Intellectual responsibility Quotes

“Intellectual”

“Epistemology”

“Responsibility”

“Ethics of belief”

“Epistemic virtue”

“This Humanist whom no beliefs constrained
Grew so broad-minded he was scatter-brained.”

“The political spirit is the great force in throwing love of truth and accurate reasoning into a secondary place.”

“Wikipedia: Intellectual responsibility”

“The intelligence is not free in the presence of a mortal fear lest its conclusions should trouble soft tranquillity of spirit.”

“The Fascist and Syndicalist species were characterized by the first appearance of a type of man who "did not care to give reasons or even to be right", but who was simply resolved to impose his opinions.”

“A lot of people's support for politicians who say things that aren't true isn't because they believe those statements per se, but they view that misinformation as supporting political goals that they believe in.”

“If upon thought hang all deliberate activities and the uses we make of all our other powers, Locke's assertion that it is of the highest concernment that care should be taken of its conduct is a moderate statement.”

“There is a certain category of fool—the overeducated, the academic, the journalist, the newspaper reader, the mechanistic "scientist", the pseudo-empiricist, those endowed with what I call "epistemic arrogance", this wonderful ability to discount what they did not see, the unobserved.”

“Theology has borrowed, and coloured for her own use, the principles which were first brought into vogue in politics. If in the one field it is the fashion to consider convenience first and truth second, in the other there is a corresponding fashion of placing truth second and emotional comfort first.”

“Englishmen have a strong sense of political responsibility, and a correspondingly weak sense of intellectual responsibility. ... And the principles which have prevailed in politics have been adopted by theology for her own use. In the one case, convenience first, truth second; in the other, emotional comfort first, truth second.”

“Primarily, naturally, it is not we who think, in any actively responsible sense; thinking is rather something that happens in us. Only so far as one has acquired control of the method in which the function of suggestion occurs and has accepted responsibility for its consequences, can one truthfully say, "I think so and so."”

“They who tamper with veracity, from whatever motive, are tampering with the vital force of human progress. Our comfort and the delight of the religious imagination are no better than forms of self-indulgence, when they are secured at the cost of that love of truth on which, more than on anything else, the increase of light and happiness among men must depend.”

“Epistemic rationality in this sense is a matter of having opinions that are capable of standing up to one's own, most severe scrutiny. ... In other words, not only must the opinion be in accord with one's other reflective first-order opinions, it must also be in accord with one's reflective second-order opinions about the ways one can reliably acquire opinions.”

“The view that there is no source of obligation save the claims of individual sentient beings entails that we have no responsibility to anything other than such beings. Most of the relevant sentient individuals are our fellow humans. So talk about our responsibility to Truth, or to Reason, must be replaced by talk about our responsibility to our fellow human beings.”

“An epistemically responsible agent desires to have true beliefs, and thus desires to have his beliefs produced by processes which lead to true beliefs; his actions are guided by these desires. Sometimes when we ask whether an agent's belief is justified what we mean to ask is whether the belief is the product of epistemically responsible action.”