week 5: autonomy, humility + self-confidence, and honesty

enlightenment

period of time that prioritized the solitary thinking that was willing to buck trends and think autonomously in order to overturn outmoded doctrines

main point that king offers about autonomy

it’s important to think for yourself, but not always by yourself

example of collective autonomy in history

• suffragists: elizabeth cady stanton and susan b anthony along with other women’s suffragists to bring their policy ideas, not by themselves

• copernicus was encourages by his friends to publish the revolutions

• tycho helped kepler publish his stuff

• galileo relied on copernicus for inspo

autonomy: image of the mean

deficiency: servility

excess: isolation

autonomy: image of the archer

object: choose to think about something

occasion: is this the/a right time for you to think about the topic?

means: what methods of thinking should you use?

motive: why do you want to know more about the topic?

three components of humility

• appropriate degree of attention to our intellectual weaknesses

• accurate (or at least reasonable) assessment of our intellectual weaknesses (registering our weaknesses as weaknesses)

• effort to own our intellectual weaknesses

jane austen’s difference between vanity and pride

• prideful people are obsessed with their weaknesses, vain people obsessed with what others thinks about those weaknesses

• both involve excessive self-focus, but they’re differently motivated

name the three vices that are the opposite of humility

neglect (caring too little about state of knowledge), arrogance (failt to register our biases), self depreciation (exaggerating our weaknesses)

how to own weaknesses

• correcting a weakness

• correcting for a weakness (use different strategies)

• accepting a weakness (maybe it’a part of your personal nature?)

types of lying

lying when you know you’re lying and lying bc you don’t care to know the full truth

what’s the greater enemy to the truth than lying?

bullshitting (post-truth)

ways we can deceive ourselves

• deliberately ignoring or suppressing evidence against our views, so that we remain convinced that these views are true

• intentionally setting a higher evidential “bar” for contrary views than our own, so as to make it harder to believe contrary views than it should be

• “justifying” our views to do the same, in ways we would reject if others were to do the same, while telling ourselves our justifications are perfectly respectable

four failures to respect the truth

plagiarism, lying, bluffing, and self-deception