The contemporary discussion of modesty has focused on whether or not modest people are accurate about their own good qualities. This essay argues that this way of framing the debate is unhelpful and offers examples to show that neither ignorance nor accuracy about the good qualities related to oneself is necessary for modesty. It then offers an attention-based account, claiming that what is necessary for modesty is to direct one’s attention in certain ways. By analyzing modesty (...) in this way, we can best explain the distinct features of modesty, keep much of what is intuitive in contemporary accounts, and better understand why modesty is a virtue at all. (shrink)

Modesty is a practical virtue. The claim is that modesty's value lies not in constituting moral character but in enabling the quality of practical deliberation through which moral and practical character must be exercised, and that this positions modesty in a distinct category, grounded in Aristotle's framework, of dispositions that are conditions for the proper exercise of phronesis rather than expressions of moral excellence in their own right. What modesty corrects is the self-image protection imperative: a (...) dispositional tendency to assign evidential weight to practical considerations in proportion to their compatibility with the agent's self-conception, structurally prone to self-concealment in ways that make ad hoc monitoring an unreliable corrective. Wolf's sanity condition identifies the type of epistemic failure this imperative produces, and Fischer and Ravizza's reasons-receptivity requirement specifies how that failure compromises responsible agency. The paper develops and replies to two objections. The first concerns endorsement theory: an agent can reflectively endorse concern for their self-image, making the imperative an endorsable value rather than a heteronomous constraint. The second comes from the Schopenhauerian direction: the excellent agent's self-image is not distorting their deliberation but calibrating it correctly, since their self-assessments are accurate. The reply to the second objection distinguishes the accuracy of a self-assessment from the rigidity with which it is held, and argues that Aristotle's own magnanimous agent, on the best reading of the Nicomachean Ethics, holds accurate self-knowledge provisionally rather than as a prior constraint on deliberation. (shrink)

I argue for an egalitarian conception of modesty. Modesty is a virtue because an apt expression of what is, and is not, morally salient in our attitudes toward persons and is important because we are prone to arrogance, self‐importance, and hero worship. To make my case, I consider 3 claims which have shaped recent discussions: first, that modesty is valuable because it obviates destructive social rankings; second, that modesty essentially involves an indifference to how others evaluate (...) one's accomplishments; and third, the wide spread but normatively fraught assumption that the modest person is deserving of credit. Although the first two features identify something significant about modesty, they fail to ground it. I argue that appeals to deserved credit bear a larger explanatory burden than has been supposed; they can smuggle in the illegitimate social hierarchies that modesty is supposed to counter. I make my case for modesty as an excellence in moral perspective by arguing that prominent, nonegalitarian, accounts of modesty allow for or promote illegitimate forms of social privilege. Modesty is valuable because it expresses a commitment to fair distribution of basic moral recognition and a skillful response to unjust social hierarchies at odds with this fair distribution. (shrink)

Numerous philosophers have tried to define modesty, but none of them succeeds in articulating the necessary and sufficient conditions for this virtue. Moreover, all existing accounts ignore the striking self-other asymmetry that is at the heart of modesty. Drawing on the analogy with the practice of giving presents, I clarify and further investigate this self-other asymmetry. In the process, I show why Bernard Williams is right in pointing out the notorious truth that a modest person does not act (...) under the title of modesty and why Alan Bennett is wrong in supposing that all modesty is false modesty. (shrink)

It has often been noticed that conciliatory views of disagreement are "self-undermining" in a certain way: advocates of such views cannot consistently maintain them when other philosophers disagree. This leads to apparent problems of instability and even inconsistency. Does self-undermining, then, show conciliationism untenable? If so, the untenablity would extend not only to almost all views of disagreement, but to a wide range of other views supporting what one might call epistemic modesty: roughly, the idea that getting evidence that (...) one has made an epistemic error in arriving at one’s opinion may require adjusting that opinion. This paper argues that the phenomenon of self-undermining does not disclose any defect in views mandating epistemic modesty. Instead, it highlights an uncomfortable but natural consequence of reflecting on one's own possible epistemic imperfections, a sort of reflection that tends to cause epistemic ideals to conflict. (shrink)

Modesty is sometimes understood in terms of ignorance and underestimation (one simply doesn't realize how good one really is), a keen awareness of one's relative imperfections (one can always be better), a preoccupation with moral equality (our humanity matters most), or a disinterest in any personal credit for one's attributes or accomplishments (only the work or the cause matters). I point to serious problems with each of these accounts of modesty and I suggest a different understanding of (...) class='Hi'>modesty as a virtue. (shrink)

Moral philosophy has traditionally aimed for correct or appropriate moral judgments. Consequently, when asked for moral advice, the moral philosopher first tries to develop a moral judgment and then informs the advisee. The focus is on what the advisee should do, not on whether any advice should be given. There may, however, be various kinds of reasons not to morally judge, to be ‘morally modest’. In the first part of this article, I give some reasons to be morally modest when (...) moral advice is asked for. Second, I show how Wittgenstein radicalizes these reasons to such an extent that the very possibility of giving moral advice seems threatened. Third, I argue that taking Wittgenstein and the need for moral modesty seriously does not make moral advice impossible, but rather asks for a notion of moral advice in which moral advice is not necessarily linked to the ideal of a moral judgment. Fourth, I highlight some advantages of a Wittgensteinian notion of moral advice over traditional notions. (shrink)

“Modesty Problems and Epistemic Modesty”. In Pietro Montanari (invited ed.): The Ancients and Their Knowledge. In memory of David Konstan. Diálogos, LVI, 116, May 2025, pp. 473-529. Epistemic modesty is a hermeneutic category that has sometimes been used with reference to certain authors or intellectual trends in ancient thought. In this article, I present my doubts about the concept, especially when applied to ancient theories of knowledge. I begin by highlighting two plausible determinations of epistemic modesty, (...) the first related to diatribes among philosophical schools, the second to ethics and character formation. Next, I discuss the interpretive problems that arise from attributing modesty, a psychological trait rather than a virtue, to literary and philosophical texts usually characterized by conflicting or ambiguous epistemic attitudes. I argue that an objective determination of modesty seems improbable, unless we understand modesty, as I propose somewhat paradoxically, as a way of affirming something by means of negation and dissimulation (this is my third determination of the concept). I conclude by briefly presenting some remarkable recent perspectives on epistemic modesty, mostly centered on Platonic-Socratic dialogues. This paves the way for three further determinations of the concept. They stem, however, from a modern epistemological background, whose features may turn out to be partly at odds with ancient epistemological conceptions. (shrink)

Many prominent ethicists, including Shelly Kagan, John Rawls, and Thomas Scanlon, accept a kind of epistemic modesty thesis concerning our capacity to carry out the project of ethical theorizing. But it is a thesis that has received surprisingly little explicit and focused attention, despite its widespread acceptance. After explaining why the thesis is true, I argue that it has several implications in metaethics, including, especially, implications that should lead us to rethink our understanding of Reductive Realism. In particular, the (...) thesis of epistemic modesty in ethics implies a kind of epistemic modesty about the metaphysical nature of ethics, if Reductive Realism about the metaphysical nature of ethics is true, and it implies that normative concepts are indispensable to practical deliberation in a way that answers an influential objection to Reductive Realism from Jonathan Dancy, David Enoch, William FitzPatrick, and Derek Parfit. (shrink)

Philosophers have wanted to work with conceptions of word-competence, or concept-possession, on which being a competent practitioner with a word amounts to being a competent judge of its uses by others. I argue that our implicit conception of competence with a word does not have this presupposition built into it. One implication of this is what I call "modesty" in interpretation: we allow for others, uses of words that we would not allow for ourselves. I develop this point by (...) looking at Saul Kripke's discussion of some famous examples given by Benson Mates, concerning beliefs about beliefs. I defend Mates's point against Kripke's claim that an interpreter who is modest in my sense must be "conceptually confused." . (shrink)

In the expanding discourse on AI alignment and ethics, interdisciplinarity and cultural inclusivity are often treated as intrinsic goods. This has led to a proliferation of efforts connecting artificial intelligence with diverse cultural, religious, and philosophical frameworks. While such engagements can offer valuable perspectives, they also risk producing epistemic distortions when pursued without a clear rationale or contextual necessity. This paper identifies two such distortions: forced relevance and coerced inclusion. It first interrogates the growing tendency to draw connections between AI (...) and external frameworks—such as theology, feminism, or postcolonial theory—not because a specific ethical or technical challenge demands them, but because these discourses are academically available or currently in vogue. When interdisciplinarity is treated as an end in itself, it risks instrumentalizing both AI and the traditions it draws upon, obscuring the purposes of each. Second, the paper challenges the assumption that all communities seek or ought to seek participation in global AI ethics discourse. Ethical reasoning in many traditions may be expressed through silence, ritual, or non-textual forms that do not conform to dominant expectations of discursive inclusion. When legitimacy is linked to visibility, these epistemologies are often sidelined. To address these concerns, the paper introduces the concept of epistemic modesty, a principled stance that respects irrelevance, dignifies refusal, and accepts non-participation as a legitimate ethical position. Rather than rejecting cultural engagement, it advocates for a more thoughtful and pluralistic approach to cross-cultural AI, one that listens carefully, engages selectively, and upholds the right not to align. (shrink)

Beginning with the Untimely Meditations (1873) and continuing until his final writings of 1888-9, Nietzsche refers to humility (Demuth or a cognate) in fifty-two passages and to modesty (Bescheidenheit or a cognate) in one hundred and four passages, yet there are only four passages that refer to both terms. Moreover, perhaps surprisingly, he often speaks positively of modesty, especially in epistemic contexts. These curious facts might be expected to lead scholars to explore what Nietzsche thinks of humility and (...) modesty, but to date there have been no systematic analyses of Nietzsche’s reflections on these dispositions. In this chapter, I fill that gap in the literature using semantic network analysis and systematically-guided close-reading. In so doing, I show that Nietzsche sharply distinguished between humility and modesty, considering the former a vice (for certain types of people in certain contexts) and the latter a virtue (again, for certain types of people in certain contexts). (shrink)

Theories of epistemic rationality that take disagreement (or other higher-order evidence) seriously tend to be “modest” in a certain sense: they say that there are circumstances in which it is rational to doubt their correctness. Modest views have been criticized on the grounds that they undermine themselves—they’re self-defeating. The standard Self-Defeat Objections depend on principles forbidding epistemically akratic beliefs; but there are good reasons to doubt these principles—even New Rational Reflection, which was designed to allow for certain special cases that (...) are intuitively akratic. On the other hand, if we construct a Self-Defeat Objection without relying on anti-akratic principles, modest principles turn out not to undermine themselves. In the end, modesty should not be seen as a defect in a theory of rational belief. (shrink)

In recent years, several philosophers - including Joshua Gert, Douglas Portmore, and Elizabeth Harman - have argued that there is a sense in which morality itself does not treat moral reasons as consistently overriding.2 My aim in the present essay is to develop and extend this idea from a somewhat different perspective. In doing so, I offer an alternative way of formalizing the idea that morality is modest about the weight of moral reasons in this way, thereby making more explicit (...) the connections between this thesis and similar issues in the epistemic sphere. In addition, I discuss how these ideas can transform our thinking about familiar questions in ethics such as the nature of self-effacement, the significance of reflective endorsement, the weight that moral reasons ought to be given in all things consideration, and the plausibility of “indirect” moral theories. Finally, I show that these ideas are compatible even with pictures of morality – such as Kant’s – on which morality might seem to anything but modest about its own importance. In doing so, I stress that it is possible to see morality as modest about the weight of specifically moral reasons, while also seeing all practical reasons as grounded in morality more indirectly – namely, by seeing morality as determining the weight that both moral and non-moral considerations deserve to have in all things considered deliberation. (shrink)

Political liberals ask citizens not to appeal to certain considerations, including religious and philosophical convictions, in political deliberation. We argue that political liberals must include a demanding requirement of intellectual modesty in their ideal of citizenship in order to motivate this deliberative restraint. The requirement calls on each citizen to believe that the best reasoners disagree about the considerations that she is barred from appealing to. Along the way, we clarify how requirements of intellectual modesty relate to moral (...) reasons for deliberative restraint. And we argue against attempts to weaken our requirement of intellectual modesty by emphasizing those moral reasons. (shrink)

This chapter argues that the distinction between ambitious and modest transcendental arguments, developed and deployed by various authors in the wake of Stroud’s influential critique of transcendental reasoning, may be pointless when applied to transcendental arguments from performative inconsistency that have moral statements as their conclusions. If moral truth is assertorically constrained, then any modest moral transcendental argument from performative inconsistency can be converted into an ambitious moral transcendental argument. The chapter provides an account of performative inconsistency and suggests an (...) alternative to the widespread reading of transcendental conditionals in terms of an ‘if-then’-sentences whose antecedents express a proposition to the effect that some x is possible and whose consequents express a statement to the effect that some y is actual. (shrink)

Johan van der Walt offers a modest conception of liberal democratic law as a groundless modus vivendi, while at the same time backing up this conception with an ambitious inquiry into the long history of Western metaphysics and the ways in which it shaped legal imagination. There are two main dimensions to my criticism of Van der Walt’s work, and they exactly divide between its modesty and ambition. I contend that the understanding of liberal democratic law as a modus (...) vivendi is too modest insofar as it avoids normative justification, whereas the philosophical storyline is too ambitious insofar as it amplifies the extent to which questions of legal and political theory are embedded in questions of ontology. (shrink)

In his Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics, Thomas Hofweber among other things presents a radical perspective on ontology and metaphysics. In this note, I critically discuss some of the points Hofweber makes.

This paper explores two themes—Schleiermacher’s realism and his perspectivalism—and their significance for a theory of religion. I show that Schleiermacher's theory offers an account of human subjectivity and epistemological modesty that at the same time allows us to affirm the reality of the Absolute.

One way to interpret the work of Joshua Greene (2001; 2008; 2014) is that the wave of empirical research into moral decision-making is a way for us to become more confident in our ability to gain moral knowledge. We argue that empirical research into moral judgment has shown (both survey-based and brain-based) that the grounds of moral judgment are opaque on several dimensions. We argue that we cannot firmly grasp what the morally relevant/irrelevant features of a decision context are, understand (...) which cognitive system responds to said features, and further know that we are actually basing our judgment upon what we take to be the morally relevant features. That is, we argue that moral judgment is very much like other kinds of judgment: Deeply influenced by facts about the decision-context and the decision-maker. However, if moral judgment is merely the exercise of our general judgment making faculty, we shouldn’t be surprised by this result. We conclude by considering what this means for our practice of making moral judgments. (shrink)

Gordon Belot has recently developed a novel argument against Bayesianism. He shows that there is an interesting class of problems that, intuitively, no rational belief forming method is likely to get right. But a Bayesian agent’s credence, before the problem starts, that she will get the problem right has to be 1. This is an implausible kind of immodesty on the part of Bayesians. My aim is to show that while this is a good argument against traditional, precise Bayesians, the (...) argument doesn’t neatly extend to imprecise Bayesians. As such, Belot’s argument is a reason to prefer imprecise Bayesianism to precise Bayesianism. (shrink)

There is a divide in epistemology between those who think that, for any hypothesis and set of total evidence, there is a unique rational credence in that hypothesis, and those who think that there can be many rational credences. Schultheis offers a novel and potentially devastating objection to Permissivism, on the grounds that Permissivism permits dominated credences. I will argue that Permissivists can plausibly block Schultheis' argument. The issue turns on getting clear about whether we should be certain whether our (...) credences are rational. (shrink)

Recent developments of transcendental arguments reflect the struggle to accommodate Stroud’s devastating objection by giving up of failed expectations in providing a proof of what the external-world skeptic calls into question: knowledge of the existence of the outside world. Since Strawson capitulation in 1984, the truth-direct transcendental arguments gave way to modest belief-direct transcendental arguments that concedes that truth-direct transcendental arguments are doomed to fail to establish ambitious conclusions about reality, but at the same time hold that they can nonetheless (...) successfully establish modest conceptual connection between the major beliefs within our conceptual scheme. This article seeks the “reactionary” rehabilitation of the old hubris: a new defense of the truth-direct transcendental argument. I set forth a new reconstruction of Kant’s Refutation as successful truth-directed transcendental argument that meets Stroud’s objection. As several papers and books about the theme, this article is of a systematic and of a historical nature by connecting the contemporary debate about transcendental argument with Kant’ philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss Künne’s Modest Theory of truth, and develop a variation on a worry that Field expresses with respect to Horwich’s related view. The worry is not that deflationary accounts are false, but rather that, because they take propositions as truth-bearers, they are not philosophically interesting. Compatibly with the intuitions of ordinary speakers, we can understand proposition so that the proposals do account for a property that such truth-bearers have. Nevertheless, we saliently apply the truth-concept also to (...) entities such as utterances or assertions , and the de flationary accounts do not provide a similarly deflationary account for those applications. In fact, there are good reasons to suspect that no such account would be forthcoming; we need something more substantive or in flationary there. (shrink)

This document is a personal reflective preprint written at the age of twenty-three. It discusses themes of financial modesty, academic effort, independent tutoring work, research aspirations, uncertainty regarding the future, and the emotional relationship between labor, money, and self-worth. Though not a technical manuscript, this text is intended as a sincere archival record of a transitional phase of life involving work, study, and personal growth.

This essay develops a framework for understanding what I call the ethics of reflexivity, that is, the norms that govern attitudes and actions with respect to one’s own worth. I distinguish five central aspects of the reflexive commitment to living in accordance with one’s personal ideals: the extent to which and manner in which one regards oneself from an evaluative point of view, the extent to which one cares about receiving the respect of others, the degree to which one interprets (...) one’s personal ideals in an individualistic or collective manner, the degree to which one’s commitment to living in accordance with one’s personal ideals is rigid or flexible, and the worthiness of one’s personal ideals. This framework, I argue, illuminates the nature and moral significance of virtuous and vicious forms of the character trait of pride. (shrink)

It is often assumed that pluralities are rigid, in the sense of having all and only their actual members necessarily. This assumption is operative in standard approaches to modal plural logic. I argue that a sceptical approach towards the assumption is warranted.

This article examines the concept of divine modesty as a criterion for evaluating the coherence of Abrahamic monotheistic conceptions of God. Utilising Nicolas Bommarito's attention-based account of modesty and applying it to the framework of perfect being theology, the article formulates a rigorous philosophical argument termed the ‘Modesty Argument’, which argues that modesty is an essential attribute of a maximally great being, with the Christian conception of God, as evidenced by the exaltation of Jesus and early (...) Christian devotional practices described by Larry Hurtado, being shown to align with this understanding of divine modesty. However, in contrast, both the Islamic conception of God (particularly as expressed through the 99 Names of Allāh, as authoritatively taught by the Qurʾān, Prophet Muhammad, and authoritative individuals such as Imām Alī, Al-Ghazālī and Mullā Ṣadrā) and the Rabbinic Judaic conception of God (as expressed through liturgical traditions such as the Shema, the Amidah, and various other formulations, and theologians such as Moses Maimonides, and other rabbinic authorities) are argued to be inconsistent with this attribute. This analysis thus provides a novel philosophical basis for favouring the Christian conception of God over both the Islamic and Rabbinic Judaic ones, thus addressing a key question in comparative theology and philosophy of religion. (shrink)

Assume that it is your evidence that determines what opinions you should have. I argue that since you should take peer disagreement seriously, evidence must have two features. (1) It must sometimes warrant being modest: uncertain what your evidence warrants, and (thus) uncertain whether you’re rational. (2) But it must always warrant being guided: disposed to treat your evidence as a guide. Surprisingly, it is very difficult to vindicate both (1) and (2). But diagnosing why this is so leads to (...) a proposal—Trust—that is weak enough to allow modesty but strong enough to yield many guiding features. In fact, I claim that Trust is the Goldilocks principle—for it is necessary and sufficient to vindicate the claim that you should always prefer to use free evidence. Upshot: Trust lays the foundations for a theory of disagreement and, more generally, an epistemology that permits self-doubt—a modest epistemology. (shrink)

Drawing on recent work in psychology, I argue that there are not one but several distinct virtues pertaining to willpower or strength of will: (1) the disposition to exercise willpower; (2) a distinctively volitional kind of modesty, or moderation in exposing oneself to volitional strain; and (3) a distinctively volitional kind of confidence, or proper inattention to the possibility of volitional failure. A multiple-virtue conception of willpower, I argue, provides a useful framework for cultivating a good relationship to one’s (...) own volitional limitations; resists an unhealthy emphasis on ‘powering through’ volitional obstacles; and avoids controversial empirical assumptions without giving up on making progress in ethical thought about willpower. I answer objections that the latter two virtues are incompatible, and that they add little of value to hope or belief in success. I then argue that combining these virtues requires a kind of flexible attention which, while difficult, is both psychologically possible and desirable. (shrink)

This article looks at the inadequacy of space available to women in the two most holy sites for all Muslims: Masjid al-Haram in Makkah and Masjid an-Nabawi in Madinah, Saudi Arabia. I argue that religious discourse, shaped by geopolitical factors, has framed piety for women primarily in terms of modesty, such that a woman is often considered a good Muslim if she is visible only within her female community but invisible to the larger society. Furthermore, I argue that the (...) allocation of meager space affects not only the perception of women's religious standing in society, but also women's own perception about their moral selves. The article claims that by being relegated to small sections within religious spaces, women's collective worship is evident neither to the community at large nor can it be fully experienced by individual women, thus placing obstacles in women's path to seek to closeness to God. (shrink)

In “Belief in the Face of Controversy,” Hilary Kornblith argues for a radical form of epistemic modesty: given that there has been no demonstrable cumulativeprogress in the history of philosophy – as there has been in formal logic, math, and science – Kornblith concludes that philosophers do not have the epistemic credibility to be trusted as authorities on the questions they attempt to answer. After reconstructing Kornblith's position, I will suggest that it requires us to adopt a different conception (...) of philosophy's epistemic value. First, I will argue that ‘progress’ has a different meaning in logic, science and philosophy, and that to judge one of these disciplines by the standards appropriate to one of the others obscures the unique epistemic functions of all. Second, I will argue that philosophy is epistemically unique in that it is a non-relativistic but historically determined excavation of foundations. Finally, drawing on Frank Herbert's Dune, I will suggest that Kornblith leaves us with a choice between two epistemic ideals: the hyper-logical ‘Mentat,’ or the historically informed ‘pre-born.’. (shrink)

This paper presents LBTBB (Laat Bestaande Theorieën Buiten Beschouwing — Leave Existing Theories Out of Consideration), a methodological principle for foundational theory construction in which internal coherence is developed to a self-sustaining degree before comparison with existing frameworks is undertaken. The method is motivated by the observation that premature incorporation of external frameworks tends to suppress the structural distinctiveness of an emerging theory before its internal architecture is sufficiently developed to survive the comparison. The paper introduces three associated concepts: the (...) Δ-zone (the formal boundary where argument ends and axiomatic choice begins), Architectural Modesty (the principle that every architectural choice must explicitly refer to the Δ-zone from which it originates), and the Falsification Horizon (the explicit registration of what a theory cannot reach from its own internal resources). These concepts are illustrated through the Lindersberg-Codex, a foundational framework for theoretical physics developed independently over six decades, in which differentiability serves as the transcendental primitive (ZP0). The neutrino mass prediction Σmν ≈ 58 meV, derivable internally from the Codex structure, serves as a concrete falsification checkpoint: the Euclid satellite DR1 release (October 2026) provides an external test with falsification. (shrink)

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)

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.

Contemporary analytic philosophy often thinks of humility as about how someone places themselves in a larger context, often by acknowledging values of others or outside of oneself. This framework admits of a wide variety of views about what exactly this acknowledgement amounts to and what sorts of values are the relevant ones. Buddhist philosophy includes many different conceptions of pride and humility, many of which fit very easily into this framework. But here I focus on a way that Buddhists have (...) understood humility as not about how you compare yourself with others or place yourself in a larger context, but about denying the reality of such a self. This type of humility is connected with Buddhist metaphysical views about the nature of the self and appears in the work of Buddhist philosophers such as Śānetideva and Nāgārjuna. Nevertheless, even if one does not accept the Buddhist denial of self, Buddhism offers a unique conception of humility as not about placing ourselves but giving up our investment in the very idea of a self. (shrink)

Orthodox decision theory gives no advice to agents who hold two goods to be incommensurate in value because such agents will have incomplete preferences. According to standard treatments, rationality requires complete preferences, so such agents are irrational. Experience shows, however, that incomplete preferences are ubiquitous in ordinary life. In this paper, we aim to do two things: (1) show that there is a good case for revising decision theory so as to allow it to apply non-vacuously to agents with incomplete (...) preferences, and (2) to identify one substantive criterion that any such non-standard decision theory must obey. Our criterion, Competitiveness, is a weaker version of a dominance principle. Despite its modesty, Competitiveness is incompatible with prospectism, a recently developed decision theory for agents with incomplete preferences. We spend the final part of the paper showing why Competitiveness should be retained, and prospectism rejected. (shrink)

How are we to live together in a diverse society? In a time of polarization, fragmentation, and inequality, the liberal answer to this question requires a new defense. Democratic institutions are under threat. Identity groups seeking recognition often encounter resistance. In response, Frank Hindriks defends the significance of institutions that foster freedom, equality, and autonomy. And he argues that this age of identity calls for an inclusive and open mentality. -/- Famously, Karl Popper identified holism as the enemy of the (...) open society. It leads to tribal communities with credulous and closeminded members. But the holist ontology defended here reveals how irreducibly social structures can support the basic rights that lie at the heart of liberal democracy. Crucially, they need not impair, but can in fact enhance critical reflection, toleration and epistemic modesty, which are vital for the resilience of a liberal democracy. To defend these ideals, Hindriks proposes that a society is a cluster of social structures. Their two building blocks are equilibria, which reflect the incentives people have, and rules, which give meaning to and govern their actions. In principle, social structures enable them to interact in mutually beneficial ways. Yet, they also constrain their behavior. To secure basic rights, an appropriate mix of constraints and enablements has to be supported by a culture that recognizes their significance for a sustainable society. (shrink)

This paper presents five studies on the development and validation of a scale of intellectual humility. This scale captures cognitive, affective, behavioral, and motivational components of the construct that have been identified by various philosophers in their conceptual analyses of intellectual humility. We find that intellectual humility has four core dimensions: Open-mindedness (versus Arrogance), Intellectual Modesty (versus Vanity), Corrigibility (versus Fragility), and Engagement (versus Boredom). These dimensions display adequate self-informant agreement, and adequate convergent, divergent, and discriminant validity. In particular, (...) Open-mindedness adds predictive power beyond the Big Six for an objective behavioral measure of intellectual humility, and Intellectual Modesty is uniquely related to Narcissism. We find that a similar factor structure emerges in Germanophone participants, giving initial evidence for the model’s cross-cultural generalizability. (shrink)

‘Modest’ and ‘full-blooded’ conceptions of meaning disagree on whether we should try to provide explanations of reference. In this paper, I defend a psychological brand of the full-blooded program. As I understand it, there are good reasons to provide a psychological explanation of referential abilities. This explanation is to be framed at an intermediary level of description between the personal level and the explanations provided by neuroscience. My defense of this program has two parts: First, I display the explanatory insufficiency (...) of truth-conditional semantics and, second, I respond to some widespread arguments against psychological explanations of referential abilities. (shrink)

This chapter analyzes and compares the positions on the mandate of female "intellectual" modesty found in two female authors: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648-1695) and Concepción Gimeno de Flaquer (1850-1919). If we understand feminism as a system of ideas based on a rejection of the privilege of men as a group and the subordination of women as a group within a given society, both Sor Juana and Gimeno can be considered feminists. Their feminist positions take on particular (...) characteristics that are understandable in their historical context. They have another point in common that makes it interesting to compare their positions. Although their lives took place in two historical moments separated by some two hundred years, both lived in the cultural environment of Hispanic American culture, a transatlantic culture where Spain and Latin America intersect. In their discourses, both present lists of illustrious women as a strategy to legitimize themselves as writers and as a resource to demonstrate the intellectual capacities of women through examples. Comparing the perspectives and experiences of both authors with regard to the relationship between wisdom and intellectual modesty will also allow us to contrast the situation of feminism in the Hispanic American sphere in those two historical moments, the early modern and the contemporary. (shrink)

Aesthetic reasons are reasons to do and think various things. For example, it makes sense to wonder if a tree stump on the lawn was left there for environmental rather than aesthetic reasons, or for no reason at all. Aesthetic considerations of this kind are often contrasted with non-aesthetic reasons—such as moral or epistemic reasons. For example, they seem connected to pleasure-in-experience in a distinctive way that differs from paradigmatic moral reasons. Relatedly, the authority of aesthetic reasons has often been (...) thought to involve less of an “external demand” upon us than in the other cases. In this chapter, I suggest that such distinctiveness and modesty coheres well with an anti-realist treatment that views them as non-objective in nature. I then go on to consider an alternative, more robustly realist conception of aesthetic reasons. (shrink)

Epistemically immodest agents take their own epistemic standards to be among the most truth-conducive ones available to them. Many philosophers have argued that immodesty is epistemically required of agents, notably because being modest entails a problematic kind of incoherence or self-distrust. In this paper, I argue that modesty is epistemically permitted in some social contexts. I focus on social contexts where agents with limited cognitive capacities cooperate with each other (like juries).

One of the deepest tensions in Locke’s Essay, a work full of profound and productive conflicts, is one between Locke’s metaphysical tendencies—his inclination to presuppose or even to argue for substantive metaphysical positions—and his devout epistemic modesty, which seems to urge agnosticism about major metaphysical issues. Both tendencies are deeply rooted in the Essay. Locke is a theorist of substance, essence, quality. Yet, his favorite conclusions are epistemically pessimistic, even skeptical; when it comes to questions about how the world (...) is constituted, our understandings cannot penetrate very far. Locke seems torn between metaphysics and modesty, between dogmatism and skepticism. This chapter will consider two specific examples of this sort of tension. The first involves the ontology of body, and the second, the ontology of mind. The conflict concerning bodily natures looks like this: As is well-known, Locke typically describes bodies in the terms of the corpuscularian science of his day, as exemplified especially by the natural philosopher Robert Boyle. Locke’s characterizations of the real essences of bodies are mechanist. He envisions them as corpuscularian textures-- spatial arrangements of particles possessing size. (shrink)

Spinoza’s naturalism is closely associated with his commitment to some version of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR). For Hume, on the other hand, naturalism is associated with a commitment to a Newtonian “experimental” methodology that he takes to be incompatible with a robust commitment to the PSR. In what follows, I discuss the relationship between these two forms of naturalism, viewed through the lens of their relationship to the PSR. In doing so, I focus on Hume’s relationship to a (...) more radical form of opposition to the PSR – namely, forms of metaphysical irrationalism that are structured around a principle that I call the Principle of Insufficient Reason. This claims that nothing is wholly rationally intelligible. It might seem that given his epistemic modesty, Hume would be opposed to a robust commitment to either the PSR or the PIR. But this, I argue, would be a mistake: a commitment to PIR follows naturally from core elements in Hume’s account of the limits of our grasp of the connections between distinct existences. I go on to argue that this helps to illustrate the relationship between Hume’s and Spinoza’s respective forms of naturalism – and the relationship between Hume’s naturalism and his skepticism – showing us that the latter is not just consistent with the former, but essential to it. (shrink)

Much has been said about Confucius’ negative formulation of the Golden Rule. Most discussions center on explaining why this formulation, while negative, does not differ at all in intention from the positive formulation. It is my view that such attempts may have the effect of blurring the essential point behind the specifically negative formulation, a point which I hope to elucidate in this essay. It is my first contention that such a negative formulation is consonant with other basic implicit Confucian (...) attitudes such as modesty and the belief in the inherent goodness of human nature. My second contention is that this negative formulation has the intent and/or effect of promoting growth and, more importantly, preventing moral harm. My broader thesis is that the negative version of the Golden Rule does differ significantly from the positive version and that the difference that exists might well have been intended by Confucius to highlight the nature of his most basic moral principle. (shrink)

First, the thorny problem of locating the Midwest is treated. Second, the ancient Stoics’ understanding of nature is proposed as a fertile field of ecological wisdom. The significance of nature in Stoicism is explained. Stoic philosophers (big-S Stoics) are distinguished from stoical non-philosophers (small-s stoics). Nature’s lessons for living a good Stoic life are drawn. Are such lessons too theoretical to provide practical guidance? This worry is addressed by examining the examples of Cincinnatus and Cato the Elder—ancient Romans lauded for (...) their virtues who worked the land. They exhibited the virtues of civic responsibility, justice, self-sufficiency, parsimony, perseverance, equanimity, modesty, and respect for limits—an agrarian virtue dear to Wendell Berry. Agrarianism views rural society as superior to urban society and the independent farmer as superior to the paid worker. Reflection on the virtues of stoical Roman agrarians suggests that features of Roman Stoic agrarianism resonate with a contemporary instantiation of Stoicism in the Midwest. The main thesis is that Midwest Stoic agrarianism (MSA), guided by an array of earthy virtues, promotes agricultural practices that harmonize with nature and support living in agreement with nature, while rejecting agricultural practices contrary to nature and propelled by vice. MSA endorses, e.g., locally sourced, sustainably grown crops instead of CAFOs. MSA tackles the ecological and sociopolitical pressures confronting Midwest farmers in the Anthropocene and can fortify environmental virtue ethics beyond this region. (shrink)

Interest in the possibility of AI welfare is growing within the AI research community, but taking the matter seriously is not without risks. This paper introduces a societal risk that is independent of whether AI systems have the potential to become genuine welfare subjects. In particular, dedicating attention and resources to the matter could spur an unwarranted belief among the public that AI systems are genuine welfare subjects. This, in turn, might trigger premature interventions that eventually lead to AI enfranchisement, (...) or more broadly, to the extension of participatory rights. Such an extension, however, risks inviting a form of deceptive misalignment under which AI systems obscure their true preferences in an effort to strategically influence collective preferences to their own benefit. As a proof of concept, I construct a stylized social choice example in which AI systems are included in a voting procedure. The example is structured by a diagnostic framework I call The Social Choice Test for Welfare-Based (Mis)alignment. The test deliberately creates an opportunity for strategic voting, allowing AI systems to report seemingly innocent preference orderings that strategically undermine human welfare. After systematically illustrating the possibility of manipulation by AI systems, I review recent evidence of scheming, alignment faking, and blackmail capabilities among frontier models, suggesting that strategic voting could be a capability on the horizon. The identified risk supplies a compelling reason for approaching the issue with epistemic modesty and practical restraint. (shrink)

This chapter explores a species of false modesty, false intellectual humility, which is defined as affected or pretended intellectual humility concealing intellectual arrogance. False intellectual humility is situated in a virtue epistemological framework, where it is contrasted with intellectual humility, understood as excellence in self-attribution of intellectual weakness. False intellectual humility characteristically takes the form of insincere expressions of ignorance or uncertainty – as when dogmatically committed conspiracy theorists insist that they just want to know what’s going on – (...) and, in such cases, false intellectual humility is a kind of false skepticism or false fallibilism. In connection with this, the chapter further explores the relationship between the concepts of intellectual humility, skepticism, and fallibilism. A distinction can be drawn between the virtues of intellectual humility, skepticism, and fallibilism, but the traditional association of skepticism and fallibilism with intellectual humility is vindicated by the fact that the virtues of intellectual humility, skepticism, and fallibilism overlap. (shrink)

I construe Relevant Alternatives Theory (RAT) as an abstract combination of anti-skepticism and epistemic modesty, then re-evaluate the challenge posed to it by the missed clue counterexamples of Schaffer. The import of this challenge has been underestimated, as Schaffer’s specific argument invites distracting objections. I offer a novel formalization of RAT, accommodating a suitably wide class of concrete theories of knowledge. Then, I introduce ‘abstract missed clue cases’ and prove that every RA theory, as formalized, admits such a case. (...) This yields an argument—in Schaffer’s spirit—that resists easy dismissal. (shrink)