When I was a boy, I got into an argument with my father about whether or not New Zealand was in Africa. I was convinced it was. So much so that I yelled at him for suggesting I was saying something dumb. Turns out, I was saying something dumb (some things never change).
I’ve since realised that it wasn’t the answer itself that was dumb. Wrong answers happen all the time in the world of scholarship, but that doesn’t necessarily make the person who proffers them, dumb. It is instead the mental processes that matter. To me, something is smart if it is produced by the sort of mind that possesses sound habits of thought.
I call these habits of thought, epistemic virtues. And in my case, with my boyish intellectual arrogance, I was displaying the opposite: epistemic vice. So that begs the question. What kind of thinking does produce smart expressions of knowledge? What is an epistemic virtue?
Humans are designed to do just about everything in groups. We eat in groups, mourn in groups, sing in groups, and yes, even think in groups. It’s the reason we have religion, political tribes, and fans of sporting teams.
Much of the time, this is a positive feature of the human experience. It creates social bonds and strengthens the individual by networking their endeavours with the helping hands of other humans.
But, like most human tendencies, there is a dark side as well. When it comes to thinking, humans often succumb to the ideas of the group, rather than constructing their own. This is a two pronged attack on our thinking:
We feel immense pressure not to be ostracised from the group for wrong think
We feel positive emotion when we do coincide with the notions of the group
The result is a world full of socially produced dogma. So much of what we think isn’t thought through properly at all, at least not by us. We become mimics. Mouthpieces for viruses of the mind. And strangely enough, even the rejection of such dogma can be a vice. People who simply adopt the opposite of the dogma - what we call contrarians - are just as bound to the dogma as the dogmatist, for they must disagree, regardless of truth.
The virtuous intellect is one who seeks their own personal understanding of the world. They do not follow received wisdom just because it is mouthed by many. And they do not reject received wisdom just because it is mouthed by many. The independent thinker makes their own mind up, for their own reasons.
Remember how I argued that New Zealand was in Africa? I sure as hell do. What went so horribly wrong? Well, other than a mind subject to flights of fancy, the main problem seems to be arrogance. I had it in my head that the answer was correct, and I was willing to fight tooth and nail to protect it.
Be honest; you’ve done the same yourself. I know I have. I still do. And it’s nothing to be ashamed of. There’s perfectly good reason for it. Who wants to undermine their own assumptions about the world? It’s very unsettling to think of the world as a mysterious and unknowable entity. We want a sense of stability. And if one treasured belief could be wrong, we realise that any could be wrong.
The virtuous intellect is one who seeks their own personal understanding of the world.
But if we want knowledge, true knowledge, then doubt is necessary. In fact, I would argue that without doubt, we cannot know anything at all. Do we not realise how biased we are? Do we not realise how easily we could be mistaken, the facts we might not know, the miscalculations we have made, the pact with the devil that curses us to always be wrong? No? Just me?
It’s so easy to be wrong. So easy, in fact, that most of our foundational beliefs are at least partly wrong. The answer to this problem: humility.
It’s not that you have to give up your treasured beliefs. You just don’t need to be so damn serious about holding onto them, like a puppy desperately gripping dad’s favourite pair of yummy sneakers. Let go a little bit. It’s good for you. Realise, you don’t need to be right about everything, or anything really. You simply need to admit to yourself that you could easily be wrong. Only then, can you be right.
Everyone knows the term “open-minded”. And everyone seems to think they are exactly it. But what do we mean by open-minded? I can see two possible definitions:
allowing for unconventional ideas to be taken up
allowing for our own existing ideas to be changed
Here I’m going to advocate for the second. Why the second but not the first? Well, is it a virtue for me to be convinced that the Earth was created by the sneeze of an interdimensional elephant named Floyd? Should I be open to something so implausible? No. However, if I’m provided good evidence to Floydism, like his giant cosmic handkerchief, with fresh boogers, then I should be “open” enough to change my mind.
This is what I call intellectual flexibility. It’s one thing to have doubt. It’s an entirely different thing to be able to drop an idea and pick up another one. This is particularly the case if the idea was previously one you hated.
The virtuous knower must not be static. But, like a flagpole bending in the wind so it does not break, they must flex as necessary.
If you cultivate this virtue, it’s true some people will accuse you of flip flopping. But that is because their mind is calcified and incapable of change. They are a fossil in a world won by living organisms like you.
There are good arguments and there are bad arguments. The good arguments consist of one or more people carefully and charitably challenging the ideas of an interlocuter. The bad ones suffer from a range of problems: defensiveness, aggression, cruelty, and maybe most of all, dishonesty.
Not me I hear you say? I always tell the truth in arguments.
Liar! We all lie in order to win. Some of us do it much more than others, sure. But we all do it. Think about statistics you’ve quoted in the past. How many of them have you actually read at the source? Be honest. Almost none most likely. That’s because, often when we argue a case, what we want is to win rather than to be actually correct.
Realise, you don’t need to be right about everything, or anything really. You simply need to admit to yourself that you could easily be wrong. Only then, can you be right.
But our desire to win is not the only problem for intellectual honesty. We may deliberately distort data and logic because we want something. Maybe it’s politically advantageous to lie. Maybe it helps us in our work. Maybe a shifty little gnome wearing a top hat promised us a ride in his magical flying wagon. Whatever the case, if we’re all honest with ourselves, we’ll admit we sometimes distort our arguments for some external benefit.
And this isn’t only bad for ourselves. It’s bad for the world. The intellect of individuals is the only thing that powers group intellect. How can we, as a society, figure out what is true in the world if people aren’t even honest about what they know and believe?
It’s okay to be dishonest sometimes, because it’s a natural thing to do. We’re not angels. But, the more we enable the angel on our shoulder, and disable the devil, the closer to truth we will be able to reach.
Everything in the world has a foundation. My apartment has a substructure. Mathematics has its axioms. And intellectual virtue has curiosity.
Think about it. How can we be intellectually productive in any way, if we aren’t curious enough to seek out knowledge? It’s the first step in the treacherous and winding maze of truth, one we would never enter (at such immense attention cost) unless we simply had to know what was at the other end.
Just think about the most positive learning experiences of your life. Were they not driven by your own curiosity? Did you not find it a million times easier to focus? I suspect that basically all great human discoveries and ideas were smithed this way. For curiosity is what fans the flames hot enough to turn those pages, investigate those rocks, and peek inside that neighbour's window.
Curiosity is the furnace of creation.
Maybe if we spent more time focusing on where our curiosity points us, instead of where we think we should be pointed, we would attain more truth and beauty. Nothing will inspire the production of ideas more than ideas sincerely pursued.
Many of the world’s sharpest minds share one trait in particular in common: they have an exceptional power of discernment. In fact the use of sharp as an intellectual metaphor seems quite apt here. It suggests a precision. It suggests the ability to cut apart a larger entity into finely sliced and individuated pieces.
This is a mental habit that shows itself in just about every area of human knowledge. The geologist must discern between layers of rock that appear almost identical to a layperson. The musician can pick out an obscure time signature in a chaotic piece of jazz music. A sommelier discerns cherry, oak, and pepper among a whirlwind of flavours most of us taste as merely grape.
As far as I can tell, there are two types:
Nodes: seeing all the little pieces that constitute the whole, and all their properties.
Networks: seeing how all the pieces arrange themselves in special kinds of relationships.
It is this illumination in our minds of these nodes and networks that constitutes what we might call information. And it’s likely that this applies to literally all subjects of inquiry. If you cannot break down a field of information into its distinct and related parts, what are you even doing intellectual speaking? Nothing. It seems to me, this sort of discernment is essentially the heart of insight. If you cannot see all the little and near-invisible pieces, what is there to say about anything?
It’s the easiest thing in the world to think someone is stupid for proposing an idea in opposition to our own. Obviously, we have the right, smart person idea. And they have the wrong, stupid person idea. But as natural as it is to be so dismissive, it’s one of the worst ways to accumulate knowledge.
Obviously, we don’t have all the answers. But we do have some. What makes us so certain that the other guy doesn’t have any answers? It’s statistically impossible that all ideas we hate are wrong.
I think that often, the reason we think an idea is so stupid, is less about the idea itself, and more about how we personally engage with the idea.
Curiosity is the furnace of creation.
We have a tendency to see opposing ideas in their worst possible light. We distort the logic. We overlook obvious elements in their claims. We entirely miss the point. And worse, we often impugn the opponent with ill-intent, as if the only reason they could hold the opinion is that they are stupid or evil.
But think how much of the world’s possible truth you are missing because you are so instinctively dismissive.
The answer is to be more charitable. Put arguments you don’t like in their best possible form. Try to understand where the opinion derives its merit. What values underpin it. What the logical outcome actually is, rather than one you manufacture from your own boiling outrage. If you do this, you may find yourself seeing the world from vastly more angles, instead of the one and only angle most of us are obsessed with: our own.
Self-awareness is now a multi-billion dollar industry. Self help books line bookstore shelves. Meditation apps crowd app stores. And personality tests of a million flavours wiggle their way into millions of dating app bios.
But seldom is self-awareness used in reference to our intellect. Instead, it typically refers to our spiritual life, our relationships, our career, our emotions, even our day-to-day practical existence. It’s strange really. Why not the intellect? That’s just as much a part of our self as anything else. And most importantly, awareness is key to its development.
It tells us what sorts of environments we learn best in
It tells us what emotional hurdles we have in our learning
It tells us what modes of learning work best for us
It tells us when we truly understand and when we simply think we understand
I would argue that this may be the most important virtue, because it’s overlooked entirely. It’s a tool we could use and basically never do. And yet, it is incredibly powerful. If we think of the intellect as just another part of self, then it stands to reason that the best way to develop it is to be aware of what needs developing.
Virtue. It’s not just something in a holy book. It’s not just the thing you have when you help a lady cross the road with her grocery bags. It’s also the foundation of your entire intellectual life.
So if you really have your heart set on becoming the smartest version of yourself, stop thinking about learning facts. Instead, build the scaffolding on which knowledge is built. Become a virtuous knower.
“I don’t know” could be the most intellectually virtuous statement one could utter.