Intellectual Humility Without Open-Mindedness: How to Respond to Extremist Views

Abstract How should we respond to extremist views that we know are false? This paper proposes that we should be intellectually humble, but not open-minded. We should own our intellectual limitations, but be unwilling to revise our beliefs in the falsity of the extremist views. The opening section makes a case for distinguishing the concept of intellectual humility from the concept of open-mindedness, arguing that open-mindedness requires both a willingness to revise extant beliefs and other-oriented engagement, whereas intellectual humility requires neither. Building on virtue-consequentialism, the second section makes a start by arguing that intellectually virtuous people of a particular sort—people with “effects-virtues”—would be intellectually humble, but not open-minded, in responding to extremist views they knew were false. We suggest that while intellectual humility and open-mindedness often travel together, this is a place where they come apart.