Modesty is a Contagious Blindspot

Abstract

I am modest about my spelling accuracy. Oops, I cannot consistently believe that! Modesty about my spelling entails I underestimate my spelling. If I indeed underestimate my spelling accuracy, then my ignorance about spelling accuracy is contagious. For if I believe you and I are equals at spelling, then my modesty commits me to underestimating your spelling. In addition to my ignorance of my merit spreading to my ignorance of your merit, my ignorance can make you ignorant. After all, how do you know that I am modest rather than accurate? In general, any modesty I possess robs my peers.

There is a myth that the Victorians covered the legs of pianos with trousers. In fact, some Victorians exposed two legs of an inconsistent triad to discredit the third leg.

1. A. All modesty is constituted by ignorance.

2. B. No virtue is constituted by ignorance.

3. C. Some modesty is a virtue.

Their argument, and now mine, is as simple as A, B, ∴ ~ C.

Each leg is attractive. Leg A explains why asserting “I am modest” is self-defeating. Leg B resonates with the requirement that virtue systematically yields right actions. Leg C is a modest formulation of the platitude that modesty is a virtue.

1. There is Linguistic, Anthropological, and Evolutionary Support for C

“Modest” is a term of praise. For instance, the memorial inscription for G. E. Moore (1873–1958) includes a Latin translation of “He was remarkable for his modesty, pleasantness and wit.” Modesty is praised by laymen, clergy, and almost all academics. Their only misgiving about leg C is that it understates: All modesty is a virtue!

Immodesty is criticized by hunter-gatherers. The anthropologist Richard Boynton Lee (1969) belatedly discovered this when he bought a magnificent ox to be later offered at a !Kung feast. Instead of being praised for his generosity, Lee was reproached for offering a scrawny, old ox. The complaints escalated for days before the feast. Baffled, the anthropologist checked discreetly with informants cultivated over his 3-year stay. They amplified warnings of a hostile, violent reception of his stingy gift. Professional curiosity overcame Lee’s impulse to flee. When the dreaded day arrived, the ox was gleefully consumed. Lee realized that he was the butt of a massive practical joke. After the event, an insider finally confided that all great gifts were denigrated by the !Kung. “Insulting the meat” suppresses arrogance. In an instinctual inversion of Thomas Hobbes’ superiority theory of humor, we laugh down those who try to rise above us. After suffering such rough justice, bearers of big gifts preemptively belittle their donations.

“Insulting the meat” is common in egalitarian groups such as hunter-gatherers. Since our evolutionary history was spent almost entirely as hunter-gatherers, we are naturally disposed to target arrogance. We thereby enforce modesty (Boehm, 1999).

The only account of virtue that fits this savage, evolutionary psychology is Julia Driver’s anti-intellectualist thesis that modesty requires egocentric underestimation of one’s merits. Jason Brennan (2007), 115) recoils from the implication that the moral emotions sustaining a virtue are induced by guilt tripping, harassment, and gaslighting. To avoid spoiling a modest high achiever, we would have to resort to manipulation, secrecy, and lies (Brennan, 2007, 114–115). To lower our cost of deception, we would shift the burden of deception onto the victim herself. How could the humbled recipient of such attention be admired rather than pitied?

2. There is Syntactic, Semantic, and Pragmatic Support for A

G. E. Moore appeals to the consistency of self-attributions of error to refute the idealist’s subjective conception of what is true (Moore, 1903, 450). In Principia Ethica (Moore, 1902, 132), Moore appeals to nonspecific awareness of one’s misappraisals to show that thinking something is good differs from preferring it. In his 1942 reply to critics, G. E. Moore switches the topic from “good” to “right.” The quotation marks are needed because Moore is responding to a critic practicing semantic ascent—Charles Stevenson, future author of Ethics and Language. Stevenson (1942, 80) contends that “It was right of Brutus to stab Caesar” means “I now approve of Brutus’ stabbing of Caesar.” Stevenson draws support from the inconsistency of self-attributing a moral mistake, “It was right of Brutus to stab Caesar but I do not believe it.” Moore replies that the inconsistency is confined to the process of assertion. The product is a consistent sentence that records a moral mistake. The same mixed verdict on consistency is required for nonethical statements such as, “I went to the pictures last Tuesday, but I do not believe that I did” (Moore, 1942, 543). Self-attributions of error are exceptions to the generalization that any consistent sentence can be consistently believed.

These sentential exceptions allow us to derive exceptions to the principle that any consistent predicate can be consistently applied to oneself: mistaken, absent, dead, fictional, mentor, secret admirer, and modest. The first person singular, present tense “I am modest” expresses a consistent proposition that the speaker cannot consistently believe. This inconsistency explains why the following passage cannot appear in Moore’s (1942) autobiography:

Moore was himself a childlike person. One thing that contributed to this quality in him was an extreme modesty. It was as if the thought had never occurred to Moore that he was an eminent philosopher. I recall that once when lecturing before a small class he had occasion to refer to an article that he had published some years before, and he went on to remark, without embarrassment, that it was a good article. I was much struck by this. Most men would be prevented by false modesty from saying a thing of this sort in public. Moore’s modesty was so genuine that could say it without any implication self-satisfaction. How many times, both in public and private, did he declare that some previous work of his was a “dreadful muddle” or “utterly mistaken”. (Malcolm, 1963, 163–164)

The paragraph does consistently appear in Norman Malcolm’s biographical remarks about Moore. Malcom agrees with historians of philosophy, such as G. J. Warnock ((1958), chapter 2) who trace Moore’s revolutionary influence to his character.

Each itch of insincerity made Moore scratch. Serviceable essays became infected by anxiety and slow to heal—delaying anthologies. Moore (1942, 34) confesses to breaking a promise to write a review of C. D. Broad’s book for Mind (despite a 4-year effort to distill his many pages of work into publishable form). Moore pleads for forgiveness in his autobiography. He characterizes his failure as his most scandalous instance of a broken promise. Overestimating one’s demerits is just the flip side of underestimating one’s merits.

Following the pattern of “I went to the pictures last Tuesday, but I do not believe that I did,” “I am modest” temporally conjugates into consistent assertions such as the past tense “I was modest” and the future tense “I will be modest.”

I am drawn to Moore because we share a common value: modesty. This grammatical joke conjugates the absurdity of “I am modest” into the second person plural. Samuel Clemens’ turned the absurdity into a practical joke with a recruitment letter of 18 May 1880 to William Dean Howells. Clemens laments the low enrollment of his Modest Club.

The second person singular, “You are modest” is assertible—but only when the purpose of the assertion is to go on record rather than inform the addressee. The sentence becomes completely assertible in the third person “He is modest.”

The modal declarative “Possibly, I am modest” is trivially true when understood as the alethic claim that there is a possible world in which I am modest. As a remark about what is epistemically possible, “I might be modest” can be a nontrivial concession that my available evidence does not exclude the possibility that I am modest. I can even acknowledge some positive evidence of present modesty: my past failure to recognize compliments, my failure to take offense when others underestimate my rank, my forgetfulness of my achievements, my… well, I could go on and on. However, I cannot go on to marshal these clues as premises for the conclusion that I am modest. Others can. However cogent their inference, my acquaintances realize that they cannot persuade me. Their explanation of my intransigence is that it would be inconsistent of me to agree that I am modest.

In contrast to the hedged assertibility of the epistemic “I might be modest,” “Probably, I am modest” is unassertible. Even more risible is “Certainly, I am modest.” The derisive laughter extends to the alethic modals “Actually, I am modest” and especially “Necessarily, I am modest.”

The imperative “Be modest!” cannot be followed even though one can unwittingly conform to it—and wittingly cause that unwitting conformity, say, by joining a monastery. The interrogative mood, “Am I modest?,” expresses a question that has only one assertible direct answer: No. In contrast, the optative mood is easy on the ear, as in the aspirant’s wish, “May I be modest.”

“I am modest” also embeds comfortably in compound statements, such as the indicative conditional “If I have all the virtues, then I am modest” and the subjunctive conditional “If I had inherited genes for shyness, then I would have been modest.” Yet such compounds resist the application of valid inference rules, such as affirming the antecedent (If P, then Q. P. Therefore, Q).

As we progress into quantified predicate logic, the inconsistent “I am modest” is domesticated into the consistent “There exists at least one trait about which I am modest.” This existential generalization cannot be inferred by the inference rule of existential generalization (This is F, therefore, there exists at least one thing that is F). The argument “I am modest about my fluency in Latin, Greek, German, and French; therefore, I am modest about something” is valid but has an unknowable premise.

Driver (1989), 378) characterizes modesty as a disposition to underestimate oneself. Self-attribution of that disposition is as consistent as self-attribution of fallibility. “I am fallible” is assertible because I need not be manifesting the disposition at the time of assertion. After Moore becomes tipsy, he may brag that he is disposed to be modest about his fluency in Latin, Greek, German, and French. Moore’s drunken boast is consistent and correct; Moore does have a disposition to underestimate his fluency in those four languages. Thanks to the disinhibiting liquor, Moore could continue to consistently and accurately brag about his sober disposition.

The defiant objection to Driver is that a modest man can know that he is modest. As a descendant of a long, long line of hunter-gatherers, I am tempted to coarsely exaggerate the absurd implications of the supposition that someone knows he is modest. There is a stigma against self-attribution of modesty that is disproportionate to the nuanced absurdity discovered by G. E. Moore. Nevertheless, there is a nuanced absurdity, and Driver’s underestimation account harnesses it.

3. Leg B is supported by modesty’s symmetry with arrogance

All of the above linguistic and logical predictions about “modest” generalize to its disreputable twin “arrogant.” After all, these opposite traits only differ in the direction of their misestimations.

The greater one’s egocentric overestimation, the greater one’s arrogance. Julia Driver (1999, 428) will claim an asymmetry. She says modesty is a limited underestimation of one’s worth. She is trying to insulate “Modesty is a virtue” from the counterexample of excessively modest people, such as those with depression, impostor syndrome, and body dysmorphic disorder. A !Kungian reply to Driver: limiting the underestimation incurs the cost of topsy-turvy comparisons between underestimators. Assume Mild and Excess are women of equal worth, but each underestimates herself. Only Excess goes too far in her underestimation. On Driver’s account, Mild is more modest than Excess. For Excess is not modest. To become modest, Excess must think better of herself!

Driver (1989, 374) sets sexual modesty aside as “modesty” in a different sense. By her dictionary (and all the dictionaries I have sampled), counting a chaste and unassertive woman as more modest because of her sexual modesty would be like counting Immanuel Kant as a heavier smoker because his night cap is on fire. Driver might nominate this as a second asymmetry with arrogance. Her dictionary will not have a separate entry for sexual arrogance.

Contrary to Driver’s lexicography, linguistic tests support univocality rather than polysemy (Sassoon, 2013). If sexual modesty is modesty in a different sense, then there would be an equivocation in arguing for Edmund Blackadder’s arrogance by adding his sexual arrogance to his overconfidence in his schemes, disdain of superior rivals, and overranking of his courtly status. However, the immodesty of this fictional, late Middle Ages dandy does rise with his shoulder pads, tights, and codpiece. Each constitutes a vote in favor of Blackadder’s election to the office of Arrogance.

Sexual modesty is itself multidimensional. Nursie, Queen Elizabeth’s old nurse in the BBC series “Blackadder,” is modest with respect to her attire but not with respect to her language (which is bawdy) and not with respect to her attitudes (which are licentious). The “with respect to” locution is evidence in favor of there being a single multidimensional sense of “sexually modest” rather than two senses. By parity of reasoning, sexual modesty is itself one dimension of modesty.

4. Utilitarianism supports “No virtue is constituted by ignorance”

Moore never discusses modesty. His teacher, Henry Sidgwick, did puzzle about humility (which resembles modesty, except for entailing a low self-estimate rather than a lower-than-warranted self-estimate): “humility prescribes a low opinion of our merits: but if our merits are comparably high, it seems strange to direct us to have a low opinion of them” (Sidgwick, 1907, 334). Sidgwick is not perplexed by the subset of humility in which one accurately gauges that one’s ability is low. That conforms to the ideal of self-knowledge. The anomaly is the subset of humility that is identical to modesty. Utilitarianism, which Moore defends in Principia Ethica, amplifies the dissonance of “I am modest.” How could ignorance maximize good consequences?

Julia Driver (1989) answers that underestimating one’s merits decreases envy. However, overestimating one’s merits also decreases envy. To the extent that I am vain about my appearance, the less I am jealous of yours.

Self-enhancement is far more entrenched than self-diminishment. This makes arrogance the more potent suppressor of envy. People are more easily flattered into contentment than admonished into it. The real issue for the utilitarian is comparative: How could modesty be a virtue while arrogance is a vice? If one is a vice and the other a virtue, then arrogance should be the virtue!

Sidgwick’s colleague at Cambridge University, W. K. Clifford (1877) published his famous “The Ethics of Belief.” Clifford argues that any failure to proportion belief to one’s evidence is culpable negligence. Fallacious self-underestimation is therefore a vice rather than a virtue. Clifford’s moral evidentialism forbids both modesty and arrogance.

In “The Will to Believe,” William James (1896) counters that believing beyond the evidence is sometimes permissible. All of his examples defend self-overestimating. His most plausible counterexamples to moral evidentialism are self-fulfilling beliefs. Belief that you are a superlative sprinter causes you to win a race that vindicates your immodesty. Instead of running away from the evidence, you are running toward the evidence!

James’s selective defense of self-deception arose from Victorian depression about determinism (also reported by John Stuart Mill, Thomas Carlyle, and Charles Darwin). To preserve his status as a moral agent, James resolved to act on the hypothesis that he has freewill. He avoided reading arguments in favor of determinism (Smilansky, 1992, 769). This self-censorship was not running toward the evidence; James did not think the issue was resolvable by theoretical evidence. James was reverting to Immanuel Kant’s doctrine that practical reasoning licenses belief in freedom, God, and immortality. These theoretically unprovable assumptions are psychologically necessary for morality. Kant exhibits Spinoza as an abnormal specimen who managed to revere morality despite being an atheistic determinist. Normal people would be demoralized by the prospect of an uncompensated, permanent cessation of existence. The crooked timber of humanity can sustain morality only by transcending its senses and believing that the world is just.

Linguistic points about modesty are refinements of observations made in the material mode by ancient Greek philosophers. Epicurus denies that anyone can believe himself determined (Aphorism 40 of the Vatican collection). For no one can consistently regard his own act of assertion as the product of necessity. In the eighteenth century, Kant says the same for “bias.” Even a little bias is too much to ascribe to one’s own judgment of a particular proposition. The agent cannot think of his judgment that p as based on any process independent of the truth of p:

Now we cannot possibly conceive a reason consciously receiving a bias from any other quarter with respect to its judgements, for then the subject would ascribe the determination of its judgement not to its own reason, but to an impulse. It must regard itself as the author of its principles independent of foreign influences. (Grundlegung 81)

Psychologically, Kant thinks introspection has indigenous weaknesses that are exacerbated by self-deception and wishful thinking. Each of us is necessarily blind to our own present biases. This blindspot thesis about self-ascribing bias has won steady, explicit assent from philosophers into the twenty-first century (Kelly, 2022, chapter 4). Psychologists have also been impressed by the greater ease with which bias is assigned to others. They trace the self-other asymmetry to the fact that we favor introspection but can apply this unreliable method only to oneself. We are forced to use more reliable, actuarial methods to settle whether others are biased.

Despite the popularity of the cautious C, “Some modesty is a virtue,” I build on the Victorians who deduced the contrary generalization, “Modesty is never a virtue.” In effect, we contrarians treat A and B as premises of a syllogism that jointly preclude C. I dust off two Victorian objections to modesty. These antiques have been stressed by Julia Driver. In response, I retrofit the Victorian case against modesty by incorporating recent developments in formal epistemology, conciliationism, and epistemic injustice.

5. Modesty handicaps inquiry

When Sherlock Holmes acknowledges that his brother Mycroft has superior powers of observation and deduction, Watson hints that Sherlock is being modest. Holmes laughs off the left-handed compliment:

“My dear Watson,” said he, “I cannot agree with those who rank modesty among the virtues. To the logician all things should be seen exactly as they are, and to under-estimate one’s self is as much a departure from truth as to exaggerate one’s own powers.” (Doyle, 1930, 435)

In “The Adventure of the Three Students,” Holmes relies on the fact that he is 6-feet tall to calculate what was observable to a 6-foot tall participant in a crime. If Holmes were modest about his height, his reenactment would have a false premise.

Might Holmes be modest by virtue of overestimating the average height of his contemporaries as being close to 6 feet? No, that would be an incompetently large error for a Victorian detective; the average height of Britons was 5 inches less than 6 feet. In A Study in Scarlet , there is a list of what Holmes knows (anatomy, chemistry, and law) and what he does not know (astronomy, philosophy, and literature). The narrator, physician John Watson, vouches for Holmes’ accurate knowledge of human anatomy.

6. Modesty requires arrogance toward correctors of underestimation

A man who is modest about his height resists corrections by his tailor. He preserves his underestimate by revising background beliefs. For instance, he hypothesizes that tailors are biased toward measurements that please customers.

Modesty’s bodyguard of arrogance is most visible when modesty is scaled up. Consider Phillip Gosse, the pious biologist who tried to save the Genesis account of creation. According to his Omphalos hypothesis, the world popped into existence around 4004 BC, complete with “fossils” and other signs that the earth was more than a million years old. His son, Edmund Gosse, remarks:

Here was perfect purity, perfect intrepidity, perfect abnegation; yet here was also narrowness, isolation, an absence of perspective, let it be boldly admitted, an absence of humanity. And there was a curious mixture of humbleness and arrogance; entire resignation to the will of God and not less entire disdain of the judgment and opinion of man. (Gosse, 1974, 12)

Phillip Gosse overrode respect for scientific peers such as Charles Darwin. Gosse also dismissed Christians who objected that he was overestimating the Biblical commitment to a literal timeline. Gosse believed his humility placed him among the few Elect.

7. Modesty concerns the unjustified process of self-estimation, not the product

There are tales in which a protagonist’s memory is thrown into massive disagreement with the ostensible memories of their peers. In “Yesterday” (Universal Pictures 2019), Jack Malik sadly ends his struggle to become a professional singer-songwriter. Bicycling home, the humbled musician is knocked unconscious by a bus during a 12-s global power failure. After being released from the hospital, Jack’s friends present him with the ill-timed gift of a guitar. Pressured to play, he wistfully performs the Beatles’ song “Yesterday.” Jack is surprised by how much his friends seem moved. When complimented on lyrics and melody, Jack emphasizes that the song is by the Beatles. His friends claim not to recall the most famous band of the twentieth century; Jack infers that his friends are teasing him. He storms back to his bedroom in his parents’ house. Jack grudgingly conducts computer searches for “Beatles.” Only references to insects are found. Jack checks his collection of albums. His copies of the Beatles’ albums are gone! Instead of concluding that he does not really remember the Beatles, Jack decides to restart his career. Jack fills in gaps in his memory of the Beatles’ lyrics and then presents the reconstructed melodies as his own creations. Eventually, Jack is hailed as a creative genius. Like Socrates in the Meno, Jack believes his so-called creations are just recovered memories. Eventually, Jack confesses to a huge audience. He retires to teach music to children.

Jack resembles the artist Madge Gill (1882–1961). When her secret trove of artworks was discovered, Mage insisted that she was merely transmitting the work of her spirit guide Myninerest.

If Jack had been less arrogant about his memory, he would have instead concluded that he is a genius with pseudo-memories. Arrogance requires belief against the evidence. Consequently, Jack would not have been arrogant despite a huge overestimation of his musical talent.

Had Jack Malik consulted psychiatrists, they would have concurred with a diagnosis of delusive memory. Creativity is poorly understood. Paul McCartney reports that “Yesterday” came to him in a dream. The song was so lovely that McCartney initially believed he must have heard it before. However, after inquiries, he concluded that it was indeed his own creation.

Jack remembers that the Beatles influenced other bands. However, he does not know that the Beatles influenced bands. After the global blackout, Jack is in an environment and community that undercuts the ability of his memory to furnish knowledge about the Beatles.

Could Jack defend his belief in the Beatles as the best explanation of the music played by other bands? No, there are better explanations available in the scholarly literature on music history. Jack needs only to do further computer searches to find Beatles-free chronicles of the Beach Boys, the Byrds, and the Bee Gees. Overall, Jack has strong evidence that he is a musical genius (who suffers from memory gaps and misleading pseudo-memories, such as formerly possessing Beatles’ albums). Consequently, Jack is modest despite his estimate of his musical talent being accurate.

8. The error of modesty is contagious

Having viewed the connection between modesty and arrogance with inflated specimens such as Phillip Gosse and Jack Malik, we can now spot the connection at an ordinary scale. To sustain an underestimate, the modest man must uproot background assumptions that would indicate those who disagree with him. One of the assumptions is that others are as reliable assessors of his merits as he.

Infection looms (Sorensen, 2015). If peers respect the judgment of the modest man, they will follow his deracination of those background assumptions.

We now appreciate a defensive function of modesty attributions; they quarantine infectious error. “Modest” labels prospective testifiers in the same prophylactic fashion as “biased,” “credulous,” and “dogmatic.”

None of these tags can be specifically self-applied. When such a label is accurate, it marks a proposition that is inaccessible to the labeled. In contrast, the label “liar” is easier to self-attribute than to attribute to others.

This logical explanation of the inconsistency of why “I am modest” is perspectival. Consider the mother of Socrates, the midwife Phaenarete (meaning “She who brings virtue to light”). At the birth of her son, Phaenarete knows that Socrates knows nothing. However, “Socrates knows that Socrates knows nothing” is a contradiction. “I know nothing” expresses a blindspot: a proposition that is consistent but inaccessible to some agent, in this case, the speaker.

The metaphorical label “blindspot” misleadingly suggests that blindspots are epistemic handicaps for the person who has them. However, knowledge about whether the blindspot “No female has a belief” is true is as easily possessed by Mrs. Moore as by Mr. Moore. She knows the negation of the blindspot. Although true blind spots are accessible only to non-blind-spotees, their privileged access is not evidence in favor of the blindspot. Male superiority in access to “No female has a belief” is compatible with male evidential inferiority. Only females can introspect counterexamples to “No female has a belief.”

Socrates is popularly, but inconsistently, portrayed as knowing that he knows nothing. This contradiction is marshalled as an explanation of why he asks questions. That explanation can be dismissed by the requirement that explanations cite consistent reasons.

“Socrates believes he knows nothing” is consistent. However, as demonstrated in Socrates’ exchange with Meno, the truth of the belief would leave Socrates unable to recognize a correct answer. Absolute humility in inquiry, the belief that the inquirer knows nothing means that inquiry cannot progress. In the absence of anything to measure a step as forward, inquiry cannot begin.

In addition to making inquiry a nonstarter, absolute humility makes inquiry a non-ender (Staffel, 2024). An impression that one correctly answered could be due to impatience, fatigue, or vanity. The belief that one knows nothing prevents one from excluding these defeaters.

The point of self-attributing knowledge is to close inquiry. If I self-attribute too little knowledge, I can end the inquiry only by abandoning it. After all, each successive stage of the inquiry brings an update on the condition of the inquirer. When is the humble inquirer entitled to ignore this evidence bearing on the scope and limits of his knowledge? “Never!” answers Karl Popper (1959, 251). The inquirer can never know enough to make further checking superfluous.

9. Nonspecific modesty is knowable, as is nonspecific arrogance

The theory that modesty requires self-underrating supports the unknowability of “I am modest” only when read specifically. Consider the (imaginary) author of Self-Estimates of my Virtue. He makes so many estimates about himself that he apologizes in his preface: ‘I underestimate some of my virtues’. The author knows that he is modest under this nonspecific reading. However, those who regard modesty as a virtue will regard “I underestimate some of my virtues” as a manifestation the vice of arrogance rather than a manifestation of the virtue of modesty. The greater the nonspecific modesty, “I enormously underestimate some of my virtues,” the greater the manifestation of immodesty. A better candidate for modesty is a self-attribution of nonspecific arrogance: “I overestimate some of my virtues.”

Jason Brennan (2007), 126) argues that “I am modest” is assertible on the strength of nonspecific comparisons such as “I am more modest than Nietzsche.” However, the datum to be explained is the unassertibility of specific self-attributions. The underestimation account is confirmed rather than disconfirmed by the consistency of nonspecific self-attributions.

The underestimation account of modesty correctly suggests that arrogance is the attitudinal opposite of modesty. Given that arrogance is constituted by overestimation, one cannot know that one is arrogant. As with modesty, there is a crucial qualification: “I am arrogant” is interpreted specifically as a claim about a specific (alleged) merit. In Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Darcy cannot know “I am arrogant about my generosity.” Mr. Darcy can only have nonspecific knowledge of his arrogance. Elizabeth Bennett’s itemized refusal of his marriage proposal astounds Mr. Darcy. He withdraws into an audit of his virtues and vices. The brooding Darcy knows that some of Elizabeth’s candidates for arrogance are ill-informed. However, her very willingness to nominate candidates for overestimation is a sign that there are some genuine instances of arrogance. With each discovered instance, Darcy’s arrogance is diminished. The self-whittling yields a less arrogant, indeed lovable, man.

Nonspecific knowledge of a present misestimation is common. Specific knowledge of a current misestimation is impossible. A taxpayer may preface a summary of his charitable donations with an apology for underestimating some of his donations. However, the taxpayer cannot single out a donation and report “I estimate donating $200, but I actually donated $300.” The only modesty the accountant can self-attribute is nonspecific: “I am modest about some donation or other.”

Michael Slote (1983), 61–62) says that modesty is a dependent virtue—one is modest about some other virtue. This entails that the grounding virtue exists (Bommarito, 2013, 103). However, modesty need not be specific: There exists a virtue such that I am modest about it. Modesty is sometimes nonspecific, in the form, I am modest about there being some virtue such that I possess it. Slote further assumes that the alleged virtue is indeed a virtue. However, people sometimes misclassify traits as virtues. They are modest by virtue of underestimating their pseudo-virtue. This is the disciplinarian’s appraisal of judges who are modest about their mercifulness; mercy is punishing people less than they deserve and is therefore a subversion of justice. Habitual mercy is a vice passing as a virtue.

As a historian, David Hume notes indigenous changes in what is regarded as a virtue. He classifies humility as a monkish virtue along with celibacy, fasting, silence, and solitude. These pseudo-virtues “… stupefy the understanding and harden the heart, obscure the fancy and sour the temper…. We justly, therefore, transfer them to the opposite column, and place them in the catalog of vices.” (Hume, 1751, 219, 270).

One implication of Hume’s reversed bookkeeping is that we should be less dismissive of modesty attributions to villains. Consider a school bully who is biased toward underestimating his ability to add. He envies a girl who neatly writes sums. However, he is actually much above average. To escape the bully’s demand that she permit him to copy her exam answers, the girl demonstrates that the bully is actually the best adder in the class. Cured of his modesty, the bully stops envying inferior classmates. No longer does he corrupt them into academic dishonesty.

10. Modesty is other-destructive

Modesty has long been accused of being self-destructive. I add the graver charge that modesty is other-destructive. A mildly disabled brother may fall into the habit of requesting his sister perform tasks that he fails to recognize as still feasible. Each favor reinforces his tendency to underestimate his abilities. His growing modesty shrinks her self-development.

When I underestimate an article that I coauthored, I harm my coauthor as well as myself. Any liberty I possess to self-harm does not extend to harming her. Given that my coauthor recognizes me as an epistemic peer, she is rationally compelled to lower her opinion of her work. Those who believe there is epistemic injustice should criticize me as an unwitting perpetuator of this cognitive wrongdoing.

On an underestimation account of modesty, a self-directed tendency to underestimate might compensate for a general tendency to overestimate myself (Foot, 1978, 9). However, this strategy of compensating for error will routinely lead to collateral damage. Others hear the underestimate unbalanced by the overestimate.

Worries about the modesty of coauthors affect readers of the joint essay. Who should readers trust when coauthors disagree about the merit of their article? Since overestimation is far more common than underestimation, the modest coauthor is more influential.

Some of the readers may be employers seeking to hire promising scholars. If the candidate is trained well, she has manifested a capacity for effective independent research. However, a coauthored essay has two causes of its value. If one of the coauthors is a protégé of the other, there is the danger that the senior coauthor is modest and overestimates the contribution made by the protégé. A senior colleague may undercut the appearance of modesty by pretending to be vain.

Pretend arrogance can be cultivated passively. Sherlock Holmes realizes that the police cooperate with him because they get the credit for solving difficult cases. Holmes refrains from correcting journalists who portray him as arrogant. Widespread belief that Holmes is arrogant fosters the cooperation of his inferiors.

In “Impudence and Modesty,” David Hume argues that modesty is an exception to the rule that virtue is rewarded and vice punished:

modesty has a natural tendency to conceal a man’s talents, as impudence displays them to the utmost, and has been the only cause why many have risen in the world, under all the disadvantages of low birth and little merit. Such indolence and incapacity is there in the generality of mankind, that they are apt to receive a man for whatever he has a mind to put himself off for; and admit his overbearing airs as proof. (Hume 1741, 553)

Noticing the benefits of arrogance and costs of modesty, strivers try to pass themselves off as brash up-and-comers. Alas, these counterfeiters seldom succeed. They lapse into their primitive modesty.

Hume withdrew this essay. My explanation is that it conflicts with his later transfer of humility from the list of virtues to the list of vices.

11. Modesty is not learnable

Ignorance is sometimes welcomed aesthetically. As children mature, some are slow to recognize their emerging attractiveness. This lack of awareness is itself attractive. Patrick MacDonagh’s “She Walked Unaware” extolls an especially slow learner:

Oh, she walked unaware of her own increasing beauty

That was holding men’s thoughts from market or plough,

As she passed by intent on her womanly duties

And she passed without leisure to be wayward or proud;

Or if she had pride then it was not in her thinking

But thoughtless in her body like a flower of good breeding.

The most beautiful women never enter a beauty contest!

If Patrick MacDonagh presents “She Walked Unaware” to the admired woman, he might spoil her allure. The modest woman might finally overcome her bias against self-attributing beauty and realize that she has blossomed. And at just that moment, the flower begins to wilt.

Similarly, the unaware woman could not act upon the maxim “Be unaware of one’s beauty!.” One can conform to the rule “Be modest,” but one cannot follow the rule. Thus, any account of virtue that requires intentionally practicing that virtue must exclude modesty.

Modesty is modestly imposed on Mormons with an underdress code. Their lengthy underwear prevents Mormons from wearing revealing overgarments. Those who complain receive a MacDonaghian rejoinder: “Modest is hottest.”

Modesty is instilled in monks by practices such as confessing, kneeling, prostration, and self-mortification. Social isolation, sleep deprivation, and ritual humiliation trigger mental changes that cannot be achieved by intentionally acting on the maxim “Be modest.” According to Martin Luther,

True humility does not know that it is humble. If it did, it would be proud from the contemplation of so fine a virtue. God has surely promised His grace to the humbled: that is, to those who mourn over and despair of themselves. But a man cannot be thoroughly humbled till he realizes that his salvation is utterly beyond his own powers, counsels, efforts, will and works, and depends absolutely on the will, counsel, pleasure and work of Another — God alone. (Luther, 1956, 375)

Several triggers for modesty do not presuppose religion (Schueler 1997, 484). According to the hard determinist, you owe all of your merits to preconditions over which you had no control. According to the hard indeterminist, all of your merits are due to luck. A third secular trigger is a shift of perspective. President Theodore Roosevelt would have dinner guests join him outside on Sagamore Hill to squint at the Spiral Galaxy of Andromeda. The spectacle was intended to humble the viewers by making their insignificance vivid.

Kant condemns all of these triggers as demeaning. The correct lesson to be drawn from the night sky is that space is constructed by you as a rational being. You are awesome. So is each rational being. That universally uplifting insight of equality is the correct basis for modesty. You owe it to yourself not to be manipulated into a servile acquiescence to false inequality.

12. Pretend modesty is closer to being a virtue than modesty

A virtue is a habit that can be built by practice. You can practice only those acts that can be intentional. You cannot be intentionally modest. Marcus Aurelius sought to emulate the modesty of his adoptive father, Antoninus Pius. This project is infeasible because one cannot tell whether one has attained the goal. More feasible is triggering modesty, perhaps through a blow to the head that makes Marcus Aurelius forget that he is emperor.

Marcus Aurelius really acted under the maxim “Pretend to be modest!.” As children, we are taught to fake modesty to avoid antagonizing sore losers. Our parents occasionally removed their masks of modesty so that we could understand how the masks protect the wearer against jealousy, gossip, and defamation.

Some pretend modesty is a species of politeness. According to Jonathan Adler (1997, 447), politeness is intended to be recognized as politeness. Tactfulness is not. If Tina Tactful passes a test, her classmate fails, Tina Tactful may deceive him by burying her test in her knapsack and lamenting, “I failed.” Tina’s lie lowers herself to her classmate’s level. He is consoled.

Pretend modesty leads people who believe they are above average to report that they are average. On average, people who believe they are above average are average. Consequently, their pretend modesty yields more accurate assertions—and a reason to avoid calling pretend modesty “false modesty.”

A modest person can pretend to be modest. Consider a modest woman who believes a gullible boy will believe she is modest based on her testimony. She tells him, “I am modest” with the intention of deceiving him into believing that she is modest. Her lie is, inadvertently, true.

If you know your coauthor is pretending to be modest, then you can discount his self-deprecating remarks about your coauthored article without lowering your opinion of him as an accurate researcher. In addition to preserving the coauthor’s status as a knower, the attribution “My coauthor does not believe our essay is mediocre” preserves your coauthor’s status as rational. Attributing insincerity is more epistemically charitable than attributing a mistake.

Pretend modesty and honesty are not co-tenable as virtues. The tension between pretend modesty and honesty is dramatized by Charles Dickens in David Copperfield. Uriah Heap regularly characterizes himself as very humble. By subordinating himself, Heap gains the trust of his employer Mr. Wickfield. Uriah Heap then manipulates his employer’s finances. Wickfield’s daughter Agnes suspects Heap: “His ascendency over papa, is very great. He professes humility and gratitude – with truth, perhaps: I hope so – but his position is really one of power, and I fear he makes a hard use of his power.” (Dickens, 1983, 429).

Hume is at liberty to list pretend modesty as a virtue because his amended tally of virtues contains neither modesty nor honesty. Few other ethicists have this flexibility. For the majority, honesty ranks as a virtue—perhaps the master virtue, necessary for nurturing and sustaining all other virtues. However, these champions of honesty still have room to characterize pretend modesty as a near miss of a virtue. For they might rescue pretend modesty from the charge that it involves an intention to deceive. When a perceptual psychologist serves her fellow experts food on small plates, her guests know that small plates exaggerate how much food is on the plate. Their knowledge of a misleading appearance does not stop the illusion. The appearance is cognitively impenetrable. Pretend modesty often takes the form of an illusion rather than an intended deception.

Customs of politeness vary. When American students are taught French, they are taught to deflect compliments. There is also cultural variation within scientific fields. In radiological scholarship, listing a senior colleague as a first author is often understood as purely honorary (Eisenberg, Ngo, Boiselle, & Bankier, 2011). For insiders, this is no more deceptive than a father hoisting a toddler on his shoulders and letting the boy delight in the appearance of being taller than his father.

In “Discourse on Arts and Sciences,” Jean-Jacques Rousseau condemns polite falsehoods as lies. Kant denies that these pleasing falsehoods are lies. For they are not intended to deceive.

Immanuel Kant’s attribution of nondeceptive effect is plausible for a normal, healthy listener. Frederich Nietzsche, however, when suffering delusions of grandeur, literally construed compliments such as Kant’s routine valediction, “I am your humble servant.” When letters revealed that Nietzsche had gone mad in Turin, an experienced handler was dispatched. His task was to persuade Nietzsche to travel by train to an insane asylum in Basal, nearer his family (Prideaux, 2018, 333). Arrogance was turned into a resource for motivating and controlling the unrealistic patient. Told of the honors awaiting him in Basal, Nietzsche credulously rode the train with aloof decorum. When Nietzsche was tempted to address the crowds at stations, his handler successfully objected that this would spoil the speech Nietzsche was to deliver for a royal audience assembled in Basal.

Kant condemned all lies. This commits him to condemning the lies designed to rescue Nietzsche. In contrast, Henry Sidgwick believed common sense agreed with utilitarianism in condoning paternalistic lies to the insane (as well as to the senile and children).

Sidgwick’s praise of pretend modesty exceeds the limits set by Kant. A utilitarian mother deceptively assigns most of the credit for building a sandcastle to her boy. Some developmental psychologists encourage these lies. They view the immodesty of children as emboldening the child to try new activities. If a boy recognizes his incompetence at building, he will not try.

13. Modesty is misallocated credit that belongs to pretend modesty

Adam Smith claims that a modest man applies an ideal standard to himself and a more common standard toward others. This forestalls invidious comparisons.

So far as our attention is directed towards the first standard, the wisest and best of us all, can, in his own character and conduct, see nothing but weakness and imperfection; can discover no ground for arrogance or presumption, but a great deal for humility, regret and repentance. So far as our attention is directed towards the second, we may be affected either in one way or in the other, and feel ourselves, either really above, or really below, the standard to which we compare ourselves.

(Smith, 1759, 6.3.22–53).

Smith is trying to justify substantive conclusions from the adoption of a double standard. However, a double standard yields only a verbal difference. Someone who is a millionaire in Canadian dollars does not increase his modesty by reporting himself a non-millionaire in American dollars.

The choice of a higher standard cannot increase modesty if that choice is based on a rational mistake. Consider a boy who is deceived into believing he is 2 years older. When his mother enrolls him in school, he notices that he is below average in physique. He is relieved that he is average in intelligence. However, the relevant standard for a student’s intellect is set by students of his actual age. The deceived boy underestimates his intelligence. But he is not modest. A double standard can yield modesty only if the standard was adopted because of a bias toward self-underestimation.

Jason Brennan (2007), 121) softens Smith’s account by denying that falling short of the ideal justifies repentance and regret. Instead, an ideal standard is a means of compensating for a bias toward overestimating ourselves. Applying the lower ordinary standard toward others compensates for a bias toward underestimating others.

Brennan is allowing the agent to know that each standard is biased. But then the agent believes neither standard’s results. She might believe the average of the two. But then she is not subscribing to either standard. She is subscribing only to a bias-cancelling interpolation.

Satisficers compensate for biases by adopting standards that preclude attainment of the highest ideal. Someone who wishes to drive safely should rely on safety devices that sacrifice the opportunity to develop abilities needed for superlative driving: automatic transmission, adaptive cruise control, and parallel parking assist. Someone who wants to live morally should resort to analogous measures that cap moral development: automatic donations, pre-packaged ethical guidelines, and algorithmic filters against temptations.

14. Driver’s Solution of Rejecting B and Affirming C Neglects Her Commitment to A

In “The Virtues of Ignorance,” Julia Driver (1989) compares “I am modest” to Moore’s “It is raining but I do not believe it.” She argues that modesty is a counterexample to “No virtue is constituted by ignorance.” This commits her to the following syllogism:

A. All modesty is constituted by ignorance.

C. Some modesty is a virtue.

∴~B. Some virtue is constituted by ignorance.

Driver supports her conclusion “Some virtue is constituted by ignorance” with examples beyond her lead case of modesty. If these supplements can be shown to be “virtues of ignorance,” Driver’s conclusion ~B follows without commitment to A or C.

Some of Driver’s putative virtues of ignorance quicken action by skipping review processes. People with impulsive courage act first and think later. Her other “virtues of ignorance” expedite omissions. Someone with blind charity, such as Jane Bennett in Pride and Prejudice , only sees what is best in others. Jane does not need to forget to forgive. Jane’s blinders ensure she never notices offenses—and so will not react badly to them.

All of Driver’s supplemental nominees for virtues of ignorance resemble fortuitous rashness, gullibility, and stupidity (Schueler, 1999, 836). Comparing impulsive courage and blind charity to modesty makes modesty seem less of a virtue. Whereas traditional defenders of “Modesty is a virtue” deny the similarity, we, advocates of “Modesty is never a virtue,” affirm the similarity and refuse to elect any of the nominees to the office of Virtue.

15. Intellectualists Commit to an Immodest Epistemology of Modesty

The majority response to Driver’s essay has always been to insist that one can know that one is modest (Flanagan, 1990, 423; Schueler, 1999, 478 fn 21). Indeed, intellectualists defiantly claim the modest man must know he is modest. After all, modesty is constituted by knowledge of an important truth. What is this truth? Buddhists, Calvinists, and other religious extollers of modesty are in drastic disagreement. This mutually undercutting diversity leads moderates to retreat to an austerely egalitarian answer: Everybody is equal (Ben-Ze’ev, 1993; Statman, 1992). This three-word tradition goes back to Kant (Grenberg, 2005, 193–196).

Kant draws leveling consequences from “Everybody is equal.” Knowledge of equality commits me to weighing sincere a posteriori testimony as heavily as my own testimony (Gelfert, 2006, 633–636). When another witness contradicts my testimony, I should not favor my perception over his. Indeed, I should favor his perception over mine. Kant’s respect for a posteriori testimony of others contradicts the Royal Society motto “Take no one’s word for it.” Remarkably, Kant thinks that equality must be presumed even given preliminary evidence that the testifier is irrational. Kant has a moral basis for the principle of charity: “Interpret people as rational.”

Equality precludes servility because servility requires me to regard my superordinate as superior. Servility is tempting when listening to an authority on mathematics. However, Kant denies that one can learn a priori propositions from testimony (Gelfert, 2006, 628, 637, and 649). No one can understand a proposition for me. Understanding an a priori proposition suffices for recognizing its truth. Kant’s rejection of a priori testimony comports with his Enlightenment imperative, “Think for yourself!.” We overcome willful immaturity by not deferring to others on a priori matters such as morality and philosophy.

Yet there is scope for humility through the recognition of a priori limits. We must resist the temptation to apply principles that apply to phenomenal reality to noumenal reality. Succumbing is hubris. We can know nothing about the intrinsic properties of objects (Langton, 2001). We only know they exist. Metaphysicians are arrogant because they make claims about the nature of reality beyond how it appears to us.

The insight that everybody is equal might be innate. Kant credits the insight to uneducated peasants. Perhaps some need to learn “Everybody is equal” by moral reflection. However, whether by nature or nurture, modesty is constituted by knowledge rather than ignorance.

If you know that modesty is the knowledge that all are equal, you know that you are modest. If you do not know you are modest, that is because you are not modest. Thus, modesty is a self-intimating virtue rather than a self-masking virtue. You should be the first to know you are modest rather than the last to know.

This immodest epistemology of modesty follows from any account of modesty that makes modesty a matter of knowing an impersonal proposition. Anyone who knows that someone else has the modesty conferring insight, M, receives the same illumination from M. Anyone who forgets M is no longer modest.

There are conflicting nominees for the modesty-conferring insight M. Thomas Aquinas says humility is constituted by knowledge that you are absolutely base (Aquinas, 1981, 2.2 Q.160). The Christian realizes that he himself is worthless in comparison to God. God is responsible for anything positive. You are responsible for all that is negative. Missionaries are needed to spread this humbling insight. Since only Christians know they are worthless, all humble people are Christians.

Aquinas here embarks on a dramatic exception to his policy of following Aristotle. Aristotle’s great-souled man knows that he is excellent. The great-souled man avoids boasting because listeners do not want their attention drawn to their inferiority. To accommodate their feelings, the great-souled man makes an exception to “Never lie!”; he tells self-deprecating falsehoods. When Aristotle appears to be praising modesty (by condemning boasting and praising inoffensiveness), he is actually praising pretend modesty.

Contemporary neo-Aristotelians contend that Aristotle should have insisted that modesty conforms to his doctrine of the mean. Alan Hazlett (2021) says modesty is knowledge of the mean between servility and arrogance. The modest man monitors himself. If I know the scope and limits of my abilities and achievements, I know that I am modest. Knowledge that I know that I am modest is itself knowledge of my epistemic scope. Therefore, in addition to knowing I am modest, I know that I am modest. Consequently, if I do not know that I know that I am modest, then I am not modest. No skeptic is modest.

The neo-Aristotelians are committed to accurate self-estimators being more modest than underestimators. Suppose a correct estimator and an underestimator are each in a position to know that they contributed equally as coauthors of a prize-winning essay. Nevertheless, the underestimator believes most of the credit belongs to his coauthor. According to the neo-Aristotelian, the accurate coauthor is more modest than the coauthor who believes the other did most of the work!

16. Absence Theorists Overgeneralize Modesty

Owen Flanagan and Norvin Richards (1988), more cautiously, rank the coauthors as equally modest. They say modesty (or humility for Richards) is non-overestimation of one’s worth.

Equating modesty with the absence of a belief state would overextend modesty. Infants are reliable non-self-overestimators because they lack the concepts needed to fall prey to vanity.

G. F. Schueler (1997, 484–485) proposes we switch to an absence of preference. W. K. Clifford was described as modest because of his indifference to academic honors such as being First Wrangler. Clifford declined to cram. Consequently, he only qualified as Second Wrangler. Clifford knew he was a superior mathematician. What made him modest was that he did not care whether this superiority made people think more highly of him.

Julia Driver (1999), 834) objects that Clifford would be arrogant if he based his indifference on the belief that others have puny minds. Some deontologists concur. Kant goes further. He thinks we are morally obliged to weigh the a posteriori judgments of others more heavily than one’s own. Their empirical opinions of one’s merits compel respectful deference (except when this default is overridden by strong evidence).

17. Attention Theories Nearly Collapse into the Self-Underestimation Theory

If modesty is not universally constituted by knowledge and not universally constituted by ignorance, what else might constitute modesty? Some answer that modesty arises from inattention to oneself. If this inattention constitutes ignorance by causing ignorance of one’s merits, the account collapses into the underestimation account.

Nicolas Bommarito (2013) forestalls this collapse by distinguishing between awareness and attention. A strong man may be aware that he is strong without attending to his strength. The awareness manifests in an emergency in which only he has the strength to lift a tree that has fallen on a hiker. He pushes the weaklings aside, explaining that only he is strong enough. Bommarito’s modest strong man differs from Julia Driver’s modest strong man. Her modest strong man underestimates his strength and so does not assert himself in an emergency. Since he judges himself no stronger than those already struggling with the tree, he helps in some other manner, say, running for help from someone strong enough to lift the tree!

All prefer Bommarito’s strong man in this emergency. However, their preference is not based on the strong man’s modesty. Driver’s modest man is more modest than Bommarito’s man. This is just the sort of situation in which modesty is exposed as a vice. People who underestimate their strengths fail to exert them.

Bommarito notes that inattention preempts the tendency of self-reflection to enhance ourselves. However, the neo-Aristotelian will counter that inattention also carries opportunity costs at self-correction. By monitoring oneself, one detects vices and spots opportunities for self-improvement. The neo-Aristotelians deny that the strong man can be aware of his superlative strength without attending to his strength. They portray attention as the means by which one learns to be virtuous. Practice is effortful. Less attention is needed to sustain mastery. However, effortful practice is still needed to prevent relapse into mediocrity.

Attention to one’s merits is also required when the modest man must pretend to be arrogant. An effective deception requires attention to the truth. Consequently, the modest man starts from his underestimate and publicly overestimates from that defective baseline.

Bommarito (2013), 102) acknowledges that modesty often involves attentive deflation of one’s merits. Modest people trace their merits to parents, mentors, luck, or God. The key for Bommarito’s approach is switching the topic: “modesty is about neither accuracy nor ignorance but instead is rooted in certain patterns of attention” (2013, 93).

As presaged in the history of psychology, accounts of attention become ever more complex. Those who resist the topic change will object that the increasing complexity only makes sense if the key to modesty is indeed the agent’s self-estimation.

18. Summary

I have updated a Victorian error theory in which modesty is a vice misclassified as a virtue. Modesty is an egocentric bias to underestimate one’s own merit. Modesty cannot be a virtue because no one can obey the imperative “Mis-estimate yourself!.” Arrogance fails to be a virtue for the same reason.

One can act under the maxim “Pretend to be modest!.” We admire pretend modesty for the reasons we admire politeness and tact. However, there is a conflict between tact and honesty. Given that honesty is a virtue, pretend modesty is, at best, a near-miss of a virtue. To a surprising degree, this tension is eased by Kant’s distinction between illusion and deception. However, too much tension remains for honesty and pretend modesty to both be virtues.

Once admirable pretend modesty is subtracted from modesty, and we realize how accurately the Victorians weighed the remainder. Arrogance draws more criticism than its opposite—modesty. However, as Edmund Gosse observes in criticism of his father, Phillip Gosse, modesty requires arrogance as a sustaining cause.