Intellectual humility and epistemic self-trust

This section and the next explore connections between intellectual humility and epistemic trust. This section discusses epistemic self-trust, the next epistemic trust in others.

As we saw, epistemic trust can be reflexive: a person can trust herself for the delivery of knowl­edge (Foley 2001, Zagzebski 2012, Lehrer 1997, Dormandy 2020).

The intellectually humble person, it turns out, is in a good position to exercise effective epistemic self-trust. The reason is that she is disposed to have a good grip on her own noetic strengths and weaknesses, including those which make her epistemically trustworthy or untrust­worthy. She will likely have insight into the affective and volitional states that determine how

Katherine Dormandy willing she is to come through for herself, and into the cognitive states that determine her level of competence (plus the affective and volitional influences on them).The intellectually humble agent, then, is well placed to tell whether trusting herself for knowledge will be effective.

If trusting herself in a given case turns out not to be a wise move (because she lacks the willingness or the competence), then intellectual humility confers a second benefit: it disposes a person to grow in epistemic trustworthiness, for it disposes her to noetically self-improve for the sake of promoting epistemic aims. This might mean working on her emotions and will, or honing the faculties that make for competence.

Intellectual humility, then, promotes effective epistemic self-trust: it helps a person know whether she is epistemically trustworthy, and when she is not, it disposes her to grow in epis- temic trustworthiness.

Compare the intellectually humble self-truster with intellectually arrogant and servile ones. We saw that the intellectually arrogant person overestimates her noetic strengths vis-a-vis the acquisition of knowledge, and underestimates her noetic weaknesses in this area. In her capacity as a self-truster, then, she will tend to overestimate her own willingness or competence to secure knowledge.As a result, she will be disposed to trust herself too readily, even when doing so is not effective.This means that she will tend to form many beliefs, of which a large proportion might, unbeknownst to her, be false or unfounded. As for the intellectually servile person, we saw that he underestimates his noetic strengths vis-a-vis the acquisition of knowledge, and overestimates his relevant noetic weaknesses. In his capacity as a (potential) self-truster, then, he will tend to underestimate his willingness or competence to secure knowledge, and will thus be disposed to distrust himself — even when self-trust might have been effective after all. The intellectually servile person may thus form comparatively few beliefs on his own, tending instead toward ten­tative belief or suspension ofjudgment.While not conducive to false or unfounded belief, such behavior is certainly not conducive to knowledge.

Another contrast between intellectually arrogant and servile self-trusters is this: the intel­lectually arrogant person, at least in theory, is in a better position to epistemically self-improve. Her readiness to trust herself, though rash, means that she will have fewer qualms about putting her beliefs out there — testifying them, acting on them, and so forth. She is thus apt to receive at least some corrective feedback from the world. Of course, her arrogance may prevent her from assimilating much of it (she may for example explain it away), but at least she will often have the option.

We have seen that intellectual humility helps make one's epistemic self-trust effective. Yet some might think that there is an even closer relationship, one of necessity, between effective self-trust and intellectual humility. Perhaps, at least in worlds similar enough to ours, intellectual humility is necessary for exercising effective self-trust. Or perhaps intellectual humility is suf­ficient to ensure that one's self-trust will be effective. Both entailment claims, however, are false.

First, intellectual humility is not necessary for epistemic self-trust to be effective. A person could trust herself effectively because she accurately evaluates her own noetic strengths and weaknesses — yet she might fail to be humble, because she is not motivated to promote epis- temic aims for their own sake (she might wish simply to advance her career). Second, intellec-

tual humility is not sufficient to ensure that epistemic self-trust is effective. A person could be epistemically motivated, and accurately evaluate her noetic strengths and weaknesses, yet trust herself rashly, even when those evaluations come up negative. For she might have some other epistemic vice, such as cognitive impulsiveness, that she is (on account of her intellectual humil­ity) aware of and motivated to overcome, but is not yet in control of. So even though effective epistemic self-trust is often powered by intellectual humility, it can be found without this virtue; and even though intellectual humility tends to make for effective epistemic self-trust, it is not guaranteed to do so.

25.4