Shelly possesses an intellectual character filled with what philosophers call the virtues: curiosity, carefulness, thoroughness, and humility in understanding the limits of her own knowledge.
Denise exemplifies an intellectual character marked by vices or defects: gullibility, lack of carefulness, and a tendency toward wishful thinking.
In an era rife with disinformation, how well Shelly and Denise think matters, as it does for us all. Through the Internet, social media and propaganda, we’re engulfed in unsubstantiated health claims, sensationalized crime stories, defamatory rumors, AI fakes and competing versions of the same news event. Many people believe the flimsiest of conspiracy theories: a faked moon landing, school shooting hoaxes, or Holocaust denial.
Into this mental miasma, enter the concept of intellectual character.
The idea describes who you are as a thinker and knower, according to philosophers and psychologists. We all have intellectual temperaments–“dispositions to think, reason and respond to new information in certain ways,” writes Quassim Cassam, author of a book, Vices of the Mind. He’s a philosophy professor at the University of Warwick who has studied conspiracy theories.
Instead of trying to understand the often-slippery reasons why someone believes something (for example, the unfounded QAnon conspiracy claims that a pedophile cabal ran the world), the intellectual character approach focuses on consistent thinking traits. For example, a person who tends to be thorough and independent-minded in evaluating information and evidence (like Shelly) is less likely to embrace outlandish conspiracy theories than someone who is gullible and intellectually careless (like Denise).
Intellectual character is a timely topic that hasn’t gotten much attention, but philosophers have been discussing it for the past 30 years, according to Belen Mesurado and Claudia E. Vanney, two researchers from Argentina who have studied intellectual virtues. Nowadays, philosophers and psychologists alike are exploring how intellectual traits, habits and attitudes can help or hinder the acquisition of knowledge and understanding.
Intellectual virtues
However, the idea of intellectual character isn’t modern. Ancient philosophers as far back as Plato and Aristotle have contemplated intellectual virtues as they sought to instill curiosity, love of learning, and wisdom in their students.
Today, there’s no single definition of intellectual virtues, but Jason Baehr, a philosophy professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, has proposed a list, which he calls “the character strengths of good knowers, thinkers, learners, and inquirers:”
- Curiosity: seeking and asking for explanations without being satisfied with superficial or easy answers; desiring a broader, deeper understanding
- Intellectual autonomy: thinking and reasoning for oneself
- Intellectual humility: knowing one’s intellectual strengths and limitations; recognizing that one still has much to learn and being able to course-correct after recognizing one’s errors
- Attentiveness: being engaged during learning to avoid distractions and to focus on the essentials
- Carefulness: detecting and avoiding mistakes in order to search for accurate conclusions
- Intellectual thoroughness: using a comprehensive perspective to investigate topics in depth and explore connections among them
- Open-mindedness: willingness to listen to opposing points of view and to consider them in order to avoid one’s own bias
- Intellectual courage: willingness to convey one’s ideas without concern for criticism, embarrassment or failure
- Intellectual tenacity: accepting intellectual challenges and sustaining prolonged effort; overcoming obstacles and not becoming discouraged when confronted with fatigue and other difficulties
Intellectual vices
While these virtues typify excellent thinkers and contribute to intellectual flourishing, vices represent the flip side. In his book, Cassam describes intellectual vices as “systematically harmful ways of thinking–intellectual defects that get in the way of knowledge.”
Cassam stresses that intellectual vices are not occasional lapses; of course, we’ve all fallen into misguided thinking. Rather, intellectual vices are habitual.
The philosopher Linda Zagzebski created a list of vices: intellectual pride, negligence, idleness, cowardice, conformity, carelessness, rigidity, prejudice, wishful thinking, close-mindedness, insensitivity to detail, obtuseness, and lack of thoroughness.
In his book, Cassam zooms in on several major intellectual shortcomings that can result in false beliefs, among them:
- Close-mindedness: reluctance to consider new information once one has adopted or “frozen upon” a given conception; denying or reinterpreting information that’s inconsistent with one’s prior ideas; being intolerant of others with contradicting opinions
- Intellectual arrogance: having an intellectual superiority complex that makes one dismissive of the views of others; poor listening skills and unwillingness to learn from others or from one’s own mistakes
- Prejudice: forming an attitude and sustaining it without any inquiry into the object of prejudice, whether it’s a person or group; whether prejudices are positive or negative, it’s the nature of prejudice not to be based on evidence
- Wishful thinking: allowing one’s wishes to have more influence than any consideration of logic or evidence
- Gullibility: demonstrating a pattern of being easily duped; unable to grasp when not to trust others; susceptible to being tricked in circumstances in which a non-gullible person would not be deceived
When intellectual character migrates from academia into the wider world, the concept can seem more ambiguous. “In practice, the line between virtues and vices can be hard to draw,” Cassam writes. “One person’s open-mindedness is another person’s gullibility. Nevertheless, there is a difference. To be gullible is to be easily duped, and this is not the same thing as open-mindedness. Genuine open-mindedness makes us more effective knowledge-gatherers, whereas gullibility makes us less effective.”
Real-world consequences
Everyone has vices to some degree, including Cassam. He believed that Britain would remain in the European Union and assumed that Hilary Clinton would win the U.S. presidency over Donald Trump. He was wrong on both counts, despite “plenty of contrary evidence,” he writes. “In retrospect, I see that my beliefs about the outcomes of the two votes were at least in part the result of wishful thinking. I thought that Brexit would lose and Clinton would win because these were the outcomes I wanted.”
Since intellectual vices are voluntary character traits, attitudes and ways of thinking, they can be changed, Cassam says. In his own case, he decided to be more careful in the future by questioning his assumptions and being more skeptical of opinion polls and other data that support his wishful thinking.
Not everyone is motivated to tackle their vices, Cassam says, “but a person whose [intellectual] vices have gotten them into serious trouble might be motivated to do something about them.”
Recognizing one’s vices can be hard, but it is possible, he writes. For example, many people see their own prejudices. However, some will remain blind to their weaknesses, even as others criticize them. Cassam cites a former White House chief of staff, known for his haughtiness, who purportedly said, “People say I’m arrogant, but I know better.”
Those with enough self-awareness and humility to acknowledge their intellectual arrogance can take practical steps to remedy their hubris, for example, by exposing themselves to superior intellects, Cassam says. “In the real world, inquiry is rarely a solitary activity, at least in relation to complex questions. There is usually the need to learn from others and to rely on their expertise. This means being willing to defer to others and to acknowledge that one doesn’t know it all.”
Gullible people who have been hoodwinked one too many times need proper skepticism, he says. “A person whose judgment is poor or who is deficient in good sense can work to correct these flaws.”
Some find conspiracy theories entertaining and won’t give them up. But those who want to kick their habit of conspiratorial thinking can start asking themselves challenging questions, Cassam says, for example: Is this really the best explanation of the event in question? How many people would need to have been involved in the conspiracy? What are the odds of there being no leaks in a conspiracy involving so many different actors?
When intellectual vices go unchallenged, the consequences are steep not just for the individual, but for society, too.
On a collective scale, poor intellectual character contributes to warping of reality and hinders citizens from governing themselves in a democracy. Charlatans deceive the gullible.
“The only hope for a society that cares about knowledge is to equip its citizens with the intellectual and other means to distinguish truth from lies,” Cassam writes. “Education can play a vital role here, especially if it can focus on the development of pupils’ critical faculties and [intellectual] virtues such as rigor and respect for evidence. Only the inculcation and cultivation of the ability to distinguish truth from lies can prevent our knowledge from being undermined by malevolent individuals and organizations that peddle falsehoods for their own political or economic ends.”