For the second year in a row, the World Economic Forum has ranked misinformation and disinformation among the top global risks. And few places provide more opportunities for spreading misinformation and disinformation than the Internet. From conspiracy theories about stolen elections, to biased search results[1], deepfakes of politicians and LLM generated bullshit (Hicks, Humphries, & Slater, 2024) – the dangers of being misled online lurks around every corner. But not every part of the Internet is leading us astray. For all the bad, misleading and deceptive, there is also a lot of knowledge to be found online. Search engines do frequently lead us to reliable sources, Wikipedia allows us to look up scientific concepts with the click of a button, and within social media, we find room for marginalised groups to organise and find their voice. Social media can also provide access to different perspectives that benefit all those who are willing to learn from others.

In many ways, it can feel rather overwhelming to be an agent online between the demand to be constantly vigilant and the desire to make use of the vast opportunities online. And there are no simple guidebooks on how to do any of it. The online environment changes too quickly and frequently to come up with clear and succinct rules for forming beliefs online. Moreover, effectively changing the online environment itself for the better is a task beyond the powers of most individuals. What should we do?

Virtues as a Solution

One answer draws on a long history within philosophy: we need intellectual virtues for the online world. According to virtue responsibilists, like Linda Zagzebski (1996), virtues are cultivated character traits that are characterised by the agent’s desire for epistemic goods, such as truth and knowledge. These are traits such as open-mindedness, intellectual courage, intellectual humility and intellectual carefulness. A focus on intellectual virtues is a focus on the epistemic agent, rather than a particular instance of that agent forming a belief. When we consider intellectual virtues, we usually do so as part of figuring out whether someone is a good or bad believer and knower. Richard Heersmink (2018) suggested that this approach is also well-suited for the online world, and I have followed this suggestion in the past (Schwengerer, 2021a; 2021b; 2024). We should ask ourselves what good or bad epistemic agents look like online. And we should strive to become these good epistemic agents – virtuous users in an online world.

There are distinct advantages of a virtue approach to the online world. First, it is something anyone can do. I cannot change Facebook’s content moderation policies or remove biased training data from ChatGPT. But I can work on how I consume content on social media and how much credence I put into ChatGPT’s outputs. I can learn how algorithms generate search results and go beyond clicking the top results. In short, I can become more intellectually careful online. Of course, becoming intellectually careful is easier said than done. In many cases, I will need help from other people to show me the way. Nevertheless, it seems to be something within my power – something that I can work towards right here, right now.

Second, intellectual virtues can adapt to the environment. The virtuous agent is not merely virtuous in one particular environment. They are a good epistemic agent in general. An agent who possesses the virtue of intellectual humility recognises their own limits and the potential for errors, regardless of whether they are forming perceptual beliefs about their strawberry ice cream on a sunny beach or about the latest political news on Twitter/X. They draw on their background knowledge of the environment to judge their own limits within that environment. More background knowledge will help, but the motivation to look for and recognise one’s limits is key. Merely knowing how the environment functions will not do. This general nature of intellectual virtues allows them to stay relevant in a quickly changing online world. Facebook ten years ago functioned very differently from TikTok today, but the motivation for truth and knowledge guided the virtuous agent ten years ago and can still do so now. When an agent is taught to be a virtuous user, that teaching sticks even when the online world changes.[2]

Third and final, intellectual virtues are not merely a response to all the bad we find on the Internet, but they also help us with the positive side of the web. While the intellectually careful will not be overly hasty when judging search results or the answer to a ChatGPT prompt, the intellectually careful will also not be overly cautious when they are in an epistemically friendly online environment. Often, highly ranked search results are good sources of knowledge. And many Tumblr sites can provide helpful first-hand perspectives of marginalised groups. Being distrustful merely because that information is found online would be a disservice. The intellectually careful finds the right mean between being overly cautious and being too hasty. And that mean depends on the particular setting the agent is in.

Taking Stock

So far, being intellectually virtuous seems to be an ideal response to the complexities and dangers of the Internet for epistemic agents. Users can actively work towards becoming virtuous in a way that seems achievable. They can do so even though the online environment constantly changes, and the acquired virtues will be useful throughout all those changes. And the intellectually virtuous can both avoid the worst of the Internet and make the most out of the best of it. But with all those advantages, the virtue approach also leads to some problems. Those I will look at in part 2.

References

Heersmink, R. (2018). A Virtue Epistemology of the Internet: Search Engines, Intellectual Virtues and Education. Social Epistemology, 32(1), pp. 1-12.

Hicks, M. T., Humphries, J., & Slater, J. (2024). ChatGPT is Bullshit. Ethics and Information Technology, 26(Article 38).

Noble, S. U. (2018). Algorithms of Oppression. New York: New York University Press.

Schwengerer, L. (2021a). Online Intellectual Virtues and the Extended Mind. Social Epistemology, 35(3), pp. 312-322.

Schwengerer, L. (2021b). Revisiting Online Intellectual Virtues. Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective, 10(3), pp. 38-45.

Schwengerer, L. (2024). Critical Social Epistemology of Social Media and Epistemic Virtues. Social Epistemology. doi:10.1080/02691728.2024.2414446

Vallor, S. (2016). Technology and the Virtues: A Philosophical Guide to a Future Worth Wanting. New York: Oxford University Press.

Zagzebski, L. (1996). Virtues of the Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Notes

[1] For more details see Noble (2018).

[2] For a detailed discussion of this advantage see Vallor (2016).

Photo by Marcelo Moreira: https://www.pexels.com/photo/low-angle-photo-grayscale-of-person-tightrope-walking-2225771/