Is arrogance a symptom of bad intellectual hygeine?
I have this belief that humility is a part of good critical thinking, and that egoism undermines it. I imagine arrogance as a kind of mind-death. But I have no evidence, and no good mechanism by which it might be true. In fact, I know the belief is suspect because I know that I want it to be true — I want to be able to assure myself that this or that intolerable academic will be magically punished with a decreased capacity to do good work. The truth could be the opposite: maybe hubris breeds confidence, and confidence results? After all, some of the most important thinkers in history were insufferable. Is any link, positive or negative, between arrogance and reasoning too tenuous to be worth entertaining? Is humility a pretty word or a valuable habit? I don't know what I think yet. Do you?
> That’s different from failing to address the arguments in their strongest form. I think you are equating these two separate critiques.
I think not. You'll find elsewhere on the site that the variations of Steelmanning, the Principle of Charity, and Assume Good Faith are all cited adjacently to each other. The quite reasonable and unremarkable epistemic standard I'm setting is the neighborhood of these ideas, and I'm surprised to see so little interest in it.
> Sometimes you can’t assume equally rational interlocutors, because your interlocutors are not equally rational, and that would be a false assumption.
And there is no interlocutor. It's a book, with a wide audience that won't talk back. A... (read more)