People who agree with whomever they are talking to on any subject display the vice of being indiscriminate. How should we negotiate our current beliefs when we are confronted with someone who doesn’t agree with us? How can we find the virtue between the vice of believing everyone else all the time, and the vice of never believing anyone else at any time? What would it look like to be virtuously open-minded? Likewise, when confronted with people that disagree with us, to what extent should we maintain our own (current) perspective? If never changing our own beliefs is a vice of excess, and always changing our beliefs is a vice of deficiency, what would it take to cultivate the virtue of intellectual firmness? In today’s class we’ll examine two spheres of our intellectual lives, namely, transcending our own perspective and maintaining our own perspective. After class, you will:
1. Be able to explain intellectual open-mindedness from a Virtue Epistemology framework, and why it should count as an intellectualvirtue.
2. Be able to explain intellectual firmness from a Virtue Epistemology framework, and why it should count as an intellectualvirtue.
3. Begin to evaluate these two spheres of activity in your own life by seeking out evidence that reveals how you are in these two areas.
Consider the following questions, write your responses in your journal, and talk about them with a friend:
1. Describe some benefits that come along with being virtuously open-minded and firm.
2. What would it be like for someone to be intellectually fair-minded? Give an example of someone being fair-minded.
3. What might it be like to be on the receiving end of someone’s being intellectually charitable to you? How might that bring about various moral and intellectual goods?