Two things to note about habits: one, they are very hard to break and two, a fair number of them are bad for us.
Many of us have fallen into the habit of reaching for our phones throughout the day to read the news and editorials. We watch videos of congressional hearings, we listen to pundits and comedians, and we read comments on internet forums. And we respond with being outraged, agitated, and distressed, and then spend our time either repeating the idiocy we have just heard or forming biting responses—often in our heads but sometimes in comments or posts of our own.
The political divide deepens, public discourse devolves into personal attacks, and the media feeds the demand for gotcha moments and entertainment. It is a hard habit to break.
But philosophy can help here. It does so through the practice of epistemic humility, along with the input of John Stuart Mill, the Stoics, and Bertrand Russell.
Epistemic humility has different meanings and different applications, but for present purposes I mean an attitude of humility, a recognition that the likelihood that you have the answer to any one problem is just not very high. Epistemic humility requires that you don’t try to convince another that you are right, but rather you try to hear what they are saying in hopes that you will learn something about your own view that you might not have understood before. You can be well-informed, involved, concerned, intelligent, and despite all of that, still miss something crucial. Epistemic humility is the recognition that you are fallible and have blind spots. You want the person or group you are disagreeing with to be able to articulate their position well enough that it gives you insight into an aspect of the issue that you failed fully to grasp correctly. Epistemic humility requires you to understand that those who disagree with you are not opponents (and certainly not enemies) but sparring partners; the only way for you to get better is to have a very good sparring partner. You share your views and criticisms with them so that they will understand their own views better, improving their ability to help you improve. If each side is understanding their own views more fully, with more awareness of the assumptions and consequences, then the likelihood is that each side will hold a better-grounded belief and thus be able to make decisions that are based on more accurate and relevant evidence with better reasoning behind them.
None of this is new, of course. The role of epistemic humility runs through the core of Mill’s On Liberty. Mill also underscores the reason to allow the public expression of beliefs and lifestyles. His reasoning has very little to do with rights and much more to do with duty and social utility understood as the thriving of as many as possible to as great an extent as possible.
You express your views so that one of three situations occurs: your view is shown to be correct, your view is shown to be wrong, or your view is shown to be incomplete. It isn’t so much that you have a right to express your views but that you have a duty to do so, just as you also have a duty to listen to the critiques made and revise accordingly.
By putting your views out there for public scrutiny, beliefs that are correct have a good chance of being seen to be correct. Others will be able to see this and adjust their own beliefs. Further, you will have to defend your views and thus deepen your own understanding of those views. You will have earned the right to hold the belief along with sharpening your reasoning skills. And with enough practice and genuine desire, you will learn how to think about your own beliefs for yourself. This skill, in its most basic form, is the true meaning of having critical thinking skills.
By putting your views out there for public scrutiny, beliefs that are false have a good chance of being seen to be false. Others will be able to see the flaws in your thinking and reject similar lines of thought in their own thinking. Also, by allowing the public expression of beliefs that most consider to be false, wrong, or even harmful, the beliefs will be more likely “to wither in the daylight” rather than fester in the shadow of censorship.
Finally, by putting your views out there for public scrutiny, beliefs that are incomplete, have a good chance of being added to by someone with a different take on the issue.
It is true that nothing can be done with those who express their views repeatedly with no intention to listen or who, perhaps, lack the mental capacity for self-reflection and revision. Mill does not grant such people the right to a public forum for their views. What he opposes by his demand for public expression is the censorship of a position by the government or society prior to it having a public hearing. But public hearings have a very specific purpose and if one takes no heed of the critiques and society is not thus improved, then there is no justification for repeated performances.
In all cases, the justification for public expression is grounded in the input from others and a willingness (and ability) to listen. The expression of beliefs in a public realm is done, not because you have a right to tell others your beliefs, but in order that your life and the lives of others, will be improved. In that sense, what you have is more of a duty to express your beliefs publicly to have a firmer grasp of the reasons for holding (or discarding) certain beliefs.
There must be epistemic humility for this project to ever get off the ground.
No doubt, this all sounds quite lovely but more than a bit unrealistic. The notion of an equal sparring partner with the shared goal of better understanding will not occur unless both sides approach with the attitude of epistemic humility. The trick is to figure out how to get people to adopt the attitude of epistemic humility. Philosophy provides an answer. Epistemology shows how little can be known with certainty, what counts as evidence (and what doesn’t), what can be done within a mindset of uncertainty and gray areas, and why confirmation bias, belief entrenchment, and self-identification can make it so difficult to seek out views that challenge one’s beliefs. Exposing students to all of this, while doing so in a setting that does not directly challenge a student’s individual, specific beliefs, allows this information to seep in and sets up the conditions for epistemic humility to be practiced. Once notions of epistemic humility are understood, then the challenge to specific beliefs can begin and have some chance of success.
I have seen how very difficult it is for students to question their own beliefs, even in a classroom setting where the stakes can be artificially low. Even those who want to challenge their beliefs don’t know how to go about it. Epistemic humility needs to be taught in the classroom. As a philosopher, I end up talking about uncomfortable, unsettling, controversial topics so it is important that my students know how to disagree with each other without the class ending in anger. Before anyone has a chance to make any claim about what they believe about X or Y or Z, we discuss epistemic humility. We talk about how it is very unlikely that they really understand the full implications of what they are talking about and even more unlikely that at the age of 18 or 20, they have an answer to the great philosophical questions or the current political issues. We discuss how class discussions are not debates since the point of the discussion is not to win but to discover what the flaws are in one’s own beliefs. And since that is hard, what you want is to have someone who will listen to you long enough and carefully enough, to understand your position and help you see where the weaknesses and errors are.
Knowing how hard it is in class with very simple cases where students are willing to take corrections, helps me grasp the immensity of the task and forces me to think about the bigger issue of why people hold the beliefs they do and why they respond to challenges the way they do. I am not suggesting all this as the answer for how to make the people on the internet treat those with whom they disagree with decency and respect, but as a way for me, and anyone who shares my bad habit, to think of how to approach living with people, of responding to those with whom I disagree, of being able to move on.
In that moment, when the urge to keep reading, the urge to doom scroll, and the urge to rant grips me, …at that moment, I force a shift to think about Russell’s point about the value of philosophy. I think about philosophy, not about a specific annoying, ignorant comment. I go beyond the immediate, the individual, and the local. As Russell says, I have recourse to thinking beyond my own self-oriented thoughts in my own self-oriented life. I can think about something far beyond the specific person and their specific comment (about which we are coming to realize, very little, perhaps nothing at all, can be done anyway). Instead, I make myself use the moment to think about the universal.
People suck at this. I suck at this. So, I focus on the fact that we all suck at this. And I think about why we suck at it and how we might get better. And I think about how I can respond differently. I de-escalate things in my own mind. I think about how to present this approach to others, as part of how I live as a philosopher. I think about how to model this approach in the classroom. I think about the larger issues that surround the divisive ways we have of disagreeing. I force myself to shift from thinking of a great refutation to thinking about what it means to have a right to free speech, epistemological issues with certainty and justification, and what it means to live in a democracy.
This is all aspirational for me, as I certainly have not achieved this state in a consistent manner, but it seems to be the way to go. The benefits are immediate. I detach from the immediacy of pointless engagement with those who are not practicing epistemic humility. I remember the teachings of the Stoics and don’t spend my life on that which I cannot change but work to finetune to the best of my ability that which I do have control over—my immediate response, how I live, and what I spend my time thinking about.
There is philosophical value in certain daily habits or rituals but we can also turn to philosophy to make our less desirable habits more beneficial for ourselves as individuals as well as for the greater good.
Susanna Goodin
Susanna Goodin is an Associate Professor of Philosophy, Undergraduate Advisor, and Department Head at the University of Wyoming, in Laramie, Wyoming. She received her MA (1985) and Ph.D. (1990) from Rice University. Her dissertation explored Locke’s views on the limits of scientific knowledge. Dr. Goodin's courses taught include Locke, Leibniz, Kant, Descartes, Spinoza, and Medieval Philosophy.
