There’s been a whole lot of talk about facts in our public discourse lately. Whether the issue is climate change, poverty, sexism, or racism, we want to know what the facts are. It’s in this context that many of us may have heard the slogan “Facts don’t care about your feelings” tossed around. Popularized by the conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, this phrase expresses a general frustration that people have allowed their intellectual capabilities to be hijacked by their emotions. Shapiro and his followers use it specifically to charge their ideological opponents with being too squeamish to face the cold, hard facts of reality, which indisputably support their position. To undermine an opposing claim, they cite some data points and conclude, “These are facts, and they don’t care about your feelings.”
It would be a mistake to think that this posturing is unique to Shapiro and his supporters. We find this tendency across the political spectrum. In left-leaning circles, for example, it takes the form of charging those with conservative viewpoints with being too “bigoted,” “backward,” or “uneducated” to accept the truth. More generally, a line of thinking taken by people of various political stripes is to say that those who disagree with them have been “indoctrinated” by certain social institutions, such as educational institutions and the media.
This attitude embodies a sort of epistemic arrogance. This is not the same as epistemic confidence. There is nothing epistemically arrogant about thinking that some of us are in better positions to know certain things than others in the same way that it is not arrogant to think that some of us are better cooks than others. Similarly, there is nothing arrogant about a high schooler thinking that she is in a generally better position to know the correct spelling of words than most kindergarteners are.
Epistemic arrogance happens when confidence in one’s knowledge and ability to know becomes excessive. For example, just as my confidence in cooking skills becomes arrogance if it goes beyond what my cooking skills actually are, confidence in my knowledge and ability to know can become arrogance if it isn’t proportionate to my actual knowledge and ability to know. Additionally, confidence in my knowledge becomes arrogance if it leads me to think of myself as a better knower in comparison to other knowers than I actually am.
Those who adopt the “facts don’t care about your feelings” slogan are epistemically arrogant in two main ways. First of all, they take for granted that they are in a privileged position to know what the facts are and what they entail. Second, they tend to unfairly dismiss those who disagree with them as being in a worse position as a knower than they may actually be.
To the first point, judgments of fact are never completely independent of our emotions, interests, and values. These play a fundamental role in our coming to believe that we know something— especially in the case of complex, ethically bound social issues such as racism and sexism. Our interests shape what questions we want to investigate in the first place, as well as what kind of facts we’re after. We are more likely to pursue lines of inquiry about topics that interest us than about ones that don’t.
Second, our interests influence whether we find that a certain fact or set of facts supports or undermines a certain position. This tendency is more pronounced for issues that we have strong convictions about. For example, we are much more hesitant to believe that a certain set of facts supports a conclusion that we strongly disagree with than one that we already strongly agree with. This is especially the case with large-scale, complex, ethically bound social issues like sexism and racism. We can agree with others about what the facts are while still disagreeing with them about what general conclusion we should draw from those facts. In such cases, we aren’t warranted in simply dismissing those who disagree with us as having their ability to know compromised. This would be epistemically arrogant because it not only takes for granted that our position is a correct one, but also that our position is one that that no reasonable knower would disagree with.
We can still be epistemically arrogant even if we are aware of the limits of our knowledge and ability to know. For example, I can be proud of my awareness of my limits as a knower to the point that I think of myself as being much more enlightened than everyone else. This could lead me to dismiss people who disagree with me as being far worse knowers than I am. While I might be hesitant to say that my position on a particular issue is the only correct one, I might still think that it is the only one that any knower would hold if she were reasonable.
Epistemic arrogance has a number of harmful consequences for our civil discourse. First, it can lead to intellectual laziness. Instead of addressing the facts and arguments offered in support of opposing viewpoints, the epistemically arrogant person dismisses them as the products of excessive emotionalism, bigotry, indoctrination, or some other bias. Second, it leads to intellectual dishonesty in our discourse. If we are epistemically arrogant, we take for granted that our position is correct or far more likely to be true. This can lead us to become even more entrenched in our position even when faced with conflicting evidence. With this mindset, we will be eager to dismiss this evidence rather than to take it into account and engage the arguments it supposedly supports. Third, epistemic arrogance can turn potentially fruitful dialogue on divisive issues into rhetorical boxing matches in which disputants attempt to display their moral or intellectual superiority over one another. These exchanges can be entertaining, but they rarely result in any progress on the issue at hand.
Instead of being epistemically arrogant, we should seek to become epistemically humble—that is, we should seek to become humble knowers. This requires having a proper awareness of one’s knowledge and of one’s abilities as a knower. We need to acknowledge that our interests play an important role in our search for knowledge, and that we are subject to the same sorts of influences that others are. Epistemic humility is a kind of disposition by which we see those who disagree with us—even about those issues that we have strong convictions about—in a much more fair and charitable light. While there is still room here to suspect that some people’s ability to know may have been unduly influenced, an epistemically humble person does not take the extra step of dismissing these positions outright. In this respect, it is a much better alternative to epistemic arrogance in enabling fruitful dialogue and debate over complex, divisive issues.
Editor’s note: This article received honorable mention in the APA Blog’s first Public Philosophy Award for Undergraduates contest.
Christopher Gregorio
Christopher Gregorio graduated from Marquette University in May 2019 with a BA in philosophy.
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One question I ask of someone who claims to be objective, to have facts on their side, etc. – this is this:
What is the distinction between your views, and views that are objective?
So far I have not run into anyone arrogant enough to outright say that the two are and the same – even if what they were saying strongly implied that this is exactly what they believed.
The Litmus Test
Perhaps the litmus test to epistemic arrogance is to point out that when it comes to views on what is happening and the best model to explain it is the scientific view where the community of scientists working in the field largely agree. And since the epistemically arrogant person’s views are still rejected by a large community of people who have the same interest as him/her in the field, it is obvious that he/she could easily be wrong.
Epistemic arrogance can be very dangerous if one has power over another or if that person is in a position of trust. In most cases the issue is a relatively minor one – certainly in the case of podcasters such as Ben Shapiro. You might largely agree with him or largely disagree, but it often comes down to an issue of esthetics – his ideas are attractive to you or not. Don’t listen to him or yell at your computer and write nasty tweets if you must.
If you display epistemic arrogance in cooking for your friends or family, there is always takeout.
Epistemic arrogance is growing and becoming a more obvious phenomenon because of the rise of government power, in both breadth and depth. We are now witnessing more and more ideas, argued (or most often, pronounced) by governments and those ideas are being imposed upon entire countries without even a discussion or acknowledgement of contrary positions or knowledge. The forces of power and control are leading to the cacophony of epistemic arrogance we are increasingly witnessing as more and more people fight over the controls foisted upon us. We are losing our civility and respect for ideas and indeed for philosophical principles such as epistemic humility, not as a sentimental posture, but a sign one is open to considering further knowledge and perspectives.
The real problem is the imposition of laws based upon epistemic arrogance, and that is likely the greatest danger that we face as a species. As power and control become increasingly centralized and restrictive, we can only expect more of this until we as a species throw off the yoke of that central control and reclaim our sovereignty.