Understanding and the Value of Intellectual Autonomy

Abstract

Why is intellectual autonomy particularly valuable? Consider two possible (and quick) arguments. (1) Let’s accept that we attach a distinctive value to our personal autonomy; then, if intellectual autonomy is a constitutive aspect of our personal autonomy, then it inherits this distinctive value. (2) A second possible argument can be apparently formulated in purely epistemic terms: intellectual autonomy is epistemically valuable because of its involvement in the obtaining of particularly valuable epistemic goods, such as knowledge and/or understanding. In this chapter, I discuss a series of recent arguments for the value of intellectual autonomy that appeal to the role it plays in the constitution of understanding, as a strong epistemic achievement. I will argue that intellectual autonomy does not permit to clearly determine which is the source of value in the sort of achievement (understanding) here involved. First, it can be shown that intellectual autonomy is valuable in a way that is independent of how we obtain understanding or knowledge through understanding. Second, understanding itself is not constitutively dependent of how an epistemic agent behaves as an intellectual autonomous being. The argument relies on how to spell out the significance of a possible virtue of intellectual autonomy. I will use Sosa’s distinction between virtues that contribute to the constitution of epistemic standings and virtues that put us in a position to do it. If a virtue, intellectual autonomy obviously belongs to the latter, and because of that it is better viewed as a complex of ethical and personal features through which any epistemic agent builds what I will call an epistemic identity. Becoming an intellectual autonomous being is valuable because it is an essential aspect of how rational agents shape their own identities as epistemic agents and how they normatively constrain their engagement in cognitive tasks.