In this paper, we argue that to reverse the excess of specialization and to create room for interdisciplinary cross-fertilization, it seems necessary to move the existing epistemic plurality towards a collaborative process of social cognition. In order to achieve this, we propose to extend the psychological notion of joint attention towards what we call joint intellectual attention. This special kind of joint attention involves a shared awareness of sharing the cognitive process of knowledge. We claim that if an interdisciplinary research team aspires to work collaboratively, it is essential for the researchers to jointly focus their attention towards a common object and establish a second-person relatedness among them. We consider some of the intellectual dispositions or virtues fostered by joint intellectual attention that facilitate interdisciplinary exchange, and explore some of the practical consequences of this cognitive approach to interdisciplinarity for education and research.

Due to the hyperspecialization so prevalent nowadays, interdisciplinary research is a demanding kind of epistemic activity. The concept of intellectual virtue as presented by responsibilist approaches of virtue epistemology could offer an effective counterweight to this challenge but raises the question of what epistemic virtues are necessary for interdisciplinarity. Based on a qualitative study, we identify and heuristically conceptualize a relevant subset of epistemic virtues required by interdisciplinarity that we call interpersonal intellectual virtues. These virtues are personal character traits that facilitate the reciprocal acquisition and distribution of knowledge with and through other people. By their very nature, they are only exercised in an interpersonal relationship that seeks an epistemic good, so in some sense, they are at the intersection of social virtues and intellectual virtues. We use Jason Baehr’s four-dimensional proposal for the essential components of intellectual virtues (motivational, affective, skill, and judgment) to show that these interpersonal traits are indeed epistemic virtues. Some examples of interpersonal intellectual virtues are intellectual empathy, intellectual respect, and intellectual trust, among others. Intellectual empathy is a paradigmatic case that we analyze in more detail. Finally, we suggest that interpersonal intellectual virtues are the key character traits of people involved in any successful collective epistemic endeavor, interdisciplinary research being a privileged context in which we can clearly see their manifestation.

The study and understanding of fundamental questions cannot be addressed by a single discipline. A plurality of insights needs to be integrated or coordinated to allow for mutual enrichment in interdisciplinary research. The intellectual character describes the set of dispositions that both configure and motivate intellectual behavior. In this paper, we explore the intellectual virtues that constitute the ideal character of an interdisciplinary researcher. We look at dimensions of several intellectual virtues – intellectual curiosity, open-mindedness, intellectual humility, and intellectual honest – relevant to interdisciplinarity, we discuss the significance of other character traits – intellectual creativity and intellectual trust – for integrating a plurality of insights, and we argue for the need of a social cognition approach, emphasizing the relevance of interpersonal intellectual virtues in interdisciplinary inquiry. All these virtues are key constituents of the intellectual character of interdisciplinary researchers.