The Importance of Personal Qualities in Intellectual Vices

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Obstructivism basically says that intellectual vices are Personal qualities that Systematically get in the way of knowledge and that we can be blamed or criticized for right? So that's your kind of uber theory of what? An intellectual vice is so because there's so much focus on these vices getting in the way. Of course if somebody has this vice you couldn't possibly blame them or criticize the more indeed say anything But negative about them on account of this then I want to say well then it's not a vice right? It's got to be this got to make sense to blame or criticize or negatively evaluate somebody If what they have is really Genuine intellectual intellectual vice Could we imagine that?

All of us have been wrong about things from time to time. But sometimes it was a simple, forgivable mistake, while other times we really should have been correct. Properties that systematically prevent us from being correct, and for which we can legitimately be blamed, are “intellectual vices.” Examples might include closed-mindedness, wishful thinking, overconfidence, selective attention, and so on. Quassim Cassam is a philosopher who studies knowledge in various forms, and who has recently written a book Vices of the Mind: From the Intellectual to the Political. We talk about the nature of intellectual vices, how they manifest in people and in organizations, and what we can possibly do to correct them in ourselves.

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Quassim Cassam received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Oxford University. He is currently Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick. He previously held faculty positions at Cambridge University and University College London. He has served as the president of the Aristotelian Society, and was awarded a Leadership Fellowship by the Arts and Humanities Research Council in the UK.

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