How do you know which experts to trust? To what extent is it healthy to be a sceptical person? When should we have the courage of our convictions? When is it appropriate to hold onto our beliefs in the face of counterevidence?

One way of exploring these ideas is to take a philosophical approach that considers the idea of ‘intellectual courage’ and its interplay with information in an age of AI.

Intellectual courage: knowledge seekers are truth seekers

The search for knowledge is also the search for truth – they are inextricably connected. I cannot know something that is not true: if it is false, then it is also false that I know it.  So being interested in knowledge is being interested in arriving at the truth.

The Danish philosopher, Søren Kirkegaard (1813-1855), emphasised the idea of knowledge requiring courage. He suggested that knowledge can only be acquired if we overcome our fears and anxieties – and this might cause us discomfort.

Our anxieties can motivate us NOT to find out the truth, for example, if we think the knowledge will hurt us, or conflict with what we believe, we can actively shut our minds to it. An example might be from COVID times: we might refuse to wear a mask because it is unpleasant and anxiety-inducing and ignore medical evidence that wearing masks reduces transmission of disease. In this example, our anxiety prevents the uptake of knowledge.

Having intellectual courage helps to overcome our anxieties in pursuit of the truth. It helps you to face unpleasant facts; helps you not to yield to peer pressure; avoid choosing lazy options; think ‘outside the box’ or get out of ‘echo chambers’ (an echo chamber is a social media space where a group of people with similar opinions share ideas and there is no challenge to those ideas from other opinions, so there is a constant reinforcement of ideas and no challenge to the ‘truth’ of the idea).

Too little and too much courage

If you have too little intellectual courage, you may be prone to succumb to peer pressure or anxiety, rather than inconveniencing yourself for the sake of the truth.

If you have too much intellectual courage, then this can encourage recklessness or foolhardiness and an over-belief in ideas where there is little evidence to support it. This can happen with believers of conspiracy theories who show an over-eagerness to believe even in the face of large amounts of countervailing evidence. You might say this shows courage because conspiracy theorists are thinking ‘outside the box’, but this is not usually the case, as it does not lead to truth. If you have to ignore information that is reputable and true in order to hold a belief, then you are no longer seeking the truth and manifesting foolhardiness rather than courage.

Dare to know

German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1805) said: ‘Immaturity is the inability to use one’s own understanding without guidance from someone else. This immaturity is self-imposed if its course lies not in any lack of understanding but in indecision and in the lack of courage to use one’s own mind without the help of someone else. Sapere aude! [Dare to know!].’

In an information age with AI, we must have intellectual courage and ‘dare to know’.

This post draws upon a free course ‘Navigating the Information Age II: themes’ that is available on Blackboard (see link below) for anyone to self-enrol. The course can be worked through individually or used as a resource in teaching.

This post is a summary of work by Prof. Genia Schönbaumsfeld, University of Southampton.

Bite-sized task

Step 1 – learn

Consider the ideas suggested in the post.

Step 2 – do

Think about how you would answer these questions or use them to generate discussion. You may wish to try this with your students.

• Can you think of times when certain anxieties or doubts have prevented you from believing something?
• What similarities or differences are there between “intellectual” courage and ordinary courage?
• When do you think it would be helpful to be intellectually courageous?
• In what way(s) could being intellectually courageous go awry?

Step 3 – reflect

How might the ideas expressed here relate to how you frame the use of AI in education?

Would you integrate these ideas into your own teaching and curricula? If so, how might you go about doing this?

Further Links

If you’re interested in the ideas in this post you may want to enrol on two free Blackboard courses below to explore these ideas more, or direct your students to self-enrol:

Follow this link to begin Navigating the Information Age I: Concepts

Follow this link to begin Navigating the Information Age II: Themes

© 2025. This work is openly licensed via CC BY-NC-SA