In my last entry, I praised the advantages of intellectual virtues in an online environment. This time, I briefly consider why too much of a focus on intellectual virtues might not be the best solution for the problematic aspects of the Internet after all. I discuss two issues, though they are not meant to be exhaustive. The first one is a question of realistic expectations towards intellectual virtues. The second one is a question of misuse and the potential dishonesty in a call for intellectual virtues for users in an online environment.

Let’s be realistic about intellectual virtues

Virtuous users cannot solve every problem, and acquiring virtues can be difficult. Let me start with the former. While it is undeniably an advantage that any individual can attempt to acquire intellectual virtues and thereby become a better epistemic agent online, some problematic aspects of the Internet cannot be solved by users alone. Of course, the virtuous user can mitigate many problems. On platforms in which the content is mostly user-generated, virtuous users also improve the platform as a whole. But consider moderation policies, algorithms, or training data for LLMs. None of these are under the direct control of users. A virtuous user of a search engine will compensate for biased algorithms to some degree, but that does not change the algorithm itself. And the lack of transparency makes things difficult even for the most virtuous users. The tools we use online can themselves be oppressive without our awareness.

Moreover, becoming virtuous can be difficult. Many vices work effectively against their own detection – they are ‘stealthy’ (Cassam, 2019). The arrogant will not detect their own arrogance, and the careless will not be careful enough in looking at their own practices online. And at times, behaviour can seem virtuous to an agent, even when it is vicious. The conspiracy theorist takes themselves to be particularly careful, open-minded and perhaps intellectually courageous. However, they likely are none of that. This worry has been brought up about media literacy, but it applies equally to virtue approaches. Appealing to independent, reflective thinking sounds good to anyone, but it is also something almost anyone would take themselves to already do. We need better ways to detect and teach intellectual virtue. Thankfully, this is already a focus of research by philosophers such as Jason Baehr (2015), but there is still work to be done.

Let’s be honest about intellectual virtues

Back in 2020, when I published my first article (Schwengerer, 2021) on online intellectual virtues, Paul Smart and Robert Clowes wrote a response piece. One part of it stuck with me in particular. They asked the following:

What, moreover, of the largely implicit ‘neo-liberal’ (or, at any rate, individualist) leanings of the virtue responsibilist position? The virtue responsibilist assumes that it is individual citizens who ought to be responsible for their own cyber-epistemic well-being. But it is contentious as to whether individual citizens should be burdened with these responsibilities in all cases. Don’t governments also have a responsibility to ensure the epistemic safety of the online environment? And what about the role of big technology companies in delivering innovative solutions to reliability-related problems? (Smart & Clowes, 2021, p. 9)

There is something right and worrying about their suspicions that the virtue approach burdens the wrong people. While it is a clear advantage that an individual agent can find help in intellectual virtues when they engage with the online world, there is a looming danger that this turns into offloading all the epistemic work onto the individual. And that danger can be mobilised deceptively by calls for better, more virtuous users of the Internet. The best parallel to draw here is the infamous story of how jaywalking became criminalised in the US.[1] In the early 20^th century, with the number of cars increasing at an ever-faster rate, the number of traffic accidents rose quickly. When pedestrians made attempts to limit the speed of cars and reclaim streets for pedestrians (and other non-automobilists), the auto industry reacted with an orchestrated push via media and lobbying to shift the blame from the cars towards the pedestrians involved in accidents. Packaged in deceptive claims about their safety concern, they advertised that careful, thinking pedestrians would act in a way to avoid accidents. Only the dumb, careless would get into accidents on the streets, so they proclaimed. And they succeeded. Cars now owned the streets, and it was up to the pedestrians to be careful in how they crossed. The auto industry managed to shift the burden from themselves and their cars to the pedestrians. We should not make the same mistake again. It cannot be solely on the users to become virtuous agents who compensate for the problems of the Internet, while the tech companies continue epistemically unsafe practices. A call for intellectual virtues for the online environment must not be a replacement for institutional measures and demands on the providers of platforms, websites and tools online.

Where to go from here?

These worries should not lead us to abandon teaching intellectual virtues for an online world. Rather, they should prompt us to think more closely about how teaching virtues to individual agents should be combined with more structural and legislative steps to make the Internet a better, more trustworthy and just place. My bet is on a divide and conquer strategy: identify which problems are best approached by improving the users and which problems are best approached by changes to the platforms or our laws governing the online world. We are not limited to choosing a single way of dealing with epistemic problems of the Internet. Rather, we ought to try out different paths and find out which of those can be effective in making the Internet a better place for all of us.

References

Baehr, J. (2015). Cultivating Good Minds: A Philosophical and Practical Guide to Educating for Intellectual Virtues. Retrieved from https://intellectualvirtues.org/why-should-we-educate-for-intellectual-virtues-2-2/

Cassam, Q. (2019). Vices of the Mind: From the Intellectual to the Political. Oxford: OUP.

Norton, P. D. (2007). Street Rivals: Jaywalking and the Invention of the Motor Age. Technology and Culture, 48(2), pp. 331-359.

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

Smart, P. R., & Clowes, R. W. (2021). Intellectual Virtues and Internet-Extended Knowledge. Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective, 10(1), pp. 7-21. Retrieved from https://wp.me/p1Bfg0-5AY

Notes

[1] For a more thorough, academic description of the history of jaywalking see Norton (2007).

Picture: [Looking up Woodward Avenue, Detroit, Mich.]