Open-mindeness

[aleph_0]

So I just left a colloquium in which Nomy Arpaly presented a[n unpublished] presentation about open-mindedness, and I thought it was both informative and inspiring. She wants to explore whether there can be such a moral good as being open-minded, and to see what that looks like. First of all, she's not interested in how to tell whether you can reflectively tell whether you're open-minded (she's skeptical about the project all together), or how to tell if another person is open-minded. Rather, she's interested in just defining any concept of being open-minded which conforms to how people use the word, and which could count as a "moral virtue" [her words--she's a virtue theorist]. Below I will try to sum her presentation.

She begins with an intuition that open-mindedness cannot be a moral virtue if it’s mere lack of judgment. She takes the example of an author who lived during the rise of Nazism. I cannot remember the name, though it sounds like ‘Feierabend’. He wrote in his autobiography that, when he was young and Nazism was gaining popularity, everybody reacted passionately, for or against. He said that he did not understand why everybody should make such quick conclusions. Nomy says that this man does not embody a moral virtue, and so this cannot be open-mindedness if it is a virtue.

Take the case of a woman. Call her Susan. She is considering divorcing her husband, but her mother is vehemently opposed to it. Her mother yells accusations at her that she's being selfish, that she's not thinking about what she's doing, not thinking about the consequences, and so on. Susan says that, in retrospect, if her mother were honest she would sat, "I stayed with your father for years and it was hell! If you're right to leave your husband, I should have left your father long ago! I cannot have stayed with your father for nothing! That would mean I made the wrong choice, and that I've wasted years of my life!" This is clearly what we call close-minded.

So is the following: In a central-European country, a doctor made a great discovery. If doctors wash their hands before delivering babies, the mothers have a much higher survival rate. He was a young man who had not delivered many babies. The medical community dismissed his findings, in spite of the fact that they were obvious, scientific, researched, and right. The community did not want to believe that some punk kid can come along and tell them that they had killed all those mothers. About a decade or more later, doctors were required to wash their hands. In the mean time, because of close-mindedness, countless women died while giving birth. This is another clear example of a brand of irrationality which we commonly describe as "close-minded".

What is the vice in play, specifically?

It is the desire to keep cognitive dissonance at all costs. That is to say, it is the desire to deny or over-look counter-evidence, and to live with a contradiction. In the first case, Susan's mother does not want to accept that it is okay to divorce, because it would cause her to admit wrong. Instead, her mother lives with the contradiction: “There is evidence that it is okay to divorce, and this is the rational conclusion; and yet, it is not okay to divorce.” The effect of choosing cognitive dissonance over rationality radically hurts her own daughter, were Susan to take the advice. In the second case, the dissonance is between the belief that: “I am a good person and have never killed anybody, and yet by not washing my hands I have killed countless mothers.” The effects of accepting the contradiction are immediately obvious, and disgusting.

We have so far told what the virtue of open-mindedness is NOT. If we want to perfect the virtue of open-mindedness, though, we need to know what it is. We need to know what to pursue, rather than to merely know what to avoid.

Open-mindedness, then, is to value others more than any cognitive state. Obviously, this is not how an Objectivist would define open-mindedness, and Nomy is subject to very legitimate criticism. However, she did not want to argue ethics. She chose a basic ethical code that she thought would be uncontroversial. Everybody agrees that you should not give harmful advice, and everybody agrees that you should not give infections to new mothers. I'm not sure that Nomy would consent to the explicit statement, “ethics is essentially other-directed or "altruist",” but she didn't oppose it. Still, the statement "open-mindedness is rationally valuing oneself more than any cognitive state," is perfectly consistent with her presentation and, in fact, would prove a further thesis: It is morally right to pursue all facets of truth, in order to pursue self-betterment. By extension, this would include giving rationally good advice. It would also mean making rational medical decisions for hypothetical patients.

What does the statement, "open-mindedness is rationally valuing oneself more than any cognitive state"? If it isn't already obvious, "any cognitive state" would be any state of false pride (like the mother who is proud of staying married when she shouldn't). It would also be other cognitive states, no matter what they are. Open-mindedness would mean a dedication to truth, because in order to better yourself, you must first identify what is best for yourself. After understanding the truth, one should, arguably, always report the truth to fellow rational agents. Thus, no dead mothers being treated by doctors who tell the mothers that they [the doctors] are doing everything they can to preserve life.

A few questions came up that I thought were relevant to people who want to understand exactly what is good:

Can there be amoral open-mindedness or close-mindedness? (Nomy was open to the possibility, but expressed a suspicion that it was impossible. I would argue forcefully that there cannot.)

Is open-mindedness really about cognitive dissonance, when people seem okay with contradictions? Suppose you have a person who has many contradictory beliefs, but on any given matter is willing to concede rational belief. But then when an issue of irrational belief comes up, he still acts irrationally. Here, the person has no cognitive dissonance. For example, take the person who hears a rational argument about how humans do not cause global warming, agrees to the rational argument, and still buys the gas-electric hybrid car on the basis of preventing global warming. This person is not close-minded because he has not denied or acted against rational evidence. So do we call this close-mindedness? If we do, then we need to change the definition of close-mindedness. If we don't, then what do we call it? (Nomy had no clear response, and said that she would think about it. By the way, Nomy was amazing because none of her presentation was written down anywhere. For that reason, though, they might not be the best responses. But considering that, she did a pretty commendable job.)

Doesn't non-judgment also count as open-mindedness? Maybe we want to say that young Feierabend (?) was too open-minded. Maybe we don't, but either way, isn't there more to what we call open-mindedness? A lot of people talk about open-mindedness as a kind of tolerance and lack of judgment. Certainly Feierabend was not right to reserve judgment about the Nazis, and later in life he admitted this. So if we want to preserve open-mindedness as a pure virtue, then we could say that open-mindedness includes reservation of judgment when there's insufficient evidence. (Nomy resisted this, saying that she wants "open-mindedness" to refer to a compelling, clear moral virtue which has no room for someone like the young Feierabend. For that reason, it should not refer to any kind of tolerance or lack of judgment, but should sometimes require passionate judgment. Indeed it should require hatred for Nazism, because Nazism so completely ignores the rational best interests of others. Personally, I think that people use the term "open-minded" to refer to both, and that if you include this in the definition, you only make the term conform to natural English. That's good, because you won't be using a technical philosophical jargon when you talk to non-philosophers about "open-mindedness"--you will be talking about the same thing they are talking about!)

[eriatarka]

I think the most immediate question her account will face is: why is open-minded (under her definition) a virtue? If cognitive dissonance makes a person feel better and sleep easier at night then why is fighting it inherently virtuous - in your doctor example, is it not likely that the doctors would die happier believing that they hadnt killed all those mothers than they would if they admitted their mistake? Fighting cognitive dissonance is probably a good idea in the long run since its often easier to achieve happiness if one's picture of the world is correct, but (as Keynes said) in the long-run we're all dead.

Her account seems to be dependent on the unstated premise that a comittment to truth is good in itself, even if accepting the truth leads to psychological unhappiness - the whole point of cognitive dissonance is that exists in cases where the truth is unpleasant and perhaps painful to the individual trying to block it out. I do think that placing truth above momentary happiness is noble, and most philosophers since Plato would argue in favour of it, but anyone claiming that its a moral virtue needs to provide an argument why this is the case, and I'm not sure that she could do this within the others-directed framework she's working in. She needs to show that fighting cognitive dissonance is actually beneficial to the individual doing it rather than to the rest of society.

Edited October 10, 2008 by eriatarka

[aleph_0]

The doctor example is very apt--by not believing it, by accepting the contradiction, they went on delivering babies without washing their hands. Open-mindedness is a virtue because it springs from unadulturated rational concern for others (or, in an Objectivist account, rational concern for oneself).

As Rand's character in Atlas Shrugged said, "In the long run, we're all dead." And he was right. His policies killed everybody.

I'm not sure how her construction would deal with psychological unhappiness from admitting past wrongs, but on the Objectivist account truth is necessary to pursue happiness. If you are ignorant of either the goal or the means, you fail in rational action toward the goal. Like I said, I think her account is liable to very legitimate criticism of her assumptions about moral maxims. The fact that she balks at the question, "Can there be amoral open-mindedness or close-mindedness?" tells me that she has some serious soul-searching to do there.

[EC]

Open mindedness is NOT a virtue or something that ANY rational person should aspire to. It is an active mind that is a rational virtue, and there is a major difference between the two. A person with an "open" mind accepts everything as possibly valid, even the arbitrary or the irrational. A man with a rational and active mind would never do neither on purpose. The call for an "open" mind is a call for subjectivism and irrationalism.

[aleph_0]

EC, you clearly did not read my post. When you have something substantive and responsive to contribute, I may read.

[EC]

EC, you clearly did not read my post. When you have something substantive and responsive to contribute, I may read.

I read the beginning and figured the rest is just complete nonsense like most of your posts. What I wrote cuts right to the essentials of the concept, and negates whatever you were spouting.

[aleph_0]

Thank you for your concession.

[~Sophia~]

Open mindedness is NOT a virtue or something that ANY rational person should aspire to. It is an active mind that is a rational virtue, and there is a major difference between the two. A person with an "open" mind accepts everything as possibly valid, even the arbitrary or the irrational. A man with a rational and active mind would never do neither on purpose. The call for an "open" mind is a call for subjectivism and irrationalism.

I understand open mindedness as receptiveness to new and different ideas - a necessary starting point if any futher examination is to happen. I consider myself open minded using that definition.

However, you are right it is often used as a call for granting plausibility to anything.

[RationalBiker]

Open mindedness is NOT a virtue or something that ANY rational person should aspire to.

I think you may be thinking of the term in it's commonly used sense (as Sophia distinguishes) as opposed to the manner in which the OP presented it. Take this quote for instance;

She begins with an intuition that open-mindedness cannot be a moral virtue if it’s mere lack of judgment.

This alone distinguishes his usage from the usage you assumed by not reading the entire post.

Regardless of how you 'essentialize' the commonly used terminology, that is not what he was referring to. You might want to consider how your admission that you did not read the whole post and subsequent defense of your error might serve as an example of 'closed-mindedness' and does not represent being 'active-minded'.

[MichaelH]

So I just left a colloquium in which Nomy Arpaly presented a[n unpublished] presentation about open-mindedness, and I thought it was both informative and inspiring. She wants to explore whether there can be such a moral good as being open-minded, and to see what that looks like. First of all, she's not interested in how to tell whether you can reflectively tell whether you're open-minded (she's skeptical about the project all together), or how to tell if another person is open-minded. Rather, she's interested in just defining any concept of being open-minded which conforms to how people use the word, and which could count as a "moral virtue" [her words--she's a virtue theorist]. Below I will try to sum her presentation.

She begins with an intuition that open-mindedness cannot be a moral virtue if it’s mere lack of judgment.<snip>

Doesn't non-judgment also count as open-mindedness? <snip>

Personally, I think that people use the term "open-minded" to refer to both, and that if you include this in the definition, you only make the term conform to natural English. That's good, because you won't be using a technical philosophical jargon when you talk to non-philosophers about "open-mindedness"--you will be talking about the same thing they are talking about!)

Wow. I'm sorry you had to sit through this presentation.

The flaw is obvious in the first paragraph of the summary: Nomy is combining "how people use the word" with "defining a concept" and "moral virtue". Defining virtues requires clear definitions. You can't go by layperson's usage for word definitions. Flaut as opposed to flaunt is a great example of this. They get misused all the time, but the misuse is still incorrect.

She also says you can't tell if you're being open-minded or not! Defining virtues means creating criteria which distinguish virtuous from non-virtuous actions.

I'm with EC: based on the summary, this presentation was nonsense in the technical sense of the term.

[EC]

Regardless of how you 'essentialize' the commonly used terminology, that is not what he was referring to. You might want to consider how your admission that you did not read the whole post and subsequent defense of your error might serve as an example of 'closed-mindedness' and does not represent being 'active-minded'.

You are wrong. If someone started a long post on the virtues of self-sacrifice I wouldn't have to read the whole thing or even part of it to respond with an essentialized post laying out the reasons why it is wrong. It is the definition of having an active mind to be able to quickly break any argument down to essentials and principles and then evaluate from there, not accept everything as possible.

[Tenzing_Shaw]

I think that "closed-mindedness" has become a smear-word similar to "extremism". If you reject unreality, then you are "closed-minded" implying that you reject new ideas for being new. If you take strong positions, you are an "extremist", implying that you take the positions merely because they are strong, and not due to their specific nature.

Extremism is clearly an invalid concept, because there are no people who consistently take every extreme position as a matter of principle. I don't think the same is true of closed-mindedness: there are indeed people who reject new ideas as such (the Catholic Church, for example). Therefore, I don't think that open-mindedness has to be an invalid concept; I think its rational meaning would be: anyone who does not reject new ideas on principle is open-minded.

To be certain here, I think it would be necessary to discover the origin of the open-minded/closed-minded distinction (perhaps by consulting an older dictionary). If open-mindedness used to be defined simply as a rejection of closed-mindedness (but has since been hijacked similarly to "selfishness"), then I think it is a virtue. If it has always been a smear-word used against the rational, then I think it would be better to invent a new term, or simply use a word like "dispassionate".

In any case, according to its current dictionary definition, open-mindedness is certainly not a virtue.

[RationalBiker]

It is the definition of having an active mind to be able to quickly break any argument down to essentials and principles and then evaluate from there, not accept everything as possible.

It seems you are unwilling to admit the obvious that you 'thought' he was using the term in one sense and his post clearly demonstrates (to those who actually read it) otherwise. The form of open-mindedness he posted about had NOTHING to do with accepting that everything is possible as illustrated by the quote I pasted in my previous post. It makes no sense to argue with you until you realize you arguing from the point of a different definition than what he was operating on. You simply declared he was wrong about 'A' when he was talking about 'B', and you did so without the evidence of having actually read what he posted.

[JMeganSnow]

I think the only real flaw in this presentation of open-mindedness (for Objectivists) is that it's *too narrow*. The virtues of honesty and rationality already encompass everything that falls under this "open-mindedness" idea, so to really form a new concept of a *separate* virtue called "open-mindedness" you have to leave out a lot of relevant details.

In other words, I think the concept she's trying to work with is too particular to be useful.

As for EC: your self-righteous posturing is nauseating. Sure, it's easy to "quickly come to the essentials" if you just ignore everything that other people say.

[EC]

As for EC: your self-righteous posturing is nauseating. Sure, it's easy to "quickly come to the essentials" if you just ignore everything that other people say.

What objectivity and the study of philosophy requires is not an "open mind," but an active mind - a mind able and eagerly willing to examine ideas, but to examine them criticially.-- Ayn Rand

Case closed; unless I'm just being nauseatingly close minded.

[eriatarka]

The irony in this thread is great.

[EC]

The irony in this thread is great.

Either that or you don't fully understand the difference between dogmatism and objectivity. I'll choose the latter since I know that a "dogmatic Objectivsm" is a contradiction in terms.

However, since we live an "open-minded" world it's probably just me being a posturing self-righteous close-minded dogmatist who ignores what others say because I am attempting to essentialize my thinking by non-essentials since I'm just a right-wing neo-con asshole simply posing as someone who is certain that what he says is true. Who are we to judge if I am right or wrong? We are all just humans with limited cognitive abilities and should be open-minded and skeptical about every argument that everyone presents since all knowledge is relative and there are no absolutes.

What forum am I at again?

[RationalBiker]

What forum am I at again?

Apparently the one where you don't address the actual post or terminology someone uses.

[EC]

Apparently the one where you don't address the actual post or terminology someone uses.

I give up.

[aleph_0]

Wow. I'm sorry you had to sit through this presentation.

The flaw is obvious in the first paragraph of the summary: Nomy is combining "how people use the word" with "defining a concept" and "moral virtue". Defining virtues requires clear definitions. You can't go by layperson's usage for word definitions. Flaut as opposed to flaunt is a great example of this. They get misused all the time, but the misuse is still incorrect.

She also says you can't tell if you're being open-minded or not! Defining virtues means creating criteria which distinguish virtuous from non-virtuous actions.

I'm with EC: based on the summary, this presentation was nonsense in the technical sense of the term.

How do you decide which concept one refers to without understanding how people use a word? Moreover, modern Objectivists like Peakoff dismiss "open-mindedness" by saying, "Look at how people use the word." They argue that, when people use the word, they refer to non-judgment.

Just because you look at how people use the word doesn't mean you're doing sociology, as analytic philosophers repeat ad nauseam. It isn't a language survey. But we cannot just invent definitions for words without any association to how the words are used in ordinary language. For instance, it would be irrational to say that the definition of justice is communism, but then explain myself by saying, "Well I don't care how people use the term 'justice'--I've given you a very clear definition of what I mean by the term, so what's the problem? It's a clearly defined concept, and I just refer to it by an arbitrary collection of syllables (or letters)." There's nothing self-contradictory about doing that, but you cannot expect people to use your terms or understand what you mean if you radically re-define the language ad hoc.

Nomy just notices that people refer to some mental acts as close-minded, like the unhappy mother and the stubborn medical community. Given that these are vices (And we need no public survey to find that out. Our independent reason tells us that these acts are wrong.) Nomy then detaches herself from ordinary language use and asks, "What is it that makes these things vices?" Within that framework she defines a perfectly legitimate concept. In fact, I challenge you to show how the concept she defined is invalid or nonsensical. It clearly refers to one set of actions and not to another, and all of those actions to which it refers are immoral actions.

I think that "closed-mindedness" has become a smear-word similar to "extremism". If you reject unreality, then you are "closed-minded" implying that you reject new ideas for being new.

That's clearly not what's being said here, though. According to a current dictionary definition, I'm sure "selfishness" would sound like a vice. And moreover, I know that according to some current dictionary definitions, "atheism" is the belief that there is no god (rather than lack of belief, which is the correct definition), and "evolution" has been similarly mis-defined although I cannot remember how.

In any case, as I said in response to the first person, the project here is philosophy and not sociology--nor is it lexicography.

I think the only real flaw in this presentation of open-mindedness (for Objectivists) is that it's *too narrow*. The virtues of honesty and rationality already encompass everything that falls under this "open-mindedness" idea, so to really form a new concept of a *separate* virtue called "open-mindedness" you have to leave out a lot of relevant details.

In other words, I think the concept she's trying to work with is too particular to be useful.

As for EC: your self-righteous posturing is nauseating. Sure, it's easy to "quickly come to the essentials" if you just ignore everything that other people say.

That's perfectly fair; the virtue of rationality already covers open-mindedness. However, that doesn't mean that we cannot define and catalogue different ways of being virtuous. There's bravery, intelligence, ambition, confidence, self-awareness, and others. All of these are arguably extensions of rationality as well, but they draw attention to types of virtue that it's dangerous or easy to neglect. It's easy to be cowardly, so one should be aware of the concept of cowardice and protect against it. Likewise, one should always self-monitor how you form your beliefs. Do you reject what someone else says because what they say is not factual, because it's inconsistent--or do you reject it because you like contradicting someone who has opposed you in the past, E and you feel like you have something invested in C winning the argument, and you are afraid of the public embarrassment that comes from admitting an obvious error. Wow. The letters EC just popped up right in the middle of that sentence. Bizarre.

Anyway, I see it as little different from cataloging argument fallacies.

[DavidOdden]

Rather, she's interested in just defining any concept of being open-minded which conforms to how people use the word, and which could count as a "moral virtue" [her words--she's a virtue theorist].

The first part (my emphasis added) is where the error lies. If you're willing to ignore how the term is actually / popularly used, then there can be a virtue of open-mindedness. The proper way to address the question is to treat the term as having an objective meaning, derived from compositional semantics. The fact is that many people use the term quite improperly, where it functions as an accusation of irrationality. Some questions are legitimately open -- we don't know enough to be able to assert that a particular conclusion is certain, and thus we should be open to the possibility that a conclusion is actually false. Not all questions are open; that would imply that knowledge is impossible.

The virtue part of legitimate open-mindedness is the denial of the vice of evasion. When you become aware of a fact (I emphasize the word fact) that challenges your previous conclusions, you should not reject the fact or the alternative conclusion out of hand. You must re-evaluate this new fact, consistent with the virtue of intellectual honesty. And while you should be willing to change your conclusion on the basis of new knowledge, you must also be willing to declare that such-and-such is knowledge, not just a personal position. That mean, given the law of the excluded middle, that you must be closed-minded to all false propositions.

I suggest, then, that you focus not on "how people use the term", but on what virtue could be identified by the expression -- intellectual honesty is the only thing that makes any sense.

[aleph_0]

I'm not familiar with compositional semantics. All the same, if you read my most recent response above, you'll see that Nomy does not wed herself to actual/popular use completely. Judging from your other posts, I think it's safe to assume you're familiar enough with contemporary philosophical literature to know what this amounts to.

And as the original post makes clear, the notion of open-mindedness presented here does not recognize the idea of "open-mindedness to false propositions" as intelligible (at least, on a de dicto reading).

[Grames]

And as the original post makes clear, the notion of open-mindedness presented here does not recognize the idea of "open-mindedness to false propositions" as intelligible (at least, on a de dicto reading).

Interesting original post.

"Open-mindedness" as presented here would require investigating new propositions to determine their truth or falsity, "close-mindedness" means not having to bother. This is clearly a false dichotomy because no one has the time and energy required by open-mindedness to address every potential new proposition, and close-mindedness prevents all learning and progress.

Rand's "active mind" is the solution, and that is a facet of rationality.

[EC]

Rand's "active mind" is the solution, and that is a facet of rationality.

Thank you.

[DavidOdden]

All the same, if you read my most recent response above, you'll see that Nomy does not wed herself to actual/popular use completely.

I don't know why one would want to wed oneself to popular use at all. If you dispose of the requirement for popular usage, you don't have any contradictions weighing oneself down, and you can simply go straight for the actual virtue, namely intellectual honesty (and activity: I've implicitly subsumed having an active mind under the concept of intellectual honesty, though if someone has an argument that that's an error, I'm open-minded).