Is it ever rational to change your mind based on learning that others have changed theirs? This paper answers affirmatively and explores the conditions under which learning about others’ mind-changes should prompt you to reconsider your own. I propose that learning about others’ shifts in belief can motivate further inquiry, provide information about the existence or quality of first-order evidence, and recalibrate our evaluation of the issues at stake. However, not all changes of mind are epistemically meaningful: some may be superficial, misleading, or driven by non-epistemic factors. Critical evaluation is necessary for distinguishing between cases that provide genuine insight and those that are irrelevant. By investigating these dynamics, I aim to illuminate the broader epistemological significance of mind-changing and its implications for navigating complex and contentious issues.

Many philosophers think that doing philosophy cultivates valuable intellectual abilities and dispositions. Indeed this is a premise in a venerable argument for philosophy’s value. Unfortunately, empirical support for this premise has heretofore been lacking. We provide evidence that philosophical study has such effects. Using a large dataset (including records from over half a million undergraduates at hundreds of institutions across the United States), we investigate philosophy students’ performance on verbal and logical reasoning tests, as well as measures of valuable intellectual dispositions. Results indicate that students with stronger verbal abilities, and who are more curious, open-minded, and intellectually rigorous, are more likely to study philosophy. Nonetheless, after accounting for such baseline differences, philosophy majors outperform all other majors on tests of verbal and logical reasoning and on a measure of valuable habits of mind. This offers the strongest evidence to date that studying philosophy does indeed make people better thinkers.

Many theorists note the important role that wonder can play in our lives. Yet, little attention has been given to the associated character virtue; characterizations of it do not go much further than basic sketches that draw on Aristotle’s view about emotional dispositions that are proper to virtue. This paper fleshes out such sketches, which helps us understand what type of virtue this trait is. The account of virtuous wonder I develop here vindicates brief suggestions in the literature that this trait is an intellectual and aesthetic virtue and reveals in what sense it is a moral and environmental virtue.

This paper interrogates the idea of a virtue-first approach to the question of what has fundamental epistemic value. It has been suggested that a virtue-first approach is needed to strengthen the view known as veritism, according to which only truth has fundamental epistemic value. I distinguish between an ontological and a methodological virtue-first approach, and suggest that only the latter is an attractive option for a veritist. I then argue that the methodological virtue-first approach is incompatible with the idea that the epistemic domain is insulated, in the sense that being of epistemic value does not entail being of value. But insulationism is arguably an important tool for veritists in meeting various objections to their view, aside from being considered generally attractive by many. Veritists thus face a dilemma that requires them to give up one of two arguably attractive tools in their kit: either the virtue-first motivation of their view, or the insulationist conception of epistemic value.

In light of the complexity of some important matters, the best epistemic strategy for laypersons is often to rely heavily on the judgments of subject matter experts. However, given the contentiousness of some issues and the existence of fake experts, determining who to trust from the lay perspective is no simple matter. One proposed approach is for laypersons to attend to displays of intellectual virtue as indicators of expertise. I argue that this strategy is likely to fail, as non-experts often display apparent intellectual virtues while legitimate experts often display apparent intellectual vices. Then, I argue that this challenge is difficult to overcome, as experts who attempt to better exhibit apparent intellectual virtues would likely compromise their own reliability in the process. Finally, I discuss two conclusions—one more optimistic and one more pessimistic—that one might draw concerning the role of intellectual virtue in the identification of experts.

Philosophers often claim that doing philosophy makes people better thinkers. But what evidence is there for this empirical claim? This paper reviews extant evidence and presents some novel findings. We discuss standardized testing scores, review research on Philosophy for Children and critical thinking skills among college students, and present new empirical findings. On average, philosophers are better at logical reasoning, more reflective, and more open-minded than non-philosophers. However, there is an absence of evidence for the claim that studying philosophy led to these differences. We present some preliminary and suggestive evidence that although some of these differences may be attributable to philosophical training, others appear to be selection effects. The key takeaway is that more data are needed. We conclude by urging philosophers and interdisciplinary collaborators to gather more data to test the claim that studying philosophy makes people better thinkers.

While sin-based responses to divine hiddenness arguments are a road less travelled, they do nonetheless have a number of defenders in the contemporary divine hiddenness literature. I begin this article by exploring the various strategies that have been employed to attempt to motivate such accounts. What none of these strategies seem to take into account, however, is a cluster of facts about the correlation (or lack thereof) between a person's propositional attitudes about God and the degree to which that person displays the relevant moral and intellectual virtues. This article aims to fill this lacuna by mapping out the options available to defenders of sin-based responses in trying to cope with this cluster of facts. I argue that there may be resources available for preserving some aspects of the sin-based approach, but that taking stock of the aforementioned facts will ultimately require the positing of causal factors besides sin in order to generate a sufficient explanation of the phenomenon of non-belief.

The purpose of this paper is to advance understanding of intellectually virtuous honesty, by examining the relationship between a recent account of intellectual honesty and a recent account of intellectual transparency. The account of intellectual honesty comes from Nathan King, who adapts the work of Christian Miller on moral honesty, while the account of intellectual transparency comes from T. Ryan Byerly. After introducing the respective accounts, I identify four potential differences between intellectual honesty and intellectual transparency as understood by these accounts. I then turn to the question of how to think about the relationship between these traits in light of these potential differences. I make the case that intellectual transparency can either be regarded as an exceptionally strong or ideal variety of intellectual honesty, or it can be regarded as a distinct virtue from intellectual honesty which is a more cardinal virtue than the latter. Along the way, I also note some places where a case can be made that Miller's and King's accounts of honesty and intellectual honesty are in need of refinement or clarification.

This paper gives a new and richer account of open-mindedness as a moral virtue. I argue that the main problem with existing accounts is that they derive the moral value of open-mindedness entirely from the epistemic role it plays in moral thought. This view is overly intellectualist. I argue that open-mindedness as a moral virtue promotes our flourishing alongside others in ways that are quite independent of its role in correcting our beliefs. I close my discussion by distinguishing open-mindedness from what some might consider its equivalent: empathy and tolerance.

While openmindedness is often cited as a paradigmatic example of an intellectual virtue, the connection between openmindedness and truth is tenuous. Several strategies for reconciling this tension are considered, and each is shown to fail; it is thus claimed that openmindedness, when intellectually virtuous, bears no interesting essential connection to truth. In the final section, the implication of this result is assessed in the wider context of debates about epistemic value.