Philosophy:Intellectual humility

Intellectual humility is the acceptance that one's beliefs and opinions could be wrong. Other characteristics that may accompany intellectual humility include a low concern for status and an acceptance of one's intellectual limitations.

Intellectual humility (IH) is often described as an intellectual virtue.({{{1}}}, {{{2}}}) It is considered along with other perceived virtues and vices such as open-mindedness, intellectual courage, arrogance, vanity, and servility.({{{1}}}, {{{2}}}) It can be understood as lying between the opposite extremes of intellectual arrogance/dogmatism and intellectual servility/diffidence/timidity.

Definitions

While IH as an independent and focused area of study is a recent phenomenon, the presence of humility in discourse dates back many centuries. Waclaw Bąk et al. identify Socrates as "the ideal example" of IH. Studies by Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, and Gordon Allport discuss humility with regard to one's knowledge without using the phrase "intellectual humility".

In 1990, Richard Paul presented IH as a critical thinking disposition, interdependent with other traits such as intellectual courage. He defined it as "Awareness of the limits of one's knowledge, including sensitivity to circumstances in which one’s native egocentrism is likely to function self-deceptively; sensitivity to bias and prejudice in, and limitations of one's viewpoint". Paul adds "It does not imply spinelessness or submissiveness. It implies the lack of intellectual pretentiousness, boastfulness, or conceit, combined with insight into the logical foundations, or lack of such foundations, of one’s beliefs."

One of the first focused studies of IH was conducted by Roberts and Woods in 2003. Much of the literature on IH concerns attempts to frame definitions. Conceptions of humility include proper belief, underestimation of strengths, low concern, limitation-owning, as well as semantic clusters, cluster of attitudes, and confidence management.Template:Jargon inline

Doxastic definition

Ian M. Church and Peter L. Samuelson proposed a doxastic account of IH. They considered IH as a virtue of valuing one's own beliefs "as he or she ought". They argued humility is the "virtuous mean" between arrogance and self-deprecation.

This definition proposed that people are intellectually arrogant when they erroneously evaluate their intellectual capacity to be higher than warranted, resulting in them being more closed-minded and biased than the intellectually humble person. People who are intellectually diffident are those who fail "to appropriately recognize or appreciate their intellectual achievements." Such a person is less inclined to speak out when he or she encounters wrong information.

See also

• Intellectual courage - Quality of willingness to critically analyze one's own strongly held beliefs and conclusions
• Modesty - Quality of being unassuming or moderate in the estimation of one's abilities

References

Cited works

• Bąk, Wacław; Wójtowicz, Bartosz; Kutnik, Jan (2022). "Intellectual humility: an old problem in a new psychological perspective". Current Issues in Personality Psychology 10 (2): 85–97. doi:10.5114/cipp.2021.106999. ISSN 2353-4192. 
• Davis, Don E.; Rice, Kenneth; McElroy, Stacey; DeBlaere, Cirleen; Choe, Elise; Van Tongeren, Daryl R.; Hook, Joshua N. (2016). "Distinguishing intellectual humility and general humility". The Journal of Positive Psychology 11 (3): 215–224. doi:10.1080/17439760.2015.1048818. ISSN 1743-9760. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2015.1048818. 
• Gertler, Brie (2020), Zalta, Edward N., ed., Self-Knowledge (Spring 2020 ed.), Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2020/entries/self-knowledge/, retrieved 26 October 2021 
• Haggard, Megan C. (December 2016). Humility as Intellectual Virtue: Assessment and Uses of a Limitations-Owning Perspective of Intellectual Humility (PDF). Baylor University (PhD thesis). p. 2.
• Haggard, Megan; Rowatt, Wade C.; Leman, Joseph C.; Meagher, Benjamin; Moore, Courtney; Fergus, Thomas; Whitcomb, Dennis; Battaly, Heather et al. (2018). "Finding middle ground between intellectual arrogance and intellectual servility: Development and assessment of the limitations-owning intellectual humility scale" (in en). Personality and Individual Differences 124: 184–193. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2017.12.014. ISSN 0191-8869. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886917307286. 
• McElroy, Stacey E.; Rice, Kenneth G.; Davis, Don E.; Hook, Joshua N.; Hill, Peter C.; Worthington, Everett L.; Van Tongeren, Daryl R. (2014). "Intellectual Humility: Scale Development and Theoretical Elaborations in the Context of Religious Leadership" (in en). Journal of Psychology and Theology 42 (1): 19–30. doi:10.1177/009164711404200103. ISSN 0091-6471. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/009164711404200103. 
• Leary, Mark R. (2018), The Psychology of Intellectual Humility, John Templeton Foundation, https://www.templeton.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Intellectual-Humility-Leary-FullLength-Final.pdf 
• Leary, Mark R.; Diebels, Kate J.; Davisson, Erin K.; Jongman-Sereno, Katrina P.; Isherwood, Jennifer C.; Raimi, Kaitlin T.; Deffler, Samantha A.; Hoyle, Rick H. (2017). "Cognitive and Interpersonal Features of Intellectual Humility.". Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin 43 (6): 793–813. doi:10.1177/0146167217697695. ISSN 0146-1672. PMID 28903672. https://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/dspace/handle/10161/23967. 
• Lynch, Michael P.; Johnson, Casey Rebecca; Sheff, Nathan; Gunn, Hanna (2016), Intellectual Humility in Public Discourse. Literature Review, University of Connecticut, https://humilityandconviction.uconn.edu/blank/what-is-intellectual-humility/ 
• Porter, Tenelle Joan (May 2015). Intellectual Humility, Mindset and Learning (Thesis). Stanford University.
• Samuelson, Peter L.; Jarvinen, Matthew J.; Paulus, Thomas B.; Church, Ian M.; Hardy, Sam A.; Barrett, Justin L. (2015). "Implicit theories of intellectual virtues and vices: A focus on intellectual humility" (in English). Journal of Positive Psychology 10 (5): 389–406. doi:10.1080/17439760.2014.967802. ISSN 1743-9760. https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/en/publications/implicit-theories-of-intellectual-virtues-and-vices-a-focus-on-in. 
• Whitcomb, Dennis; Battaly, Heather; Baehr, Jason; Howard-Snyder, Daniel (2017). "Intellectual Humility: Owning Our Limitations" (in en). Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 94 (3): 509–539. doi:10.1111/phpr.12228. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/phpr.12228. 
• Zmigrod, Leor; Zmigrod, Sharon; Rentfrow, Peter Jason; Robbins, Trevor W. (2019). "The psychological roots of intellectual humility: The role of intelligence and cognitive flexibility" (in en). Personality and Individual Differences 141: 200–208. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2019.01.016. ISSN 0191-8869. 

Books

• Aberdein, Andrew (2020). "Intellectual Humility and Argumentation". in Alfano, Mark; Lynch, Michael; Tanesini, Alessandra. The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Humility. Routledge. pp. 325–334. https://philarchive.org/rec/ABEIHA. Retrieved 2022-06-04. "Paul is the only theorist in Ritchhart’s survey to propose intellectual humility as a critical thinking disposition" 
• Church, Ian; Samuelson, Peter (2016). Intellectual Humility: An Introduction to the Philosophy and Science. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4742-3675-1. https://books.google.com/books?id=RG8wDQAAQBAJ. 
• Paul, Richard (1990). Critical Thinking: What Every Person Needs to Survive in a Rapidly Changing World. Center for Critical Thinking and Moral Critique, Sonoma State University. pp. 54, 194. ISBN 0944583040. 
• Snow, Nancy E. (2018). "15. Intellectual Humility". in Battaly, Heather (in en). The Routledge Handbook of Virtue Epistemology. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-49528-4. https://books.google.com/books?id=bkBvDwAAQBAJ. 

Further reading

• "Can Intellectual Humility Save Us from Ourselves?". JSTOR. 24 Jan 2024. https://daily.jstor.org/can-intellectual-humility-save-us-from-ourselves/.  Seven conversations "pairing scholars of intellectual humility with community leaders to explore manifestations of intellectual humility outside the academy."
• Resnick, Brian (2019). "Intellectual humility: the importance of knowing you might be wrong". https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2019/1/4/17989224/intellectual-humility-explained-psychology-replication. 
• Dolan, Eric (2019). "Intellectually humble people tend to possess more knowledge, study finds". https://www.psypost.org/2019/03/intellectually-humble-people-tend-to-possess-more-knowledge-study-finds-53409.