Critical Thinking and the Intellectual Virtues

In this chapter I address four (clusters of) questions: (1) Are the dispositions, habits of mind, and character traits constitutive of the “critical spirit” rightly conceived as intellectual virtues? What is gained and/or lost by so conceiving them? (2) Do the intellectual virtues include abilities as well as dispositions, or should we maintain the distinction, embraced by many accounts of critical thinking, between abilities of reason assessment and the critical spirit? (3) Should we be externalists/reliabilists or responsibilists with respect to the intellectual virtues? (4) What is the connection between virtue and reason? Is a virtuous intellect eo ipso a rational one? I will argue that a virtuous intellect is not necessarily a rational one, and that in addition to the intellectual virtues, rational abilities—those captured by the reason assessment component of critical thinking—are required.