Educating for Intellectual Virtue: A Critique from Action Guidance

Abstract

Virtue epistemology is among the dominant influences in mainstream epistemology today. An important commitment of one strand of virtue epistemology – responsibilist virtue epistemology – is that it must provide regulative normative guidance for good thinking. Recently, a number of virtue epistemologists (most notably Baehr) have held that virtue epistemology not only can provide regulative normative guidance, but moreover that we should reconceive the primary epistemic aim of all education as the inculcation of the intellectual virtues. Baehr's picture contrasts with another well-known position – that the primary aim of education is the promotion of critical thinking. In this paper – that we hold makes a contribution to both philosophy of education and epistemology and, a fortiori, epistemology of education – we challenge this picture. We outline three criteria that any putative aim of education must meet and hold that it is the aim of critical thinking, rather than the aim of instilling intellectual virtue, that best meets these criteria. On this basis, we propose a new challenge for intellectual virtue epistemology, next to the well-known empirically driven ‘situationist challenge’. What we call the ‘pedagogical challenge’ maintains that the intellectual virtues approach does not have available a suitably effective pedagogy to qualify the acquisition of intellectual virtue as the primary aim of education. This is because the pedagogic model of the intellectual virtues approach (borrowed largely from exemplarist thinking) is not properly action-guiding. Instead, we hold that, without much further development in virtue-based theory, logic and critical thinking must still play the primary role in the epistemology of education.

Gotta know why! Preliminary evidence supporting a theory of virtue learning as applied to intellectual curiosity

“…This does of course hinge upon how the intellectual virtues are being conceptualized, as noted in the beginning of this article. If educators and researchers move toward a conception of intellectual virtue that articulates a greater influence from cognitive abilities -such as critical thinking and/or reflective judgment -then the connection between moral and intellectual virtues and the shared theories and pedagogies may dissipate or weaken substantially (Kotzee et al, 2019;Siegel, 2015). How useful the intellectual analogues to the moral virtues are for understanding intellectual development in higher education requires rigorous empirical research; future work should focus on how well measures of intellectual virtue relate to other meaningful behaviors, skills, and abilities.…”

“…Finally, the third reason why Besser's theory applies to intellectual virtue is implied by the strategies proposed to foster intellectual virtue in students. Proponents of intellectual virtue education highlight the significance of pedagogical techniques such as instruction, the use of exemplars, unique forms of the Socratic method (Watson, 2019), and the opportunity to practice virtuous behavior, as summarized by Kotzee et al (2019). These strategies correspond to the strategies proposed for moral development (e.g.…”

“…The concept of intellectual virtue is gaining popularity in education (Baehr, 2016;Kotzee et al, 2019), and in particular higher education (Arum et al, 2021;Hyslop-Margison, 2003;Jones, 2012;Orona, 2021a;Schwartz, 2020). The relevance to education has led scholars to supply strategies for developing virtue (e.g.…”

Online Misinformation and “Phantom Patterns”: Epistemic Exploitation in the Era of Big Data

“…would be less credulous with respect to online misinformation. However, it is difficult to inculcate these traits in those who lack them (Tanesini 2016; Kotzee et al 2021). Ultimately, then, we think that any intervention to deal with the problems that we have highlighted should focus more on modifying the environment, rather than attempting to mold individual's intellectual character in the right ways.…”

Epistemic Injustice

“…Be this as it may, these objections are hardly definitive. What they bring to the fore are questions about the worthiness and plausibility of virtue-focused exemplarist models since they arguably fail to be "properly action-guiding" (see Kotzee et al 2019).…”