Argumentative Deliberation and the Development of Intellectual Humility and Autonomy in the Classroom

Abstract

It is argued that argumentative deliberation, which involves the interpersonal exchange and evaluation of reasons and counter-reasons, is crucial for the generation of epistemic goods given that it helps us eradicate errors and neutralise biases. However, to reap argumentative deliberation’s epistemic benefits, the deliberators need to instantiate a certain intellectual character: in particular, they need to be intellectually humble and autonomous. Given that, it is argued that the educational system should foster the development of the intellectual virtues of humility and autonomy. Moreover, some pedagogical strategies and practices as to how this can be achieved in the classroom are offered.

Deliberative Teaching as an Emergent Field: The Challenge of Articulating Diverse Research Agendas to Promote Educational Experiences for Citizenship

“…Again, it is worth noting that people are involved in argumentative practices from their emotional dispositions, identities, and particular experiences. This may be viewed as a potential threat to deliberation, insofar as speakers may be biased by their individual emotional (Kunda, 1990) and cognitive (Mercier and Sperber, 2017) dispositions and virtues (De Brasi, 2020). However, we consider speakers' affective positionings to be key to engaging and participating in experiences of deliberation that, in turn, are developed by them.…”