Is Intellectual Character Growth a Realistic Educational Aim?

Responsibilist approaches to virtue epistemology examine the epistemic significance of intellectual virtues like curiosity, attentiveness, intellectual humility, open-mindedness, intellectual courage, and intellectual tenacity (Battaly, 2008). On one way of thinking about these traits, they are the deep personal qualities or character traits of a good thinker or learner. Given the intimate connection between intellectual virtues and good thinking and learning, responsibilist virtue epistemology appears ripe for application to educational theory and practice (Baehr, 2016). At a minimum, growth in intellectual virtues seems like a worthy educational aim.

But is this aim realistic? There are at least three objections to thinking that it is. According to the first objection, there is no such thing as intellectual virtue; or, if intellectual virtue exists, it is a very rare phenomenon. This objection is rooted in empirical data from social psychology purporting to show that the activity associated with intellectual virtues either does not exist or is attributable, not to any stable dispositions of intellectual character, but to epistemically insignificant and often trivial situational influences (see e.g. Alfano, 2012). If this is right, the objection goes, then intellectual character growth is a profoundly unrealistic and misguided educational aim. Call this the “situationist objection.”