Abstract
Philosophers and psychologists have devoted considerable attention to the study of intellectual humility and intellectual arrogance. To this point, theoretical and empirical studies of intellectual humility and arrogance have focused on these traits as possessed by individual reasoners. However, it is natural in some contexts to attribute intellectual humility or intellectual arrogance to collectives. This paper investigates the nature of collective intellectual humility and arrogance and, in particular, how these traits are related to the attitudes of individuals. I discuss three approaches to collective intellectual humility and arrogance. Rather than arguing that one of these approaches is applicable to all instances of collective intellectual humility and arrogance, I argue that there are at least two and perhaps three distinct forms of both collective intellectual humility and arrogance. Recognizing these distinct forms of collective intellectual humility and arrogance, I argue, is crucial to understanding how intellectual humility and arrogance are related to troubling phenomena like political polarization.
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Notes
While I will focus on intellectual humility and arrogance, much of the discussion to follow might be applied to other virtues and vices, insofar as these involve self-directed attitudes. Thanks to an anonymous referee for encouraging me to emphasize this point.
Driver’s discussion explicitly concerns modesty, rather than humility. I follow convention in treating these, in general and with respect to intellectual capacities in particular, as interchangeable.
This is not to say that having a low and false estimation of oneself is generally sufficient for being humble. Excessively harsh estimations may instead be involved in a vicious counterpart of humility (Zagzebski, 1996).
In fact, some such data has been collected and this data, at least, indicates that there is no significant difference in intellectual humility between members of the two major political parties in the United States (Leary et al., 2017).
Fricker (2010) offers a similar line of argument in support for intellectual virtues in the collectivist sense, noting that the joint commitment of individuals to certain motives within the context of the group might lead groups to behave differently to how their members would behave alone.
The attitudes in question might concern some average member of the collective, the aggregated capacities and achievements of the members, or something further. Thanks to an anonymous referee for raising this distinction.
Thanks to an anonymous referee for this example.
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I would like to thank two anonymous reviewers whose comments on an earlier draft guided improvements to this paper.
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Harris, K.R. Collective intellectual humility and arrogance. Synthese 199, 6967–6979 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03101-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03101-y