Intellectual Virtues

Questioning to Develop Intellectual Dispositions

To cultivate ourselves as fair-minded, intellectually responsible persons, we strive to develop intellectual virtues or dispositions. These attributes are essential to excellence of thought. They determine with what insight and integrity we think.

This section contains brief descriptions of the intellectual virtues, along with related questions that foster their development. Only to the extent that you are routinely asking these questions of yourself are you developing these virtues.

Intellectual humility is knowledge of ignorance; sensitivity to what you know and what you do not know. It means being aware of your biases, prejudices, self-deceptive tendencies and the limitations of your viewpoint. Questions that foster intellectual humility include:

• ■ What do I really know (about myself, about the situation, about another person, about my nation, about what is going on in the world)?
• ■ To what extent do my prejudices or biases influence my thinking?
• ■ How do the beliefs I have uncritically accepted keep me from seeing things as they are?

Intellectual courage is the disposition to question beliefs you feel strongly about. It includes questioning the beliefs of your culture and the groups to which you belong, and a willingness to express your views even when they are unpopular. Questions that foster intellectual courage include:

• ■ To what extent have I analyzed the beliefs I hold?
• ■ To what extent have I questioned my beliefs, many of which I learned in childhood?
• ■ To what extent have I demonstrated a willingness to give up my beliefs when sufficient evidence is presented against them?
• ■ To what extent am I willing to stand up against the majority (even though people ridicule me)?

Intellectual empathy is awareness of the need to actively entertain views that differ from our own, especially those we strongly disagree with. It is to accurately reconstruct the viewpoints and reasoning of our opponents and to reason from premises, assumptions, and ideas other than our own. Questions that foster intellectual empathy include:

• ■ To what extent do I accurately represent viewpoints I disagree with?
• ■ Can I summarize the views of my opponents to their satisfaction? Can I see insights in the views of others and prejudices in my own?
• ■ Do I sympathize with the feelings of others in light of their thinking differently than me?

Intellectual integrity consists in holding yourself to the same intellectual standards you expect others to honor (no double standards). Questions that foster intellectual integrity include:

• ■ Do I behave in accordance with what I say I believe, or do I tend to say one thing and do another?
• ■ To what extent do I expect the same of myself as I expect of others?
• ■ To what extent are there contradictions or inconsistencies in my life?
• ■ To what extent do I strive to recognize and eliminate self-deception in my life?

Intellectual perseverance is the disposition to work your way through intellectual complexities despite the frustration inherent in the task. Questions that foster intellectual perseverance include:

• ■ Am I willing to work my way through complexities in an issue or do I tend to give up when I experience difficulty?
• ■ Can I think of a difficult intellectual problem concerning which I have demonstrated patience and determination in working through the difficulties?
• ■ Do I have strategies for dealing with complex problems?
• ■ Do I expect learning to be easy or do I recognize the importance of engaging in challenging intellectual work?

Confidence in reason is based on the belief that one’s own higher interests and those of humankind at large are best served by giving the freest play to reason. It means using standards of reasonability as the fundamental criteria by which to judge whether to accept or reject any belief or position. Questions that foster confidence in reason include:

• ■ Am I willing to change my position when the evidence leads to a more reasonable position?
• ■ Do I adhere to principles of sound reasoning when persuading others of my position or do I distort matters to support my position?
• ■ Do I deem it more important to “win” an argument, or see the issue from the most reasonable perspective?
• ■ Do I encourage others to come to their own conclusions or do I try to force my views on them?

Intellectual autonomy is thinking for oneself while adhering to standards of rationality. It means thinking through issues using one’s own thinking rather than uncritically accepting the viewpoints of others. Questions that foster intellectual autonomy:

• ■ To what extent am I a conformist?
• ■ To what extent do I uncritically accept what I am told by my government, the media, my peers?
• ■ Do I think through issues on my own or do I merely accept the views of others?
• ■ Having thought through an issue from a rational perspective, am I willing to stand alone despite the irrational criticisms of others?