Educating for Intellectual Humility and Conviction
Open accessAbstract
It is argued that two plausible goals of the educational enterprise are (i) to develop the intellectual character, and thus the intellectual virtues, of the student, and (ii) to develop the student's intellectual self-confidence, such that they are able to have conviction in what they believe. On the face of it, however, these two educational goals seem to be in tension with one another, at least insofar as intellectual humility is a genuine intellectual virtue. This is because intellectual humility seems to require that one does not have conviction in one's beliefs. It is argued that this tension can be avoided so long as we have the right account of intellectual humility in play. This enables us to understand what educating for intellectual humility might involve, and how it might co-exist with the educational development of a student's intellectual self-confidence.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Understanding is widely acknowledged as one of the fundamental epistemic goals of education.
“As understanding is widely acknowledged as one of the fundamental aims of education, the answer to these questions depends on whether ChatGPT fosters or could foster the acquisition of understanding in its users.”
From ChatGPT, Education, and Understanding (2025) · cites this paper as Pritchard 2020
The opening discussion and “The Puzzle Resolved” identify intellectual virtue and self-confidence as educational goals, but neither identifies understanding as a fundamental aim. A search for “understanding” found it in other contexts, not as an educational aim; the cited paper therefore does not establish the attributed claim. (LLM, conf=0.74)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Cites
Intellectual Humility: Owning Our Limitations
Whitcomb, D., Battaly, H., Baehr, J., & Howard‐Snyder, D. (2017) · Philosophy and Phenomenological Research · doi:10.1111/phpr.12228 · Cited by 610 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Research works printed but not linked: 32
- Baehr, J. (2011) The Structure of Open-Mindedness, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 41.2, pp. 191-213.
- Barrett, J. and Church, I. (2016) Intellectual Humility, in: E. L. Worthington, D. E. Davis and J. N. Hook (eds), Handbook of Humility: Theory, Research, and Applications, (London, Routledge, 2016), pp. 62-75.
- Bloomfield, P. (2017a) Humility Is Not A Virtue, in: M. Alfano, M. Lynch, and A. Tanesini (eds), Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Humility (London, Routledge).
- Brennan, J. (2007) Modesty Without Illusion, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 75.1, pp. 111-128.
- Christensen, D. (2007) Epistemology of Disagreement: The Good News, Philosophical Review, 116.2, pp. 187-217.
- Church, I. (2016) A Doxastic Account of Intellectual Humility, Logos & Episteme, 7.4, pp. 413- 433.
- Driver, J. (1989) The Virtues of Ignorance, Journal of Philosophy, 86.7, pp. 373-384.
- Dunning, D. and Kruger, J. (1999) Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77.6, pp. 1121-1134.
- Elga, A. (2007) Reflection and Disagreement, Noûs, 41.3, pp. 478-502.
- Elga, A. (2010) How to Disagree About How to Disagree, in: R. Feldman and T. Warfield (eds), Disagreement (Oxford, Oxford University Press), pp. 175-186.
- Feldman, R. (2007) Reasonable Religious Disagreements, in: L. Anthony (ed.), Philosophers Without Gods (Oxford, Oxford University Press), pp. 194-214.
- Hazlett, A. (2012) Higher-Order Epistemic Attitudes and Intellectual Humility, Episteme, 9.3, pp. 205-223.
- Hoorens, V. (1993) Self-Enhancement and Superiority Biases in Social Comparison, European Review of Social Psychology, 4.1, pp. 113-139.
- Perin, C. (2010) The Demands of Reason: An Essay on Pyrrhonian Scepticism (Oxford, Oxford University Press).
- Priest, M. (2017) Intellectual Virtue: An Interpersonal Theory, Ergo, 4.16, https://doi.org/10.3998/ ergo.12405314.0004.016 · DOI · Paper page
- Pritchard, D. H. (forthcoming a) Ignorance and Inquiry, American Philosophical Quarterly.
- Pritchard, D. H. (forthcoming b) Wittgensteinian Epistemology, Epistemic Vertigo, and Pyrrhonian Scepticism, in: J. Vlasits and K. M. Vogt (eds), Epistemology After Sextus Empiricus (Oxford, Oxford University Press).
- Pritchard, D. H. (forthcoming c) Wittgenstein's On Certainty as Pyrrhonism in Action, in: N. de Costa and S. Wuppuluri (eds), Wittgensteinian (adj.): Looking at Things from the Viewpoint of Wittgenstein's Philosophy (Dordrecht, Springer).
- Pritchard, D. H. (2012) Disagreement, Scepticism, and Track-Record Arguments, in: D. Machuca (ed.), Disagreement and Scepticism (London, Routledge), pp. 150-168.
- Pritchard, D. H. (2013) Epistemic Virtue and the Epistemology of Education, Journal of Philosophy of Education, 47.2, pp. 236-247.
- Pritchard, D. H. (2014a) Truth as the Fundamental Epistemic Good, in: J. Matheson and R. Vitz (eds), The Ethics of Belief: Individual and Social (Oxford, Oxford University Press), pp. 112-129.
- Pritchard, D. H. (2016a) Epistemic Axiology, in: M. Grajner and P. Schmechtig (eds), Epistemic Reasons, Epistemic Norms, and Epistemic Goals (Berlin, DeGruyter), pp. 407-422.
- Pritchard, D. H. (2016b) Intellectual Virtue, Extended Cognition, and the Epistemology of Education, in J. Baehr (ed.), Intellectual Virtues and Education: Essays in Applied Virtue Epistemology (London, Routledge), pp. 113-127.
- Pritchard, D. H. (2016c) Seeing It For Oneself: Perceptual Knowledge, Understanding, and Intel- lectual Autonomy, Episteme, 13.1, pp. 29-42.
- Pritchard, D. H. (2018a) Intellectual Humility and the Epistemology of Disagreement, Synthese, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-02024-5. · DOI
- Pritchard, D. H. (2018b). Neuromedia and the Epistemology of Education, Metaphilosophy, 49.3, pp. 328-349.
- Pritchard, D. H. (2019) Disagreement, Intellectual Humility, and Reflection, in: W. Da Silva Filho (ed.), Thinking about Oneself: The Place and Value of Reflection in Philosophy and Psychology (Dordrecht, Springer).
- Riggs, W. (2010) Open-Mindedness, Metaphilosophy, 41.1, pp. 172-188.
- Roberts, R. C. and Wood, W. J. (2003) Humility and Epistemic Goods, in: M. DePaul and L. Zagzebski (eds), Intellectual Virtue: Perspectives from Ethics and Epistemology, (Oxford, Oxford University Press), pp. 257-279.
- Roberts, R. C. and Wood, W. J. (2007) Intellectual Virtues: An Essay in Regulative Epistemology (Oxford, Oxford University Press).
- Robertson, E. (2009) The Epistemic Aims of Education, in: H. Siegel (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Education (Oxford, Oxford University Press), pp. 11-34.
- Tanesini, A. (2016) Intellectual Humility as Attitude, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 96.2, pp. 399-420.
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Cassinadri, G. (2024) · Philosophy & Technology · doi:10.1007/s13347-024-00701-7 · Cited by 41 · see citing works
“For example, if a person uncritically trusts any web page that 4 For an account of the development of intellectual virtues in education see Hyslop-Margison (2003), Battaly (2006), MacAllister (2012), Sockett (2012), Pritchard (2013, 2018, 2020), Byerly (2019), Baehr (2015).”
BackgroundEducation as the Social Cultivation of Intellectual Virtue
Croce, M., & Pritchard, D. (2022) · Social Virtue Epistemology · doi:10.4324/9780367808952-78 · Cited by 14 · see citing works
Self-citationChatGPT, Education, and Understanding
Malfatti, F. I. (2025) · Social Epistemology · doi:10.1080/02691728.2025.2449599 · Cited by 13 · see citing works
“I will focus in particular on the epistemic goal of understanding, which is widely acknowledged to be one of the fundamental epistemic goals of education (Croce and Pritchard 2022; Elgin 1999, 2021, 2022; Pritchard 2020).”
- Authors
- Pritchard, D.
- Affiliations
- University of California, Irvine (US)
- Corresponding author
- Pritchard, Duncan
- ORCID
- Pritchard, Duncan
- Venue
- Journal of Philosophy of Education
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2020-04
- Volume
- 54
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 398-409
- ISSN
- 0309-8249 (ISSN-L)
- 1467-9752
- OpenAlex
- W2973879563
- Cited by
- 67
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2026: 7 · 2025: 15 · 2024: 13 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 14 · 2021: 5 · 2020: 2 · 2019: 1 · 2018: 1
- FWCI
- 41.40
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Locations
- Journal of Philosophy of Education (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nd)
- Edinburgh Research Explorer (University of Edinburgh) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Education, Philosophy, and Society
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Philosophical Ethics and Theory
- Keywords
- intellectual humility, intellectual virtues, intellectual character, educational goals, philosophy of education
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
