The Inquiring Mind: On Intellectual Virtues and Virtue Epistemology

by Jason Baehr

The Inquiring Mind is a new contribution to "responsibilist" or character-based virtue-epistemology--an approach to epistemology in which intellectual character traits like open-mindedness, fair-mindedness, inquisitiveness, and intellectual courage, rigor, and generosity are given a central and fundamental role. Jason Baehr provides an accessible introduction to virtue epistemology and intellectual virtues, and establishes two main goals. The first is to shed light on the nature and structure of intellectual virtues and their role in the cognitive economy. To this end, he examines the difference between intellectual virtues and intellectual faculties, talents, temperaments, and skills, develops a "personal worth" account of the nature of an intellectual virtue, contrasts this account with several others, and provides analyses of two individual namely, open-mindedness and intellectual courage. The second main goal is to account for the role that reflection on intellectual
character virtues should play within epistemology at large. Here Baehr defends three main claims. The first is that the concept of intellectual virtue does not merit a central or fundamental role within traditional epistemology. The second is that it does, nonetheless, merit a secondary or background role in this context. The third is that intellectual character virtues and their role in intellectual life can form the basis of an approach to epistemology that is distinct from but complementary to traditional epistemology. Finally, Baehr examines the relation between intellectual and moral virtues.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction

235 pages, Hardcover

First published June 30, 2011

Reviews

[Ray A. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Worth reading, but written for epistemologists, not for a general audience. Best chapters for the lay person are the Introduction, Intellectual Virtues, Open-mindedness, and Intellectual Courage.

[Brady Corrin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Worthwhile even if you do not believe in intellectual virtues. Treating intellectual traits with moderation is a great philosophy no matter how you define good thinking.

[Joshua Finch]

Easy and fast read by a meticulous and clear writer. I enjoyed very much the traditional epistemology accounts of justification, i.e. reliabilism and evidentialism, being updated by virtue epistemology concepts.

The chapter on intellectual courage had underwhelming examples, but the one on open-mindedness was novel. It is hard to top Aristotle on this, and it was repetitive in other ways (like about how the virtues are specifically intellectual), so was nowhere near as interesting as the prior trad / virtue epistemology synthesizing, which was brilliant. I would have loved to see how other trad epistemological issues like that of the structure of justification, are updated by this approach, instead of a second chapter (ch. 10, on top of the intro) sketching out the research program instead of diving in, and instead of the two particular virtue exploration chapters.