This chapter explores an unappreciated psychological dimension of intellectual humility. In particular, I argue there is a plausible connection between intellectual humility and epistemic egocentrism. Epistemic egocentrism is a well-known cognitive bias – often called ‘the curse of knowledge’ – whereby an agent attributes his or her own mental states to other people. I hypothesize that an individual who exhibits this bias is more likely to possess a variety of traits that are characteristic of intellectual humility. This is (...) surprising because intellectual humility is often regarded as an antidote to cognitive biases, whereas I claim that a particular cognitive bias (namely, the curse of knowledge) may help foster an intellectual virtue. (shrink)

We examined the universality of the curse of knowledge by investigating it in a unique cross-cultural sample; a nomadic Nilo-Saharan pastoralist society in East Africa, the Turkana. Forty Turkana children were asked eight factual questions and asked to predict how widely-known those facts were among their peers. To test the effect of their knowledge, we taught children the answers to half of the questions, while the other half were unknown. Based on findings suggesting the bias’s universality, we (...) predicted that children would estimate that more of their peers would know the answers to the questions that were taught versus the unknown questions. We also predicted that with age children would become less biased by their knowledge. In contrast, we found that only Turkana males were biased by their knowledge when inferring their peers’ perspectives, and the bias did not change with age. We discuss the implications of these findings. (shrink)

Does expertise within a domain of knowledge predict accurate self-assessment of the ability to explain topics in that domain? We find that expertise increases confidence in the ability to explain a wide variety of phenomena. However, this confidence is unwarranted; after actually offering full explanations, people are surprised by the limitations in their understanding. For passive expertise, miscalibration is moderated by education; those with more education are accurate in their self-assessments. But when those with more education consider topics related (...) to their area of concentrated study, they also display an illusion of understanding. This “curse of expertise” is explained by a failure to recognize the amount of detailed information that had been forgotten. While expertise can sometimes lead to accurate self-knowledge, it can also create illusions of competence. (shrink)

Informed consent (IC) is a key patients’ right. It gives patients the opportunity to access relevant information/knowledge and to support their decision-making role in partnership with clinicians. Despite this promising account of IC, the relationship between ‘knowledge’, as derived from IC, and the role of clinicians is often misunderstood. I offer two examples of this: (1) the prenatal testing and screening for disabilities; (2) the consent process in the abortion context. In the first example, IC is often over-medicalized, (...) that is to say the disclosure of information appears to be strongly in the clinicians’ hands. In this context, knowledge has often been a curse on prospective parents. Framing information in a doctor-centred and often negative way has hindered upon prospective parents’ decision-making role and also portrayed wrong assumptions upon disabled people more widely. In the second context, information is more often than not dismissed and, in a de-medicalized scenario, medical contribution often underplayed. The latter leads to an understanding of the dialogue with clinicians as a mere hinderance to the timely access to an abortion. Ultimately, I claim that it is important that knowledge, as derived from IC, is neither altogether dismissed via a process of de-medicalization, nor used as a curse on patients via a process of over-medicalization. None of the two gives justice to IC. Only when a better balance between medical and patients’ contribution is sought, knowledge can aspire to be a blessing (i.e. an opportunity for them), not a curse on patients in the IC context. (shrink)

Epistemological interest in trust concentrates mainly on whether and how it is a proper resource for responsible knowers. However, trust is important and valuable to epistemic agents for reasons that do not depend on its being knowledge-conducive, or knowledge enhancing. Being trusted is essential for full participation in an epistemic community. The story of Cassandra illustrates these dimensions of trust's value.

Does greater knowledge help or hinder one’s ability to coordinate with others? While individual expertise can reveal a suitable focal point to converge on, ‘blissful’ ignorance may systematically bias decisions towards it through mere recognition. Our experiment finds in favour of the former possibility. Both specific and general knowledge are significantly associated with success in four of five coordination problems as well as over all. Our analysis suggests that more knowledgeable participants are better able to identify focal decision (...) alternatives because they are aware of more such alternatives and possess more relevant information about each. (shrink)

As the editors of the series, New Literary Theory, proclaim in the preface of the book, the purpose of the series is to make more room in literary theory for playful and accessible approaches to li...

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, (...) and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

[Introduction]: Curiosity is now widely regarded, with some justification, as a vital ingredient of the inquiring mind and, more particularly, as a crucial virtue for the practitioner of the pure sciences. We have become accustomed to associate curiosity with innocence and, in its more mature manifestations, with the pursuit of truth for its own sake. It was not always so. The sentiments expressed in Sir John Davies's poem, published on the eve of the seventeenth century, paint a somewhat different picture. (...) To seek knowledge with no particular end in mind was to indulge in "fruitlesse curiositie," while the "desire to know" was associated with those catastrophic events that took place at the dawn of history in the Garden of Eden and with the ensuing curse that fell upon succeeding generations. Davies's poem neatly sets out two of the chief impediments to the advancement of learning in seventeenth-century England: the fact that the Genesis narrative attributes the Fall of the human race to the desire for knowledge, and the moral disapprobation associated with the vice of curiosity. In short, the traditional classification of curiosity amongst the vices and its complicity in the commission of the first sin represented a major obstacle to early modern projects to enlarge human learning. This essay will explore the changing fortunes of curiosity, from its construction as an intellectual vice in the patristic era to its subsequent transformation, over the course of the seventeenth century, to a virtue. Particular attention will be paid to the way in which Francis Bacon dealt with prevailing conceptions of curiosity and forbidden knowledge and how he modified an existing view of the moral legitimacy of knowledge of nature in order to provide rhetorical justification for his proposed instauration of learning. This change in the status of knowledge of nature, initiated by Bacon and promoted by his successors, highlights the morally charged character of early modem debates over the status of natural philosophy and the particular virtues required of its practitioners. As we shall see, the rehabilitation of curiosity was a crucial element in the objectification of scientific knowledge and led to a shift of focus away from the moral qualities of investigators and the propriety of particular objects of knowledge to specific disciplines, procedures, and methods. (shrink)

The idea of dignity seems indissociable from that of humanity, whether in its universal dimension of ‘human dignity’, or in the individual ‘dignity of the person’. This paper provides an outlook on the ethics governing the sciences and technology, in particular the biological sciences and biotechnology, and recalls the notion of ‘glory’, both human and divine, as it infuses a great part of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance cultures, just before the scientific revolution in Europe.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Martin Heidegger and OntologyEmmanuel Levinas (bio)The prestige of Martin Heidegger 1 and the influence of his thought on German philosophy marks both a new phase and one of the high points of the phenomenological movement. Caught unawares, the traditional establishment is obliged to clarify its position on this new teaching which casts a spell over youth and which, overstepping the bounds of permissibility, is already in vogue. For once, (...) Fame has picked one who deserves it and, for that matter, one who is still living. Anyone who has studied philosophy cannot, when confronted by Heidegger’s work, fail to recognize how the originality and force of his achievements, stemming from genius, are combined with an attentive, painstaking, and close working-out of the argument—with that craftsmanship of the patient artisan in which phenomenologists take such pride. In this study, it is important for us to understand, above all, the true intentions of our author, to illuminate what he thinks really needs to be said, and to surmise what is most critical for him.To get to the heart of Heidegger’s system, it seems fitting to begin with a problem that is generally familiar. We choose the problem of knowledge, a deeper understanding of which takes us to the very threshold of Heidegger’s thought. For this problem, central to modern philosophy, is one of the main obstacles of modern philosophy that Heidegger wishes to surmount. Neo-Kantianism, which takes knowledge as the philosophical problem of the first rank, is the movement against which Heidegger rebels with all his strength. We have, thus, every chance of gaining access to his thought by the main door, so to speak. Once inside the system we will try to trace its outlines, 2 reserving, for a second part of our work, the determination of Heidegger’s place in the history of ideas, especially in the phenomenological movement, as well as of his relations with the philosopher to whom he owes so much—Edmund Husserl. 31In its most general form, the problem of the theory of knowledge has a critical significance. It consists in delineating a domain where knowledge can be certain and in determining the criteria for the legitimate scope of knowledge. But this problem, as normal and as simple as it may appear, has deeper roots. That knowledge should need a criterion at all presupposes that truth is not identical to all that is known and that the course [End Page 11] of things can fail to correspond with the course of thought. “How does knowledge correspond to being?” is a more profound formulation of the problem of knowledge.But we are not going to touch anymore on the primordial phenomenon that generates the problem. The problem of correspondence between thing and thought presupposes a free activity of thought and its isolation in relation to the object. It is precisely this presupposition which renders their harmony and even their contact problematic. “How does the subject take leave of itself to attain the object?” is what the problem of knowledge, in the last analysis, boils down to. Its true source is thus the concept of “subject” as elaborated by modern philosophy. The cogito presided over the subject’s birth. The cogito was the affirmation of the privileged nature of the subject’s immanent sphere, of its unique place in existence; hence, the cogito was the specificity of the subject’s connection to the rest of reality, the sui generis nature which opens up the passage from immanence to transcendence, the passage from ideas contained in the thinking substance to 4 their “formal existence.”The concept of the subject, understood as a substance having a specific position in the entire domain of being, presents us with difficulties of two kinds. First, how do we understand this leave-taking from the self which the thinking substance brings about and which displays an entirely original aspect? Indeed, we could say that thought, in reaching out toward objects, does not actually take leave of itself, since its objects—considered as ideas and contents of thought—are, in a certain sense, already within it. In order to make sense of this paradox, Descartes... (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to (...) be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Amitav Ghosh’s The Nutmeg’s Curse (2021) is an insightful deliberation on the layered inequities and asymmetries created by the intersection of colonialism and anthropogenic activities. In The Nutmeg’s Curse, Ghosh conceives the present-day climate and ecological crisis as fallouts of colonial thinking and its manifestations in dominant epistemic and ethical constructions. This article underscores Ghosh’s critique of the Eurocentric discourses for their instrumentality in producing the totalitarian binaries of human and non-human, in which the ‘human’ was always the (...) whites and the ‘non-human’ comprised all ‘others’—the non-whites, indigenous people, nature and ecology. In attributing agency and signifying authority to the white capitalist, this dualistic thinking has always conceived of the ‘others’ as non-humans—those who could be objectified, commodified and tampered with. This article explores how Ghosh repudiates this colonialist monolithic demarcation, which, in compliance with the discourse of the Anthropocene, had annihilated non-Western forms of signification, knowledge and ethics. The article focuses on how the systemic othering of Western modernity’s episteme had been incremental, leading to occurrences of ‘testimonial injustices’ and ‘hermeneutical injustices’—which had culminated in severe forms of epistemicide and unleashed, what Boaventura de Sousa Santos terms ‘cognitive injustice’—relegating indigeneity and ecology to precarious conditions. In accordance with this, this article argues that Ghosh envisages a critical necessity to dismantle the matrix of Western capitalist modernity and its associated narrative of the Anthropocene and claims for a conceptualization of decolonial ecological ethics that would prioritize an encompassing of the episteme produced by the ‘other’. An engagement with the indigenous voices and a restoration of non-Western modes of knowledge production are crucial, as they can offer new ethical dimensions to envision ecology and life with its multiplicities and facilitate ‘cognitive justice’ for the oppressed and unrepresented ‘other’. (shrink)

Attributed to Alexander of Aphrodisias -the leading ancient commentator on Aristotle -the Quaestiones exemplify the process through which Aristotle's thought was organized and came to be interpreted as "Aristotelianism." This volume of R.W. Sharples's translation, together with his earlier translation of Quaestiones 1.1-2.15, makes the Quaestiones available in its entirety for the first time in a modern language. The Quaestiones are concerned with problems of physics and metaphysics, psychology and divine providence. Readers interested in Aristotle's psychological views will find the (...) second half of the Quaestiones particularly valuable. Ten of the problems discussed involve issues raised in Aristotle's On the Soul, including the unity of apperception and the transition from first to second actuality in the act of contemplation. An additional twelve problems relate to aspects of physical theory such as infinity, necessity, and potentiality. Quaestio 2.21 concerns divine providence and helps supplement our knowledge of Alexander's position. A study of the Quaestiones also suggests how interpretations of Aristotle were influenced by doctrines of Hellenistic philosophy. Translated first into Arabic and then into Latin, excerpts from the Quaestiones played a significant role in the transmission of ancient Greek philosophy to the medieval world. (shrink)

In this paper we formalize an approach to knowledge that we call Interrogative Epistemology, in the spirit of Hintikka’s “interrogative model” of knowledge. According to our approach, an agent’s knowledge is shaped and limited by her interrogative agenda. The dynamic correlate of this postulate is our Selective Learning principle: the agent’s agenda limits her potential for knowledge-acquisition. Only meaningful information, that is relevant to one’s issues, can really be learnt. We use this approach to propose a (...) new perspective on group knowledge, understood in terms of the epistemic potential of a group of agents: the knowledge that the group may come to possess in common after all members share their individual information. We argue that the standard notions of group knowledge studied in the literature, ranging from distributed knowledge to common knowledge, do not give us a good measure of a group’s epistemic potential. Common knowledge is too weak and too “static”, focusing on what the agents can coordinate upon only based on their actual, current knowledge, thus disregarding testimonial knowledge. In contrast, the concept of distributed knowledge is too strong, being based on the assumption that agents can completely internalize all the testimonial evidence received from others, irrespective of the limitations posed by their own interrogative agendas. We show that a group’s true epistemic potential typically lies in between common knowledge and distributed knowledge. We propose a logical formalization of these concepts, which comes together with a complete axiomatization, and we use this setting to explain both the triumphs and the failures of collective knowledge, treating examples that range from “collective scientific knowledge” [14, 35, 43] to the so-called “curse of the committee”. (shrink)

Vol. 1. Ars logica seu de forma et materia ratiocinandi -- v. 2. Naturalis philosophiae I. pars. De ente mobili in communi. III. pars. De ente mobili corruptibili -- v. 3. Naturalis philosophiae IV. pars. De ente mobili animato.

Michel Haar supports the natural, but he fails to see that the drives behind technology— people's curiosity, exploration and desire to control—could not be more natural. They are, after all, part of our evolutionary heritage. As Konrad Lorenz, the famous ethologist, shows in Behind the Mirror. In his discussion of alienation, Haar also overlooks the work of Friedrich Hayek, the Nobel prizewinning economist, who explores the emergence of the extended society of worldwide markets in his book Fatal Conceit. Hayek predicts (...) that there will always be a tension between our instinctive need for the closeness and familiarity of the tribal-like grouping and the extended market. I contrast Haar also with the perspective of William Warren Bartley III in his book Unfathomed Knowledge, Unmeasured Wealth, in which a Bartley expounds a logical/epistemological argument to the effect that alienation of our products is insuperable. (shrink)