An analysis of false intellectual humility
False modesty is affected or pretended modesty concealing pride. Inspired by this definition, I propose that false intellectual humility is affected or pretended intellectual humility concealing intellectual arrogance.
A few comments on this analysis.I assume here no distinction between modesty and humility.1 (Ordinary language is more subtle:“modesty” has connotations of sexual discretion and propriety; “humility” has connotations of submission and deference — thus the intuitive, if not entirely clear, connection between intellectual humility and testimony.) Thus, I assume that modesty is the same as humility, and that intellectual humility is a species of humility. (This is what is going to make it possible to say that false intellectual humility is a species of false modesty.)
More precisely, I assume that humility is excellence in self-attributing weakness — such that the humble person characteristically attributes weakness to themselves at the right time and in the right way — and that intellectual humility is excellence in self-attributing intellectual weakness — such that the intellectually humble person characteristically attributes intellectual weakness to themselves at the right time and in the right way. Intellectual weakness includes such things as uncertainty, ignorance, confusion, intellectual vice, and the lack of intellectual virtue. (This is not the ordinary sense of “weakness”; in the ordinary sense, uncertainty and ignorance per se entail no weakness.) Intellectual humility is thus manifested in admitting what you do not know or understand and those ways in which you fall short of intellectual virtue. The intellectually humble person will acknowledge what is mysterious, inexplicable, or beyond the scope of their understanding, and they will be aware of the extent to which they lack intellectual virtues, in a broad sense that includes both character traits like open-mindedness, intellectual courage, and intellectual autonomy, as well as intellectual powers like good memory, reasoning ability, and creativity.
The present account of the virtue of intellectual humility combines elements of an account I defend elsewhere (2012, 2016a) and an account defended by Dennis Whitcomb, Heather Battaly, Jason Baehr, and Dan Howard-Snyder (2015). I incorporate two ideas from Whitcomb and company: (i) that intellectual humility is concerned with intellectual weakness in general (rather than mere ignorance or unjustified belief), and (ii) that intellectual humility is concerned with a person's own intellectual weaknesses (as opposed to those of others). But I retain one idea of my own: intellectual humility is manifested in the attribution of intellectual weakness; manifestation of intellectual humility does not require “owning” said weakness, in the sense of taking responsibility for it.
Having defined humility and intellectual humility as excellences, it is natural to say that both, so defined, are virtues.And thus, following Aristotle, we can recognize the virtue of humility as a mean between two vicious extremes: the vice of arrogance, characterized by insufficient selfattribution of weakness (as well as excessive self-attribution of strength), and the vice of servility, characterized by excessive self-attribution of weakness (as well as insufficient self-attribution of strength).2 The virtue of intellectual humility thus emerges as a mean between intellectual arrogance and intellectual servility.3
The vice of intellectual arrogance, which appears in our definition of false intellectual humility, is manifested in the failure to appreciate what you do not know, what you are not in a position to know, the relative strength of your intellectual powers, your biases and blind spots, and subjects about which you lack expertise. Moreover, it is manifested in the overestimation of your knowledge, of your ability to know, of your impartiality, and of the extent of your expertise.
This understanding of the virtues of humility and intellectual humility jibes with two other ideas about virtue that have been suggested by neo-Aristotelian virtue ethicists.
First, we can agree that virtues are corrective, serving to counteract or guard against some vicious tendency.4 In as much as you are prone to (intellectual) arrogance and (intellectual) servility, (intellectual) humility is the cure for what ails you.5 Second, we can agree that the virtues correspond to domains or spheres of human activity or experience, such that virtues can be individuated by appeal to the various problems and situations with which human beings have to cope.6 For each such problem or situation, the virtue ethicist wants so say, there's a virtue for that. In as much as reflective monitoring and awareness of our own (intellectual) weaknesses is, in this way, one of the things that human beings naturally do, there is a virtue for that: (intellectual) humility.I said that false modesty “conceals” arrogance. This requires two points of clarification. First, such concealment, in the relevant sense, need not be successful. Someone's arrogance might be obvious, despite their false modesty. Second, concealment, in the relevant sense, does not require the intention to conceal. This is because falsely modest people often do not know that they are arrogant, and thus do not intend to conceal their arrogance. For the same kind of reason, we should not assume that affecting modesty or pretending to be modest is always deliberate or conscious. We are not always aware of our affectations and pretensions; it is possible to affect or pretend that you possess a trait without realizing that you are doing so.
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