As we saw in the introduction to the Everyday Excellence challenge, deliberative humility is one of the basic excellences of mind. Superficially, this is the excellence of being open to the possibility that we don’t have all the answers. But if we don’t have all the answers, then what should we do?On this first day of the February challenge, let’s dig a a little deeper.
A good place to start is Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean. Excellence in a particular sort of activity is about finding the right balance between “too much” and “too little.” If we picture humility on a continuum, at one extreme we have something like arrogance or vanity, and at the other, we have timidity. How do we think of these characteristics in the realm of deliberation?
Arrogance often shows up in deliberation as an assumption that we already know best, which of course makes us blind to other possibilities. This is a common enough pattern that we have aphorisms to warn us about it. For instance, To someone with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Deliberative arrogance can also appear in more subtle ways. For instance, consider the person who assumes not just that their belief in a situation is correct, but that their way of looking at the situation is superior. This leaves no room for other perspectives — let alone other worldviews. Just as assuming the superiority of our judgments blinds us to possibilities, assuming the superiority of our way of judging forestalls growth in the very skills we need for mature deliberation.
Deliberative arrogance can lead to a certain sort of dogmatism. We often think of dogmatism as confusing an opinion with a “fact,” but in philosophy dogmatism can refer to a claim that is believed on insufficient grounds. These perspectives shed light on dogmatism, but since we want to know how to practice excellence of mind, let’s ask about common motivations behind dogmatism. It’s a Big World out there, and it dawns on most of us at some time in our lives that there are people with other beliefs than ours. For many of us, this observation provokes a certain unease, and one way we can comfort ourselves is by tuning out alternatives.
Have you ever been in a conversation in which you challenge a claim someone makes, and they just kept repeating the claim, as if it became more convincing by repetition alone? One way to understand why people repeat a claim is to realize that they are themselves the audience for that repetition. This explains a familiar pattern in our social media behavior as well: We tend to clump into like-minded echo chambers, so that all the voices match up with the one inside our own heads.
It’s quite easy to say to ourselves we don’t know everything, so let’s get practical. What are some signs that we might be engaging in a bit of deliberative arrogance? Have you ever started a response to someone challenging your belief by repeating the belief? As in, three more times, or five, or seven? Have you responded with a sentence like “I’ve always believed that . . .”? Have you disregarded the challenge completely, chalking it up to naïveté or stupidity? These moves could be telling you that you are assuming that your own beliefs are so transparently correct that they can’t be examined.
Alright, Matthew, you might be thinking, maybe I do get a little carried away sometimes, but we can’t stop the world and deliberate about everything. You’re absolutely right. If we did stop and deliberate about everything, we wouldn’t be having this philosophical conversation, because our species would never have survived the savannah.
But excellence of mind doesn’t require examining every belief and every decision, every time. In fact, that’s why we develop habits — both in our actions in the world and in deliberation. Nature has given us a prodigious ability to make challenges routine by falling back on habits, and this ability generally makes our lives run smoothly (and consumes considerably less brain power). But note that Nature didn’t endow us with a natural ability to play the bassoon, either.
Because we are rational animals, we also have the ability to cultivate habits intentionally — and that’s precisely the point of our philosophical challenge. So, what does deliberative humility look like, day by day, as a set of habits?
As you engage in everyday decision-making this week, notice what you reject, and why. This is a good way to detect deliberative arrogance. For instance, if your reaction to an unfamiliar belief is immediately to tell yourself, “That can’t be right,” challenge yourself to ask why that belief can’t be right. Is a belief correct in proportion to familiarity? The assumption that a familiar belief is a grounded belief leads to the conclusion that all judgments that we’re not already familiar with are wrong and should be rejected — which forestalls growth, and keeps us stuck in unexamined habits that prevent us from excellencifying our capacity for deliberation.
Practice curbing the urge to label alternative beliefs as hopelessly naïve or irremediably stupid. Instead, take a step toward humility and force yourself to consider that an unfamiliar alternative might “have a point.” And then ask yourself what that point is. And then entertain the possibility that that point might be true — and What if it is? By doing this, you’ll be practicing a mindset of humility in which you aren’t the Last Word.