Toolkit Ethics -- December 2019
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"This subject lies at the
juncture of ethics and the philosophy of mind.
Aristotle raises the subject under the heading “intellectual
virtue.” Descartes addresses it in his
work Rules for the Direction of the Mind. W.K. Clifford calls it “the ethics of
belief.” The subject is (roughly) ‘how to cultivate the faculty of reasoning’
or ‘how to conduct the understanding’ or ‘when to believe.’ This is the morality of thinking, the
morality of argument. It is ‘how to think’
or ‘the art of thinking.’ ‘Intellectual
honesty’ and ‘intellectual conscience’ and ‘intellectual courage’ and
‘intellectual integrity’ are newer terms.
This is not the courage of one’s
convictions (to act the way you believe, even - especially - in the face of
opposition), but is closer to not to
believe at all (not before smelling a thing out - thus to
believe the way you act). The basic idea
is a reluctance to believe - a hesitancy to believe - skepticism, wariness,
being guarded about belief."
