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Essential Intellectual Traits
Intellectual Humility – verses – Intellectual Arrogance
Having a consciousness of the limits of one’s knowledge, including a sensitivity to
circumstances in which one’s native egocentrism is likely to function self-deceptively;
sensitivity to bias, prejudice and limitations of one’s viewpoint. Intellectual humility
depends on recognising that one should not claim more than one actually knows. It
does not imply spinelessness or submissiveness. It implies the lack of intellectual
pretentiousness, boastfulness, or conceit, combined with insight into the logical
foundations, or lack of such foundations, of one’s beliefs.
Intellectual Courage – verses – Intellectual Cowardice
Having a consciousness of the need to face and fairly address ideas, beliefs or
viewpoints toward which we have strong negative emotions and to which we have
not given a serious hearing. This courage is connected with the recognition that ideas
considered dangerous or absurd are sometimes rationally justified (in whole or in
part) and that conclusions and beliefs inculcated in us are sometimes false or
misleading. To determine for ourselves which is which, we must not passively and
uncritically “accept” what we have “learned.” Intellectual courage comes into play
here, because inevitably we will come to see some truth in some ideas considered
dangerous or absurd, and distortion or falsity in some ideas strongly held in our
social group. We need courage to be true to our own thinking in such circumstances.
The penalties for non-conformity can be severe.
Intellectual Empathy – verses – Intellectual Close-mindedness
Having a consciousness of the need to imaginatively put oneself in the place of
others in order to genuinely understand them, which requires the consciousness of
our egocentric tendency to identify truth with our immediate perceptions of long-
standing thought or belief. This trait correlates with the ability to reconstruct
accurately the viewpoints and reasoning of others and to reason from premises,
assumptions, and ideas other than our own. This trait also correlates with the
willingness to remember occasions when we were wrong in the past despite an
intense conviction that we were right, and with the ability to imagine our being
similarly deceived in a case-at-hand.