Montaigne's Epistemology
So, Michel De Montaigne. French guy, born in 1533, approximately invented "essays" as a form of thing you can write.
Generally, when a new form of thing is invented, and you go experience the earliest iterations of it, it is not very good because no one has figured out what works yet. This was the case for novels, and movies, it is the case for AI art today. So even though his Wikipedia article notes that his essays "contain some of the most influential essays ever written", I kind of was like "yeah they have to say that because he invented them".
Then I read a selection of them and... chat... his takes are kinda good? Like, this guy, writing in the actual literal 1500s, barely a century after the invention of the Gutenberg press, outlined a set of discourse norms that surprised me in their sophistication.
I'm going to give a selection of some of his takes on truth-seeking, below:
You should welcome opposition to our beliefs:
When I am contradicted it arouses my attention not my wrath. I move towards the man who contradicts me: he is instructing me. The cause of truth ought to be common to us both. [On the art of conversation]
You should bet on your beliefs:
It would be a useful idea if we had to wager on the deciding of our quarrels, useful if there were a material sign of our defeats so that we could keep tally on them and my manservant say: ‘Last year your ignorance and stubbornness cost you one hundred crowns on twenty occasions.' [On the art of conversation]
You should feel good when someone changes your mind:
I feel far prouder of the victory I win over myself when I make myself give way beneath my adversary's powers of reason in the heat of battle than I ever feel gratified by the victory I win over him through his weakness. [On the art of conversation]
You should aim to be precise in your observations:
When you have just listened to a whole page of Virgil you can safely exclaim, ‘Now that is beautiful!’ The cunning ones escape that way. But to undertake to go back over the detail of a good author, to try to indicate with precise and selected examples where he surpasses himself and where he flies high by weighing his words and his locutions and his choice of materials one after another: not many try that. [On the art of conversation]
You should have epistemic humility:
Tacitus, writing during a period in which belief in portents was on the wane, says that he nevertheless does not wish to fail to provide a foothold for them, and so includes in his Annals matters accepted by so many decent people with so great a reverence for antiquity. [On the art of conversation]
You should notice the ways that your imagination tends to be limited:
He who had never actually seen a river, the first time he did so took it for the ocean, since we think that the biggest things that we know represent the limits of what Nature can produce in that species. [That it is madness to judge the true and the false from our own capacities]
You should face the hard parts of reality:
The cheating may escape my sight, but it does not escape my sight that I am very cheatable. [On the affection of fathers for their children]
That you have to touch grass:
Callicles says in Plato: that, at its extremes, philosophy is harmful; he advises us not to go more deeply into it than the limits of what is profitable: taken in moderation philosophy is pleasant and useful, but it can eventually lead to a man’s becoming vicious and savage, contemptuous of religion and of the accepted laws, an enemy of social intercourse, an enemy of our human pleasures, useless at governing cities, at helping others or even at helping himself - a man whose ears you could box with impunity. [On moderation]
Not every single essay is good; I did not care, for example, for On Friendship, where he asserts that if you have a true friend and he asks you to kill your daughter, you would do it. And that you can only ever have One True Friend. And that his One True Friend, Etienne de La Boétie, is just the most special little guy in existence and everyone should be jealous because of the special bond they had, which is transcendental and mystical and you just wouldn't get it. I mean ok maybe he can have that one, I wouldn't kill my hypothetical daughter even if my most special friend told me to.
That being said, most of his stuff is quite nice, and I also like his takes on love, and status, and moderation. I even like his takes on friendship, outside of On Friendship:
I like a strong, intimate, manly fellowship, the kind of friendship which rejoices in sharp vigorous exchanges just as love rejoices in bites and scratches which draw blood.
Some of his essays have faded into irrelevancy (sadly, "of posting" is about another kind of post) and some are just note fragments. But it's clear that Montaigne was intelligent, and thoughtful about his epistemic hygiene.
You'll notice that half the quotes above are from the same essay, On the art of conversation. That essay, moreso than some of his others, reads like an exhortation — this is how I approach having conversations, and wouldn't it be wonderful if others did more of the same!
I think about Montaigne in his tower, writing in solitude. I am luckier than he is, because I live in a civilization that was changed by his work. He laid down these foundations five centuries ago, and they spread, and now when I enter fun discussions with my friends, I don't have to spend the first hour explaining why we should welcome being proven wrong. Everyone's already bought in.