 In the first video, I noted that intellectual humility is extremely important, which motivated us to consider what such a virtue, if it is indeed a virtue, could possibly be. In the second video, we considered two leading philosophical accounts of intellectual humility, and highlighted some worries that faced them. In this video, I want to give a brief sketch of an alternative philosophical account of intellectual humility, the doxastic account of intellectual humility. The account I want to explore is not terribly theory-rich, I'll admit that, and one could draw from mountains of literature on the nature of intellectual virtues, virtue epistemology, or the history and nature of humility in general. But that's not what I aim to do in this talk. Here I just want to follow our intuitions, stake a claim, and ultimately, though we won't have time for it in this lecture, get ready to defend it against the criticisms that will surely come. Remember, we're going to start with a rough piece of clay, but then we'll try to shape that piece of clay a little bit over the course of this video and see where we end up. As I mentioned in the first video, we might easily imagine that intellectual humility is the virtuous mean between intellectual arrogance on the one hand and intellectual servility on the other. The intellectually humble person then doesn't overly value her beliefs, which would be intellectual arrogance, nor does she undervalue them, which would be intellectual servility. Instead, she values her beliefs, their epistemic status, and her intellectual abilities as she ought. Now let's call this basic messy view DA for doxastic account. Now according to DA, intellectual humility is the virtue of valuing one's own beliefs as he or she ought. Okay, so admittedly, that's a really rough piece of clay, but again, we're going to try to shape that a little bit and see if we can make it a little bit nicer. Now the first thing we might want to know is what does this valuing amount to in this account? We might easily wonder, for example, if this valuing amounts to how firmly someone is holding onto their given beliefs. How resilient that given belief is to revision or elinquishment. And to some extent, that would make a lot of sense, I think. After all, it seems right to think that an intellectually arrogant person would be someone who is completely unwilling to change her belief in the face of disagreement or evidence to the contrary. Likewise, it seems right to think that an intellectually servile person would be someone who holds his beliefs loosely and revises or changes them at the proverbial drop of a hat. Intellectual humility then would amount to holding to your beliefs as firmly as you ought. But I think we can imagine situations that might suggest that this isn't the best way to understand the valuing in DA, in this basic doxastic account. So consider the following scenario. This is called convict. Connor has been charged and convicted of a series of extremely heinous crimes. And there is manifold evidence suggesting that he is indeed guilty. There's surveillance footage of Connor committing the crimes. There is his personal journal that explains in detail his criminal plans, motivation, and intent. There are several eyewitnesses to Connor's crimes. He even confesses in full, all in all, Connor's trial is an easy, open and shut case. Nevertheless, Connor's mother, who loves him very dearly, simply cannot bring herself to believe that he is guilty. She's seen the surveillance footage. She's read the diary. She's availed of all the relevant evidence against her son. Indeed, she does not blame the judge, the jury, or the judicial system for convicting him. Nevertheless, her love for her son bars her from believing that he is guilty of these heinous crimes. In such a scenario, Connor's mother's belief is extremely firm. Her love for her son simply renders her psychologically unable to believe that he's guilty. Is she being intellectually arrogant then? I don't think so, because she is entirely sensitive to all the relevant reasons or evidence or justification against her belief. And she's sensitive to the dearth of any reasons or evidence or justification in favor of her belief. So perhaps the valuing in DA should not be a function of belief firmness. Maybe instead it should be some function of being sensitive to the relevant reasons or evidence or justification for or against one's belief. Or to use a catch-all phrase, we might say that intellectual humility is some function of being sensitive to the positive, epistemic status for or against one's beliefs. So maybe we can shape our rough piece of clay a bit further along these lines. So consider the following revision. We're going to call this DA prime. So here, intellectual humility is the virtue of attributing positive epistemic status to one's own beliefs as he or she opt. Now, admittedly, this is still a rough piece of clay, no doubt, but I think we are getting somewhere with it. According to DA prime, if you attribute far more evidence, justification or positive epistemic status to your belief than it merits, then you are going to be intellectually arrogant about that belief. Conversely, if you attribute far less evidence, justification or positive epistemic status to a belief than it merits, then you're going to be intellectually servile when it comes to that belief. Intellectual humility on this view is the virtue of attributing positive epistemic status to one's own beliefs as you ought. Now, so far so good, but there are a number of pressing questions that we still have to consider. Let's take a look at two such questions. First of all, what is determining the ought in DA prime? In other words, can we say anything further about the normative component here? And secondly is attribution, the right sort of word we want to use when it comes to intellectual humility. After all, attributing positive epistemic status to a given belief seems like a highly reflective activity, one that simply couldn't be done subconsciously, say. And insofar as that seems like an unnecessary restriction on intellectual humility, maybe we should consider a different term. First of all, it seems like the sort of positive epistemic status, it seems like the positive epistemic status or evidence or justification someone ought to attribute to their own belief is the positive epistemic status that such beliefs actually have. So at the very least, perhaps the doxastic account of intellectual humility should be most concerned with whether or not someone is accurately tracking, be it consciously or subconsciously, the positive epistemic status that their beliefs actually enjoy. And what is more to address the second question, accurately tracking positive epistemic status, perhaps unlike attributing positive epistemic status, does not seem to require highly reflective activity. Accurately tracking positive epistemic status, perhaps unlike attributing positive epistemic status, seems like the sort of thing that can be done implicitly or even subconsciously. So this might allow us to shape our piece of clay just a little bit further. Now we can consider another modification to our account. Now we're looking at DA double prime. According to this, intellectual humility is the virtue of accurately tracking the positive epistemic status of one's own beliefs. Now on this view, if you think that one of your beliefs enjoys a tremendous amount of evidence, justification or positive epistemic status when it actually doesn't, then you're intellectually arrogant about that belief. And in contrast, if you think that one of your beliefs enjoys a paltry amount of evidence, justification or positive epistemic status, when it actually enjoys a tremendous amount, then you're going to be intellectually servile about that particular belief. Intellectual humility, again, is the virtue of accurately tracking the positive epistemic status of your own beliefs. And I think this all makes a fair amount of sense, but I think we still need to make some sort of caveat to DA double prime in order to account for situations where someone has been non-culpably deceived, that is, deceived in a way that they can't be blamed for. Consider another scenario. This scenario is called lie. Mary has known Martha for many, many years and has always found her to be extremely trustworthy. One day, Martha is feeling a bit cheeky and decides to tell Mary a lie, pretty serious lie. Feigning a panic, Martha runs up to Mary and tells her that Mary's house is on fire. Naturally enough, since Mary's never known Martha to be anything other than entirely honest, Mary non-culpably yet falsely believes that her house is on fire and takes such a belief to have a lot of positive epistemic status via Martha's testimony. And as such, Mary heads home in a hurry. In order for DA double prime to rightly handle scenarios like this, we need Mary's strong belief, that is her belief which is taken to have a lot of positive epistemic status to count as, to not count as intellectual arrogance, simply because she was non-culpably deceived. However, someone might worry that the fact that Mary's belief is based on a lie means that it enjoys far less positive epistemic status than Mary actually imagines it to. To avoid such a worry, we'll have to make a final adjustment to our clay, to the doxastic account of intellectual humility. Here we'll call it DA triple prime. Intellectual humility is the virtue of accurately tracking when one could non-culpably take to be the positive epistemic status of one's own beliefs. And since Mary is non-culpable in believing Martha's testimony, DA triple prime helps guarantee that Mary won't be wrongfully ascribed with intellectual arrogance. According to this way of thinking, intellectual humility can be assessed along two axes. How much positive epistemic status a given belief enjoys and how much positive epistemic status a given agent thinks that it enjoys. And if you're like me and casually think that the truth of a theory corresponds somehow to whether or not it can be graphed, you'll be happy to see the following image. Now, again, I'm suggesting that intellectual humility is the virtue of accurately tracking the positive epistemic status of your beliefs in proportion to the amount of positive epistemic status that your beliefs actually enjoy. So for example, if I ascribe my adiosyncratic religious or anti-religious belief with far more positive epistemic status than it really enjoys, then I'm guilty of intellectual arrogance and my belief will fall in the upper left-hand corner of the graph. Alternatively, if I ascribe my belief that microwaves are safe, for example, with far less positive epistemic status than it really enjoys, perhaps because I perused the back alleys of the internet and took the unsubstantiated anxiety of a blogger seriously, then I'm guilty of intellectual servility and my belief will fall in the lower right-hand corner of the graph. While there's certainly more work that needs to be done, in other words, there's certainly more shaping that we could do to this lump of clay that we have before us, I think this account of intellectual humility, what I've been calling the doxastic account of intellectual humility, tracks our intuitions across a wide range of cases. And what is more, it does not seem to fall victim to the same sort of worries that afflict the low concern for status account or the limitations owning account of intellectual humility. Since the doxastic account represents intellectual humility as a virtuous meme between intellectual arrogance and intellectual servility, and it does not require social context, then it does not fall victim to the same worries as the low concern for status account. And since the doxastic account does not, as far as I can tell, afford scenarios where someone can be at once intellectually humble and intellectually arrogant or intellectually humble and intellectually servile, then it does not seem to fall victim to the same sort of worries that have afflicted the low concern for status account of intellectual humility. Now, does this mean that the doxastic account is the final word when it comes to intellectual humility? As much as I'd like to think so, I know this isn't the case. There are plenty of worries we might have against the doxastic account, and we just haven't had time to bring those up here, not in the time we have. Nevertheless, I tried to give us some reasons to think, even if they are ultimately inconclusive reasons, that the doxastic account of intellectual humility is a good way to think about this virtue from a philosophical perspective. In the next video, Dr. Peter Samuelson will briefly explore how empirical research, namely from psychology and cognitive science, might help us further elucidate and understand this very important virtue.