3.1: Personal Traits of Reasonable People

Fallibilism:

We mentioned earlier that as subjects we are fallible beings. Our evidence is limited and we are liable to make mistakes in reasoning. Given our nature as fallible subjects, we should never be entirely convinced that we have settled a matter once and for all. To be completely convinced we are right would lead us to neglect any further evidence and argument that might warrant some revision of our views.

Intellectual Humility:

Closely related to the idea of fallibilism is intellectual humility. Intellectual humility goes beyond merely recognizing our capacity for error. Fallibilism is not directly concerned with our attitudes towards others and their views and thought processes. Intellectual humility does concern these social factors. The intellectually humble person will keep ego out of their engagement with other people in inquiry. Pride and celebration of your excellence is fine in competitive contexts, but inquiry isn’t a competition, it’s a cooperative activity where respect for others is critical. Arrogance and pride are liable to drive others from the project of inquiry with the result of losing their insights and perspectives.

Of course, there are times when someone understands more than others and it may be tempting to see arrogance in expertise. Dismissing expertise as arrogant, however, will be a failure of intellectual humility itself. Seeing arrogance in expertise is a self-protective way of propping up one’s ego by judging another as flawed instead of trying to understand them and make good use of a learning opportunity. Bear in mind that genuine expertise is only acquired through the exercise of intellectual humility. This may be hard to see in people who already have some hardearned expertise, but even the smartest among us only move past ignorance by humbly yielding to the better argument.

Open-mindedness:

The open-minded person is open to fairly evaluating reasons and evidence. Note that open-mindedness focuses on our openness to reasons and evidence. A popular but misguided conception of open-mindedness is that we should never have much confidence in our own beliefs but always grant that we are just as likely to be wrong as someone who disagrees with us. Here we are not focused on arguments and evidence, but the beliefs and opinions. While absolute confidence in our beliefs would be at odds with fallibilism, we should be confident in our beliefs to the degree that we have good reasons for holding them. At the same time, open-mindedness counsels that we should always be open to evaluating new evidence or argument or re-evaluating argument in light of new objections. When our best evaluation of the evidence and arguments clearly point towards a certain conclusion, we should wind up being less open to contrary conclusions.

The problem with popular ways of thinking about open-mindedness as focused on belief or opinion is that the person who knows what they are talking about and holds a view with some conviction as a result of rigorous inquiry would not count as openminded. You might, for instance, encounter a climate change skeptic alleging that climate scientists are not open-minded because they are unwilling to consider the possibility that the warming of our climate is the result of sun spots. Climate scientists have in fact looked into such alternative hypotheses. Endlessly raising debunked theories as a means of questioning the science or the open-mindedness of scientists is a fallacious attempt to undermine the science. We should hold our beliefs with as much conviction as the best available reasons and evidence warrant. Often, our reasons justify high levels of confidence, if not absolute confidence (again, fallibilism). In this case, open-minded critical thinking will support confident belief in well supported views and render us less open to the beliefs not supported by good reasons. This is no violation of open-mindedness where we understand this in terms of being open to evaluating arguments and evidence.

Intellectual Courage:

Reasonable people, being open-minded and intellectually humble, take the risk of discovering that they have things wrong once in a while. This can be hard. It’s generally not pleasant to find that you are mistaken. It takes intellectual courage to bear this risk with grace. It helps to have a sense of humor here. It’s best if curiosity and delight in discovery outweigh the dread we often feel about getting things wrong. But while critical thinking involves a degree of intellectual risk, it should not involve putting your personal safety on the line in any way. Critical thinkers attack ideas and arguments, not each other. If somebody attacks you personally, they are not being reasonable.

It is possible for a person to feel attacked if they self-identify with an idea that comes under scrutiny. But feeling personally attacked when an idea you like faces criticism would be a failure of intellectual humility that results from investing ego into something that isn’t you. You are not your ideas. You can change your mind about something without being personally harmed. When reasonable people do change their minds, it will not be because any other person is dominating or compelling them. Reasonable people change their own minds in response to compelling reasons, not domineering people.

Perseverence:

Even once we’ve acquired the traits discussed so far, clarifying and evaluating arguments can be challenging and frustrating work. It often requires a measure of hard-earned skill. For an ounce of encouragement, bear in mind that confusion is a normal part of intellectual growth. Of course, sometimes things are confusing because they just don’t make sense. But things that do make sense can feel confusing when they are novel, abstract, or just complicated. Stick with it. That confusion is what it feels like to grow new neural pathways. You’ll be smarter if you see it through. Even after 40 years of studying philosophy, I sometimes find myself feeling lost and confused in my first pass at reading the work of a philosopher I haven’t studied before. Then in the second reading things will begin to make sense. Take some rest between passes. Your brain will continue to sort things out even when you aren’t actively reflecting on the material. It also helps enormously to take notes on how terms are defined and how arguments are structured. By the third or fourth pass, maybe over the course of a few days, rich and clear understanding will emerge and you’ll be wiser than you were before.