What is the solution to the puzzle?

22 The solution is undergirded by Baehr’s wider move: to explain the epistemic value of intellectual virtues not directly in terms of their connection to (e.g. their conduciveness of) some epistemic end, such as truth, but rather—and in a way that draws from Hurka’s work on moral virtue—in terms of the intellectual virtue’s contribution to what he calls an individual’s personal intellectual-worth.

Why is Baehr taking openmindedness to be intellectually virtuous?

in order to better understand how Baehr is taking openmindedness to be intellectually virtuous (when it is) because of its connection to truth, the authors need a more concrete account of the conditions under which it counts as “reasonable” for S to believe that engaging in C may be helpful for reaching the truth.

Open AccessJournal Article10.1080/00455091.2014.923247

Openmindedness and truth

J. Adam Carter, +1 more

- 17 Sep 2014

- Canadian Journal of Philosophy

- Vol. 44, Iss: 2, pp 207-224

TL;DR: The authors argued that openmindedness, when intellectually virtuous, bears no interesting essential connection to truth and argued that the connection between open-mindedness and truth is tenuous, and that several strategies for reconciling this tension are shown to fail.

Abstract: While openmindedness is often cited as a paradigmatic example of an intellectual virtue, the connection between openmindedness and truth is tenuous. Several strategies for reconciling this tension are considered, and each is shown to fail; it is thus claimed that openmindedness, when intellectually virtuous, bears no interesting essential connection to truth. In the final section, the implication of this result is assessed in the wider context of debates about epistemic value.

AI Agents for this Paper

Find similar papers on Google Scholar, PubMed and Arxiv
Write a critical review of this paper
Analyze citations of this paper to find unaddressed research gaps

Most frequently asked questions

1. What are the contributions in this paper?

A 1 The claim that openmindedness is a paradigmatic example of an intellectual virtue—conceived of as a disposition—is not incompatible with recognizing that there might be some interesting occurent psychological state that also fits the description of openmindedness.. This kind of position is examined in detail in §2.

2. What is the way to explain openmindedness?

One (albeit, indirect) way to advance the view that virtuous openmindedness is characterized by a motivation for truth would be to generate a kind of reductio for the view that intellectual virtues must be reliable.

3. What is the point of Montmarquet’s argument against a reliability condition on intellectual?

But then, to the extent that openmindedness is intellectually virtuous by way of its truth-conduciveness, the openmindedness exhibited by Aristotle and Einstein must not be equally intellectually virtuous.

4. What is the criterion of adequacy for a theory of intellectual?

32 Riggs (Ibid.: 211) takes the requirement that a theory of intellectual virtue not exclude the intellectual giants as a “criterion of adequacy for a theory of intellectual virtue.”

Citations

Journal Article•10.1111/J.1468-0149.1992.TB02347.X

Knowledge in Perspective. Selected Essays in Epistemology

T. E. Wilkerson

- 01 Jul 1992

- Philosophical Books

153

Journal Article•10.1017/S135824611800053X

Can Closed-mindedness be an Intellectual Virtue?

Heather Battaly

- 01 Nov 2018

- Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement

TL;DR: In this article, the authors adopt a working analysis of closed-mindedness as an unwillingness or inability to engage seriously with relevant intellectual options, and show that in epistemically hostile environments, closedmindedness will be an intellectual virtue.

...read moreread less

•Journal Article•10.1111/SJP.12163

Open Mindedness as Engagement

Jack M. C. Kwong

- 01 Mar 2016

- Southern Journal of Philosophy

TL;DR: Open-mindedness is an under-explored topic in virtue epistemology, despite its assumed importance for the field as discussed by the authors, and questions about it abound and need to be answered.

...read moreread less

•Journal Article•10.3998/ERGO.12405314.0004.016

Intellectual Humility: An Interpersonal Theory

Maura Priest

- 01 Sep 2017

- Open Access Journal

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the fruits of intellectual humility are external to the virtue holder, and they further argue that intellectual humility is not a personal virtue, but an interpersonal virtue.

...read moreread less

Journal Article•10.1111/PHC3.12316

The epistemology of education

Lani Watson

- 07 Mar 2016

- Philosophy Compass

TL;DR: The landscape of contemporary epistemology has significantly diversified in the past 30 years, shaped in large part by two complementary movements: virtue and social epistemologies as mentioned in this paper.

...read moreread less

...

Expand

References

•Book

Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View

Stanley Milgram

- 01 Jan 1974

TL;DR: The Dilema of Obedience as discussed by the authors is a fundamental element in the structure of social life and obedience is as basic an element in social life as one can point to, and it is only the man dwelling in isolation who is not forced to respond through defiance or submission to the commands of others.

...read moreread less

3.6K

Monograph•10.1017/CBO9781139174763

Virtues of the Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of Knowledge

Linda Zagzebski

- 13 Sep 1996

- The Philosophical Review

TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a theory of virtue and vice in epistemology and moral theory of knowledge and moral virtue, and conclude that the scope of the moral part is limited by the nature of knowledge.

...read moreread less

1.4K

Journal Article•10.1111/1467-9264.00062

XIV—Moral Philosophy Meets Social Psychology: Virtue Ethics and the Fundamental Attribution Error

Gilbert Harman

- 01 Jun 1999

TL;DR: The fundamental attribution error as mentioned in this paper is the error of ignoring situational factors and overconfidently assuming that distinctive behaviour or patterns of behaviour are due to an agent's distinctive character traits, when in fact there is no evidence that people have character traits (virtues, vices, etc.).

...read moreread less

832

Journal Article•10.5840/SAAP1990185613

Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity

Anthony Graybosch

- 01 Nov 1990

629

Journal Article•10.1215/00318108-112-4-447

How truth governs belief

Nishi Shah

- 01 Oct 2003

- The Philosophical Review

TL;DR: In this paper, it is argued that the question whether to believe that p seems to collapse into the question of whether p is true, and that there is no such gap between the two questions within the first-personal deliberative perspective.

...read moreread less

578

...

Expand

Openmindedness and truth

Chat with Paper

AI Agents for this Paper

Most frequently asked questions

1. What are the contributions in this paper?

2. What is the way to explain openmindedness?

3. What is the point of Montmarquet’s argument against a reliability condition on intellectual?

4. What is the criterion of adequacy for a theory of intellectual?

5. What is the solution to the puzzle?

6. Why is Baehr taking openmindedness to be intellectually virtuous?

Citations

Knowledge in Perspective. Selected Essays in Epistemology

Can Closed-mindedness be an Intellectual Virtue?

Open Mindedness as Engagement

Intellectual Humility: An Interpersonal Theory

The epistemology of education

References

Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View

Virtues of the Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of Knowledge

XIV—Moral Philosophy Meets Social Psychology: Virtue Ethics and the Fundamental Attribution Error

Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity

How truth governs belief

Related Papers (5)

Virtues of the Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of Knowledge

Epistemic virtue and doxastic responsibility

The Inquiring Mind

Intellectual virtues and the epistemic value of truth

Reconciling Open-Mindedness and Belief