In this paper I provide an account of two forms of intellectual arrogance which cause the epistemic practices of conversational turn-taking and assertion to malfunction. I detail some of the ethical and epistemic harms generated by intellectual arrogance, and explain its role in fostering the intellectual vices of timidity and servility in other agents. Finally, I show that arrogance produces ignorance by silencing others (both preventing them from speaking and causing their assertions to misfire) and by fostering self-delusion in the (...) arrogant themselves. (shrink)

El principal objetivo de este estudio consiste en dar cuenta de cómo se enmarca la forma de tratamiento nominal marico en el habla de jóvenes universitarios de Caracas, Venezuela, dentro de la Teoría de la cortesía, según la perspectiva ofrecida por los hablantes. Igualmente, se busca documentar qué cambios está presentando en los contextos de uso así como en sus funciones pragmáticas. Los participantes fueron 60 estudiantes universitarios, 30 mujeres y 30 hombres, de 17 a 21 años. Tradicionalmente, la palabra (...) marico se ha usado como agresión verbal vulgar y ha sido, generalmente, considerada un insulto. Luego del análisis cualitativo de los datos, se plantea que esta FTN se halla en una fase de transición de insulto a marcador pragmático anticortés que indica solidaridad dentro de un grupo etario específico y está perdiendo su carácter agraviador. En la actualidad, la juventud caraqueña emplea esta FTN no solo para implicar lazos de amistad, sino para expresar emociones como sorpresa y enojo, crear efectos de intriga, hacer bromas, abrir y cerrar oraciones e, incluso, sustituir otras FTN que nunca han sido consideradas insultos en el español de Venezuela. La metodología empleada fue el cuestionario y el análisis cualitativo de reportes en primera persona. Las variables de edad y sexo son factores determinantes, puesto que parece haber tendencia entre los jóvenes entrevistados a no emplear esta forma nominal con hablantes que están fuera de su grupo etario y las mujeres siguen siendo conservadoras al restringir, más que los hombres, el uso de este vocablo. (shrink)

Today’s New APPS interview is with Alessandra Tanesini, Professor of Philosophy at Cardiff University. This is Part I; Part II will run next week. Thanks very much for doing this interview with us, Alessandra. Let’s start with your personal practice of philosophy. What are the pleasures and pains of philosophy...

The New APPS interview with Alessandra Tanesini, Professor of Philosophy at Cardiff University, will run in two parts. Part II is here; Part I was last week. Philosophy and other humanities are under increasing pressure to justify their existence in universities on short-term economic criteria, sometimes in number of majors...

Intellectual humility, I argue in this paper, is a cluster of strong attitudes directed toward one's cognitive make-up and its components, together with the cognitive and affective states that constitute their contents or bases, which serve knowledge and value-expressive functions. In order to defend this new account of humility I first examine two simpler traits: intellectual self-acceptance of epistemic limitations and intellectual modesty about epistemic successes. The position defended here addresses the shortcomings of both ignorance and accuracy based accounts of (...) humility. (shrink)

The exponential rise in transgender self-identification invites consideration of what constitutes an ethical response to transgender individuals’ claims about how best to promote their well-being. In this paper, we argue that ‘accepting’ a claim to medical transitioning in order to promote well-being would be in the person’s best interests iff at the point of request the individual is correct in their self-diagnosis as transgender (i.e., the distress felt to reside in the body does not result from another psychological and/or societal (...) problem) such that the medical interventions they are seeking will help them to realise their preferences. If we cannot assume this—and we suggest that we have reasonable grounds to question an unqualified acceptance in some cases—then ‘acceptance’ potentially works against best interests. We propose a distinction between ‘acceptance’ and respectful, in-depth exploration of an individual’s claims about what promotes their well-being. We discuss the ethical relevance of the unconscious mind to considerations of autonomy and consent in working with transgender individuals. An inquisitive stance, we suggest, supports autonomous choice about how to realise an embodied form that sustains well-being by allowing the individual to consider both conscious and unconscious factors shaping wishes and values, hence choices. (shrink)

Introduction / Alessandra Tanesini and Michael P. Lynch -- Reassessing different conceptions of argumentation / Catarina Dutilh Novaes -- Martial metaphors and argumentative virtues and vices / Ian James Kidd -- Arrogance and deep disagreement / Andrew Aberdein -- Closed-mindedness and arrogance / Heather Battaly -- Intellectual trust and the marketplace of ideas / Allan Hazlett -- Is searching the Internet making us intellectually arrogant? / J. Adam Carter and Emma C. Gordon -- Intellectual humility and the curse of (...) knowledge / Michael Hannon -- Bullshit and dogmatism : a discourse analytical perspective / Chris Heffer -- Polarization and the problem of spreading arrogance / Michael P. Lynch -- Arrogance, polarization and arguing to win / Alessandra Tanesini -- Partisanship, humility, and epistemic polarization / Thomas Nadelhoffer, Rose Graves, Gus Skorburg, Mark Leary, and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong -- Science denial, polarization, and arrogance / Lee McIntyre -- The polarization toolkit / Quassim Cassam -- Epistemic rights in a polarized world : the right to know and the abortion / Debate Lani Watson. (shrink)

In this paper I offer an original account of intellectual modesty and some of its surrounding vices: intellectual haughtiness, arrogance, servility and self-abasement. I argue that these vices are attitudes as social psychologists understand the notion. I also draw some of the educational implications of the account. In particular, I urge caution about the efficacy of direct instruction about virtue and of stimulating emulation through exposure to positive exemplars.

Alessandra Tanesini ABSTRACT: Arrogance has widespread negative consequences for epistemic practices. Arrogant people tend to intimidate and humiliate other agents, and to ignore or dismiss their views. They have a propensity to mansplain. They are also angry. In this paper I explain why anger is a common manifestation of arrogance in order to understand the...

Intellectual servility is a vice opposing proper pride about one's intellectual achievements. Intellectual timidity is also a vice; it is manifested in a lack of proper concern for others’ esteem. This paper offers an account of the nature of these vices and details some of the epistemic harms that flow from them. I argue that servility, which is often the result of suffering humiliation, is a form of damaged self-esteem. It is underpinned by attitudes serving social-adjustive functions and causes ingratiating (...) behaviors. Timidity, which is habituated through self-silencing, is underpinned by negative attitudes toward the intellectual worth of the self, which serve a defensive function. Like servility, timidity is an obstacle to the acquisition and transmission of knowledge and especially knowledge about oneself. (shrink)

This article argues that intellectual character vices involve non-instrumental motives to oppose, antagonise, or avoid things that are epistemically good in themselves. This view has been the recent target of criticism based on alleged counterexamples presenting epistemically vicious individuals who are virtuously motivated or at least lack suitable epistemically bad motivations. The paper first presents these examples and shows that they do not undermine the motivational approach. Finally, having distinguished motivating from explanatory reasons for belief and action, it argues that (...) our epistemic practice of vice attribution supplies evidence in favour of motivational accounts of vice. (shrink)

This paper has five aims: it clarifies the nature of esteem and of the related notions of admiration and reputation ; it argues that communities that possess practices of esteeming individuals for their intellectual qualities are epistemically superior to otherwise identical communities lacking this practice and that a concern for one's own intellectual reputation, and a motivation to seek the esteem and admiration of other members of one's community, can be epistemically virtuous ; it explains two vices regarding these concerns (...) for one's own intellectual reputation and desire for esteem: intellectual vanity and intellectual timidity ; finally, it offers an account of some of the epistemic harms caused by these vices. (shrink)

We-thinking theories allow groups to deliberate as agents. They have been introduced into the economic domain for both theoretical and empirical reasons. Among the few scholars who have proposed formal approaches to illustrate how we-thinking arises, Bacharach offers one of the most developed theories from the game theoretic point of view. He presents a number of intuitions, not always mutually consistent and not fully developed. In this article, I propose a way to complete Bacharach’s theory, generalizing the interdependence hypothesis and (...) building on his intuition about vacillation. It is a simple model of vacillation between the I and we-modes of reasoning, as a way in which we-thinking can come to mind in the face of a decision problem. The vacillation model makes we-reasoning more easily usable in game theory. (shrink)

The question of immigration and its corollary community and minority formation has always been analysed in relation to states. However, the increasing importance of solidarity beyond national borders on the grounds of one or several identities – national, religious, ethnic, regional – removes the claim of recognition of a collective identity from a national level to an international level and, in the European Union, to a supranational level. Such an evolution places territory at the core of the analysis of citizenship (...) and nationhood, for communities as well as states. This article will attempt to show that in this new configuration, negotiations between states and immigrants are brought beyond borders in order for states to maintain the ‘power’ of incorporation and citizenship while expanding their influence beyond their territories and to compete with transnational communities in their engagement in the process of globalization. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger and Immanuel Kant - two important pillars of contemporary philosophy-were proficient critics of traditional metaphysics in their time. They were known to be critical of a sort of metaphysical striving predisposed to grounding or representing an elusive concept of the universal.. Kant had earlier deconstructed a pre-eminent feature of Western metaphysics, namely, the socalled essence of thing, had it consigned to the noumenon evocative of the paradoxical nature of human knowing: it regulates the boundaries according to which any (...) notion of the infinite, the universal or the absolute can be reflexively thematized, or, thus strategically said, problematized. (shrink)

In this new book, Alessandra Tanesini demonstrates that feminist thought has a lot to offer to the study of Wittgenstein's philosophical work, and that -at the same time-that work can inspire feminist reflection in new directions. In Wittgenstein, Tanesini offers a highly original interpretation of several themes in Wittgenstein's philosophy. She argues that when we look at his work through feminist eyes we discover that he is not primarily concerned with providing solutions to technical problems in the philosophy of (...) mind, mathematics, and language. Instead, his remarks on these topics are intended to offer insights about human finitude, the loneliness of the modern autonomous self, and our relations to other human beings. Thus, the modern conception of the individual emerges as the critical target of Wittgenstein's philosophical work, both early and late. This conception has also been one of the dominant concerns of contemporary feminist philosophy. In this book, Wittgenstein's insights are deployed to further feminist debates on issues such as identity, difference, the masculine character of the modern self. (shrink)

Theories of assertion must explain how silencing is possible. This chapter defends an account of assertion in terms of normative commitments on the grounds that it provides the most plausible analysis of how individuals might be silenced when attempting to make assertions. The chapter first offers an account of the nature of silencing and defends the view that it can occur even in contexts where speakers’ communicative intentions are understood by their audience. Second, it outlines some of the normative commitments (...) characteristic of assertion when used in the speech act of telling;. This commitment view of assertion is then used to explain silencing as a matter of being deprived of the ability to make some of the commitments one is trying to acquire. Finally, the main rivals of the commitment view of assertion endorsed here are shown to be unable to account for silencing, at least when they are considered in their purest form. (shrink)

In this chapter, after a review of some existent empirical and philosophical literature that suggests that human beings are essentially incapable of changing their mind in response to counter-evidence, I argue that motivation makes a significant difference to individuals’ ability rationally to evaluate information. I rely on empirical work on group deliberation to argue that the motivation to learn from others, as opposed to the desire to win arguments, promotes good quality group deliberation. Finally I provide an overview of some (...) epistemic virtues and vices crucial to the politico-epistemic activities of arguing, debating, and listening to a contrary point of view. (shrink)

The Mismeasure of the Self is dedicated to vices that blight many lives. They are the vices of superiority, characteristic of those who feel entitled, superior and who have an inflated opinion of themselves, and those of inferiority, typical of those who are riddled with self-doubt and feel inferior. Arrogance, narcissism, haughtiness, and vanity are among the first group. Self-abasement, fatalism, servility, and timidity exemplify the second. This book shows these traits to be to vices of self-evaluation and describes their (...) pervasive harmful effects in some detail. Even though the influence of these traits extends to any aspect of life, the focus of this book is their damaging impact on the life of the intellect. Tanesini develops and defends a view of these vices that puts vicious motivations at their core. The analyses developed in this work build on empirical research in attitude psychology and on philosophical theories in virtue ethics and epistemology. The book concludes with a positive proposal for weakening vice and promoting virtue. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that social networking sites (SNSs) are emotion technologies that promote a highly charged emotional environment where intrinsic emotion regulation is significantly weakened, and people's emotions are more strongly modulated by other people and by the technology itself. I show that these features of social media promote a simplistic emotional outlook which is an obstacle to the development and maintenance of virtue. In addition, I focus on the mechanisms that promote group-based anger and thus give rise (...) to affective polarisation. In the final section, after a discussion of the positive value of some forms of anger, I argue that SNSs should not be designed to prohibit or suppress anger, but that its encouragement should also be avoided. I conclude with a suggestion about how this might be achieved. (shrink)

There is much of interest in Cassam’s ground-breaking Vices of the Mind. This discussion focuses exclusively on one aspect of his view, namely, his account of what it takes to be properly criticisable or blameworthy for one’s epistemic vices. This critical discussion consists of two sections. The first provides an overview of Cassam’s account of responsibility and criticisability for intellectual vices. The second raises a problem for that account whose formulation is due to Battaly and proposes a solution which, at (...) least in part, could also be adopted by Cassam himself if he were prepared to make some small changes to his view. This solution generates a highly disjunctive account of criticisability and responsibility for possessing an epistemic vice. Although such heterogeneity might seem wholly unsatisfactory, it receives a plausible explanation when the account is put within the context of a Strawsonian approach to the practice of holding people responsible for their epistemic vices. (shrink)

Self- affirmation techniques can help reduce arrogant behaviour in public debates. This chapter consists of three sections. The first offers an account of what speakers owe to their audiences, and of what hearers owe to speakers. It also illustrates some of the ways in which arrogance leads to violations of conversational norms. The second argues that arrogance can be understood as an attitude toward the self which is positive but defensive. The final section offers empirical evidence why we should expect (...) self-affirmation to reduce defensiveness and thus the manifestation of arrogance in debate. (shrink)

In the article I argue that intellectual arrogance can be an individual, collective and even corporate vice. I show that arrogance is in all these cases underpinned by defensive positive evaluations of epistemic features of the evaluator in the service of buttressing its illegitimate social dominance. Individual arrogance as superbia or as hubris stems from attitudes biased by the motive of self-enhancement. Collective arrogance is underpinned by positive defensive attitudes to a one’s social identity that seeks to maintain its unwarranted (...) social dominance. Finally, corporations are arrogant when their attitudes are the aggregation of the arrogant dispositions of its managers or when these corporations have inherited structures and policies that are defensive of its illegitimately dominant social status. (shrink)

Communities often respond to traumatic events in their histories by destroying objects that would cue memories of a past they wish to forget and by building artefacts which memorialize a new version of their history. Hence, it would seem, communities cope with change by spreading memory ignorance so to allow new memories to take root. This chapter offers an account of some aspects of this phenomenon and of its epistemological consequences. Specifically, it is demonstrated in this chapter that collective forgetfulness (...) is harmful. Here, the focus is exclusively on the harms caused by its contribution to undermining the intellectual self-trust of some members of the community. Further, since some of these harms are also wrongs, collective amnesia contributes to causing epistemic injustices. (shrink)

El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar un aspecto parti-cular de la demonología alejandrina y siríaca a partir del así llamadoδαίμων πλάνος o demonio errante, que Evagrio Pón-tico presenta en su tratado Sobre los pensamientos. Este demonio tiene como misión particular distraer al monje de la finalidad que le es pro-pia y disponerlo al ataque de demo-nios más peligrosos y dañinos. Esta figura es inaugurada por Evagrio y retomada algunos siglos más tarde por autores siríacos que la desarro-llan y aplican (...) de diversos modos en sus obras espirituales. Me detendré, además del texto evagriano, en la obra de uno de sus comentadores más reconocidos: José Hazzaya. (shrink)

After more than three centuries, Molyneux's question continues to challenge our understanding of cognition and perceptual systems. Locke, the original recipient of the question, approached it as a theoretical exercise relevant to long-standing philosophical issues, such as nativism, the possibility of common sensibles, and the empiricism-rationalism debate. However, philosophers were quick to adopt the experimentalist's stance as soon as they became aware of recoveries from congenital blindness through ophtalmic surgery. Such recoveries were widely reported to support empiricist positions, suggesting that (...) the question had found its empirical answer. Contrary to this common view, we argue that studies of patients recovering from early blindness through surgery cannot provide an answer. In fact, because of the very nature of such ophtalmological interventions it is impossible to test the question in the empirical conditions outlined by Molyneux. Thus we propose that Molyneux's question be treated as an early thought experiment of a specific kind. Although thought experiments of this kind cannot be turned into actual experimental conditions, they provide a conceptual restructuring of theories. Such restructuring in turn leads to new predictions that can then be tested by normal experiments. In accord with this interpretation, we show that Molyneux's question can be analyzed into a hierarchy of specific questions about vision in its phenomenal and sensory-motor components. Some of these questions do lead to actual experimental conditions that could be studied empirically. (shrink)

Clinical ethics consultation, as an activity that may be provided by clinical ethics committees and consultants, is nowadays a well-established practice in North America. Although it has been increasingly implemented in Europe and elsewhere, no agreement can be found among scholars and practitioners on the appropriate role or approach the consultant should play when ethically problematic cases involving conflicts and uncertainties come up. In particular, there is no consensus on the acceptability of consultants making recommendations, offering moral advice upon request, (...) and expressing personal opinions. We translate these issues into the question of whether the consultant should be neutral when performing an ethics consultation. We argue that the notion of neutrality 1) functions as a hermeneutical key to review the history of CEC as a whole; 2) may be enlightened by a precise assessment of the nature and goals of CEC; 3) refers to the normative dimension of CEC. Here, we distinguish four different meanings of neutrality: a neutral stance toward the parties involved in clinical decision making, toward the arguments offered to frame the discussion, toward the values and norms involved in the case, and toward the outcome of decision making, that is to say the final decision and action that will be implemented. Lastly, we suggest a non-authoritarian way to intend the term “recommendation” in the context of clinical ethics consultation. (shrink)

This book considers the semantic and syntactic nature of indexicals - linguistic expressions, as in I, you, this, that, yesterday, tomorrow , whose reference shifts from utterance to utterance.There is a long-standing controversy as to whether the semantic reference point is already present as syntactic material or whether it is introduced post-syntactically by semantic rules of interpretation. Alessandra Giorgi resolves this controversy through an empirically grounded exploration of temporal indexicality, arguing that the speaker's temporal location is specified in the (...) syntactic structure. She supports her analysis with theoretical and empirical arguments based on data from English, Italian, Chinese, and Romanian. Professor Giorgi addresses some difficult and longstanding issues in the analysis of temporal phenomena - including the Italian imperfect indicative, the properties of the so-called future-in-the-past, and the properties of Free Indirect Discourse - and shows that her framework can account elegantly for all of them. Carefully argued, succinct, and clearly written her book will appeal widely to semanticists in linguistics and philosophy from graduate level upwards and to linguists interested in the syntax-semantics interface. (shrink)

It is a familiar experience to perceive a material object as maintaining a stable shape even though it projects differently shaped images on our retina as we move with respect to it, or as maintaining a stable color throughout changes in the way the object is illuminated. We also perceive sounds as maintaining constant timbre and loudness when the context and the spatial relations between us and the sound source change over time. But where does this perceptual invariance ‘come from’? (...) What is it about our perceptual systems that makes them able to ‘transform’ incoming unstable and fluctuating sensory inputs into generally stable and coherent conscious experiences? And what exactly do we experience as invariant in cases like those described above? There are two main approaches to the Problem of Perceptual Invariance: the Local-Inferential approach and the Global-Structural approach. Although both approaches include an account of the sub-personal perceptual mechanisms ‘stabilizing’ variant and invariant components in incoming sensory stimulation and a proposal regarding the phenomenology of perceptual invariance, in this paper I argue that the latter provides a better solution to the problem overall. (shrink)

Arrogance has widespread negative consequences for epistemic practices. Arrogant people tend to intimidate and humiliate other agents, and to ignore or dismiss their views. They have a propensity to mansplain. They are also angry. In this paper I explain why anger is a common manifestation of arrogance in order to understand the effects of arrogance on debate. I argue that superbia (which is the kind of arrogance that is my concern here) is a vice of superiority characterised by an overwhelming (...) desire to diminish other people in order to excel and by a tendency to arrogate special entitlements for oneself, including the privilege of not having to justify one’s claims. (shrink)

In this article I argue that often propositional knowledge is acquired and retained by extensive reliance on physical and social scaffolds that create an environment or niche conducive to knowledge. It is incumbent on epistemologists to subject these aids to epistemic assessments. I show that several of the activities involved in the creation of niches within which inquiry can thrive are carried out by whole cultures. New generations benefit from inheriting these niches whilst being able to improve upon them to (...) the advantage of their descendants. Finally, I highlight that the growth of human epistemic achievements is often due to increased outsourcing of cognitive effort and epistemic powers onto impersonal physical and social structures so that human beings can succeed more by contributing less to the solution of problems. (shrink)

Anger dominates debates in the public sphere. In this article I argue that there are diverse forms of anger that merit different responses. My focus is especially on two types of anger that I label respectively arrogant and resistant. The first is the characteristic defensive response of those who unwarrantedly arrogate special privileges for themselves. The second is often a source of insight and a form of moral address. I detail some discursive manifestations of these two types of anger. I (...) show that arrogant anger is responsible for attempts to intimidate and humiliate others with whom one disagrees. Whilst resistant anger can be intimidating, it is also essential in communicating moral demands. (shrink)

BackgroundEthics review is the process of assessing the ethics of research involving humans. The Ethics Review Committee (ERC) is the key oversight mechanism designated to ensure ethics review. Whether or not this governance mechanism is still fit for purpose in the data-driven research context remains a debated issue among research ethics experts.Main textIn this article, we seek to address this issue in a twofold manner. First, we review the strengths and weaknesses of ERCs in ensuring ethical oversight. Second, we map (...) these strengths and weaknesses onto specific challenges raised by big data research. We distinguish two categories of potential weakness. The first category concerns persistent weaknesses, i.e., those which are not specific to big data research, but may be exacerbated by it. The second category concerns novel weaknesses, i.e., those which are created by and inherent to big data projects. Within this second category, we further distinguish between purview weaknesses related to the ERC’s scope (e.g., how big data projects may evade ERC review) and functional weaknesses, related to the ERC’s way of operating. Based on this analysis, we propose reforms aimed at improving the oversight capacity of ERCs in the era of big data science.ConclusionsWe believe the oversight mechanism could benefit from these reforms because they will help to overcome data-intensive research challenges and consequently benefit research at large. (shrink)