Cognitively extended intellectual humility
These issues about virtue and responsibility in the context of extended cognition become even more vexed once we turn our attentions from a general virtue like humility, and focus instead on the potential role of extended cognitive processes with regard to the specifically intellectual virtue of intellectual humility.As noted above, since the intellectual virtues are themselves a kind of cognitive trait, then the issue is not merely whether the cognitive bases of the virtue can be extended, but whether the intellectual virtue itself can be cognitively extended.
As we will see, the reasons why we should be cautious about thinking of a virtue like humility as even involving an extended cognitive process become even more pressing once we turn to the more ambitious idea of intellectual humility as actually being an extended cognitive process.Indeed, building on our previous point about the virtues more generally and extended cognition, there seem to be good reasons for supposing that no intellectual virtue could be an extended cognitive process. If that's right, then at most the cultivation of intellectual humility could be in part aided via the employment of extended cognitive processes; it could never be the case that intellectual humility could itself be an extended cognitive process. For comparison, let's start with this latter, weaker claim, in order to bring out what is problematic about the former, stronger claim.
Just as we can imagine an agent making use of technology to aid her development of humility, even to the extent that the technology qualifies as neuromedia (though this is more controversial, as we saw above), so we can also imagine an agent making use of technology to aid her development of intellectual humility. As before, the exact manner in which this occurs will depend on what one holds intellectual humility to be, but in keeping with our remarks earlier we could treat it as relatively uncontroversial that intellectual humility at least demands that one doesn't regularly overestimate one's intellectual abilities and achievements.12 Accordingly, we can imagine technology that encourages a healthy mindfulness in this regard, and in the process enables one to be more intellectually humble.
Moreover, if this technology is developed alongthe right lines, then it may qualify as neuromedia, due to our seamless interactions with it and its cognitive integration with our other cognitive capacities.We thus have a case of the intellectual virtue of intellectual humility being supported by neuromedia, and thus incorporating the use of an extended cognitive process.
The interesting question, however, is whether we can move from this kind of claim to the stronger thesis that the intellectual virtue of intellectual humility can itself consist in an extended cognitive process, as opposed to merely incorporating such processes in its cultivation. We can see the implausibility of this suggestion by outlining what it might involve in particular cases. For example, suppose we fitted subjects with neuromedia from birth such that they exhibited behaviour associated with intellectual humility. No matter how cognitively integrated this neuromedia became with the subject's other cognitive processes, would there be any temptation to treat this behaviour as the manifestation of an intellectual virtue (rather than just the product of the technology)?
We can bring this point into sharper relief by imagining two groups of subjects, where the first group is trained up to be intellectually humble in the usual way (through regular emulation of intellectually humble exemplars, say), while the second group is simply fitted with the neuromedia to ensure that they end up exhibiting intellectually humble behaviour. Even if the behaviours ultimately exhibited by the two groups are identical (and in fact it is likely that the second group would exhibit the intellectually humble behaviours much more quickly), it only seems to be the former group who are genuinely manifesting intellectual humility. The crux of the matter is that intellectual virtues seem to be in part characterised by the essentially reflective manner of their acquisition and cultivation, such that even if they can be exhibited on particular occasions in an unreflective manner (as manifestations of one's second nature, whereby via habituation the exercise of virtue has become automatic), it nonetheless remains that no virtue, properly speaking, can be completely manifested unreflectively.
And yet that is exactly what the idea of neuromedia as a cognitively off-loading of intellectual virtue implies.13One can imagine various kinds of critical push-back against this line. If cognitive abilities in general can become extended cognitive processes, then why not the specific kinds of cognitive abilities at issue when it comes to the intellectual virtues? (But then it has often been the case that the intellectual virtues have been explicitly contrasted with mere cognitive skills, just as the virtues in general are typically distinguished from mere skills.)14 Or, if one grants that there can be such a thing as extended cognitive abilities, then doesn't it follow that there can be an extended cognitive character? Accordingly, why not hold that the lines of cognitive responsibility do genuinely thread back to the extended cognitive agent, and hence that there is the relevant degree of cognitive responsibility involved on the part of the subject when neuromedia is in play that is needed for the manifestation of an intellectual virtue like intellectual humility? (But isn't the reality rather that a divide opens up between two kinds of cognitive responsibility: the lower-grade sort that is applicable to an extended cognitive character, and the higher-grade sort that is applicable to the intellectual virtues.)
38.4