Intellectual Humility

Thursday April 14, 2011 • 1 Comment 

A poster offered this addition to the ongoing spiritual tyranny conversation.  While I am not familiar with the whole of Dr. Linda Elder’s work and it is possible that I’d find myself in agreement with much of what she says, I must confess that as I pondered Dr. Elder’s points that follow, I found myself taking issue with an underlying presumption, the theme that runs throughout the quoted section: that being “an intellectual” necessarily means a need for humility.  And she presumes that humility is a self-denigrating, self-imposed denial of the corrupting force of ego: pretentiousness, conceit, and emotions.

From Valuable Intellectual Traits:

Intellectual Humility: Having a consciousness of the limits of one’s knowledge, including a sensitivity to circumstances in which one’s native egocentrism is likely to function self-deceptively; sensitivity to bias, prejudice and limitations of one’s viewpoint. Intellectual humility depends on recognizing that one should not claim more than one actually knows.  It does not imply spinelessness or submissiveness. It implies the lack of intellectual pretentiousness, boastfulness, or conceit, combined with insight into the logical foundations, or lack of such foundations, of one’s beliefs.

Intellectual Courage: Having a consciousness of the need to face and fairly address ideas, beliefs or viewpoints toward which we have strong negative emotions and to which we have not given a serious hearing. This courage is connected with the recognition that ideas considered dangerous or absurd are sometimes rationally justified (in whole or in part) and that conclusions and beliefs inculcated in us are sometimes false or misleading. To determine for ourselves which is which, we must not passively and uncritically “accept” what we have “learned.” Intellectual courage comes into play here, because inevitably we will come to see some truth in some ideas considered dangerous and absurd, and distortion or falsity in some ideas strongly held in our social group. We need courage to be true to our own thinking in such circumstances. The penalties for non-conformity can be severe.

Intellectual Empathy: Having a consciousness of the need to imaginatively put oneself in the place of others in order to genuinely understand them, which requires the consciousness of our egocentric tendency to identify truth with our immediate perceptions of long-standing thought or belief. This trait correlates with the ability to reconstruct accurately the viewpoints and reasoning of others and to reason from premises, assumptions, and ideas other than our own. This trait also correlates with the willingness to remember occasions when we were wrong in the past despite an intense conviction that we were right, and with the ability to imagine our being similarly deceived in a case-at-hand.

Intellectual Integrity: Recognition of the need to be true to one’s own thinking; to be consistent in the intellectual standards one applies; to hold one’s self to the same rigorous standards of evidence and proof to which one holds one’s antagonists; to practice what one advocates for others; and to honestly admit discrepancies and inconsistencies in one’s own thought and action.

Intellectual Perseverance: Having a consciousness of the need to use intellectual insights and truths in spite of difficulties, obstacles, and frustrations; firm adherence to rational principles despite the irrational opposition of others; a sense of the need to struggle with confusion and unsettled questions over an extended period of time to achieve deeper understanding or insight.

Faith In Reason: Confidence that, in the long run, one’s own higher interests and those of humankind at large will be best served by giving the freest play to reason, by encouraging people to come to their own conclusions by developing their own rational faculties; faith that, with proper encouragement and cultivation, people can learn to think for themselves, to form rational viewpoints, draw reasonable conclusions, think coherently and logically, persuade each other by reason and become reasonable persons, despite the deep-seated obstacles in the native character of the human mind and in society as we know it.

Fairmindedness: Having a consciousness of the need to treat all viewpoints alike, without reference to one’s own feelings or vested interests, or the feelings or vested interests of one’s friends, community or nation; implies adherence to intellectual standards without reference to one’s own advantage or the advantage of one’s group.

Here is my response.

I observe that true intellectuals are fully conscious of their knowledge limits and “egocentric circumstances”. The mechanics of rationality and logical tools presuppose those things are irrelevant to forming and sustaining a cohesive understanding. By definition, true intellectuals are mentally flexible and in constant effort to update or refine their understanding.

Seeking an opportunity to boast or posture knowledge that is unknown, or even unknowable, is NOT the actions of an intellectual, but rather the conduct of a small mind and a small person desperate to manufacture relevance.

I submit that Dr. Elder is not really talking about an intellectual at all, but what I refer to as passive-minded pseudo thinkers, people whose intellectual pursuits are in service to some political, or theological, or philosophical orthodoxy. And once they have mastered the “respected” party line, they become unquestionable and unquestioning authorities.   These are the dogmatists that rely on bluff and bluster to intimidate when challenged on the integrity of their ideas. Some people do it with heat and passion; others do it with a patient hand-wringing smile, but their goal is to intimidate the uninitiated out of the Arena of Ideas.  Scratch the surface of their canons of orthodoxy, and suffer their wrath. For all of the posturing, their theological or philosophical horizon is measured in minutes and seconds with a fundamental resentment of a counterargument headwind.

Of course, true intellectuals are also intimidating but not because they seek to coerce as a means of domination.  They are intimidating because they are so thorough in arriving at their conclusions.  Their determination to solve the mystery of what they don’t know leads them to study and integrate a vast array of knowledge. They are confident because they are so rationally competent.  And competent people do not have a moral obligation to accept incompetence any more than an elementary school teacher has a responsibility to accept the conclusions of children who insist that 2+2=127.  To be sure, if a teacher accepted just any old answer to the equation in service to fair-mindedness, they would be guiltily of malpractice. The same is true for competent intellectuals. Having the right answer and advocating the right answer is not conceit. Having the wrong answer and demanding exemption from critical review is conceit.

I offer this thought. The failings she is warning against are not the sins of the intellectual. Some of the most arrogant, condescending, hubristic people are anti-intellectual, anti-rational mystics.  Having overtly abandoned the tools of persuasion, mystics cannot escape the need to condescend because they are relying on some form of revelation as the starting point of their ideas.  They have no choice but to use the force of their own certainty as a foundation for all comments. They cannot consider any other information, fact, or rational argument that runs counter their revelatory presumptions. At the end of every Mystic Despot’s argument is an appeal to authority, and all arguments on authority are really a fight over force.  The moment we start justifying force, we have left the realm of rational conversation. So, the guilty parties of ‘egocentric self-deception’ are the sins of the irrational, touchy-feely, cabal of Mystic Despots.

By definition, true intellectuals have courage. It is a hard place to live constantly challenging your own ideas to ever better refinement.  It takes enormous courage to look into the face of chaos and be willing to abandon every idea in service to better ideas. This dynamic is done in all circumstance without heed to enormous potential social cost. It takes courage to be the only person in ANY room offering a better argument or idea when everyone else just wants to get along.

By definition, true intellectuals have empathy. What makes them so good at evaluating ideas is the empathy to see thoughts from every facet in and ongoing dynamic tension to reality.

By definition, intellectuals are people of integrity. They have a living and abiding interior consistency that compels the best and highest actions, work, and energy, and moral clarity. This is what gives them the power to press their ideas to the next level.

By definition, intellectuals expect that man is a rational creature created equal with all men. And if those people are also empowered with the same logical tools, they too will see the best ideas and act on them accordingly.  They are the antithesis of the barbarian who must resort to force to carry his arguments.



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