus exclusively on these narrower virtues, however. Some also emphasize the importance of broader intellectual virtues, both for liberatory purposes and for more conventional purposes. For example, Jane Braaten (1990), in her development of a feminist conception of intelligence as virtuous social intelligence, describes six virtues that contribute to this ideal of virtuous social intelligence. The first two are good examples of virtues that involve attentiveness to the particularity of others, but not exclusively the distinctive particularities of special significance for advancing liberatory goals. The first virtue she describes as “an imaginative ability: the ability to represent alternative subjective points of view, not merely of a perceptual character, but also of an ideological character.” The second virtue is “an ability to reason hypothetically about the likely responses of others to given courses of

Audience Sensitivity  153 events, given their various subjective points of view” (6). Likewise, José Medina (2013, ch.1) stresses the role of so-called conventional intellectual virtues such as intellectual humility and open-mindedness in the sort of epistemic resistance necessary for accomplishing liberatory epistemological purposes and ensuring the excellent function of democracies. There are two broad intellectual virtues of this sort that I will focus on here for purposes of illuminating the nature and role of audience sensitivity in the life of the virtuous epistemic agent. The first we might call intellectual empathy. It is a tendency to imaginatively occupy the particular perspectives of the particular others one encounters, aimed at achieving better understanding of their perspectives. It is the tendency to employ the imaginative ability that constitutes Braaten’s first virtue in the effort to better understand those individuals one encounters in one’s daily life. Virtue epistemologists have done surprisingly little work on intellectual empathy as an intellectual virtue. Jason Baehr (2011) briefly refers to intellectual empathy as an intellectual virtue in his discussion of open-mindedness, primarily in order to contrast the two. He writes that intellectual empathy “involves a willingness or ability to view things from the standpoint of another person, to ‘get inside another’s head’.” He describes “tak[ing] up the standpoint of the other” person as the distinctive activity “proper” to intellectual empathy (156). In a similar vein, Stephen Grimm (2019) writes approvingly of the suggestion that a certain kind of empathy that constitutes “the distinctive mental act of getting into the mindset of others” is central to what he calls the “virtue of being an understanding person” (345). He writes, moreover, that understanding other people is a distinct enterprise from trying to understand the natural world, and that the former requires being able to successfully ‘take up’ the person’s attitudes, and thus to be able to imagine what it would be like to care about things in the way the other person does, or to have the same sorts of worries, hopes, and concerns the agent does. (348) Intellectual empathy of the kind in view here is not merely an ability or an act, but a character trait. It is a character trait constituted by a tendency to employ empathic abilities, or to engage in empathic actions, across a wide range of situations. And it is a tendency to do so out of the motivation to attain better understanding of others. Thus, intellectual empathy as an intellectual virtue is a tendency to exercise skills in taking up the perspectives of others out of a motivation to understand others. While virtue epistemologists have done little research on intellectual empathy of this sort, this sort of empathy does appear to be the focus of a significant strain of research in psychology. The research I have

154  Audience Sensitivity in mind focuses on empathy as a trait rather than a state, and it proposes that among the facets of such empathy is one called dispositional perspective taking. A widely used measure of dispositional perspective taking is the perspective taking subscale of the Davis’s Interpersonal Reactivity Index (1980). As Davis puts it, the items in this subscale “assess the respondent’s tendency to try to understand people by imagining their perspectives” (1983: 5). Moreover, “the items comprising this scale refer not to fictitious situations or characters, but to ‘real-life’ instances of perspective-taking” (1980: 12). A sample item is “Before criticizing somebody, I try to imagine how I would feel if I were in their place.” Davis’s measure of empathy has been cited in over 5,000 articles. A second, closely related intellectual virtue is open-mindedness. Virtue epistemologists have had much more to say about this intellectual virtue. In fact, they have tended to characterize it in way that makes it quite similar to intellectual empathy, but without the narrow focus on understanding the perspectives of particular others one encounters in one’s daily life. Wayne Riggs’s (2019) account is illustrative. On his account, the open-minded person is characteristically (a) willing and (within limits) able (b) to transcend a default cognitive standpoint (c) in order to take up or take seriously the merits of (d) a distinct cognitive standpoint, (e) and is sufficiently sensitive to cues indicating the existence of such alternative standpoints, (f) while having a well-calibrated propensity to exercise these abilities. (150) The distinct cognitive standpoints that the open-minded person is disposed to take seriously needn’t be those of particular others they encounter, though they might be. Put differently, the open-minded person isn’t merely open-minded about the perspectives of others they encounter, they are open-minded within limits regarding the logical space of possible views regarding the topics of their inquiries. For Riggs, the intellectual virtue of open-mindedness clearly involves skills in identifying and understanding diverse perspectives on topics of its possessor’s inquiries. Regarding the distinctive abilities of the openminded person, Riggs writes that “finding ways to make challenging ideas intelligible to oneself is a cognitive ability that is fundamental to being open-minded” (147). Riggs stresses, moreover, that open-mindedness, like intellectual empathy, often operates on entire perspectives. When it does operate on an entire perspective, Riggs proposes that its exercise requires seeing that perspective “all together—seeing how it hangs together and makes sense holistically, and seeing how it [would dispose one] to perceive the world in a particular way” (148). Perspectives, for Riggs, as for me, are complex, and understanding them in their complexity is a challenging task. The open-minded person is someone who

Audience Sensitivity  155 will be skilled in identifying and grasping the relationships between the elements in diverse perspectives on topics of their inquiries, and they will be disposed to exercise these skills under appropriate circumstances. The foregoing sketches of intellectual empathy and open-mindedness will allow us to compare and contrast these with one another and with our target virtue of audience sensitivity. When we do, we find that there is a central way in which these traits all overlap, and a central way in which they differ. The central way in which they overlap is that they each require skills for identifying and understanding perspectives. We should expect that the intellectually empathetic, the open-minded, and the audience sensitive will all have a strong understanding of the elements that constitute a perspective, the differences between these elements, and the ways in which they contribute to forming perspectives. We should expect, moreover, that they will also have abilities to get inside of diverse perspectives, different from those they in fact inhabit, to gain understanding of these. The intellectually empathetic, open-minded, and audience sensitive will therefore overlap in their understanding and know-how. Where they chiefly differ is with respect to when and for what reasons they characteristically employ these shared skills. Intellectually empathetic people characteristically employ the skills of understanding perspectives in order to understand the other people they encounter in their daily lives. What characteristically triggers their use of these skills is a flesh-and-blood other, and their aim in employing the skills is to understand this other person. Open-minded people characteristically employ the skills of understanding perspectives in order to make epistemic progress on topics of inquiry—for example, in order to reach the truth about this topic or to attain a better understanding of it. What characteristically triggers their use of these skills is their motivation to make epistemic progress in an inquiry, and the availability of perspectives relevant to this inquiry that they have not yet adequately investigated. And audience-sensitive people characteristically employ the skills of understanding perspectives in order to equip them to better fit their communications to particular others so as to advance their epistemic goods. What triggers their employment of these skills is the presence of a recipient of a potential communication of theirs whose receipt of this communication may be influenced by their distinctive perspective. In sum, the intellectually empathetic will tend to employ skills of understanding perspectives when doing so may help them better understand another person; the open-minded will tend to do so when doing so will help them make progress on an inquiry; and the audience sensitive will tend to do so when doing so will help them advance the epistemic goods of the recipients of their communications. Understanding these relationships between intellectual empathy, open-mindedness, and audience sensitivity in this way suggests that we

156  Audience Sensitivity should expect those who are more strongly characterized by one of these traits to be more strongly characterized by the others, other things being equal. This is because anyone who possesses one of these virtues possesses a set of skills that is an important prerequisite for possessing the other virtues. Yet we should also expect a stronger association between intellectual empathy and audience sensitivity than between open-mindedness and audience sensitivity, because the former two share a focus on applying their common set of skills to the particular others encountered in their possessor’s daily life. Returning to the topic with which we began this sub-section, these virtues are both good candidates for broad intellectual virtues involving sensitivity to others in their particularity that may be valuable for liberatory epistemic purposes. What is distinctive about audience sensitivity, however, is its focus on regulating its possessor’s communications as opposed to its possessor’s reception of others’ communications. Given that the lion’s share of attention from feminist virtue epistemologists has been given to virtues such as testimonial justice or hermeneutical justice that govern the reception of others’ communications, audience sensitivity may provide an interesting new candidate—albeit a broad one—for a feminist or liberatory intellectual virtue.

3 Audience Sensitivity and Opposing Vices We can further illuminate the nature and role of audience sensitivity by contrasting it with opposing vices. Here my focus is on intellectual character vices that tend to disrupt the sound performance of the characteristic behaviors of audience sensitivity. We’ve seen that the characteristic behaviors of audience sensitivity involve, on the one hand, attending well to those distinctive features of one’s audiences likely to influence their reception of one’s communications and, on the other hand, deftly fitting one’s communications to one’s audiences in light of one’s grasp of these features so as to promote their epistemic goods. Thus, the vices that will be my focus here are intellectual character vices that disrupt sound attending and sound fitting. Sound attentiveness to the features of one’s audiences likely to influence their reception of one’s communications can be disrupted through a variety of intellectual character vices. Perhaps the first candidate to come to mind is a vice of deficiency—a vice involving a deficient motivation to attend to the distinctive features of one’s audiences in order to facilitate fitting one’s communications to them. Yet deficient motivation of this kind often co-occurs and is explained by the presence of some alternative positive motivation. And it is also more clearly vicious in many of these latter cases, where a vicious motivation tends to lead its possessor to attend poorly, if at all, to the distinctive features of their audiences liable to influence reception of their communications.

Audience Sensitivity  157 There are many different intellectual motivations that will tend to lead a person to attend poorly to the distinctive features of their audiences. Often these are motivations oriented toward the self and its features, or toward the self and its features in relation to others and their features. For example, a certain kind of preoccupation with one’s own features may prevent one from attending well to the distinctive features of one’s audiences. A significant strand of research in psychology has focused on self-preoccupation, with the Self-Consciousness Scale (Fenigstein et al. 1975) being one of the most widely used measures. This measure assesses individual differences in private self-consciousness and public self-consciousness, where the former is “the tendency to think about and attend to the more covert, hidden aspects of the self” and the latter is “the tendency to think about those self-aspects that are matters of public display.” A sample item for the former is “I’m always trying to figure myself out,” while a sample item for the latter is “I’m concerned about the way I present myself.” If one is dominated by a concern to attend to one’s own private or public features in the way characteristic of those who score highly on the Self-Consciousness Scale, this will leave little room to attend well to the features of others in the way characteristic of audience sensitivity. By contrast, some authors have conceived of the virtue of humility as being partly or even fully constituted by a freedom from such self-preoccupation. Jonathan Kvanvig (2018), for example, writes that “a proper expression of humility involves putting the focus of attention elsewhere than on one’s successes or abilities” (196), and he suggests similarly that the humble person will tend to focus their attention away from their faults or limitations too—they will simply be free from self-preoccupation. It would appear that humility of this sort, a freedom from vicious self-preoccupation in one’s patterns of attention, is a prerequisite for the virtue of audience sensitivity. Other similar intellectual vices conflicting with audience sensitivity involve motivations to view others, including one’s audience, in particular ways in relation to oneself. For example, a person may be motivated to see themselves as better than their audiences in various respects, as we saw in Chapter 4 with the vice of intellectual arrogance. Someone motivated in this way is likely to selectively attend to negative features of their audiences, and to interpret features of their audiences uncharitably so as to perceive themselves as superior to their audiences. In a similar way, a person may be motivated to view certain others qua members of their social groups as inferior to themself qua member of their social group. Such motivations can prevent them from accurately assessing features of their audience when this audience includes members of a different social group from their own. This vice, and others like it, is particularly destructive in the kinds of contexts of particular concern to liberatory virtue epistemologists—contexts containing epistemic interactions across social divides.

158  Audience Sensitivity There are also further ways a person may be motivated to view others in relation to themselves that can occlude their access to others’ distinctive features besides motivations to perceive themself as in some respect superior to others. For example, a person may simply be motivated to maintain their perception that they are normal—that others are not so different from them. This motivation can occlude them from noticing the distinctiveness of their audiences. And still further motivations can distort one’s attentiveness to one’s audience, even if they do not involve motivations to view that audience as being related to the self in a particular way. For example, Stephen Grimm (2019) describes the vice of judgmentalism as one that “encourages us, as a default, to attribute poor behavior to a person’s deficient character” (346). It may be that many judgmental individuals are motivated to judge others harshly out of an ultimate motivation to view themselves as superior to others. But Grimm’s comments suggest this is not essential to judgmentalism. Some people may simply have a biased interest in discovering negative or demeaning facts about others as opposed to more flattering facts. Such an interest can prevent one from attending well to the distinctive features of one’s audiences in the way characteristic of audience sensitivity. An important pattern has emerged in our contemplation of these various vices opposed to audience sensitivity. Each of these vices shares something in common. They all involve patterns of attentiveness (or inattentiveness) to others’ features that run counter to the pattern of sound attentiveness characteristic of the audience sensitive. And yet they are a diverse lot. This helps to illuminate that being a virtuously audiencesensitive person is in part a matter of training one’s attention in a particular way, and avoiding training one’s attention in many other possible opposing ways. Being a virtuously audience-sensitive person requires developing a pattern of attending carefully to the distinctive features of one’s audiences liable to influence their reception of one’s communications. Developing this pattern of attention rather than another requires not prioritizing too highly attending to one’s own features to the neglect of others’ features, not selectively attending to negative information about others, not selectively attending to information about others that reflects in particular ways on oneself, and so on. It requires both skill in understanding which features of one’s audiences are important to attend to for purposes of advancing their epistemic goods via one’s communications, and the motivation to grasp these features as they in fact are rather than as various possible attention biases might motivate one to see them. Also standing opposed to virtuous audience sensitivity are vices that tend to inhibit sound fitting of one’s communications to one’s audiences. Here the example that comes immediately to the fore is what is sometimes called rhetoric or sophistry. Those who engage in vicious rhetoric or sophistry may not be at fault for failing to attend to the distinctive

Audience Sensitivity  159 features of their audiences. Indeed, they may excel in doing exactly this. More precisely, they may excel in attending to those features of their audiences likely to influence how their communications will be received. Yet, despite attending to these features with skill, the viciously sophistical do not fit their communications to their audiences in the way characteristic of the virtuously audience sensitive. It’s not that sophists don’t “fit” their communications to their audience in some sense. In fact, here again, there is a sense of “fitting” in which they may excel in fitting their communications to their audiences. It’s just that the way in which they fit their communications to their audience is not the same as the way in which the virtuously audience sensitive fit their communications to their audience. Bringing out this contrast between virtuous and vicious ways of fitting one’s communications to one’s audiences was an important part of Plato’s visceral and sustained attack on rhetoric, sophistry, and the allied practice of poetry. For Plato, poetry was a part of rhetoric, and the distinction between rhetoric (as practiced by professional rhetoricians at the time) and sophistry was not sharp. Both rhetoric and poetry were forms of persuasive speech. They involved the use of particular techniques aimed at persuading the speaker’s audience. In the Republic, the poets are characterized as making claims to truth, to telling it like it is, that are in fact—contrary to appearances—little more than the poet’s unargued imaginative projections whose tenability is established by their ability to command the applause of the audience. . . . selling their products to as large a market as possible, in the hope of gaining repute and influence. (Griswold 2016, sect. 3.4) The poets use a technique that involves attending to features of their audience and exploiting those features. They “take advantage of that part in us the hoi polloi are governed by”—the irrational part. They “help enslave even the best of us to the lower parts of our soul; and just insofar as they do so, they must be kept out of any community that wishes to be free and virtuous” (Griswold 2016, sect 3.3). The poets manipulate their audiences’ feelings in a way that will harm their audiences’ characters and will “maim the thought of those who hear them” (Republic 595a), as a means to gaining fame. The contrast between rhetoric and philosophy takes center stage in the Gorgias. There Socrates asks Gorgias to define what he, a rhetorician, does, and to do so in such a way as not to confuse rhetoric with philosophy, what Socrates does. Gorgias proposes that “rhetoric is a producer of persuasion. Its whole business comes to that” (453a). Socrates then brings out that there are two different kinds of persuasion: one that

160  Audience Sensitivity instills beliefs only, and one that instills knowledge, and it seems that rhetoric, as practiced by Gorgias and his ilk, is of the former sort. Griswold observes, “The analogy of this argument to the critique of poetry is already clear; in both cases, Socrates wants to argue that the speaker is not a truth speaker, and does not convey knowledge to his audience” (2016, sect. 4). Instead, Socrates proposes that the rhetorician aims to produce a pleasure in the audience that is a cheap, false imitation of knowledge. In this way, rhetoric comes to be related to justice in the way that cookery is related to medicine or that cosmetics is related to gymnastics. Whereas in each case the latter arts are true forms of caring aimed at appropriate goods—whether for the body or for the soul—the former are not, but merely pretend to be. The rhetorician thus pretends to care for the recipients of their communication in the way that an appropriately caring communicator does, but is in reality only concerned with “producing pleasure in the audience and the pleasures of power” for themselves (ibid). Socrates’s attack on rhetoric is not an attack on rhetoric per se but an attack on the sort of rhetoric popularly practiced in his day. He in fact holds out hope for a true rhetoric, which is ultimately synonymous with philosophy. This true rhetoric is the art of speaking or communicating. Socrates summarizes the requirement for artful speech in the Phaedrus, where he argues that this involves both knowledge of the subject matter of the speech as well as—and more importantly for our purposes— appropriate fitting of one’s speech to one’s audience. He says: A man must know the truth about all the particular things of which he speaks or writes, and must be able to define everything separately; then when he has defined them, he must know how to divide them by classes until further division is impossible; and in the same way he must understand the nature of the soul, [277c] must find out the class of speech adapted to each nature, and must arrange and adorn his discourse accordingly, offering to the complex soul elaborate and harmonious discourses, and simple talks to the simple soul. Until he has attained to all this, he will not be able to speak by the method of art. (277 b–c) The true rhetorician, the artful communicator, is one who takes care both to know that of which they speak and those with whom they are speaking, and fits what they speak to those with whom they speak so as to lead the latter toward knowledge. As such, Socrates’s ideal of the artful communicator appears to incorporate within it something very closely approximating our virtue of audience sensitivity, and is sharply contrasted with the opposing ideal of vicious rhetoric or sophistry, which

Audience Sensitivity  161 is a manipulative enterprise not oriented toward fostering its recipients’ epistemic well-being, despite its pretence of doing so. In contrast to Plato, contemporary philosophers have taken very little interest in the subjects of rhetoric or of artful speech more generally. A notable emerging exception is research on the philosophy of argumentation and informal logic. Here some authors, especially Christopher Tindale (2013, 2015), have begun to advocate for the importance of attending to one’s audience in constructing arguments, out of aims to advance their epistemic interests. This kind of proposal sits very well also with the recent development of virtue argumentation theory and its interest in identifying the virtues and vices of argument (for an overview, see Aberdein and Cohen 2016). Audience sensitivity may seem a good candidate for a virtue of argumentation, and vices opposed to it would include sophistry of the kind vilified by Plato. Yet one thing that our discussion of Plato’s attack on sophistry and rhetoric reveals is that we might also hope for philosophers to broaden their attention beyond arguments to artful or virtuous communication more generally. Doing so will involve returning to consider the kinds of issues that were central for Plato in his juxtaposition of philosophy and rhetoric— issues also central for understanding the nature of audience sensitivity as a virtue. Considering these issues helps to highlight that the virtuously audience sensitive fit their communications to their audiences, but not in the way characteristic of vicious rhetoric or sophistry. They do so with the aim characteristic of the philosopher for Plato: that of advancing their audiences’ epistemic well-being. And this makes all the difference.

References Aberdein, Andrew and Daniel Cohen. 2016. “Introduction: Virtues and Arguments.” Topoi 35, 2: 339–43. Baehr, Jason. 2011. The Inquiring Mind: On Intellectual Virtues and Virtue Epistemology. New York: Oxford University Press. Braaten, Jane. 1990. “Towards a Feminist Reassessment of Intellectual Virtue.” Hypatia 5, 3: 1–14. Daukas, Nancy. 2019. “Feminist Virtue Epistemology.” In The Routledge Handbook of Virtue Epistemology, ed. Heather Battaly, 379–91. New York: Routledge. Davis, Mark. 1980. “A Multidimensional Approach to Individual Differences in Empathy.” JSAS Catalog of Selected Documents in Psychology 10, 85. Davis, Mark. 1983. “Measuring Individual Differences in Empathy: Evidence for a Multidimensional Approach.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 44: 113–26. Fenigstein, Allan, Michael F. Scheier, and Arnold H. Buss. 1975. “Public and Private Self-Consciousness: Assessment and Theory.” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 43, 4: 522–7.

162  Audience Sensitivity Fricker, Miranda. 2007. Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Grimm, Stephen. 2019. “Understanding as an Intellectual Virtue.” In The Routledge Handbook of Virtue Epistemology, ed. Heather Battaly, 340–51. New York: Routledge. Griswold, Charles. 2016. “Plato on Rhetoric and Poetry.” In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward Zalta. Available at https://plato.stanford. edu/entries/plato-rhetoric/ Kvanvig, Jonathan. 2018. Faith and Humility. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Medina, José. 2013. The Epistemology of Resistance. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Riggs, Wayne. 2019. “Open-Mindedness.” In The Routledge Handbook of Virtue Epistemology, ed. Heather Battaly, 141–54. New York: Routledge. Tindale, Christopher. 2013. “Rhetorical Argumentation and the Nature of Audience: Toward an Understanding of Audience—Issues in Argumentation.” Philosophy and Rhetoric 46, 4: 508–32. Tindale, Christopher. 2015. The Philosophy of Argument and Audience Reception. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

8

Epistemic Guidance

We turn now to a final, fifth candidate for a virtue of intellectual dependability—epistemic guidance. Like the virtue of audience sensitivity examined in the previous chapter, epistemic guidance has a proximate focus on both features of dependent inquirers and features of its possessor. Yet the features that are its primary focus in each case are different from those that are the focus with audience sensitivity. Whereas the virtuously audience sensitive attend to the features of others liable to influence how their communications are received, and on this basis fit their communications to others so as to promote others’ epistemic goods, virtuous epistemic guides attend primarily to the dynamics of others’ inquiries, and on this basis offer aid to others in making decisions in their inquiries that will advance their epistemic goods. While all of the virtues of intellectual dependability, and indeed virtues more generally, likely require a level of maturity typically only afforded to those with a broad relevant basis in life experience, this is especially true of epistemic guidance. For the epistemic guide must have a broad knowledge of the dynamics of inquiry and the kinds of aid suitable to dependent inquirers in various circumstances of inquiry and with various aims in inquiry, and this type of knowledge is typically only gained via sustained participation in communal inquiry. Indeed, as we will see further below, and as may already be anticipated by the reader, there is a close relationship between epistemic guidance and wisdom in both this respect and other respects. I will again follow my established pattern from previous chapters by beginning with a guiding conceptualization of epistemic guidance in Section 1, followed by comparing this virtue with similar virtues in Section 2 and contrasting it with opposing vices in Section 3.

1 A Guiding Conceptualization of Epistemic Guidance As we observed in Chapter 1, inquiry is a dynamic process that can involve decision-making. An inquirer may make decisions about which questions or topics to pursue in inquiry, about which evidence to take into account, and about how to evaluate this evidence. Even if final

164  Epistemic Guidance outputs of inquiry such as the beliefs the inquirer forms are not under the direct voluntary control of the inquirer,1 many of these other aspects of inquiry often are to one degree or another. And, even in some cases where conscious, voluntary decisions about these matters are not made by the inquirer in the moment, the inquirer may have developed patterns of inquiry exhibited in their current conduct through previous voluntary decisions, and they may be capable of exercising their agency in their current conduct even if they do not happen to do so in a particular case. In the space of inquiry, then, there is significant scope for decision-making. The decisions one makes—or fails to make—in inquiry can make a difference for the epistemic goods one gains or foregoes in inquiry. The decisions of inquiry involve epistemic risks and rewards. By attending to this question, one may need to postpone attending to that other question. By attending to this body of evidence, one may gain a more thoroughly informed view and may be able to advance one’s understanding. Yet doing so may come at the cost of postponing forming a firm judgment on the matter and launching further inquiry that depends on having settled the matter in this case. Inferences can be formed on the basis of different patterns of reasoning with distinct strengths and vulnerabilities. Even the way one weighs distinct aims of inquiry may be subject to deliberation and decision. A person who is virtuously motivated to promote others’ epistemic goods in the way characteristic of intellectual benevolence may notice these features of inquiry. They may come to recognize that, given the significance of these potential decisions involved in others’ inquiries, one way to contribute toward advancing others’ epistemic goods is by influencing the dynamic conduct of their inquiries. If well-positioned to do so, a person may be able to advance others’ epistemic well-being by offering them aid in making decisions in inquiry. The virtue of epistemic guidance, as I am conceptualizing it here, is just such a tendency to offer others aid in making decisions in their inquiries out of a motivation to promote their epistemic goods. Like the other virtues of intellectual dependability we have surveyed in the previous three chapters, epistemic guidance involves a distinctive proximate motivation and a distinctive set of skills. Epistemic guidance shares with intellectual benevolence an ultimate motivation to advance others’ epistemic goods, where this motivation involves not only overtly motivational but also complementary affective and cognitive features. The epistemic guide judges it good for others to gain epistemic goods and for themselves to aid others in gaining these; they tend to delight in others’ attainment of epistemic goods and in their own contributions toward helping others gain these; and they are motivated to promote others’ epistemic well-being. Yet, distinctively, epistemic guidance requires a proximate motivation to promote others’ epistemic goods specifically via aiding them in making decisions in inquiry that advance

Epistemic Guidance  165 their epistemic well-being. Along with their overt motivation to promote others’ epistemic goods via aiding their decision-making in inquiry, the epistemic guide tends to judge it good to promote others’ epistemic well-being in this way, and they tend to experience positive affect when they aid others in making good decisions in inquiry and negative affect when they fail in doing so. As such, epistemic guidance is a subordinate virtue to intellectual benevolence, the characteristic reasons of which ascend to the reasons characteristic of intellectual benevolence. Epistemic guidance is intellectual benevolence specialized to the sphere of influencing the dynamic conduct of others’ inquiries. The skills required by epistemic guidance are not trivial. In order to offer others excellent aid in making decisions in their inquiries, the epistemic guide must have a strong grasp of the characteristic aims and decision-points of inquiries in general, must have a strong grasp of the types of aid that can be offered to dependent inquirers to assist with this decision-making, must be attentive to the unfolding of the inquiries of their particular dependent inquirers and to the aims of these inquirers, and must tend to fit the aid they offer to the particularities of these others and their inquiries. I will comment briefly on each of these features. First, the epistemic guide has a strong grasp of the dynamics of inquiry in general. They understand that there are various legitimate epistemic aims in inquiry, such as those of gaining true belief or understanding. They have a strong grasp of the comparative values of these aims where there are clear facts about these comparative values, and they also recognize that inquirers may reasonably differ in their weighting of some of these aims (cf. Riggs 2008; Kelly 2014). They understand that the conduct of inquiry involves distinguishable processes such as question generation, evidence gathering, and evidence evaluation. They understand, moreover, that these processes can be conducted in different ways, more or less self-consciously, in accordance with a variety of patterns. For example, they understand that questions can be formulated more or less precisely, evidence can be gathered more or less thoroughly and more or less fairly, and it can be evaluated in accordance with various established patterns of reasoning with their own risks and vulnerabilities, including those characteristic of various biases, intellectual virtues, and intellectual vices. The epistemic guide not only has a grasp of these different decision-points in inquiry, but they grasp how different decisions made at these decision-points tend to influence the epistemic rewards or risks that inquiry affords. They have a thorough familiarity with the situations characteristically faced in inquiry. They know how to locate themselves in the dynamics of inquiry, and they are astute at identifying and evaluating the various possible avenues available through decisions in inquiry. The epistemic guide’s knowledge of the dynamics of inquiry is not merely an abstract knowledge. The epistemic guide also attends to

166  Epistemic Guidance the particularities of the unfolding inquiries of their particular dependent inquirers. They are attentive to the different aims their dependent inquirers may have in their inquiries and to how these inquirers weigh distinct aims in inquiry. They are attentive to the processes of inquiry these inquirers have engaged in and are engaging in. They are attentive to the patterns these inquirers have employed in conducting these processes of inquiry, the patterns they are employing in conducting these processes, and the patterns they could employ. They are astute at identifying the various possible avenues available to their dependent inquirers through the decisions they could make in their inquiries, and they are skilled in evaluating how these avenues may influence these inquirers’ attainment of their legitimate aims in inquiry. The epistemic guide’s knowledge of the dynamics of inquiry in general and their tendency to attend to the unfolding of their dependent inquirers’ inquiries positions them well to offer these inquirers aid in making decisions in inquiry. Yet there is still further skill required in offering this aid. 2 The epistemic guide must be knowledgeable about the kinds of aid that can be given to inquirers in their decision-making in inquiry, and must know how to offer these different kinds of aid. They will know, for example, that dependent inquirers’ decisions may be advanced in some cases via highlighting for these inquirers the different possibilities that their different potential decisions would afford for their inquiries. They will know that these decisions may sometimes be advanced through encouraging or discouraging specific conduct, through offering praise or blame or through directing the attention of dependent inquirers to the exemplary or deficient conduct of other inquirers. They will know that in some cases it may be best to effectively make others’ decisions in inquiry for them, interfering with and even bypassing their epistemic agency in the manner characteristic of epistemic paternalism—for example, by withholding evidence from them. Finally, in a similar way to how the epistemic guide must not only grasp inquiry in general but must grasp the particularity of the unfolding of their dependent inquirers’ inquiries, they must not only grasp the kinds of aid that can be offered to others in their decision-making in inquiry but they must fit the particular aid they offer to the particular others who depend on them. The epistemic guide, with their strong grasp of the dynamics of inquiry in general, of the types of aid that can be offered to others in their decision-making in inquiry, and with attentiveness to the particularity of their particular dependent inquirers’ inquiries, will tend to offer others aid in making decisions in their inquiries that advances their epistemic well-being. Where others are well-positioned to exercise their epistemic agency responsibly, this will typically take the form of helping others to grasp for themselves the various possibilities afforded to them by different decisions they may make in their inquiries, or of helping others to evaluate these possibilities in light of their own

Epistemic Guidance  167 reasonable aims in inquiry, or of providing these others with encouragement or discouragement of various forms regarding particular decisions. Yet in some cases where others are not well-positioned to exercise their epistemic agency responsibly, the epistemic guide may interfere more paternalistically in their dependent inquirers’ decision-making in inquiry in order to advance their epistemic well-being.3 Which sort of aid they offer to their particular dependent inquirers will be selected on the basis of the guide’s informed judgment regarding how well it will advance this particular dependent inquirer’s epistemic goods in this particular situation. The terminology of “guidance” seems apt for this virtue in a number of ways. One paradigm of a guide is that of a person with extensive knowledge of a territory less familiar to others who can aid these others in navigating the territory so as to achieve well their own reasonable aims. One might hire such a guide when visiting a new location in which one takes an interest. One may have an idea of landmarks one wishes to visit in this territory but be unsure of how best to go about finding one’s way to these, or in which order to visit them and at what time, and so forth. The guide here can offer “guidance” in the sense of counsel regarding what to do in order to achieve the traveler’s legitimate aims. They can also exercise a stronger influence in certain cases, “guiding” the traveler by removing certain possibilities from their route, bypassing their agency in making these decisions on their behalf. A similar kind of guidance can be a great benefit to us in conducting our inquiries. In this case too, the virtuous epistemic guide knows the lay of the land of inquiry and can offer both the counsel of guidance and a guiding influence that promote our attainment of our own reasonably selected aims in inquiry. The virtuous epistemic guide is someone who is excellent at showing us how to get where we legitimately want to go in our inquiries, or where we should want to go.

2 Epistemic Guidance and Similar Virtues As already anticipated in the introduction to this chapter, one virtue that is similar to epistemic guidance, and the one on which I will concentrate here, is the virtue of wisdom. More exactly, my focus here will be primarily on a type of wisdom that some authors have called “intellectual practical wisdom.” While there remains controversy among philosophers about the nature and value of practical wisdom in general, there is fairly broad agreement about some of its characteristic features (see Russell 2009, ch.1). Practical wisdom is practical in the sense that it concerns what to do. Indeed, following Aristotle, it is the excellence of deliberation, the aim of which is deciding what to do in accordance with reason. Practical wisdom, moreover, has been conceived as a central ingredient both in

168  Epistemic Guidance each other individual virtue and in the life of the overall virtuous person. It is a central ingredient in each other individual virtue, in part, because it involves knowledge of how to achieve the aims of each other individual virtue in particular contexts, and a tendency to decide what to do in accordance with this knowledge. It is a central ingredient in the life of the overall virtuous person, in part, because it performs an integrative function of balancing the various potentially competing aims of the other individual virtues, enabling its possessor to identify how best to achieve an adequate balance of these various aims in a given context. Practical wisdom is paradigmatically exercised in circumstances involving some uncertainty regarding what to do in which there are distinctive risks and benefits associated with various possible courses of action. Practical wisdom can thus be described as incorporating a tendency to engage in excellent deliberation and decision-making regarding how to achieve an adequate balance of good aims in one’s conduct. Historically, following Aristotle, a rather sharp distinction has been drawn between practical wisdom so understood and a certain kind of theoretical wisdom. The latter has tended to be conceptualized as a complex epistemic state, rather than as a virtuous tendency. The relevant epistemic state might involve possessing detailed knowledge or thorough understanding, perhaps of foundational principles, and may be relative to particular domains of study (cf. Baehr 2012). Yet recently several virtue epistemologists have begun to draw attention to a variety of intellectual or theoretical wisdom that is much more similar to practical wisdom as previously described. A key ingredient for understanding their conception of intellectual practical wisdom has already been supplied in the previous section, and indeed in Chapter 1 of this book. This ingredient is the idea that inquiry involves dynamic conduct incorporating deliberation and decision-making. This deliberation and decision-making, moreover, as suggested in the previous section, aims at achieving an adequate balance of legitimate epistemic aims, reasonably weighted relative to one another. Because inquiry involves these features, it is an arena that falls within the purview of practical wisdom as conceptualized above. Just as there may be an excellence of deliberation and decision-making regarding how to achieve an adequate balance of good aims in one’s conduct generally, there may be an excellence of deliberation and decision-making regarding how to achieve an adequate balance of legitimate epistemic aims in one’s inquiries in particular. This excellence is intellectual practical wisdom. It is in very much this vein that Robert Roberts and Jay Wood (2007) and Jason Baehr (2012) describe intellectual practical wisdom. Roberts and Wood claim that “Intellectual practical wisdom is just practical wisdom narrowed toward the intellectual goods” (310). Whereas practical wisdom in general is “a power of deliberation—of figuring out how to accomplish what is good” (310) and is “a power to judge of particulars”

Epistemic Guidance  169 (306), intellectual practical wisdom is a power of deliberation in inquiry and is “good judgment in intellectual practices” (305). Practical wisdom has a home in the life of inquiry because inquiry involves investigations, and “investigations are obviously practices, richly various voluntary activities in which we make a difference, by our actions, in what we and others know” (307). On Roberts and Wood’s conception, intellectual practical wisdom is a component of each other intellectual virtue, enabling its possessor to discern how to achieve the aims of each individual virtue in particular contexts: “each of the virtues has its own department of practical wisdom” (311). Yet intellectual practical wisdom also performs an integrative function. They write, Practical wisdom consists in . . . the unification of all these patterns [characteristic of the individual intellectual virtues], a facility for switching from one to another as occasion requires, for blending the considerations characteristic of one virtue with those of others, and for adjudicating between the different appeals of virtues when they seem to conflict. (311) In a similar way, Jason Baehr maintains that the person who possesses generic practical wisdom is “one who knows how to deliberate and act well; this person is good at balancing competing values and applying moral principles to challenging and novel situations . . . but is also able and willing to conduct himself accordingly” (92). Yet Baehr also recognizes that this kind of tendency has a place in the life of inquiry: “practical wisdom extends into various aspects or dimensions of the cognitive life—[it] is sometimes deployed in deliberation about and the pursuit of distinctively epistemic goods or values” (87). He therefore proposes a “competence conception” of theoretical wisdom according to which the latter is thought of as “constituting one dimension or application of practical wisdom” (90). Theoretical wisdom, so understood, “would amount to a cognitive ability that enables its possessor, say, to reliably identify choiceworthy epistemic ends or subject matters, and to quickly and efficiently arrive at a deep explanatory understanding of them” (89). It should already be clear that there are several dimensions of overlap between intellectual practical wisdom so conceptualized and epistemic guidance as described in the previous section. Both virtues have as their primary focus deliberation and decision-making in the processes of inquiry. They are concerned with exercising good judgment in the decisions involved in inquiry, and they require a broad knowledge of the dynamics of inquiry in general and attentiveness to the particularities of inquiries. Both likewise require knowing how to achieve aims of inquiry in specific circumstances. And both require an ability to weigh well and to balance competing aims in inquiry when they conflict.

170  Epistemic Guidance The main difference between intellectual practical wisdom and epistemic guidance is that epistemic guidance, unsurprisingly, has as its focus decision-making in others’ inquiries, whereas intellectual practical wisdom appears to be concerned primarily with decision-making in one’s own inquiries. We can of course imagine a more expansive conception of intellectual practical wisdom which incorporates this distinctively other-regarding aspect of epistemic guidance. We might say that intellectual practical wisdom, when possessed in its fullness, requires epistemic guidance. Some of Roberts and Wood’s comments about intellectual practical wisdom suggest they may be sympathetic toward this view; it is less clear that Baehr is thinking in these terms. Yet, in much the way that, as argued in Chapter 4, it may be worthwhile to distinguish between the self-regarding love of epistemic goods and intellectual benevolence because these may arise out of different foundational motivations in human personality, it may likewise be worthwhile to distinguish between a self-oriented intellectual practical wisdom and epistemic guidance. In part because these traits may arise out of different basic motivations in human personality, it seems conceivable that a person may attain being a wise inquirer but not a wise guide of others’ inquiries, and perhaps vice versa. Even if these traits are distinguished in this way, there remains a close connection between them. Wisdom tends to enable a person to offer excellent guidance—and this fact is often recognized. Linda Zagzebski (2017), for instance, in her work on exemplar sages, notes that “Wise persons are admired in the area of practical judgment; they are often consulted by other persons who want advice; and they may be asked to settle disputes” (91). Yet Zagzebski distinguishes between features that make people wise and features that help us to identify people as wise. She suggests that the propensities to offer counsel of the sort just identified, and to settle disputes, “are simply features that we can use to find wise persons in advance of investigating them. The features that make them wise will presumably be deeper features that explain the easily observable features” (92). A similar suggestion in this vein that I think Zagzebski may be sympathetic with is that the features highlighted above in the area of overlap between intellectual practical wisdom and epistemic guidance are good candidates for the deep features that explain what makes a person intellectually practically wise, while the features distinctive of epistemic guidance may help us to identify people who are intellectually practically wise and they also help explain what makes a person a wise epistemic guide. I want to conclude this section by briefly noting how the work that some philosophers and scientists have done to fill in the details of the know-how characteristic of practical wisdom can help us to further illuminate the nature of epistemic guidance. I have spoken somewhat

Epistemic Guidance  171 ­

172  Epistemic Guidance in understanding the skills characteristic of practical wisdom. With Valerie Tiberius, he summarizes these skills as comprising five component abilities: Intuitive ability: an expert is often able to identify what she ought to do quickly, effortlessly, and without conscious deliberation. Deliberative ability: an expert is able to use slow, effortful, consciously accessible processes to search for and evaluate what she ought to do when an intuitive identification is lacking or inadequate. Meta-cognitive ability: an expert is able to identify when and how to rely on intuition and deliberation. Self-regulative ability: an expert is able to identify how to affect her environment, behavior, affect, and motivations so that she can successfully do what she has identified she ought to do. Self-cultivation ability: an expert is able to identify how to tailor her practice and experience in order to make her intuitive, deliberative, and self-regulative abilities even more reliable over the long-run. (2019: 34) Where Grimm proposed that practical wisdom consists in knowing how to live well, we might take Smartwood’s suggestion to be that practical wisdom consists in being an expert at living well. And where Grimm helped us to appreciate some of the complexity of the know-how characteristic of practical wisdom, Smartwood likewise helps us appreciate the complexity of the expertise characteristic of practical wisdom. Moreover, as we applied Grimm’s ideas to intellectual practical wisdom and epistemic guidance, we can do the same in this case. Here the application is that both intellectual practical wisdom and epistemic guidance involve intuitive, deliberative, meta-cognitive, self-regulative, and self-cultivative abilities concerned with discerning what to do in one’s own or others’ inquiries, with doing what one has decided to do, and with developing one’s own capacities for further excellence in these areas. The epistemic guide, like the expert firefighter, will often know how to offer others aid in making decisions in inquiry without conscious deliberation, but will also be capable of engaging in deliberation about how to help them when an intuitive evaluation is lacking, will be a good judge of when and how to rely on intuitive or deliberative processes, and will be able to put into effective action their judgments regarding how to aid others’ decisions in inquiry. Less than ten years ago, Jason Baehr could write that “The concept of wisdom is largely ignored by contemporary philosophers” (2012: 81)— and other authors around the same time or earlier could claim the same. Thankfully, this has become increasingly less so, and—allowing myself to be a bit optimistic here—it seems we are steadily learning a good deal about wisdom as this scholarship expands. Because epistemic guidance

Epistemic Guidance  173 is a kind of distinctively other-regarding equivalent of a unique subspecies of wisdom—intellectual practical wisdom—I suggest there is much we may learn about the latter as we learn more about the former. Epistemic guidance is not the same thing as practical wisdom or intellectual practical wisdom, but there is substantial overlap between these in the kinds of skills they characteristically involve. Just as there is a kind of wisdom of inquiring, there is a wisdom of guiding others’ inquiries. The latter is the virtue of epistemic guidance.

3 Epistemic Guidance and Opposing Vices The nature of epistemic guidance and its place in the life of the intellectually dependable person can likewise be illuminated through a consideration of opposing vices. Here as elsewhere in Part II my focus is on intellectual character vices that tend to lead their possessors to engage in patterns of behavior in significant tension with those patterns characteristic of the focal virtue in question—in this case epistemic guidance. We can begin to identify some of the vices opposed to epistemic guidance by observing that epistemic guidance does seem to involve hitting a certain mean, like many other virtues do. Acting as an epistemic guide involves in a certain way being willing to get into others’ business— specifically, their business of making decisions in inquiry. Yet, in contrast to the virtuous epistemic guide whose involvement in others’ decisions in inquiry is motivated by their concern to promote others’ overall epistemic well-being, we may imagine other types of character that involve being either too eager to get into others’ business in inquiry or too averse toward doing so. These characters involve tendencies to exercise too strong an influence over others’ conduct in inquiry or too weak an influence. Epistemic guidance hits the mean. On the extreme of exercising too strong an influence over others’ decisions in inquiry is the vicious epistemic paternalist. I suggested in my discussion of the nature of epistemic guidance that the epistemic guide may sometime guide others’ decisions in inquiry by interfering with their inquiries in a paternalistic manner. Yet it is important to recognize that while this sort of action may sometimes be taken by a virtuous epistemic guide, it does come with costs pertaining to the dependent inquirer’s epistemic autonomy (Pritchard 2013; Bullock 2016). The epistemic guide is sensitive to these costs, valuing dependent inquirers’ development of epistemic autonomy among other elements of their epistemic well-being. Yet some people may not share this value stance with the epistemic guide. They are too ready to interfere with others’ epistemic autonomy. They are too strongly motivated to make others’ decisions in inquiry for them out of a motivation to ensure that others attain certain other values in their inquiries. If well-positioned to help others attain these other values, they may help these others attain certain epistemic

174  Epistemic Guidance goods. But in doing so they cost their dependent inquirers a price that the epistemic guide would not be willing to pay that causes greater injury to their longer-term epistemic well-being. They are insufficiently patient with dependent inquirers. Vicious epistemic paternalism, we should observe, is not the only sort of vice that may lead a person to exercise too strong an influence over others’ decisions in inquiry. At least the vicious paternalist is motivated by others’ epistemic goods—they just have an imbalance in their prioritizing of others’ epistemic goods. Yet others may be motivated to exercise too strong an influence on others’ decisions in inquiry just because they enjoy exercising this influence—regardless of whether in so doing they promote any epistemic goods for these others. This sort of personality is similar to the social vigilante discussed in Chapter 4. It’s just that their focus is somewhat broader—they are interested in influencing others’ conduct in inquiry more broadly and not only the conclusions others end up making. On the other extreme, that of tending to exercise too weak an influence over others’ decisions in inquiry, are those who are too strongly averse to involving themselves in others’ business—particularly their business in inquiry. A person may be excessively motivated to avoid any sort of potential conflict with fellow inquirers that their attempts to influence others’ decisions in inquiry could involve. Even if well-positioned to aid others in making good decisions in their inquiries, such a person may be overly hesitant to do so out of a concern that any such attempt may be perceived as meddlesome or condescending and may lead to relational conflict. They may fail to see legitimate opportunities to benefit others by guiding their decisions in inquiry when these arise, instead perceiving these as more tainted with risk than they in fact are. While a person can miss the mark of virtuous epistemic guidance by exercising either too strong or too weak an influence over others’ decision-making in inquiry, they can also miss this mark by influencing others’ decisions in inquiry in particular patterned ways. We observed previously that part of what is involved in the virtue of epistemic guidance is appreciating how dependent inquirers weigh epistemic goods themselves, and tailoring one’s influence on others’ decisions in inquiry to how these others weigh these goods. A person may miss the mark of epistemic guidance by failing on this score. They may, for instance, be motivated to guide others to conduct their inquiries in the way they themselves would, given their own weighting of epistemic values. While the difference here is a subtle one, it is worth noting. Epistemic guidance is not a tendency to lead fellow inquirers to make the decisions in inquiry that one would make for oneself in their circumstances. It is instead a tendency to aid others to make decisions in inquiry that will promote these others achieving a good balance of their own legitimate aims as inquirers.

Epistemic Guidance  175 The foregoing vices all involve problematic motivations focused on others’ inquiries, and as such they are in a certain way the kinds of vices most distinctively opposed to epistemic guidance. Yet the overlap between epistemic guidance and (intellectual) practical wisdom we observed in the previous subsection suggests that additional candidates for vices opposed to epistemic guidance will include vices also opposed to these latter virtues. Of special interest here are vices that oppose these traits because they oppose what these traits share in common. We saw in the previous subsection that practical wisdom and epistemic guidance share in common a focus on excellent deliberation, particularly in circumstances in which legitimate aims may conflict or in which the pathways toward achieving legitimate aims are somewhat unclear. As Smartwood put it, practical wisdom involves excellence in making decisions under circumstances that are complex and demanding. Yet some features of character focus problematically on precisely these features in such a way as to undermine wisdom in general or epistemic guidance in particular. One construct focusing on these features that has received extensive attention from psychologists is the need for closure. The need for closure is characterized as “the desire of completing the epistemic process” (Roets 2018: 40) or “the individual’s desire for a firm answer to a question and an aversion toward ambiguity” (Kruglanski and Webster 1996: 264). People high in the need for closure have a strong motivation to quickly reach and stick with a decision. Their need for closure is facilitated by two tendencies called “seizing” and “freezing.” As Roets explains, the former tendency “denotes an inclination to seize quickly on information that promises to bring about closure”; it helps to explain why those with strong need for closure “may often leap to conclusions based on partial or inconclusive information sampling and hypothesis generation” (40). The latter tendency refers to “the inclination to maintain closure by holding on to, or freezing the acquired knowledge” through a process that “immunizes [acquired knowledge] against contradictory information” (ibid). Hundreds of empirical articles have revealed the basic behavioral outcomes of high need for closure. Roets summarizes these findings as follows: high levels of NFC [need for closure] generally lead people to reach conclusions quickly and often prematurely (cf. seizing) based on cognitive heuristics, and to display heightened resistance to alter these conclusions once made (cf. freezing), often by neglecting contradictory information. (42–3) Two of the five facets of the need for closure as commonly measured are especially interesting to compare with epistemic guidance and wisdom

176  Epistemic Guidance more generally. These are decisiveness and aversion to ambiguity. The decisiveness facet measures an individual’s motivation to reach a decision quickly. Sample representative items include “When I am confronted with a problem, I’m dying to reach a solution very quickly” and “I almost always feel hurried to reach a decision, even when there is no reason to do so” (Roets and Van Hiel 2007). This facet is interesting to compare with wisdom and epistemic guidance because of the way that it would presumably operate in the contexts highlighted above in which wisdom and epistemic guidance characteristically operate— contexts of complexity and challenge. A highly decisive person in these contexts would be strongly motivated to reach decisions—on their behalf or on others’ behalf—quickly. Yet this tendency is likely to conflict with wisdom and epistemic guidance. It’s not that the wise person or the epistemic guide never makes decisions quickly; we saw with Smartwood’s work that part of the wise person’s expertise is an intuitive ability to identify how to act quickly. The conflict is rather that the decisive person relies excessively on intuitive processing. They lack the patience and perhaps the ability necessary to engage in the deliberative reasoning that is also characteristic of expert decision-makers. They are motivated to avoid engaging in this kind of deliberative process. But by being motivated to avoid this sort of process, they are motivated to avoid behaving in a way that constitutes an important component of wisdom, and likewise epistemic guidance. Similar remarks apply to the construct of aversion to ambiguity. Aversion to ambiguity is both a facet of need for closure and a construct of independent interest. When it is conceptualized independently, it is conceptualized as what it sounds like—simply an aversion to ambiguity. Those who are highly averse to ambiguity are put off by finding themselves in ambiguous circumstances, seek to avoid these, or seek to exit from them as quickly as possible if found in them. By way of illustration, McLain’s (2009) widely used measure of ambiguity tolerance includes the sample items “I would rather avoid solving a problem that must be viewed from several different perspectives” and “I find it hard to make a choice when the outcome is uncertain.” As the reader will by now anticipate, this sort of intolerance or aversion to ambiguity will work to undermine wisdom and epistemic guidance, given the kinds of circumstances in which the latter characteristically operate. A person who strongly seeks to avoid ambiguous situations will thereby avoid the kinds of situations in which these virtues characteristically operate. And a person who is put off by and stunted by the ambiguity characteristic of these circumstances will not be able to act with the skill and equanimity characteristic of wisdom. Considering these opposing vices helps to illuminate some of the preconditions for the virtue of epistemic guidance. To possess the virtue of epistemic guidance, a person cannot be too averse to ambiguous situations, nor have too strong a motivation to reach and retain decisions.

Epistemic Guidance  177 Specifically, they cannot be too averse to encountering situations of other inquirers in which there is ambiguity about best courses of action for these inquirers’ inquiries, and they cannot be too strongly motivated to quickly settle on a decision about which guidance to offer (if any) when considering such inquirers. Instead, the virtue of epistemic guidance will be supported by a tolerance for ambiguity, especially in others’ inquiries, and by a concern to offer wise counsel to others whether that counsel can be identified via intuitive processes or whether it requires slower deliberative processes. The epistemic guide must be at home with the challenging and complex nature of inquiry—especially others’ inquiries. This is where their virtue must do its most distinctive work.

Notes 1 For more on this topic, see the literature on doxastic voluntarism, e.g., (Chignell 2018, sect. 3.4). 2 In this epistemic case, as in the case of giving aid more generally, not all aid is equal. For a review of recent research on different kinds of helping behavior, see (Nadler 2012). 3 For further discussion of the conditions under which epistemic paternalism may be justified, see (Axtel and Bernal 2020). Michel Croce (2018) also offers a helpful discussion of epistemic paternalism that stresses the significance of other-regarding epistemic virtues for paternalistic interference. While I think he goes too far in claiming that possessing and exercising such virtues is necessary for paternalistic interference to be justified (I think it may be justified, for example, when the would-be-interferer has sufficient reason for thinking the interference is permissible and is the best available course of action), I am in hearty agreement with him about the way in which these virtues can play an important role in regulating the conduct of paternalistic interference.

References Axtel, Guy and Amiel Bernal, eds. 2020. Epistemic Paternalism: Conceptions, Justifications, and Implications. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Baehr, Jason. 2012. “Two Types of Wisdom.” Acta Analytica 27: 81–97. Bullock, Emma. 2016. “Knowing and Not-Knowing for Your Own Good: The Limits of Epistemic Paternalism.” Journal of Applied Philosophy 35, 2: 433–47. Chignell, Andrew. 2018. “The Ethics of Belief.” In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward Zalta. Available at plato.stanford.edu/entries/ ethics-belief/ Croce, Michel. 2018. “Epistemic Paternalism and the Service Conception of Epistemic Authority.” Metaphilosophy 49, 3: 305–27. Grimm, Stephen. 2015. “Wisdom.” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 93, 1: 139–54. Kelly, Thomas. 2014. “Evidence Can Be Permissive.” In Contemporary Debates in Epistemology, eds. Matthias Steup, John Turri, and Ernest Sosa, 298–311. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

178  Epistemic Guidance Kruglanski, Arie W. and Donna M. Webster. 1996. “Motivated Closing of the Mind: ‘Seizing’ and ‘Freezing.’” Psychological Review 103, 2: 263–83. McLain, David. 2009. “Evidence of the Properties of an Ambiguity Tolerance Measure: The Multiple Stimulus Types Ambiguity Tolerance Scale—II (MSTAT-II).” Psychological Reports 105, 3: 975–88. Nadler, Arie. 2012. “From Help-Giving to Helping Relations: Belongingness and Independence in Social Interaction.” In The Oxford Handbook of Personality and Social Psychology, eds. Kay Deaux and Mark Snyder, 394–418. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pritchard, Duncan. 2013. “Epistemic Paternalism and Epistemic Value.” Philosophical Inquiries 1, 2: 9–37. Riggs, Wayne. 2008. “Epistemic Risk and Relativism.” Acta Analytica 23, 1: 1–8. Roberts, Robert and Jay Wood. 2007. Intellectual Virtues: An Essay in Regulative Epistemology. New York: Oxford University Press. Roets, Arne. 2018. “Three Decades of Need for Closure Research: About Epistemic Goals and (not) Means.” In The Motivation-Cognition Interfact: From the Lab to the Real World: A Festschrift in Honor of Arie W. Kruglanski, eds. Catalina E. Kopetz and Ayelet Fishbach, 39–55. Abingdon: Routledge. Roets, Arne and Alain Van Hiel. 2007. “Separating Ability from Need: Clarifying the Dimensional Structure of the Ned for Closure Scale.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 33, 2: 266–80. Russell, Daniel. 2009. Practical Intelligence and the Virtues. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Smartwood, Jason. 2013. “Wisdom as an Expert Skill.” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 16, 3: 511–28. Smartwood, Jason and Valerie Tiberius. 2019. “Philosophical Foundations of Wisdom.” In The Cambridge Handbook of Wisdom, eds. Robert Sternberg and Judith Gluck, 10–39. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zagzebski, Linda. 2017. Exemplarist Moral Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

9

Being Intellectually Dependable for Groups

This book began with the seemingly mundane observation that we are pervasively dependent on our fellow inquirers in our inquiries. This observation led to the book’s focal question of what it takes to be the sort of person on whom others can depend in their inquiries, and an answer to this question has been pursued through focusing on a neglected suite of virtues that contribute distinctively to making a person intellectually dependable. With a few exceptions, most of the discussion in the book so far could be read as giving the impression that the “others” in view here are always other isolated individual inquirers—that the focus of the book is on being the sort of person on whom one’s fellow individual inquirers can depend in their individual inquiries. Yet, however tempting it may be, this impression is misleading. For, just as it is a mundane truth that other individual inquirers may depend on us in their individual inquiries, it is an equally mundane truth that other groups of inquirers may depend on us in their collective practices of inquiry. Being intellectually dependable—being the sort of person on whom others can depend in their inquiries—must include being intellectually dependable when fellow groups of inquirers are dependent upon one, and not only when it is fellow individual inquirers depending on one in isolation. This chapter therefore turns to the question of what is distinctively involved in being intellectually dependable when one is depended upon by groups of inquirers and not only by individual inquirers in isolation. The chapter has three sections. In Section 1, I discuss an important objection to the account of intellectual dependability I have developed so far that focuses on how this account might accommodate a broad conception of epistemic agency. I argue that this objection can be answered in an appealing way if we clarify, as above, that the “others” who can depend on the intellectually dependable person include groups of inquirers and not only individual inquirers. In Section 2, I discuss the idea, strongly confirmed in the growing literature on collective epistemology, that the inquiry-relevant features of groups such as their beliefs and intellectual character traits can be importantly different from analogous inquiry-relevant features of individuals. Insofar as this idea is correct, it helps to illustrate the distinctive demands upon the

180  Being Intellectually Dependable for Groups intellectually dependable person when groups of inquirers depend upon them. In Section 3, I briefly illustrate how each of the five virtues of intellectual dependability that have been my focus in Part II of this text makes distinctive demands of its possessor when it is groups of inquirers rather than individual inquirers who are in the position of intellectual dependence. The three sections work together to illustrate both the importance of being intellectually dependable for groups of inquirers and some of the distinctive demands of being intellectually dependable for groups of inquirers.

1 Intellectual Dependability and a Broad Conception of Epistemic Agency Throughout this book, I have conceptualized intellectual dependability in terms of aiding others in their inquiries. And, more specifically, I have conceptualized aiding others in their inquiries as aiding others to achieve legitimate aims of inquiry, such as obtaining true beliefs, avoiding false beliefs, adopting rational attitudes, conducting inquiries in accordance with intellectual skill or virtue, and achieving understanding. Many contemporary epistemologists might summarize this idea by saying that my conceptualization focuses on aiding others in their exercise of epistemic agency. They would claim that what it is for a person to exercise their epistemic agency is for them to take steps to pursue exactly these kinds of aims in their inquiries (cf. Olson 2015). So, the intellectually dependable person could be thought of as the sort of person on whom others can depend to enhance their epistemic agency. Yet other epistemologists—perhaps a minority—might at this juncture raise an objection to the account of intellectual dependability I’ve offered. For they propose that epistemic agency includes much more than suggested here. For them, epistemic agency is characteristically exercised not only when one takes steps to pursue achieving the kinds of aims identified in the previous paragraph for oneself in one’s own inquiries, but it is also exercised when one contributes toward others’ attainment of such aims, and when one works with others to achieve such aims together. Thus, if being intellectually dependable only involves supporting fellow inquirers in attaining the aims of inquiry identified in the previous paragraph, then it cannot be identified with supporting others in exercising their epistemic agency. Key dimensions of others’ epistemic agency have been overlooked. The intellectually dependable person needs to be the sort of person on whom others can depend not only in their attempts to achieve the aims identified in the previous paragraph, but they need to be the sort of person on whom others can depend in their efforts to help others achieve such aims and in their efforts to work together with others to achieve such aims cooperatively.

Being Intellectually Dependable for Groups  181 One good recent example of an epistemologist who conceptualizes epistemic agency in the broader way that can give rise to this objection is Miranda Fricker (2007). Her widely discussed work on epistemic injustice includes a detailed treatment of a kind of epistemic injustice she calls testimonial injustice. Testimonial injustice occurs when a hearer accords insufficient credibility to a speaker on account of a prejudice they have regarding the latter’s social identity. What is important for us here is Fricker’s diagnosis of the harm involved in testimonial injustice. She proposes that in cases of testimonial injustice, the speaker is harmed as a knower or in their capacity as a knower. It’s not, however, that the speaker is injured in their capacity for attaining the aims of their own individual inquiries. Rather, they are injured in their capacity to contribute to the collective pursuit of knowledge. They are prevented from serving in the role of an informant (see especially Chapter 6). Fricker stresses that serving in the role of informant, contributing to collective practices of inquiry, is part of what it is to be a knower, and is part of what is involved in exercising one’s epistemic agency. Here she follows Edward Craig (1990), who argues that the original concept of knowledge was focused on precisely this sort of function. For Craig and Fricker, the original concept of one who knows was the concept of a person who can serve capably in the role of informant. Since this is what being a knower centrally involves, injuring a person’s ability to contribute to collective practices of inquiry is injuring them as a knower. Epistemic agency centrally involves contributing toward such practices. This broad conception of epistemic agency, to repeat, appears to raise a challenge to the conception of intellectual dependability that I have developed throughout this book. For, if being intellectually dependable involves only aiding others in the pursuit of achieving the aims of their own individual inquiries, then it does not include aiding others in contributing to collective practices of inquiry, and so does not include aiding others in exercising all dimensions of epistemic agency. Indeed, it doesn’t include aiding others in exercising the most central dimensions of epistemic agency. Somewhat paradoxically, being intellectually dependable doesn’t include aiding others to themselves be intellectually dependable for other others. I think this objection is an important one. What is most important about it is that it is surely correct in insisting that part of being intellectually dependable is being the sort of person on whom others can depend in their attempts to contribute to collective practices of inquiry. One way or another, the account of intellectual dependability needs to be developed in such a way as to accommodate this important function, even if we don’t agree with the view of Fricker and Craig that contributing to collective practices of inquiry is central to what it is to be a knower or to exercising one’s epistemic agency. Somehow the account of intellectual dependability must allow that part of what it is to be intellectually

182  Being Intellectually Dependable for Groups dependable is to be the sort of person on whom others can depend when they are seeking to be good informants—indeed, even when they are seeking to be intellectually dependable. Fortunately, there are multiple ways to accommodate this concern. The approach that I prefer involves appealing to the idea, central to this chapter, that it is not only individual inquirers but groups of inquirers that depend on us in their inquiries. Take a case in which a fellow inquirer is attempting to contribute to collective practices of inquiry— for example, by sharing their testimony with fellow inquirers in an effort to contribute to these others gaining knowledge. If this fellow inquirer is dependent upon you in these attempts—if there are ways you can help them to make the contributions they are aiming to make—then likewise the potential recipients of their testimony are dependent upon you. Indeed, both they and the recipients of their testimony are together dependent on you in this case. The group of inquirers as a whole is dependent upon you in their work of inquiry, and this dependence involves both the dependence of the testifier and the dependence of the potential recipients of testimony. The testifier and the recipients depend on you to facilitate the testimonial exchange, thereby enhancing their collective practice of inquiry. Now, imagine we stick with the original conception of what it is to be intellectually dependable. To be intellectually dependable is to be the sort of person on whom others can depend in their inquiries. Specifically, it is to be the sort of person on whom others can depend for aid in their pursuit of achieving legitimate aims in their inquiries, such as attaining true beliefs and gaining knowledge. Imagine now that we clarify, and indeed emphasize, that the “others” in view here include other groups of inquirers and not only other individual inquirers. Being intellectually dependable involves being dependable for dependent groups of inquirers and for dependent individual inquirers. Now return to the case we just considered. Given this clarified conception of what it takes to be intellectually dependable, it will follow that being intellectually dependable in this case will require being such that the group consisting of the testifier and the recipients of their testimony can depend on you for aid in their inquiry. But being such that this group can depend on you in this case will require being such that you can facilitate their testimonial exchange. And being such that you can facilitate their testimonial exchange requires that you can be depended upon by the testifier in their efforts to contribute to group practices of inquiry as well as by the recipients of this testimony in their pursuit of collective inquiry. The point generalizes. If being intellectually dependable includes being the sort of person on whom groups of inquirers can depend in their inquiries, then being intellectually dependable will include being the sort of person on whom fellow individual inquirers can depend in their efforts to contribute to collective practices of inquiry. For any case in which a

Being Intellectually Dependable for Groups  183 fellow inquirer is potentially engaged in contributing to collective practices of inquiry is a case in which there is a group of inquirers that is potentially engaged in inquiry. And if this fellow inquirer is dependent on you in making their contributions, then the group too will be dependent upon you in their collective practices of inquiry. So, one way to accommodate the very legitimate concern that could be raised by someone like Fricker or Craig who maintains an expansive conception of epistemic agency is to clarify, and indeed to stress, that the “others” in view in the account of intellectual dependability offered in this book include group others and not only individual others. The present approach to responding to this important objection can be strengthened if we clarify that groups of inquirers can depend upon us in their practices of inquiry in different ways. In some cases, a group of fellow inquirers depends upon us in their practices of inquiry, even though there is hardly anything like a mutually acknowledged group aim in the practice of inquiry. In fact, groups of inquirers can depend upon us to facilitate their collective practices of inquiry when the group they constitute is only very loosely recognizable as a group at all, and even when the members of this “group” are committed not to common aims in inquiry but to opposing one another in their aims as inquirers. We might imagine, for example, that in the testimony case described earlier there is only one potential recipient of the testimony and they are committed to ignoring the would-be testifier. In this case, the would-be testifier and the would-be recipient of the testimony hardly form a cohesive group with shared aims in inquiry. Yet they are in a position to engage in collective practices of inquiry. And there are legitimate aims they could and should adopt in this collective practice. As such they can depend on their fellow inquirers to enhance their collective practices of inquiry. It is important that such cases are included as proper targets in our conceptualization of the intellectually dependable person. When we say that the intellectually dependable person can be depended upon by fellow groups of inquirers, these loosely constituted “groups” must be included as well. Any collection of individual inquirers who are in a position to engage in collective practices of inquiry and whose engagement in these practices can be enhanced by the intellectually dependable person’s efforts is to be included among the class of “others” who can depend upon the intellectually dependable person. The intellectually dependable person is the sort of person who can be depended upon by fellow individual inquirers and by fellow groups of inquirers in their pursuit of legitimate aims of individual and collective inquiry. Yet, in addition to the aforementioned ways in which groups of inquirers may depend upon us in their inquiries, we should also note that there are other quite different ways that groups can depend on us in their inquiries. In these other cases, there is more of a cohesive group that exists,

184  Being Intellectually Dependable for Groups and it has more in the way of shared group aims for group inquiry. These cases too must be included among the kinds of cases in which intellectual dependability has application. And, in fact, these cases arguably provide some reason for favoring the present approach to responding to the focal objection of this section over rival approaches. To see this, consider a salient alternative approach which could have been taken. On the alternative approach, we alter the conception of intellectual dependability developed earlier in this book so that the intellectually dependable person is conceptualized as someone on whom other individual inquirers can depend in exercising their epistemic agency in the broad sense. Thus, being intellectually dependable would involve not only being such that fellow individual inquirers can depend on one to offer them aid in achieving the aims of their own individual inquiries, but being such that they can depend on one to offer them aid in their efforts to contribute to collective practices of inquiry in the ways envisioned by Fricker and Craig. Notably, this approach, too, would accommodate the concern for the account of intellectual dependability raised by our focal objection. And it would make clear how intellectual dependability has application in the kinds of cases just considered in which a loosely defined group depends upon us in its collective practices of inquiry. For each of the individuals in the group in this case can depend upon the intellectually dependable person to enhance their individual epistemic agency in the broad sense. And this seems all that is needed in these cases. Yet, arguably, this approach does not accommodate as well as the approach favored here cases in which a more cohesive group depends upon us in the group’s pursuit of shared legitimate group aims in inquiry. In these cases, we may be in a position to influence a group’s inquiry more directly than by enabling each of its members to better exercise their individual epistemic agency in contributing to the group’s inquiry in the ways Fricker and others have in mind. Groups may depend on us in this more direct way to help them shape their views as a group; they may depend on us to evaluate whether their group views are justified; they may depend on us to identify and evaluate the group processes they have used in forming their views; they may depend on us to enable them to gain group understanding; they may depend on us to enable them to cultivate or exercise group intellectual virtues. In these cases, intellectual dependability will plausibly call for virtuous attentiveness to and support of group-level features in group inquiries, and this attentiveness and support will involve more than excellence in supporting each group member’s individual exercise of epistemic agency. What is needed in addition, plausibly, is attentiveness to group epistemic agency. In fact, attentiveness to group epistemic agency in these cases will plausibly regulate attentiveness to the epistemic agency of individual group members. The intellectually dependable person will often

Being Intellectually Dependable for Groups  185 influence group epistemic agency by influencing the epistemic agency of group members. Yet, which group members’ epistemic agency the intellectually dependable person decides to influence in order to influence group epistemic agency, and how they go about doing this, will be regulated by their motivation to influence group epistemic agency. In cases in which the intellectually dependable person is depended upon directly by a cohesive group in the pursuit of its aims in inquiry, the intellectually dependable person’s focus will be primarily on influencing the group’s epistemic agency, and secondarily on influencing group members’ epistemic agency as needed to secure this aim. In some cases, the intellectually dependable person will act so as to influence the epistemic agency of the group without acting so as to influence the epistemic agency of any particular group members, thinking that some group members or others will be able to act upon their influence so as to secure the desired group outcome. In other cases, the intellectually dependable person will themselves be a group member or even a group leader, and can themselves act so as to bring about the desired group outcome without needing to influence this outcome via influencing the epistemic agency of other group members. In all cases, it is important that the intellectually dependable person is concerned to promote the group’s epistemic agency and not just the group members’ epistemic agency. For this reason, the “others” included among the proper targets of intellectual dependability must not include only other individuals, as on the rival approach to responding to our focal objection considered here. The intellectually dependable person must instead be conceptualized, as proposed here, as someone on whom both individual inquirers and group inquirers can depend in their inquiries; they must be capable of enhancing both the epistemic agency of other individuals and the epistemic agency of groups. By clarifying our conception of the intellectually dependable person in this way, we can both answer the focal objection of this section and can accommodate better than rival approaches to answering this objection cases in which a cohesive group depends on the intellectually dependable person in a relatively direct way.

2 Intellectual Dependability and Collective Epistemology The observations at the end of the previous section about the potential importance of attending to group-level features of group inquiries lead us naturally to the subject of this second section. Here my focus is on the way in which the growing literature in collective epistemology strongly suggests that group-level features relevant for group inquiry are not always just straightforward summations of analogous inquiry-relevant features of individual group members. Whether a group holds a view is not just a matter of whether most or all of its members hold that view; whether a group’s view is justified is not just a matter of whether most

186  Being Intellectually Dependable for Groups or all of its members justifiedly hold that view; the process a group has used in its inquiry is not just a matter of the processes its members have used in their inquiries; and so on. This is important for our context here. For it reveals that attending well to the group-level features relevant for group inquiries involves more than attending to analogous features of individual group members. Given the distinctiveness of group-level features relevant for group inquiries, there are distinctive demands upon the intellectually dependable person when it is groups, rather than individuals, that are dependent upon them. In the background of most research in collective epistemology is a fundamental contrast between summativist and non-summativist conceptions of group epistemic phenomena. Summativist conceptions propose that for a group to possess some epistemically relevant feature F is for its members to possess F. For example, for a group to have a belief is for its members to have that belief, or for a group to have knowledge is for its members to have knowledge. Non-summativist views propose that group epistemic features sometimes diverge from the features of their members. A group possessing a feature F is not always merely a matter of its members possessing F. Indeed, in some cases, a group may even possess a feature F without any of its members possessing F. For instance, in the literature on group belief, Margaret Gilbert (2004; Gilbert and Pilchman 2014) has long defended a joint commitment model of belief. According to this model, a group has a belief that p just in case its members are jointly committed to the group believing that p. Gilbert stresses that the members of a group may be jointly committed to p being the group’s belief, however, without them themselves believing that p. And, indeed, she has argued that members’ individual beliefs that p are neither necessary nor sufficient for group belief that p. Members’ beliefs that p are not sufficient for group belief because the individual beliefs in p of group members in isolation, despite their agreement, do not provide the kind of mutuality and shared agency that can be necessary for generating group belief that p. The fact that some individuals all individually believe that p doesn’t automatically make it the case that their group believes that p. The group may not have given any thought to p as a group, and this may be necessary for their having a group belief regarding p. On the other hand, members may be willing to allow for p to be their group’s belief despite themselves privately not believing that p. This can occur, for instance, when a group forms its beliefs in accordance with certain restrictive procedures that its individual members needn’t follow in their own belief formation. As members of such a group committed to participating in group belief formation in accordance with the relevant rules, group members may together reach a collective belief that p despite refraining from believing p as individuals. The collective belief that p may, to be sure, put some pressure on the group members to behave in

Being Intellectually Dependable for Groups  187 ways not directly in tension with their believing that p. And in this way collective belief may exercise some influence over individual belief. But the two are not the same thing. Now, to be fair, not everyone working in collective epistemology agrees with Gilbert that the phenomenon she is describing is collective belief. Some have argued that it is instead collective acceptance (e.g., Wray 2001). Yet, even on such a view, it remains the case that there is a collective state that is typically arrived upon via some process of inquiry, and which exercises significant influence over the behavior of both groups and individuals. On this basis, the state, whether conceptualized as belief or not, is recognizable as a collective epistemic state (cf. Bird 2014), and one which has analogues in individual epistemic states without consisting in a summation of such analogous states. The existence of such collective epistemic states is important for theorizing about intellectual dependability. For it implies that for a person who wishes to be intellectually dependable for groups in their formation of these belief-like attitudes, they must not only attend to analogous features of group members—they must attend to this distinctively grouplevel attitude. Doing so will require that they recognize and operate in light of the fact that this group attitude requires a kind of mutuality and shared agency among group members not secured via group members’ own private formation of beliefs. It likewise requires that they recognize and operate in light of the fact that the formation of the group attitude may be governed by rules of inquiry distinctive to the group. Influencing group belief-like attitudes will sometimes involve attending to and supporting these kinds of features, whereas influencing individuals’ beliefs in isolation does not. The summativism vs. non-summativism debate recurs with respect to other group epistemic features. Jennifer Lackey (2016), for example, argues that a group having a justified belief that p is not the same as any combination of its members having justified beliefs that p. Group justified belief requires something more than the justified belief in p of some combination of its members. Lackey doesn’t argue in a way comparable to Gilbert that groups can have justified beliefs without any of their members having justified beliefs. But she does maintain that group justified belief consists in something more than group member justified belief. The main reasons Lackey gives for this non-summative perspective on group justified belief have to do with the fact that the evidence that group members have which bears upon the justification of their individual beliefs in a proposition p may differ from that of their fellow group members and may be in tension with it. For example, some group members may have a belief that p justified on the basis of their justified belief that q, where others have a belief that p justified on the basis of their justified belief that r, where q and r are incompatible. In this kind of case, it seems plausible that the conflicting evidence the group members

188  Being Intellectually Dependable for Groups possess undermines the group’s justification in p despite the fact that the members are each individually justified in their beliefs that p. And other similar cases can arise as well. Because of this, Lackey proposes an account of group justified belief that p that requires a certain kind of coherence within the evidential bases of group members’ justified beliefs, and that ensures that full disclosure of group member evidence would not result in the discovery of defeating evidence for p. Here again, what is important for us is not so much the details of Lackey’s specific account of group justified belief, but some of the more general points she makes about differences between epistemic evaluations of group beliefs and analogous epistemic evaluations of group member beliefs. There are positive epistemic evaluations of group beliefs that require more than is required by analogous positive epistemic evaluations of group member beliefs. Even though group members may justifiedly believe a proposition p, there may be analogous positive epistemic properties that the group belief in p lacks because of a lack of coherence in the evidential bases of these group member beliefs, or because if the group were to fully disclose their evidence it would thereby uncover defeating evidence for p. In this way, Lackey directs our attention to some phenomena that distinctively arise in the epistemic evaluation of group beliefs. Recognizing and appreciating these phenomena will be important for a person to be intellectually dependable for groups. For a person to be intellectually dependable for groups in promoting their achievement of positive epistemic properties, they must be attentive to these distinctive group-level features. They must be attentive, for instance, to the relations between potentially conflicting evidential bases of group member beliefs. Being attentive to these relations isn’t necessary for supporting the achievement of analogous positive epistemic properties for individuals in isolation—it is a distinctive requirement of cases in which one aims to promote positive epistemic properties for groups. There is likewise a literature exploring distinctive group processes in inquiry. These are processes that take place in groups and that influence both the formation of group attitudes and group member attitudes, but that do not take place in individuals’ own private inquiries. They are processes involving group member interaction. For example, groups may exhibit information cascades (Bikhchandani et al. 1992). In these cases, individual members in a group update their credences in light of their fellow group members’ credences without taking into account that the latter may have themselves been updated in light of other fellow group member credences. For instance, all but one member of a group may have private information that favors p over not-p, with member X being the only member whose information favors not-p over p. Yet, when X’s fellow group member X + 1 notices that X favors not-p, X + 1 updates their credence to reflect this, ending up

Being Intellectually Dependable for Groups  189 themselves favoring not-p. And then group member X + 2 updates their credence to reflect that both X and X + 1 favor not-p. And so on, until the entire group favors not-p despite the private information of almost all members favoring p over not-p. Likewise, groups can exhibit conformity bias (Asch 1951). This is a bias in which group members publicly espouse the view they perceive to be the dominant view within a group, even if they privately disagree with this view. Their public conformity to the dominant view can mislead their fellow group members, as well as non-group members, to think that support for the dominant view is stronger than it in fact is. Groups can also be characterized in terms of the tightness or looseness of their information-sharing connections. Some groups are tightly connected, with each group member on average sharing information with more other group members than is shared on average in less tightly connected groups. Tightly connected groups are subject to an important vulnerability: in these groups, misleading evidence is more easily widely shared, and as such consensus on correct views can be harder to build (Zollman 2007). Groups also can divide epistemic labor (Bird 2014). This can be done more or less well. Individuals can be assigned subtasks for the group that do or do not fit them well, and those who perform subtasks can be situated better or worse in terms of their abilities to communicate with others who perform other relevant subtasks. In all forms of group inquiry, there is at least some dependence of some inquirers on other inquirers. But inquirers can depend well or poorly on one another. Inquirers can ignore fellow inquirers they shouldn’t ignore, or exhibit prejudice in their treatment of fellow inquirers (cf. Fricker 2007), and so on. Group processes of inquiry will often involve processes of dependence of some inquirers on other inquirers that can be improved. In all these ways and others, group inquiry differs from isolated individual inquiry. The processes that an individual inquirer uses in conducting private inquiries do not include any of these processes involving group member interaction. Thus, supporting groups in conducting their inquiries in accordance with sound processes for inquiry involves distinctive elements when compared with supporting individuals in conducting their private inquiries in accordance with sound processes for these inquiries. In order to be intellectually dependable for groups by supporting their employment of sound processes of inquiry, a person will need to attend to distinctive group processes of inquiry such as those identified here. Chiefly, this involves attentiveness to the patterns of interaction and dependence between group members in contributing to group inquiry. Finally, the summativism vs. non-summativism debate recurs with respect to group intellectual character traits. Here the focal question for

190  Being Intellectually Dependable for Groups most researchers has concerned whether or not apt ascriptions of virtues or vices to groups is best understood in terms of some or most of their members possessing these traits as private individuals. Several authors, including Miranda Fricker (2010), Reza Lahroodi (2007), and Meghan Byerly and myself (2016), have defended non-summativist views on this question. We have argued that a group’s possession of a virtue or vice may not be best understood in terms of its members’ possession of that virtue or vice. One way of defending non-summativism for group intellectual character traits parallels the defense of non-summativism for group belief we saw above. Namely, there appear to be cases in which group members’ private intellectual character traits diverge from the analogous group intellectual character traits. This can occur for similar reasons to those which can lead to divergence between members’ beliefs and group beliefs. For instance, group policies and procedures, or values to which members are committed as group members but not as private individuals can lead group members to behave characteristically in one way as group members but differently independently from the group. Such divergence could manifest, for example, in groups that tend to engage in the virtue Fricker (2007) calls testimonial sensitivity despite the fact that their members as private individuals are largely racist and tend to commit testimonial injustices outside of the group context. A different and complementary way of defending non-summativism for group intellectual character traits focuses on cases in which a group appears to manifest an intellectual virtue or vice that just isn’t available as a virtue or vice for individuals, because of differences between groups and individuals. The most obvious example of a relevant difference between groups and individuals is that groups have members who interact in the group’s activity of inquiry, whereas individual inquirers do not. As such, if there are any virtues or vices that involve the regulation of group member interaction in the conduct of group inquiry, these may be good candidates for distinctive group intellectual virtues or vices that cannot be possessed by individual inquirers and that do not consist in group members’ possession of these traits as individual inquirers. Are there any such distinctive group intellectual virtues or vices? Here isn’t the place to undertake a detailed defense of an answer to this question. But I will briefly suggest a few possibilities. We saw above that the distribution of intellectual labor in groups can be done better or worse. As such, we might think that there are group intellectual virtues focused upon the excellent distribution of intellectual labor. What is involved in distributing intellectual labor virtuously in groups? I don’t have a fully worked-out answer to offer, but presumably any fully worked-out answer will want to include the group’s commitment to distributing intellectual labor in a way that promotes its achievement of group aims in inquiry, but that also balances this commitment with a commitment

Being Intellectually Dependable for Groups  191 to the intellectual well-being of the group’s members. The group that divides intellectual labor excellently will be skilled in identifying ways that intellectual labor can be divided, skilled in identifying the intellectual strengths and weaknesses of its group members, and skilled in matching its members to fitting portions of the divided group labor. The group will tend to exercise these skills in a way that is governed by motivations to achieve group epistemic goods, and that balances the achievement of these goods with the promotion of epistemic goods for group members. Similarly, we might imagine a group intellectual virtue that involves empowering group members to contribute well to group inquiry. To contribute well to group inquiry, group members may need to be provided with access to relevant materials, may need training in taskrelevant skills, and may need channels of communication whereby they can appropriately influence group inquiry. A group that is excellent at empowering its members to contribute to group inquiry will be attentive to the needs of its group members and motivated to meet these needs so as to advance group inquiry. In these ways, the case of group character traits appears to parallel the cases of group belief, group justification, and group processes. Group intellectual character traits appear to involve distinctive group-level components that are not components of individual intellectual character traits. Supporting the intellectual virtues of groups and mitigating the intellectual vices of groups requires more than supporting the analogous intellectual virtues of group members and mitigating the analogous intellectual vices of group members. Here again the intellectually dependable person will exhibit skill and concern focused upon distinctively group-level phenomena in their efforts to support the epistemic agency of groups. This section has taken us on a brief tour of the growing literature in collective epistemology. The main purpose of the tour has been to highlight the fact that this literature consistently emphasizes that the epistemic features of groups do not consist in a mere summation of the analogous epistemic features of their members. Group beliefs, group justification, group processes, and group virtues and vices often consist in more than group members’ possession of analogous features. As such, supporting the epistemic goods of groups requires more than supporting the analogous features of their members. Indeed, in some cases there are group-level features that do not have clear analogues in the group’s members. Being intellectually dependable for groups thus requires attentiveness to these distinctive group-level phenomena. We should expect the person who is intellectually dependable for groups to have some grasp of these facts, and to be motivated and skilled in promoting positive epistemic features of groups. As suggested in the previous section, their motivation and skill devoted to these group features will regulate their motivation and skill in enhancing other group members’ broad epistemic agency.

192  Being Intellectually Dependable for Groups

3 The Virtues of Intellectual Dependability for Groups My final aim in this chapter is to return to each of the five example virtues of intellectual dependability featured in Part II of this text and to briefly discuss their operation when it is groups of inquirers rather than individual inquirers who are in the position of intellectual dependence. My focus is primarily on the distinctive demands of these virtues when they are directed toward dependent groups of inquirers rather than dependent individuals. Begin with the virtue of intellectual benevolence. In Chapter 4, we conceptualized this virtue as consisting in a refined motivation to promote others’ epistemic goods for its own sake. We understood this motivation to involve cognitive, affective, and explicitly motivational components. Intellectually benevolent people judge it good for others to attain epistemic goods and for themselves to promote these goods. They have mature views about the relative value of epistemic goods. They tend to experience positive affect when others gain epistemic goods and when they help others attain epistemic goods, and they tend to experience negative affect when others fail to attain epistemic goods and when they fail in aiding others to attain epistemic goods. They want to help others attain epistemic goods for its own sake. The most important thing for us to observe here is that when intellectual benevolence is directed toward groups of fellow inquirers, it will include a motivation to promote group epistemic goods. Thus, the intellectually benevolent person will be motivated to promote true and justified group beliefs, the use of reliable processes of inquiry in groups, the display of group intellectual virtues, and excellence in group practices of inquiry more generally. These motivations will include the cognitive, affective, and explicitly motivational components cited above. The intellectually benevolent person will, for example, tend to experience positive affect when groups employ reliable processes or act in accordance with group intellectual virtues, and negative affect when they fail in trying to help groups form true beliefs. They will judge it good to aid groups to engage in better group practices of inquiry. They will want to improve the epistemic lives of groups. Having these kinds of motivations directed toward group epistemic goods makes demands on the intellectually benevolent person that go beyond the demands of exercising intellectual benevolence toward isolated inquirers. This can be seen if we consider the kinds of group features that intellectually benevolent people will need to attend to if they are to be properly motivated to promote group epistemic goods. For example, we saw in the previous section that group processes of inquiry include processes in which individual inquirers depend on fellow individual inquirers, whereas there is no such dependence between inquirers in cases of isolated individual inquiry. The intellectually benevolent person will

Being Intellectually Dependable for Groups  193 recognize this, and will be concerned to aid fellow inquirers in their dependence on one another. They will, for example, tend to experience negative affect when well-positioned testifiers are misunderstood or ignored, and they will judge it good to help others express their ideas clearly to those who depend on them. Likewise, they will be concerned to prevent problematic group processes such as groupthink or information cascades. They will be motivated to help groups divide epistemic labor well. They will be concerned to promote group policies that tend to encourage group intellectual virtue. They will be concerned that groups adequately attend to the different evidential bases of their members so as not to undermine the group’s attainment of positive epistemic properties, and so on. In these ways, the motivations characteristic of intellectual benevolence when directed toward groups of inquirers require a grasp and attentiveness toward group-level features that is not required by intellectual benevolence when it is directed toward individual inquirers in isolation. Because intellectual benevolence is understood in this way to include both a motivation to promote other individuals’ epistemic goods and a motivation to promote the epistemic goods of groups of inquirers, questions may arise as to the comparative strengths of these motivations. Would an intellectually benevolent person always be more strongly motivated to promote a group’s attaining a true belief p than to promote an individual group member’s attainment of this true belief p, for example, other things being equal? Insisting on an affirmative answer may be too strong. But one fact that we may expect the intellectually benevolent person to be sensitive to is the one observed in the previous section regarding the way in which group attitudes and virtues often exert significant influence over analogous attitudes and virtues of group members. We might then expect that in a broad range of cases, an intellectually benevolent person would prefer to influence the epistemic goods of groups over the epistemic goods of group members, because by doing the former they may also accomplish the latter. Paradoxically, this may lead an intellectually benevolent person on occasion to display seemingly callous behavior toward some group members if influencing their individual epistemic goods is unlikely to influence the group’s epistemic goods, while influencing the group’s epistemic goods might well influence their goods as group members. Without resolving the issue, I wish to acknowledge here the potential scope for conflicts of choice between promoting individual group members’ epistemic goods and promoting a group’s epistemic goods. The intellectually benevolent person will at least have on their radar the possibility for such conflicts and will aim to achieve an acceptable balance in promoting goods of each type. They will have an appreciation of the ways these goods can interact. Consider next the virtue of intellectual transparency. In Chapter 5, we conceptualized this virtue as a tendency to faithfully and skillfully share

194  Being Intellectually Dependable for Groups one’s perspective on topics of others’ inquiries with these others out of a motivation to promote their epistemic goods. We learned in that same chapter that intellectual transparency partly involves skill in identifying what one’s perspective is, and it partly involves skill in communicating this perspective to dependent others. The intellectually transparent person is able both to dispassionately grasp their own perspective and to help others see what it is like to view things from this perspective. I would suggest here that when it comes to being intellectually transparent for groups, the first of these aspects is largely the same while the second is altered. The skills one exercises in identifying what one’s perspective is are the same whether one is going to share this perspective with a single fellow inquirer or with a group of fellow inquirers. But what it takes to communicate this perspective effectively to a group may differ from what it takes to communicate it effectively to another individual. The basis for this contention is again to be found in the nonsummativist perspective reviewed in the previous section. Because group attitudes and group understanding are not always mere summations of group member attitudes and understandings, effective communication of one’s perspective to a group requires more than effectively communicating one’s perspective to group members one by one. It can require attentiveness to the dynamics whereby group views and understandings are achieved, and tailoring one’s communications so as to interact with these dynamics to yield desirable results. One component of this tailoring is deciding to whom to communicate one’s perspective. Often in groups there will be communication channels one needs to attend to and make use of if one wishes for one’s perspective to be considered. Likewise, communicating one’s perspective effectively may require communicating it to several influential group members at once, all of whom have different and sometimes divergent perspectives. The difficult task here is to communicate one’s perspective in such a way as to maximize understanding of the perspective among these different individuals. Intellectual transparency, when directed toward groups of inquirers, involves the exercise of these distinctive skills that are not required when intellectual transparency is directed toward individual inquirers. It is also worth noting that some of the obstacles to achieving intellectual transparency may be further exacerbated when it is groups of inquirers rather than lone individual inquirers who are in the position of intellectual dependence. For example, where the temptations to understate or overstate one’s perspective are driven by concerns about one’s reputation, these are only stronger in a group as opposed to an individual context. Those who want to appear better epistemically positioned than others, or those who want to avoid making public mistakes, are likely only to be more strongly influenced by these motivations when communicating in a group context. When intellectual transparency is

Being Intellectually Dependable for Groups  195 directed toward groups of inquirers, it requires strong resolve in the face of such temptations. The transformation of the virtue of communicative clarity in the group context parallels the transformation of intellectual transparency. In Chapter 6, we conceptualized communicative clarity as a tendency to resolve or eliminate sources of ambiguity in one’s communications, out of a motivation to promote others’ epistemic goods. We noted that communicative clarity involves a focus both on one’s communications and on the recipients of these. For whether a communication is adequately clear depends in part on intrinsic features of the communication and in part upon features of its recipients—whether the communication is likely to be understood adequately by them, or whether it will be problematically ambiguous to them. Thus, communicative clarity requires both skill in clarifying one’s communications and attentiveness to those features of others likely to influence whether one’s communications are adequately understood. In much the same way as suggested above with the virtue of intellectual transparency, I suggest that the former component of communicative clarity remains largely the same in the group context, whereas the latter component includes distinctive elements. The tools one has at one’s disposal for clarifying the intrinsic features of one’s communications remain largely the same in the group context. But the features of recipients one needs to pay attention to in order to ensure that one’s communications are adequately understood may be different from what one would attend to when communicating to isolated individuals. As we saw with intellectual transparency, part of what one will need to pay attention to in order to ensure that one’s communications are adequately understood by a group are the communication channels within the group. To communicate in such a way that one is adequately understood by the group, whether one is aiming to communicate one’s perspective or something else, one needs to communicate to the right group members at the right time and so on. Likewise, as we saw with intellectual transparency, one may need to craft one’s communications so that they can be adequately understood simultaneously by several different individuals with divergent perspectives. Different group members may have different features that could lead them to misunderstand one’s communications in different ways. In these cases, one needs to deploy one’s skills in clarifying one’s communications in such a way as to maximize the adequate understanding of these among relevant group members. One may also need to be alert to ways that group members’ features may interact to impact whether one’s communications are adequately understood by the group. It may be that no single individual in a group possesses knowledge that would require one to clarify a particular part of one’s communication in order for them to adequately understand it, yet the group collectively possesses sufficient knowledge to require this. This could happen, for instance, if the group members possess different

196  Being Intellectually Dependable for Groups knowledge, but they tend to share this knowledge with one another when deliberating, and the different knowledge they possess, when combined, can lead to confusion over one’s communications. In such a case, one may need to anticipate how the features of the group may interact to prevent one’s communications from being clear to the group, and may need to act preventively to stop this from occurring. In these ways, the virtue of communicative clarity requires attentiveness to distinctive group-level features when it is directed toward groups. Also similar to intellectual benevolence is the way in which obstacles to communicative clarity can be exacerbated by the group context. The weight the perfectionist communicator puts on their shoulders may only be heavier when they are performing publicly. The temptation to use obscurities in order to make oneself seem profound may be stronger when the prize is being thought profound by a whole group. In the face of such temptations, the virtuously clear communicator remains guided by the aim of ensuring that their communications are adequately clear so that they can be understood by the groups that depend upon them and can thereby enhance these groups’ epistemic goods. If intellectual transparency and communicative clarity are only partially altered in the group context, the final two virtues—audience sensitivity and epistemic guidance—are more thoroughly transformed. In Chapter 7 we conceptualized audience sensitivity as a tendency to fit one’s communications to the distinctive features of one’s audiences out of a motivation to promote the audience’s epistemic goods. That chapter was probably the most explicit chapter where it was made clear that the intellectually dependable person must be dependable for groups of fellow inquirers and not only isolated individual inquirers. This was made clear when we considered the demands that audience sensitivity makes when one is communicating with a plural audience. Yet there is more we can say about the ways in which audience sensitivity makes distinctive demands on the intellectually dependable person when it is directed toward group audiences. We noted in Chapter 7 that the virtuously audience-sensitive person will attend to the distinctive needs, interests, perspectives, abilities, and tendencies of their audiences, and will fit their communications to their audiences in light of their grasp of these features. Yet, where it is group audiences that are in view, attending to these features will make distinctive demands on audience sensitivity. For these features can be composed in part by distinctive group-level features of the sort we considered in the previous section, and thus, audience sensitivity will demand attentiveness to these. For example, groups may have needs to improve the grouplevel processes they are using in their inquiries. They may need to do a better job dividing epistemic labor or engaging in epistemic cooperation. Group intellectual interests and perspectives may be formed through joint commitments involving mutuality and shared agency. Group’s total

Being Intellectually Dependable for Groups  197 perspectives will include the various elements of the divergent evidential bases of group members. Groups have abilities for interdependent inquiry that individual inquirers do not, and they may also have tendencies to engage in group inquiry in particular ways that individual inquirers cannot have. Thus, across the board, audience sensitivity makes distinctive demands of its possessor when it is directed toward group audiences. When communicating with groups, the virtuously audience sensitive will attend to these kinds of features of their group audiences and will fit their communications to these audiences in light of their grasp of these features. Finally, consider epistemic guidance. In Chapter 8, we conceptualized epistemic guidance as a tendency to offer others aid in making good decisions in their inquiries. The virtuous epistemic guide knows a lot about the processes of inquiry, is skilled in paying attention to the processes that others are employing in their inquiries, and exercises skill in aiding others to make good decisions in their inquiries. All of these elements of epistemic guidance are transformed when this virtue is directed toward groups of inquirers. To practice virtuous epistemic guidance of groups of inquirers, a person needs to know about group processes of inquiry. They need to have a grasp of the decision points in group inquiries, and they need to be able to identify different ways groups could go about practicing inquiry. They also need to pay attention to the processes that particular dependent groups are using in their inquiries. Are group members depending on each other well or poorly? Are the groups implementing policies that encourage intellectually virtuous conduct? What are the different ways available to this particular group whereby they can pursue their epistemic goals? Finally, epistemic guidance of groups also requires skill in influencing group decision-making. How can this particular group be led to conduct its inquiry one way rather than another? Virtuous epistemic guides will know how to influence groups to make good decisions in their inquiries, and will tend to employ this know-how in the service of advancing groups’ epistemic goods. In these ways, the virtues of intellectual dependability make distinctive demands on their possessors when it is groups rather than individual inquirers who are in the position of intellectual dependence. The fully intellectually benevolent person will value group epistemic goods, including distinctive group-level features that partly constitute or contribute to these goods. The fully intellectually transparent person will be skilled in enabling groups to understand their perspective, exercising distinctive skills in their communication of their perspective to groups. Likewise, the virtuously clear communicator will deploy their skills in clarifying their communications in light of their grasp of distinctive group-level features that may influence whether their communications are adequately understood by groups. The virtuously audience sensitive will

198  Being Intellectually Dependable for Groups attend to a wide variety of group-level phenomena in their attempts to fit their communications to the needs, interests, perspectives, abilities, and tendencies of their group audiences. And the virtuous epistemic guide will employ their knowledge of group-level processes in their attempts to influence groups to make good decisions in their inquiries.

4 Conclusion Being an intellectually dependable person is not only about being the sort of person that fellow individual inquirers can depend upon in their isolated individual inquiries. It is also about being the sort of person that groups of inquirers can depend upon in their collective practices of inquiry. Yet being dependable for groups of inquirers makes distinctive demands on the intellectually dependable person. This is because there are distinctive group-level features relevant for the attainment of epistemic goods in group inquiries that the intellectually dependable person must be attentive toward. Indeed, when directed toward dependent groups of inquirers rather than dependent individual inquirers, each of the five virtues of intellectual dependability surveyed in this text is transformed, making distinctive demands of its possessor.

References Asch, Solomon E. 1951. “Effects of Group Pressure on the Modification and Distortion of Judgments.” In Groups, Leadership and Men; Research in Human Relations, ed. Harold Guetzkow, 177–90. Oxford: Carnegie Press. Bikhchandani, Sushil, David Hirshleifer, and Ivo Welch. 1992. “A Theory of Fads, Fashion, Custom, and Cultural Change as Informational Cascades.” Journal of Political Economy 100, 5: 992–1026. Bird, Alexander. 2014. “When Is There a Group That Knows?” In Essays in Collective Epistemology, ed. Jennifer Lackey, 42–63. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Byerly, T. Ryan and Meghan Byerly. 2016. “Collective Virtue.” Journal of Value Inquiry 50, 1: 33–50. Craig, Edward. 1990. Knowledge and the State of Nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fricker, Miranda. 2007. Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fricker, Miranda. 2010. “Can There Be Institutional Virtues?” Oxford Studies in Epistemology 3: 235–52. Gilbert, Margaret. 2004. “Collective Epistemology.” Episteme 1, 2: 95–107. Gilbert, Margaret and Daniel Pilchman. 2014. “Belief, Acceptance, and What Happens in Groups: Some Methodological Considerations.” In Essays in Collective Epistemology, ed. Jennifer Lackey, 189–213. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lackey, Jennifer. 2016. “What is Justified Group Belief?” Philosophical Review 125, 3: 341–96.

Being Intellectually Dependable for Groups  199 Lahroodi, Reza. 2007. “Collective Epistemic Virtue.” Social Epistemology 21: 281–97. Olson, Dustin. 2015. “A Case for Epistemic Agency.” Logos & Episteme 6, 4: 449–74. Wray, K. Brad. 2001. “Collective Belief and Acceptance.” Synthese 129, 3: 319–33. Zollman, Kevin. 2007. “The Communication Structure of Epistemic Communities.” Philosophy of Science 74, 5: 574–87.

Index

Aberdein, Andrew 161 achievements, epistemic 12–13 advice 170 agreeableness 94 Ahlstrom-Vij, Kristoffer 46 aims of inquiry 10–13, 57, 164, 169, 180 Alfano, Mark 11 Alston, William 10 apprenticeship, intellectual 61–4 Aristotle 85, 167–8 arrogance 99–103, 157 Asch, Solomon 189 attentiveness, intellectual 4, 37, 130–3, 136–7 autonomy 3, 36–8, 61, 73–6, 99, 148, 173 Baehr, Jason 11, 28, 36–45, 58–64, 74, 84–90, 97, 130–41, 153, 169–72 Bailin, Sharon 59 Bandura, Albert 17 Battaly, Heather 11–12, 28–30, 38–43, 52, 83–90 Baumeister, Roy 66 begging the question 147 bias 116, 158, 165, 189 Bikhchandani, Sushil 188 Bird, Alexander 187, 189 Bishop, Scott 117 Black, Max 119–20 Bolkan, San 129 Braaten, Jane 152–3 Brighouse, Harry 68 Brownlee, Kimberly 66 Buekens, Filip 136–7 Bullock, Emma 173 bullshit 119–20, 136–7

cardinality of virtue 3, 91, 97, 106–7, 114–16, 127, 145 carefulness, intellectual 4, 37, 130–6, 139–40 Carr, David 37, 74 Cassam, Quassim 101 cautiousness, intellectual 36, 50 charity, interpretive 46–7 citizenship 70–5 civic virtue 59, 70–2 Coady, David 21 Cocking, Dean 67 Code, Lorraine 60 cognitive load 129 collective acceptance 187 collective epistemology 179, 185–91 community of inquiry 2, 9, 17, 45, 56 composite audience 150 computational propaganda 70 conformity bias 189 conscientiousness: as an intellectual virtue 3, 46, 63, 84; as a personality trait 94; see also love of Cooke, Sandra 64 cooperation 9, 14, 65–73, 99 courage, intellectual 36–8 coverage 15–18 Craig, Edward 65, 181–4 critical spirit 59 critical thinking 58–61, 73–6 Croce, Michel 21 curiosity 37–8, 43, 48, 74, 117–18, 130 Curren, Randall 58, 64, 67, 69 Dalmiya, Vrinda 38 Daukas, Nancy 151–2 Davis, Mark 154

202 Index deception 110–14 decision-making 163–76, 197 deference 38, 46 deliberation 61, 68–73, 164, 167–9, 172, 175 Delphi Report 60, 76 Dewey, John 70 division of epistemic labor 189, 191, 193 dogmatism 100 Dow, Philip 37 Driver, Julia 40 dynamics of inquiry 5, 163, 165–6, 169, 194 Elgin, Catherine 62 empathy, intellectual 4, 11, 46, 153–6 epistemic agency 166–7, 179–85, 191 epistemic egoism 53, 99 expertise 20–9, 62, 147, 172, 176 Facione, Peter 60 feedback 53, 146 Feher, Anita 139–40 feminist epistemology 60, 151–2, 156 Fenigstein, Allan 157 flourishing 65, 67–8, 146 Frankfurt, Harry 119 fraudulent science 63 Fricker, Elizabeth 21 Fricker, Miranda 38, 151, 181–4, 189–90 friendship 67–8, 89 Galston, William 70 generosity, intellectual 3, 17, 37–40, 91, 94–7 Gilbert, Margaret 186–7 Goldberg, Sanford 15 Goldman, Alvin 15, 20–3 grandiosity, intellectual 4, 119–20 Grandy, Richard 61 Greco, John 12 Green, Adam 12 Grimm, Stephen 10, 153, 158, 171–2 Griswold, Charles 159–60 group belief 186–8, 190–2 group intellectual virtue 184, 190–3 group processes 184, 188–93, 197 group understanding 184, 194 group-level features 184–6, 188, 191, 193, 196–8 Gutmann, Amy 70

Habashi, Meara 94 Harris, Richard 63 haughtiness, intellectual 4, 119–20 Hazlett, Allan 14 Helm, Bennett 67 hermeneutical justice 151, 156 Hill, Peter 12 Hobbes, Valerie 140 honesty 4, 37, 63, 74, 109–116 Hookway, Christopher 10 humility, intellectual 4, 37–8, 50, 116, 118–19, 130, 152–3, 157 Hursthouse, Rosalind 52 implicature 114 informal logic 59, 161 informant 65, 181–2 information cascades 188, 193 interests, intellectual 36, 144, 146–7, 149, 196 James, William 10 joint commitment 186, 196 judgmentalism 4, 158 junk news 71 justice, epistemic 38, 46, 95, 151–2, 156, 181, 190 Kawall, Jason 30, 40–2 Kelly, Thomas 165 King, Nathan 11–12, 36, 40, 43 know-how 145, 170–2, 197 Kotzee, Ben 65 Kruglanski, Arie 175 Kvanvig, Jonathan 39, 157 Lackey, Jennifer 187–8 Lahroodi, Reza 190 liberatory epistemology 151–3, 156–7 Limpman, Matthew 61 Linker, Marueen 46 love of knowledge 3, 37, 85, 88, 92–3 love of learning 94, 118 Luntley, Michael 62 lying 66, 95, 114, 120 Magee, Bryan 137–8, 140 malevolence, epistemic 3, 97–8, 101 manipulation 51, 53, 66, 159, 161 McCabe, Kira 94 McLain, David 176 Medina, José 153 Miller, Christian 94–5, 110–12

Index  203 mindfulness 117–18, 123 Mizrahi, Moti 22 modelling inquiry 17, 22 Montmarquet, James 11, 40, 45, 84 moral virtues 41–2, 58, 88 need for closure 5, 175–6 need to belong 66 needs, intellectual 27, 48 Noddings, Nel 64 obscurantism 136–8, 141 Olson, Dustin 180 open-mindedness 4, 11, 16, 28, 36–8, 107, 152–6 others-centeredness 99, 102 paternalism, epistemic 5, 166, 174 patience 174, 176 pedantry 138, 140 perfectionism 139–41, 196 perseverance, intellectual 11, 28, 38, 43, 47–8 Peters, Richard 62 Peterson, Christopher 94 Plato 150, 159–61 practical wisdom, intellectual 5, 37, 167–73, 175 pretentiousness 119–20 Pritchard, Duncan 58, 173 process gains 69, 72 proximate motivation 93, 107–8, 110, 126–7, 144–5, 164 Putnam, Robert 70 Rhee, Young Won 94 rhetoric 4, 137, 150, 158–61 Riggs, Wayne 10, 154, 165 Rini, Regina 71–2 risk, epistemic 65, 164 Roberts, Robert 30, 38–40, 50, 85–9, 92–9, 102, 116, 119–20, 168–71 Robertson, Emily 63 Roets, Arne 175–6 Russell, Daniel 91, 97, 106, 138, 167 Ryan, Richard 66 sages 170 Saucier, Donald 100–1 self-consciousness 4, 157 self-knowledge 109, 112, 116–17 self-preoccupation 157 servility, intellectual 121–2

Sherman, Nancy 68 Shogren, Karrie 118 Siegel, Harvey 58–9, 64, 73–6 sincerity 110, 114–16 situationist challenge to virtue epistemology 12 Smartwood, Jason 171–2, 176 social epistemology 1–2, 9, 29, 108 social intelligence 152 social mobility gap 69 social networks 70, 72 social skills 69 social vigilantism 100–3 Sockett, Hugh 64 sophistry 158–61 Sosa, Ernest 12 stealthy vices 101 Stump, Eleonore 110 subservience, intellectual 3, 102–3 summativism 187, 189–90 supererogation 95–6 Tanesini, Alessandra 99, 121–3 Thomas, Laurence 67 thoroughness, intellectual 4, 36–7, 50, 74, 130–6 Tiberius, Valerie 172 timidity, intellectual 4, 121–3 Tindale, Christopher 150, 161 tolerance for ambiguity 176–7 truthfulness 3, 63, 92–3, 97 Turri, John 15 value, epistemic 13, 53, 85–7, 100, 109, 174 vanity, intellectual 3, 99, 101, 120, 122–3 vigilance 50, 116–18 virtue argumentation theory 161 Watson, Jamie 20–1 Westlund, Andrea 60 Whitcomb, Dennis 50, 116 Williams, Bernard 95, 114–15 Williamson, Timothy 140 Wilson, Alan 110–12 Woolley, Samuel 70 Wray, Brad 187 Zagzebski, Linda 11, 13–14, 20, 39, 45–6, 53, 84, 170 Zeifman, Igal 71 Zollman, Kevin 189