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The Virtues of Ingenuity: Reasoning and Arguing without Bias

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Abstract

This paper describes and defends the “virtues of ingenuity”: detachment, lucidity, thoroughness. Philosophers traditionally praise these virtues for their role in the practice of using reasoning to solve problems and gather information. Yet, reasoning has other, no less important uses. Conviction is one of them. A recent revival of rhetoric and argumentative approaches to reasoning (in psychology, philosophy and science studies) has highlighted the virtues of persuasiveness and cast a new light on some of its apparent vices—bad faith, deluded confidence, confirmation and myside biases. Those traits, it is often argued, will no longer look so detrimental once we grasp their proper function: arguing in order to persuade, rather than thinking in order to solve problems. Some of these biases may even have a positive impact on intellectual life. Seen in this light, the virtues of ingenuity may well seem redundant. Defending them, I argue that the vices of conviction are not innocuous. If generalized, they would destabilize argumentative practices. Argumentation is a common good that is threatened when every arguer pursues conviction at the expense of ingenuity. Bad faith, myside biases and delusions of all sorts are neither called for nor explained by argumentative practices. To avoid a collapse of argumentation, mere civil virtues (respect, humility or honesty) do not suffice: we need virtues that specifically attach to the practice of making conscious inferences.

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Notes

  1. For a real example of what G.’s argument might be, see Giubilini and Minerva 2012.

  2. For instance, Ennis’ list (1996) includes a disposition to “Care about the dignity and worth of every person”, and a “concern about others’ welfare”.

  3. See Bacon, New Organon (aphorism 71). Descartes on disputations: “Et je n’ai jamais remarqué non plus que par le moyen des disputes qui se pratiquent dans les écoles, on ait découvert aucune vérité qu’on ignorât auparavant : car pendant que chacun tâche de vaincre, on s’exerce bien plus à faire valoir la vraisemblance qu’à peser les raisons de part et d’autre ; et ceux qui ont été longtemps bons avocats ne sont pas pour cela par après meilleurs juges. “(Descartes 1824: 206–207).

  4. : “(…) as a lover of truth, and not a worshipper of my own doctrine, I own some change of my opinion, which I think I have discovered ground for. In what I first writ, I with an unbiassed indifferency followed truth, whither I thought she led me. But neither being so vain as to fancy infallibility, nor so disingenuous as to dissemble my mistakes for fear of blemishing my reputation, I have, with the same sincere desire for truth only, not been ashamed to publish what a severer enquirer has suggested. “(Essay concerning human understanding, chap. XXI, § 72 —Locke 1706). (Locke is discussing Descartes’ concept of indifferency, a central piece of the Cartesian conception of free will.) See also Section 34 of Locke’s Conduct of the Understanding, a user’s guide to the virtues of ingenuity.

  5. (On Watson’s intellectual virtues, see Haack 2003 pp. 109 sq.; on Watson’s intellectual vices see Shapin 2009, Robert Roberts and Jay Wood 2007).

  6. “(…) de notre point de vue, la valeur rhétorique d’un énoncé ne saurait être annihilée par le fait qu’il s’agirait d’une argumentation que l’on estime bâtie après coup, alors que la décision intime était prise, ou par le fait qu’il s’agit d’une argumentation basée sur des prémisses auxquelles l’orateur n’adhère pas lui-même. (…) il est légitime que celui qui a acquis une certaine conviction s’attache à l’affermir vis-à-vis de lui-même, et surtout vis-à-vis des attaques pouvant venir de l’extérieur; il est normal qu’il envisage tous les arguments susceptibles de la renforcer. “.

  7. The view that intellectual vices may cancel each other out is common among students of intellectual virtues. Woods and Roberts (2007: loc. 2645 sq.) argue, for instance, that the intellectual vices of a brilliant, but impatient and dominating scientist may balance opposite vices in his team (excessive conservatism and laziness, for instance) (Hookway 2003 makes a similar point, as well as Rorty 1996). In such cases, opposite vices would cancel each other. Here, I focus on the notion that identical biases in individuals may create virtuous collective dynamics.

  8. Latour’s reasoning offers interesting similarities with Kuhn’s discussion of firmness in the sciences (op. cit., 1977). As we saw, Kuhn did not see firmness in upholding the scientific consensus as a virtue in everyone: engineers, in his view, have a right to neglect tradition, because what they produce is not ideas that time will eventually test, but designs that must work here and now. In a similar vein, Latour notes that judges need to be ingenious because their decision is likely to be final, and will (in most cases at the Conseil d’État) not be corrected later.

  9. There is, of course, not much that is original here (cf. Aristotle Rhetoric 1.1., 1355b—Aristotle 1991).

  10. Just like ingenuity may be collective, conviction might be individual. Persuaders are typically distinct from their target, but there may be such a thing as solitary self-conviction. A smoker who forces herself to think of all the unpleasant consequences if smoking is not exactly pondering whether to stop smoking. In a sense, she is trying to bring a recalcitrant brain to follow her decision.

  11. The expression is Herbert Simon’s (1983: 8).

  12. This personal intepretation is, I think, both coherent and charitable. Mercier and Sperber attribute a variety of contradictory motivations to reasoners, depending on the context. The abstract tells us that “Skilled arguers (…) are not after the truth but after arguments supporting their views”, and many readers have found this a reason to conclude that the argumentative theory puts a premium on conviction rather than ingenuity. However, Mercier & Sperber often make what looks like the opposite claim. In the “normal context” of argumentative reasoning, “people (…) disagree but have a common interest in the truth”(2011, p. 65). It is not clear exactly what motivations an argumentative context should trigger—a preoccupation for truth, or a tendency to disregard the truth. The answer seems to be that it all depends on people’s motivations : on whether or not they have “an axe to grind” (see Mercier and Sperber 2011, section 6). Why people may or may not want to grind that axe is left unspecified by the theory.

  13. Joel Mokyr, for instance, argues that the “Industrial Enlightenment” inspired by the Baconian programme helped spread a culture of ingenuity that had an unprecedented economic impact.

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  1. Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University, 30–34, Frankel Leó utca, 1023, Budapest, Hungary

    Olivier Morin

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Morin, O. The Virtues of Ingenuity: Reasoning and Arguing without Bias. Topoi 33, 499–512 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-013-9174-y

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