The Importance of Knowledge

3min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

We can only have this discussion about what's an intellectual vice if we agree that we all want to get things right at the end of the day and we more or less agree on what it would mean to get things wrong. I think for most people and you know, maybe hopefully for most people listening to this to this podcast there are personal qualities that either make it easier or more difficult for us to know Let's say a child needs vaccinations but doesn't really need them because they're already protected by their parents' parenting decisions. If someone were to tell me in all seriousness who cares about knowledge or understanding? I just don't think we that's what anyone seriously believes. And the same goes

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.

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

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.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.