Intellectual Humility: What Does It Mean to Be Intellectually Humble?

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to answer the question: What is intellectual humility? My main focus will be on two different contemporary accounts of intellectual humility – Whitcomb et al.’s Limitations-Owning Account and Church’s Doxastic Account – where I will argue that while both accounts identify particular aspects of intellectual humility, neither provides us with a fully satisfactory answer to what this virtue amounts to. There is however a straightforward way to revise the limitations-owning account, which turns it into an apt characterization of intellectual humility. In conclusion, I will argue for the position that intellectual humility is the virtue of valuing yourself intellectually as you ought, and that the revised version of the limitations-owning account captures what this actually amounts to.