>>Dr. Linda Zagzebski: In the last lecture I mentioned that most of the intellectual
virtues arise from a motive to get truth and to avoid falsehood. Some virtues like curiosity
and inquisitiveness are directed towards getting the truth. Other virtues like intellectual
thoroughness and carefulness are more directed towards preventing ourselves from getting
false beliefs. Intellectual humility and open-mindedness probably do both. They help us to believe
what is true and to avoid believing something false. Why is there a difference between the
desire to believe the truth and the desire to avoid believing what’s false. The answer
goes back to a famous paper by William James called The Will To Believe. Part of what James
does in that paper is to call attention to the difference between a desire to get something
good intellectually and the desire to avoid getting something bad. The desire to get something
good leads to extending ourselves, being adventuresome intellectually, asking questions, taking a
risk now and then. The desire to avoid getting something bad leads us to be intellectually
cautious, to be as careful as possible in forming our beliefs, weighing all the evidence
and holding back on believing until we think we have been intellectually thorough. James
thinks that different people have different intellectual values. Valuing truth is different
from disvaluing falsehood. The person who values truth is more of a risk taker than
the person who is afraid of falsehood. I think we can say that even though the virtues of
intellectual caution serve a different end than the virtues of love of truth, the virtues
of intellectual caution are still virtues. And the virtues of intellectual adventuresomeness
are virtues also. But I will leave it to you to decide which ones are more important. I
think it probably depends upon the context. Here are some virtues of the intellectually
careful and cautious person. One is intellectual attentiveness. The attentive person knows
how to look, how to examine, how to identify relevant details. She pays attention to the
evidence. Another is intellectual thoroughness. The thorough person knows how and where to
find evidence and knows how to weight it. She is not hasty in coming to conclusions.
Another virtue is intellectual perseverance. Getting knowledge can be slow and painstaking.
There can be setbacks and discouragement. The persevering person does not give up easily
when on a line of discovery. The intellectual virtues I have mentioned in the last two lectures
are virtues of a person who sincerely values truth and conscientiously tries to get it.
But we depend upon other people for most of our beliefs. That means that we can be harmed
unless other people have these virtues too. We live in communities that require trust
in each other and having the intellectual virtues makes us trustworthy. We need to trust
other people and each of us needs the virtues that makes us deserving of that trust. We
can see what would happen if we did not have intellectual trust in each other in the Greek
legend of Cassandra. According to that myth Apollo gave Cassandra the gift of prophecy
as part of a scheme to seduce her. When she rebuffed him he did not take back his gift,
but he did something much worse. He allowed her to continue to see the future but she
was fated to never be believed. Cassandra’s warning that the Trojan Horse was a trick
went unheeded with disastrous results for the Trojans, but the effect on her was terrible
in a different way. Aeschylus tells us that it drove her mad. Imagine what it would be
like to be disbelieved about everything you say, not just predictions about the future.
You would be completely isolated and there would be no way you could make plans with
others or even do the minimum to carry out your practical life. There would be no point
in talking to anybody. We need to be able to trust each other but we can only do that
if everyone agrees to do their best to be worthy of intellectual trust. If too many
people are intellectually irresponsible that undermines the fabric of society in a drastic
way. How often do you think you can trust what you read or hear? Once you find out that
many people are untrustworthy you start to doubt everybody because it is so hard to tell
the trustworthy from the untrustworthy. That is why I think that intellectual virtues are
just as important as moral virtues. When we talk about civic virtues next week, think
about the importance of intellectual virtues for a well-functioning society of citizens
who want to be informed voters and participants in public debate. Think about whether there
is a difference between the virtues that should govern what you believe privately and the
virtues that should govern what we say to each other. It seems to me that the virtues
of caution are more important for what we tell each other.