In my understanding, Epistemic Virtues are the virtues that lead someone to
knowledge or truth.

Some epistemic virtues are curiosity, open-mindedness, a sensitivity to
reason and evidence, doubt, but also experience and good judgment.

Most importantly, in my opinion, is the humble openness, or even an almost
masochistic eagerness, to change your mind in the face of good reasons and
evidence. This can be very hostile to certain other needs in life such as
community or emotional well-being, but anyone who wants the truth must
think this way.

Most people are bigots. It's very, very hard to avoid bigotry, perhaps even
impossible.

Arguing based on the presumed motives of your interlocutor seems like an
epistemic vice. If you want you and your interlocutor to reach the truth,
you have to go down the complicated rabbit hole of ideas. Unfortunately,
it's often only practical between people of similar background, and similar
background often maintains the biases between interlocutors. There is a
sweet spot of different opinions and similar knowledge for the most
fruitful conversations to take place. Judging the truth-value of a person's
ideas based on their motives is a fallacy. Ideas are completely separate
from their motives.

In a previous email, I listed what I believe to be the conditions the truth
must meet for us to be at peace with it. I'm mostly agnostic about whether
or not the truth meets these conditions, but I tentatively believe it does.
The evidence in cultural evolution, as well as the truth contained in good
fiction give me confidence that the absolute truth might be totally
satisfactory despite the vicissitudes of life. My claims about the
conditions that must be met to reconcile one with the truth are gotten
through introspection with a moderate degree of observations of human
behavior. I'm completely open to the idea that complete reconciliation with
the truth is impossible, but I think a degree of wisdom can be achieved
that reveals a satisfactory understanding of reality.

There are all sorts of complications in the above. I assume that there is
such thing as an absolute truth and I assume it must meet certain
conditions for humans to be at peace with it. I also claim there is such a
thing as a problem of reconciliation with the truth. It's also very hard to
justify the idea that good fiction and religion contain wisdom about human
nature and patterns of human experience in cultural evolution. I've reached
a state where my ideas are composed of ideas that require very long
arguments or books to justify.

It's often the case that intellectuals are regarded as arrogant. This is
tragic considering that intellectual integrity requires a great deal of
humility. A consequence is this:
Charles Bukowski — 'The problem with the world is that the intelligent
people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.'

Critical thinking follows the Dunning-Kruger effect, so intelligent people
are only confident after a long period of learning:
[image: image.png]




On Wed, Aug 29, 2018 at 3:53 AM Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Hi List,
>
>
>
>   I have been thinking quite a bit lately about the value of intellectual
> integrity. As I have blogged about before, (see, e.g., here We Need to
> Value Intellectual Integrity
> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.psychologytoday.com_blog_theory-2Dknowledge_201602_we-2Dneed-2Dvalue-2Dintellectual-2Dintegrity&d=DwIFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=GHqEZdNvno2zrf5nEZXvpJOcwu6emCpQTH2ci8NMKAA&s=BaOjUVeGX8RR6VkFgvoi5JVlKSlWElzk730MvIhPO3A&e=>)
> it is one of the values that I as being in most danger, especially on the
> political scene, but also more broadly.
>
>
>
>   I would love to hear what others think. It seems to me that the desire
> for a Theory of Knowledge would go hand in glove with a value of
> intellectual integrity. Do we as a society deeply share this value?
>
>
>
> Best,
> Gregg
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