Symposium Introduction: Epistemic Vices: Moving Beyond Saints and Sinners

Abstract

Perfect epistemic agents do not exist. People are messy. We make mistakes; we are error-prone. We have limited attention spans, sluggish cognitive processing powers, pedestrian interpersonal skills, inefficient and unreliable memories. At times we struggle to get out of our own way — the vagaries of life, relationships, and responsibilities, both individually and collectively, take a toll, especially in dopamine-seeking, split-attention environments. Such pressures keep us from being the very best version of themselves. More often than not, we are less than we ought to be. Specifically, all of us have flawed intellectual characters to some extent or another, which is to be expected. We are human after all. Flaws are encoded in our DNA. It comes as no surprise then, that there are times when we are defective inquirers — suboptimal or blameworthy epistemic agents. Prejudice, irrationality, superbia, closed-mindedness, epistemic entrenchment, willful ignorance, insouciance, my-side bias, to name but a few, all have the potential to colonize and deleteriously influence our capacities to efficiently and effectively acquire, share, produce, and audit knowledge, or to engage in responsible and effective inquiry. All this leaves us with a choice. Should educationalists pursue a virtue-based account of other-worldly epistemic excellence based on knowledge gained via strictly controlled laboratory conditions, or would it be more profitable to seek richer understandings of the flawed nature, scope, identity, and significance of our intellectual character traits, attitudes, and ways of thinking, and how they systematically, though not invariably, block the path to knowledge?¹

Intellectual vices is a way of talking about those deleterious epistemic character traits, attitudes, and modes of thinking that reflect our imperfect epistemic desires and that get in the way of successful epistemic pursuits. Though various scholars understand the nature of epistemic vice in distinctive ways, there are currently two main perspectives: motivationalism and obstructivism.² The former characterizes epistemic vice in terms of imperfect epistemic motivations, while the latter understands it in consequentialist terms: more specifically, that which obstructs the acquisition, retention, and transmission of knowledge.

Virtue epistemologists pursue normative accounts regarding how prototypical thinkers under ideal conditions should think. Vice epistemologists, on the other hand, take a more true-to-life view of matters. They look to our zetetic failings and present an explanatory account of the way in which corrupted motivations and flawed intellectual character traits get in the way of knowledge. Broadly put, their interests hinge on understanding how, why, and under what circumstances specific vices of the mind (both personal and collective intellectual failings) obstruct the acquisition, retention, auditing, and transmission of knowledge.

So, what are the epistemic vices? Etymologically, “vice” derives from the Latin word vitium, which is a fault or defect. If we take seriously our epistemic responsibilities, it stands to reason that we must develop a proper account of what goes wrong when we (individually and collectively) fail to acquire, transmit, and audit knowledge in credible ways. In cases where we have a measure of control with respect to remedying our vices, we also require guidance on how to mitigate or overcome them. On this approximation, epistemic vices might be conceptualized as intellectual character failings, vicious attitudes, or corrupted ways of thinking that systematically get in the way of knowledge. Since character traits, in part, explain what people do, scholars maintain that epistemic vices explain, at least to some extent, how people, more often than not, fail to appropriately think, reason, reflect, inquire, or evaluate relevant evidence, and stress-test the strength of competing claims.³

The relationship between epistemic vices and character traits is framed in dispositional terms. Vices, whether they are character traits, attitudes, or styles of thinking, first exist as dispositions. For instance, solubility is a disposition. On this view, dispositions are cashed out in terms of subjunctive conditionals. To say that sugar is soluble means that, if sugar were put in water, it would dissolve. Understood this way, dispositions are sensitive to certain stimulus events or conditions specific to them. Epistemic vices that are also character traits comprise tendencies to exhibit certain patterns of perception, feeling, thinking, reasoning, and behavior that obstruct the gaining, keeping, auditing, or sharing of knowledge. Like most robust character traits that are consistently manifested in a wide variety of trait-relevant eliciting conditions (including situations that are not always necessarily conducive to such behavior), they are habits of the heart-mind that are activated when the person comes into contact with the right activating conditions.⁴ In other words, they are stable dispositions to act, think, and feel in particular ways.⁵

Here are some examples of how this plays out in the real world. Closed-mindedness is a relatively familiar example of a characterological epistemic vice. First, to be clear: being closed-minded and thinking closed-mindedly represent the difference between a trait (what a person is predisposed toward) and an action (what a person does). Only part of what it is to be closed-minded is to think closed-mindedly. By thinking systematically in ways that are unreasonably entrenched, inflexible, insular, blinkered, irrationally defensive, and unreceptive or unresponsive to evidence that contravenes or threatens preexisting views, irrespective of the objective merits of such, closed-mindedness constitutes “an unwillingness or inability to engage, or engage seriously, with relevant intellectual options.”⁶

Yet this is only part of the story: there is more to being closed-minded than simply thinking closed-mindedly. This is why thinking vices are more basic than character ones. Without a proper grasp of thinking vices, the corresponding character vice remains conceptually elusive. One mistake is to view closed-mindedness as necessitating having already made up one's mind (i.e., forming a prejudgment)⁷ about a given topic. Closed-mindedness also pertains to the manner through which one arrives at beliefs or conducts inquiries, or the manner through which one seeks out and interprets the probative force of evidence. In real-world terms, closed-mindedness might manifest itself in exercising preferential treatment for certain select sources. It also might influence the types of questions one asks, how they are asked, the sequence in which they are asked, the time at which they are asked, the environment in which they are asked, and of whom they are asked.⁸ Since not all instances of closed-mindedness amount to reductionist instances of dismissing intellectual options, educators require more nuanced and conceptually robust understandings of the concept, including how it plays out in real-world conditions. To explain why, look at another example. Since closed-mindedness need not involve dismissing an option outright, more subtle or stealthy instantiations of the concept exist. Some closed-minded individuals overinflate the valency of other options. Some downplay options they would rather avoid, not to dismiss them per se, but just enough to cast sufficient doubt so that others start to worry about their evidential merits. Likewise, closed-mindedness need not just be about failing to engage with other valid options. Such failures, where blameworthy, come in degrees and are context-dependent. Depending on the particulars of the case at hand, one might interpretively silence others (by unjustly assigning them a credibility deficit or purposively misinterpreting their utterances to suit their own agenda), fail to seek out and marshal discordant perspectives responsibly, flatly ignore nonconformists or malcontents, or be wholly oblivious to some or all of the above at any one time.

Epistemic vices often do not make much sense without understanding the attitudinal elements animating them. These attitudes express summary evaluations or appraisals of objects. To like or dislike something is to form a perspective on it, based on a particular evaluative description that shapes a perspective about that subject or object — a perspective that invariably comes in terms of degrees. For instance, I like soccer but dislike professional cycling. The extent to which I like soccer and dislike cycling can, in turn, be captured by means of attitudinal scales. Superbia (haughtiness), intellectual arrogance,⁹ and insouciance¹⁰ are noteworthy examples. Other paradigmatic cases include “cognitive superiority complex,”¹¹ “epistemic entrenchment” (imperviousness to contradictory evidence or reasons),¹² “my-world myopia,” and “epistemic malevolence” — a hostility or contempt for the good, including epistemic goods.¹³ “My-world myopia” is a phrase I coin to capture situations in which members of elite or dominant demographic groups consciously avoid knowledge about the experiences and lifeworlds of oppressed or marginalized groups¹⁴ in order to preserve psychologically comforting half-truths, to protect untested assumptions, to preserve unchecked privilege, and to evade accountability. For Quassim Cassam, insouciance captures the “casual lack of concern about whether one's beliefs have any basis in reality or are adequately supported by the best available evidence.”¹⁵ Arguably this vice captures the zeitgeist of ameliorative epistemology in educational discourse. Students who engage in bullshit (the primary product of insouciance), at least in Harry Frankfurt's analysis, do not care about facts, evidence, rationality, truth, or falsity. More precisely, since the bullshitter “does not reject the authority of truth; he [simply] pays no attention to it at all,”¹⁶ one can see the importance of educationalists focusing on scholarly conceptualizations of its forebearer, insouciance, framed here as a casual indifference (an epistemic apathy of sorts) to the truth, together with a stoic indifference to the central epistemic obligations to ground one's views in relevant facts, reasons, or evidence.

The preceding discussion provides a useful context for the papers in this Educational Theory symposium. Understanding epistemic vices is the key to rehabilitation. And since vices can exist in either individual or social settings, each with their own context-dependent particularities, and each with deleterious consequences for inquirers and knowledge, educators require a robust understanding of how, why, and under what conditions such vices operate — and how the individual and social registers relate to and influence each other. The papers in this symposium all speak to the pedagogical dimensions of dealing with epistemic vices.

David Coady in his paper “Stop Talking about Echo Chambers and Filter Bubbles” takes issue with the pervasive focus on echo chambers and filter bubbles as the cause of epistemic vices. He argues that such ubiquitous concepts and their repurposing by epistemologists¹⁷ suffer from “use-mention confusion” whereby the “emergence and proliferation of new terms has been mistaken for the emergence and proliferation of new phenomena to which these terms putatively refer.”¹⁸ In a sense, he asks, “what's new in the new?”— a question theorists, in his view, fail to answer satisfactorily. The upshot of this conceptual fuzziness is that echo chambers and filter bubbles remain inconsistently defined in the literature and, as a consequence, lack explanatory usefulness. Extrapolating further, Coady presents a compelling argument as to why the pursuit of certain binary characterizations of political views is a fools' errand: the very idea that exposure to the “other side” neatly captures predefined and clearly demarcated opposing ideologies (liberal versus conservative, for instance) is so ingrained in Western culture that we have forgotten to examine these false dichotomies critically. This argument has ramifications for neologisms like “epistemic bubbles” and “echo chambers,” since the former putatively refers to “social epistemic structure[s] which [have] inadequate coverage through a process of exclusion by omission,” while the latter supposedly represents a “significant disparity in trust between members and non-members.”¹⁹ Taking epistemic bubbles to constitute situations in which other voices are not heard, while in echo chambers, “other voices are actively undermined,”²⁰ both rely on oversimple dichotomies. Getting clear about what precisely constitutes epistemically discordant exchanges requires a deeper and more nuanced consideration of what characterizes a sufficiently rich and varied broad political spectrum, together with an understanding of the particular structures that supposedly foster it. For Coady, the focus on echo chambers and filter bubbles — even those colonized by epistemologists — amounts to a debate as to whether or not most people expose themselves to heterogenous political discourses. That is the issue to focus on; toward this purpose he finds the language of echo chambers and filter bubbles to be not only “unnecessary” but “extremely harmful.”²¹

The second paper in this collection examines whether interventionist epistemic paternalistic practices make us better evidentialist agents. In “Can Epistemic Paternalistic Practice Make Us Better Epistemic Agents?,” Giada Fratantonio looks to the purported benefits of using these as pedagogical tools with students to mitigate or eradicate what she refers to as “evidential vices.”²² Noting that much of the literature focuses on whether epistemic paternalism is a genuinely epistemic form of paternalism,²³ as well as who is entitled to apply such interferences,²⁴ there exists a lacuna regarding to what extent, if any, such practices are actually effective in making a student a better epistemic agent. Breaking new ground, she argues, contra Daniella Meehan,²⁵ that epistemic nudges are both morally preferable and more effective in an instrumental sense. Principally, this argument turns on whether psychological dispositions are fixed or not. On this view, epistemic nudges are a bit like bubble wrap around a vase. Bubble wrap does not change the fragility of the vase; it only masks it. When epistemic nudges are not present and the bubble wrap removed, the vase remains as fragile as before.²⁶ This leads Meehan to maintain that epistemic nudges are not only ineffective but counterproductive, insofar as they can lead to epistemic laziness. In response, Fratantonio's counterargument posits that repeated nudges can result in long-lasting effects for the epistemic agent, and contrary to Meehan's worry about laziness, nudges do not bypass or hinder one's capacities to reason and think critically. In conclusion, Fratantonio suggests that epistemic nudges might house some unexplored promise in educational contexts.

The final article, “Epistemic Vice Rehabilitation: Saints and Sinners Zetetic Exemplarism,” by Gerry Dunne and Alkis Kotsonis, surveys a range of pedagogical possibilities for rehabilitating epistemic vices.²⁷ Rather than individualistic expositions, where vice reduction lies at the feet of each individual, we look instead to an exemplarist animated community of inquiry principles based on defeasible-reasons-regulated processes. We argue that this approach epitomizes a more socially attuned, interdependently calibrated, true-to-life vice-reduction model. Our proposed model comprises four distinct yet complementary components: (1) positive exemplars of epistemic virtue (saints); (2) negative exemplars of epistemic vice (sinners); (3) direct teaching/instruction; and (4) cognitive apprenticeship. Positive exemplars give students role models to admire and emulate. Negative exemplars show how we are all human and that what is important about mistakes is that we learn from them and endeavor not to make them again. Direct teaching tackles epistemic vices head-on by means of using age and stage-appropriate stimuli (Tik Tok videos, Instagram videos, etc.) to unpack the deleterious effects of epistemic vice. Finally, cognitive apprenticeship uses the principles of modeling and expert-guided practice, where students learn via hands-on, real-world tasks to harness and enhance their inquiry processes, such as conceptual mapping, stress-testing reasons, anticipating objections, formulating alternative explanations, and scrutinizing the force of evidential claims.

Together these papers offer a theoretical elaboration of the problem of epistemic vice, as well as specific pedagogical advice for educators on how to counteract them. Needless to say, this project is of special relevance today.