ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book addresses the ideal of intellectual dependability and the virtues of intellectual dependability as a group. It defends the view that a complete education—particularly at the tertiary level—should include developing students’ intellectual dependability. The book then examines the nature and characteristic psychology of intellectual benevolence. It also contrasts intellectual benevolence with a wide range of opposing vices, including epistemic malevolence, intellectual haughtiness and vanity, social vigilantism, and intellectual subservience, thereby illuminating its distinctive characteristic psychology. The book examines the nature and characteristic psychology of intellectual transparency. It then explores the nature and characteristic psychology of communicative clarity. The book explores the nature and characteristic psychology of audience sensitivity and compares audience sensitivity so understood to similar virtues such as intellectual empathy and open-mindedness, identifying what these traits share in common and what is distinctive about audience sensitivity.
