Intellectual Dependability: A Virtue Theory of the Epistemic and Educational Ideal

215 Pages·2021·2.861 MB·English

by  T. Ryan Byerly

Intellectual Dependability
Intellectual Dependability is the first research monograph devoted to
addressing the question of what it is to be an intellectually dependable
person—the sort of person on whom one’s fellow inquirers can depend
in their pursuit of epistemic goods. While neglected in recent scholar-
ship, this question is an important one for both epistemology—how we
should conceptualize the ideal inquirer—and education—how we can
enable developing learners to grow toward this ideal.
The book defends a virtue theory according to which being an
intellectually dependable person is distinctively a matter of possessing
a suite of neglected virtues called “the virtues of intellectual depend-
ability” that are themselves distinctively concerned with promoting
epistemic goods in others’ inquiries. After defending the existence and
educational significance of these virtues as a group, the book turns
t oward the project of identifying and conceptualizing several specific
instances of these virtues in detail. Virtues discussed include intellectual
benevolence, intellectual transparency, communicative clarity, audience
sensitivity, and epistemic guidance. In each case, an interdisciplinary
treatment of the nature of the virtue and its relationship to other virtues,
vices, and personality features is offered, drawing especially on relevant
research in Philosophy and Psychology. The book concludes with a chap-
ter devoted to identifying distinctive ways these virtues of intellectual
dependability are manifested when it is inquiring communities, rather
than individuals, that occupy the position of intellectual dependence.
By directing attention to the ideal of intellectual dependability,
the book marks a novel turn of scholarly interest explicitly toward a
neglected dimension of the ideal inquirer that will inform both episte-
mological theorizing and educational practices.
T. Ryan Byerly is Senior Lecturer in the Philosophy Department at the
University of Sheffield. He is the author or editor of several books, includ-
ing Putting Others First: The Christian Ideal of Others- Centeredness
(Routledge, 2019).
Routledge Studies in Epistemology
Edited by Kevin McCain, University of Alabama at Birmingham,
USA and Scott Stapleford, St. Thomas University, Canada
Epistemic Duties
New Arguments, New Angles
Edited by Kevin McCain and Scott Stapleford
The Ethics of Belief and Beyond
Understanding Mental Normativity
Edited by Sebastian Schmidt and Gerhard Ernst
Ethno-Epistemology
New Directions for Global Epistemology
Edited by Masaharu Mizumoto, Jonardon Ganeri, and Cliff Goddard
The Dispositional Architecture of Epistemic Reasons
Hamid Vahid
The Epistemology of Group Disagreement
Edited by Fernando Broncano-Berrocal and J. Adam Carter
The Philosophy of Group Polarization
Epistemology, Metaphysics, Psychology
Fernando Broncano-Berrocal and J. Adam Carter
The Social Epistemology of Legal Trials
Edited by Zachary Hoskins and Jon Robson
Intellectual Dependability
A Virtue Theory of the Epistemic and Educational Ideal
T. Ryan Byerly
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.
routledge.com/Routledge-Studies-in-Epistemology/book-series/RSIE
Intellectual Dependability
A Virtue Theory of the Epistemic
and Educational Ideal
T. Ryan Byerly
First published 2021
by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2021 Taylor & Francis
The right of T. Ryan Byerly to be identified as author of this
work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77
and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be
trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this title has been requested
ISBN: 978-0-367-33369-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-32400-0 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by codeMantra
For all those who have been intellectually dependable
for me over the years—a long list of teachers, colleagues,
friends, and family.

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
PART I
1 The Intellectually Dependable Person 9
2 The Virtues of Intellectual Dependability 34
3 Educating for Intellectual Dependability 56
PART II
4 Intellectual Benevolence 83
5 Intellectual Transparency 105
6 Communicative Clarity 125
7 Audience Sensitivity 143
8 Epistemic Guidance 163
9 Being Intellectually Dependable for Groups 179
Index 201

Acknowledgments
There are many individuals and institutions who deserve my gratitude
for their role in supporting this project. I thank many of them below.
Yet there are no doubt others I have unintentionally overlooked, and I
remain grateful for their contributions as well. The views expressed in
this work are of course my own, and are not those of the individuals or
institutions thanked below.
The idea for this book project first germinated during my stay in
residence at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in August of 2018. I
was awarded a fellowship as part of the Epistemic Responsibilities of
the University Project, itself funded by the Templeton World Charity
Foundation, which supported my research on the place of intellectual
virtues education in higher education curricula. While I had not planned
to develop a book project on intellectual dependability at the time, the
idea naturally occurred to me while spending focused time on research at
the lovely facilities of the Abraham Kuyper Center at the VU. I benefitted
from early conversations of the idea of the book project with René van
Woudenberg and Jeroen de Ridder, and informal conversations about the
project with Heather Battaly, Daniel Howard-Snyder, Ian James Kidd,
and others at a summer seminar on Virtues in the University organized
by the Kuyper Center. During the 2018–19 academic year, I continued
working on the book project, drafting chapters, and submitting a book
proposal. I returned to the VU in July 2019, where a workshop focused
on the first two chapters of this book was held. I benefitted much from
the discussion with the audience at these sessions. I am very grateful to
the Kuyper Center and the Epistemic Responsibilities of the University
Project for their role in supporting this project.
During the 2018–19 and 2019–20 academic years, my work was also
supported by an Academic Cross-Training Fellowship in Psychology,
funded by the John Templeton Foundation. This fellowship supported
a variety of research projects of mine, including this book project. My
cross-training mentors were Peter Hill and Keith Edwards, both psychol-
ogists at Biola University. I am grateful to the John Templeton Founda-
tion for the time for research afforded by this fellowship, and especially
for the opportunity to learn more about psychological research relevant