What is an open mind- and do we really want one?
I know that men are likely to bring what are only their prejudices to the judgment of alien peoples. Avoiding this is one of the main purposes of education. But trying to prevent it by removing the authority of men's reason is to render ineffective the instrument that can correct their prejudices. -Allen Bloom Open mindedness is considered a virtue, yet it most commonly exists as the the ‘nuclear option’ in arguments from ignorance: “you don’t believe in X because you don’t have an open mind.†It has the benefit of making the arguer sound virtuous and their opposition intolerant. It is much less dramatic if we dropped the ad hominem component and said something nearer to the truth: “Drop what you know, understand my point of view, and accept it!†When an argument takes place among the genuinely open-minded, all sides need to have a willingness to consider the possibility that claims can be found to be false as well as true. How important is it to think it unreasonable to reject the validity of certain ideas, and instead treat them as plausibly valid? There are very few beliefs that are unambiguously false (If I jump off the Golden Gate Bridge, I could fall into the gentle curved sail of a passing boat) so should we adopt a mind-set of unlimited credulity? At some point, we have to consider and ultimately reject the vast majority of ‘new ideas’ that exist in the world. How can we not? The process of critical thinking is not about rejecting ideas; it is about subjecting them to what the individual has previously believed to be true. One cannot continually consider discarding belief in God every time someone with a Phd after their name provides an argument to the contrary. Would an agnostic find spiritual contentment if he adopted the perpetual stance that all religious beliefs are equally valid? Disagreeing with a person’s position or argument after considering it does not make one closed-minded. Obviously, rejecting all new ideas is every bit as silly as accepting them all. The art lies in discernment. Ideas? I will get the ball rolling to say that an essential prerequisite for this discernment is not to be swayed by third hand information. In slogan form-Think for Yourself.
