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

[Philip of Macedon · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Inquiring Mind is a study of the intellectual virtues and their relation to epistemology. Jason Baehr begins by introducing real life examples of intellectual virtues in Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, as well as a literary example from CP Snow’s novel The Search. These examples, he says, “provide some sense of the underlying psychological structure of intellectual virtue,” arising from a desire for truth, knowledge, and understanding — a desire for “cognitive contact with reality”, that subordinates other desires that may compromise such achievement. These virtues are traits of character, and play different roles in the context of inquiry. They allow us to overcome cognitive demands and succeed in developing reliable true knowledge. An intellectually virtuous person, Baehr points out while clarifying the virtues, “is one who thinks, reasons, judges, interprets, evaluates, and so on, in an intellectually appropriate and rational way,” and an intellectually vicious person “is one who is deficient or defective in this regard.”

He describes the demands of successful inquiry, and characterizes these demands as motivational, inquisitive, reflective, remaining focused, pursuing wonder, curiosity, evaluating wide variety of sources, employing intellectual fairness, consistency, objectivity, impartiality and open-mindedness. Our capacity for self-deception can be tempered and even avoided by cognitive integrity. Honesty and transparency and self-scrutiny and thinking outside the box are needed when establishing doxastic coherence.

He names the different categories of cognitive qualities: virtues, faculties, talents, temperaments, and skills. All of these relate to the first category, virtue. In order to develop the virtues one must have some reasonable mixture of strengths in the other categories. Baehr distinguishes intellectual and character virtues from intellectual faculties and capacities, like vision, memory, reason. Virtues are qualities like fair-mindedness, intellectual honesty, inquisitiveness, contemplativeness, curiosity, attentiveness, thoroughness, humility, thoroughness in inquiry, intellectual perseverance, patience, sensitivity to detail, perceptiveness, creativity, self-awareness, integrity. They are concepts that exhibit a sort of intellectual character that must be cultivated and developed, and which do not occur naturally.

Competing schools of epistemological thought are examined, reliablism and evidentialism. Poor reasons for holding beliefs are studied as examples of defective inquiry, in which people hold false, unjustified beliefs and reject correct beliefs due to undemanding and undiscriminating habits of inquiry. This can be caused by uncritical and hasty inquiry, bias, low curiosity, intellectual laziness, carelessness, gullibility, apathy, obliviousness, self-deception, concern only for the most immediate, practical, self-serving concerns. That is, cognitive failures or defects can be to blame for holding wrong beliefs, particularly when reasons for not holding those beliefs are abundant. The antidote for intellectual vice, the intellectual virtues mentioned earlier, become a necessary condition for justification.

He examines the concept of personal intellectual worth as it relates to the intellectual virtues, distinguishing the basic equality and dignity everyone shares from the personal worth concept as an intellectual value. Intellectual duties and virtues make up this trait. These things are volitional, not intrinsic qualities we are born with. He goes into some depth discussing the virtues and how they might be cultivated. These contribute to the possessor of the virtues as being a better person intellectually.

Throughout the book arises the question of how intellectual virtues relate to moral virtues. It is a nuanced relationship with subtle distinctions and similarities. Some philosophers contend that the intellectual virtues are a subset of moral virtues. Baehr addresses this in some depth in the appendix, concluding that the two categories are distinct, and one can be intellectually virtuous without being morally virtuous. Intellectual virtues can in some sense be a subset of moral virtues, but this depends on the motivations of the person embodying the virtues, and whether or not their epistemic goals are truly others-regarding in a capacity that exceeds only knowledge development. Generally, however, just as an athlete or an artist can be exceptional at athletics or at art and still be a morally deficient person, an intellectually excellent person can still be morally rotten. Even if they exhibit virtues that could, in another person, be utilized for moral good and constructive ends like the flourishing and well-being of other living things, this is not necessarily true in all cases. Still, I think he rightly points out that moral virtues do in some way depend on intellectual virtues, because moral good ultimately will come from epistemic goods.

Baehr investigates open-mindedness and determines how the competing and complementary definitions of open-mindedness offered by other philosophers compare to his own. What he concludes is that open-mindedness is a facilitating virtue, in that it is necessary to make others possible, but can at times prove to be a vice if not exercised correctly. He calls it a cognitive detaching from, or transcendence of, a default cognitive standpoint. He does a similar investigation of intellectual honesty, another facilitating virtue. In both cases he cites examples of journalists, scientists, lawyers, doctors, and other professionals who operate in environments that to some degree necessitate open-mindedness and intellectual honesty, but shows how even these virtues can be embodied for selfish ends without an others-regarding aspect. This makes them self-serving and not virtuous. To be truly virtuous one must exhibit these qualities for the sake of discovering truth and sharing knowledge, not for the sake of self-advancement.

I really liked the book. It slows down when he discusses the competing schools of thought or different ways of framing and contextualizing the virtues. I didn’t find these moments enlightening or useful but someone better acquainted with the current developments in these niches of epistemology probably will. Aside from those few moments when comparison becomes the focus, the book is a sharp and illuminating work on epistemology.

[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.