ABSTRACT

The study of intellectual humility (IH) is of recent vintage. It has become a topic of interest with the rise of responsibilist virtue epistemology, which holds that epistemic value is attained through the possession and exercise of epistemic character traits. IH is one such trait, along with others such as open-mindedness, intellectual perseverance, and curiosity. So a global sense of regret or dismay at not being intellectually perfect is not what the authors require for someone to own their limitations and thus possess intellectual humility. It seems that simple acceptance of our human finitude without feeling regret or dismay would be required. Philosophical work on IH is vigorous and ongoing. The same is true of work in psychology, and of collaborations among philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists. Tanesini (2016) does so by conceptualizing IH as a cluster of attitudes, not as a disposition. This raises the question of what IH is— a disposition, a cluster of attitudes, or some other construct.