>>Dr. Linda Zagzebski: Aristotle began his metaphysics with the pronouncement “ALl
men by nature desire to know.” When you hear this, you might get the impression that
Aristotle believed that everybody likes to study, but read further. He goes on to say
“An indication of this is the delight we take in the senses. For even apart from their
usefulness they are loved for themselves, and above all others, the sense of sight.
For not only with a view to action but even when we are not going to do anything we prefer
seeing to everything else. The reason is that this most of all the senses, makes us know
and brings to light many differences between things,” Aristotle's point is that the human
mind by nature reaches out to grasp the world. We look, we touch, we remember and we contemplate
what we experience. We study for a reason. Books are a way to bring the faraway world
closer to us. Which the advent of modern communications we can say the same thing about videos and
electronic media. The desire to know, to find out what the world is like, is innate. But
some people have it more than others. Leonardo Da Vinci was perhaps the most unrelentingly
inquisitive person in history. Here’s the way Kenneth Clark Describes him: “Everything
he saw made him ask ‘why’ and ‘how’. Why does one find seashells in the mountains?
How does a bird fly? What accounts for cracks in the walls? What is the origin of wind and
clouds? How does the heart pump blood. Find out, write it down. If you can see it, draw
it, copy it out. Ask the same question again and again and again.” If you look at Leonardo’s
notebooks I think you will be stunned at the incredible reach of his desire to know the
world in all its detail. Leonardo’s curiosity was matched by an incredible intellectual
and artistic talent, but he was not intellectually perfect. I remember reading a biography of
Leonardo as a child, and I was very disappointed that he rarely finished anything. He just
kept moving from one project to the next. So intellectual perseverance was not one of
his virtues. But maybe that just means that some people have too many talents. What is
intellectual virtue? I became fascinated with this question in the early nineties. At that
time hardly any philosopher talked about intellectual virtue. Nobody talked abotu curiosity, open-mindedness,
intellectual courage, intellectual humility, intellectual attentiveness, thoroughness,
and carefulness. So I wrote a book called Virtues of the Mind in which I developed a
virtue theory that is broad enough to include intellectual virtues in the same theory as
moral virtues. And I then use the theory to address the central question of epistemology.
What is knowledge and justified belief? We won’t be talking about epistemology in this
course, but I want you to see why I think that the intellectual virtues are just as
important as the moral virtues. And I think that fundamentally almost all of the intellectual
virtues arise from the same basic motivation. The motivation to get the truth about the
world for ourselves and others. We need to believe the truth for almost anything else
we want. And we need other people to believe the truth also. False beliefs hurt us. Some
intellectual virtues function primarily to protect us from false beliefs. Virtues like
intellectual attentiveness, carefulness, and thoroughness. Other virtues open our minds
to more truths about hte world than we would have otherwise. Virtues like curiosity and
inquisitiveness are like that. But I think all of the intellectual virtues arise from
a motive to get truth and avoid falsehood. Here are some key intellectual virtues. Curiosity
is the desire to find out what exists, why it exists, and how it works. The closely related
virtue is inquisitiveness, or the disposition to ask questions over and over again. Getting
part of an answer is not enough. Getting an answer to one question leads to another question.
Young children are naturally inquisitive. Unfortunately, as we grow older we tend to
become less inquisitive. Maybe that’s because we had trouble getting answers to our questions
when we were younger. But that means we need a proper regard for the difficulty in getting
genuine knowledge, and that leads to two more virtues. Intellectual humility is facing up
to the truth about oneself. Neither over valuing nor under valuing one's abilities and accomplishments.
The intellectually humble person acknowledges her intellectual limitations. She does not
deny her accomplishments but she’s more concerned about her truth than her status.
That also means she gives intellectual credit where it is due. If she gets an idea from
another source she recognizes that when she puts forth the idea in her class papers or
published work. The intellectually humble person know that she might be wrong, that
leads to another virtue. Open-mindedness is the readiness to step outside one’s own
point of view to consider the merits of other perspectives with a willingness to change
one’s mind when that is warranted. Open-mindedness follows from a genuine love of truth and the
humility that one might be mistaken in one’s beliefs. There’s plenty of evidence that
people are usually not open-minded. For instance, there are studies that admit that most people,
and I’m sorry to say even college professors, people with PhDs, read or view only the media
outlets that are dominated by their own political views. If they happen to read an article from
the other side of an issue, they get mad. I think it is because human beings want the
world to be a certain way and they won’t want to hear any reason to think otherwise.
That might seem odd when the belief they want to be true is negative. Why would people want
bad news to be true? Actually it’s easy. Suppose you dislike the administration in
office. You will then be quick to believe bad economic news and will resist evidence
against your belief. I’ve seen this again and again going back decades. Or, suppose
that you think that most people are racist or instead you believe that racism is very
uncommon. Your response to evidence of racism will be very different in each case. I notice
that in reactions to the publicity about an OU fraternity’s racist chant. Some people
not only concluded that the chanters are racist, but were quick to conclude that fraternities
are racist or that OU students in general are racist or that Oklahomans are racist.
But I also know people who interpreted the same evidence as an aberration and looked
for conditions that excused the participants. But we can’t just believe what we want to
believe. Intellectual humility makes us realize that we might be wrong about a lot of things.
Open-mindedness makes us look at reasons for and against a belief whether or not we want
to look at it. Remember that Aristotle that that virtue was a mean between extremes. Does
that apply to the intellectual virtues? I think it does. Take open-mindedness. I think
there is such a thing as being too open-minded. Open-mindedness forces us to think about the
importance of different perspectives on the same issue. But at some point we need to stop
looking at perspectives and decide what we believe the truth to be. Life is short and
we aren’t going to get all points of view about every subject. And we wouldn’t want
to anyway. Part of being a person is having one’s own conscientiously developed point
of view. Anybody who really treats all points of view as equal is not a person. So I do
think there is such a thing as excessive open-mindedness. What about excessive curiosity? It is interested
that Aquinas treated curiositas as a vice. In English we have different words for the
wrong kind of curiosity. Nosiness or being intrusive on other people’s privacy. Is
is really true that it is good for all of us to know everything going on in the world?
Probably not, but then there must be limits to the virtue of curiosity. Can there be excessive
intellectual humility? I think that one is easy. An excessively humble person is one
who does not take credit for their intellectual accomplishments. Some people are quick to
denigrate themselves in front of others and maybe even in their own minds. I don’t think
that can be a virtue. What are the names for excessive humility and excessive open-minded
and excessive curiosity? From time to time I will mention the possibility that there
are virtues and vices without names. If you keep a list we can look at them together later
in the course.