Education and Virtue
The
reported death toll from COVID-19 in the United States has climbed past 60,000,
the highest number by far in any country in the world. Without even checking, I suspect that some
voices on the Internet will say this fact “proves” interesting conclusions: (a)
the US health system is both too expensive and not as good as single-payer
health systems, (b) the US was deliberately targeted by our enemies (probably
China) who produced the virus in their secret labs, (c) President Trump’s
dithering in January and February prevented us from responding quickly to the threat
of pandemic, (d) God is punishing the US for its many sins, especially sexual
sins, and (e) a skillful conspiracy of opportunistic terrorists spread the
virus in the US.
Obviously,
not every purported implication of some fact really is an implication of that
fact.
As I say, I haven’t surfed the web to
see if all these ideas are out there. It
would be nice to be wrong. Unfortunately,
our ubiquitous web of electronic connections gives a platform for all sorts of
tendentious, fallacious, and inaccurate statements. And outright lies, of course.
Everybody
knows this. Our world is so rife with
contradictory claims that some people abandon the search for truth. Or they become zealots for ideologically pure
doctrine. (Don’t let anyone make you
doubt our cause!) It doesn’t help when
national leaders dismiss unwanted facts as “fake news.” But the problem is far greater than one
person or his influence.
What should
we do? Many in my business (college
professors, especially philosophers) have argued that the proliferation of
misinformation and disinformation in our world, especially in social media,
underscores the need for a liberal education.
We need to train young people to critically evaluate evidence, to
recognize and reject fallacies, to understand the methods and procedures of
science (statistical procedures in particular), and to become familiar with
trustworthy sources of information.
Notice my
word: “train.” It is not enough for a
student (or professor, for that matter) to know about intellectual skills. We need to practice them until they become
habits, habits of the mind. In other
words, we need to grow into intellectual
virtues.
Education
is not just about learning stuff. It is
about training persons in virtue. It is
important to insist on this point, because some educators fail to see it. When they hear a phrase like “training
students,” they immediately worry about indoctrinization. They fear narrow-mindedness or rigid
orthodoxy of any sort: political, religious or philosophical. So they resist the call to promote
intellectual virtue and they refuse to think of themselves as instructors in
morality.
You see the irony, I hope. Most educators who resist their role as moral
teachers do so out of fear of intellectual vices. The responsible way to reduce the vices of
narrow-mindedness or credulity is to promote intellectual virtue. I urge them to read Linda Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, just one of dozens
of books in the field.
It’s possible to avoid the
self-contradictory thinking of the educator who fears intellectual vice so much
that he refuses to promote virtue. A
hard-headed epistemic skeptic (Nietzsche comes to mind) could refuse to recognize
either virtue or vice. Education, he
might say, is simply a game some of us play with words. We use our “mobile army of metaphors” to do
whatever we like, provided we can get away with it—that is, so long as the
students will pay. Of course, when
Nietzsche says, “Let us be honest with ourselves”—which he does—he gives away
the whole game. The genuine skeptical
educator would have to be more consistent than Friedrich Nietzsche.
Intellectual virtues are not just
for students. We all need to train ourselves
in open-mindedness, persistence, firmness of belief, logical procedures,
charity of interpretation, faith, and other intellectual virtues.
Are you surprised that I include
faith among the virtues? Read Why Faith is a Virtue. In that book I argue that faith is a
moral virtue, but it’s a very small step to including it among the intellectual
virtues. Or maybe it’s no step at
all. Linda Zagzebski argues that there
is no real distinction between moral and intellectual virtues. I suspect she’s right.
