Abstract
This paper explores how open-mindedness and its exercise can be social in nature. In particular, it argues that an individual can be regarded as open-minded even though she does not conduct all of the intellectual tasks as required by open-mindedness by herself; that is, she delegates some of these tasks to her epistemic peers. Thinking about open-mindedness in such social terms not only opens up the possibility that there are different and surprising ways for an individual to be open-minded, but can also help offset some recent criticisms raised against open-mindedness and its status as an intellectual virtue.
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Notes
These difficulties have prompted various responses from defenders of open-mindedness. For example, Jason Baehr has argued that an individual’s exercise of open-mindedness is virtuous only if she reasonably believes there is a good chance of reaching the truth (Baehr 2011, p. 210). Similarly, Wayne Riggs has pointed out that there are situations in which we could be close-minded in an open-minded way (Riggs 2010). Both of these responses adopt the strategy of identifying specific conditions under which open-mindedness should or should not be exercised, thus spelling out when it is virtuous and when it is vicious. Both, however, also assume the individualist assumption in that the possessor of the trait is still expected to carry out these intellectual tasks herself, though now under limited circumstances. In this paper, I propose an alternative response to these difficulties by abandoning the individualist assumption understood in this sense.
These accounts of open-mindedness have also been criticized. For instance, Baehr points out that Riggs’s habits of thought are better thought of as preconditions for exercising open-mindedness, as opposed to its core (Baehr 2011). Similarly, Baehr’s requirement is better construed as one among other ways in which a person can give novel ideas serious consideration (Kwong 2016).
As we will see later, this does not preclude the possibility that entities other than individuals, e.g., groups, can be open-minded.
Throughout the essay, I will assume that Jordan undertakes these intellectual activities with the proper motivation, that is, out of a desire for truth, knowledge, and understanding, or to be in closer cognitive contact with reality (Zagzeski 1996). For stylistic reasons, I will sometimes omit the motivational component in my description of Jordan. Unless otherwise stated, she should always be understood as possessing the proper motivation.
This assumption of her competence is not necessarily a requirement for open-mindedness, though possessing it is important for being virtuously open-minded.
Jeremy Fantl and Neil Levy have argued that under some of these circumstances, such as ones involving controversial debates, we ought to be dogmatic and not consider challenges that we fail to understand (Fantl 2018; Levy 2006). Part of the worry here is that when an individual considers these challenges but is unable to respond to them, she would be epistemically worse off than if she did not take them up. In this paper, I will not directly address this important issue, which raises questions tangential to this paper. Rather, I am interested in exploring alternative options that an open-minded person has when she finds herself in these circumstances.
It should, of course, be noted that the present issue has to do with whether active involvement in the process is epistemically relevant to assessing one’s open-mindedness. Thus, I do not have in mind cases in which Jordan acts viciously (i.e., coercing others to do the work for him, or stealing ideas from others).
In this case, we might commend Jordan for taking her time, for if she did not, she would be acting in an epistemically irresponsible way, placing herself in an avoidable position in which she risks the potential loss of true beliefs and acquisition of false ones.
It is difficult to specify what this time frame is. If she does not return to the challenge—say, she forgets about it—then that would be a reason to judge that she is not after all open-minded. However, I am inclined to think that what matters here is intention and motivation. Suppose Jordan suddenly passes away before she has a chance to examine the challenge. Even though she fails to make good on her promise to review the challenge, her initial intention and motivation to do so perhaps suffices to warrant our original evaluation of her as an open-minded person.
We should, of course, be reminded that this person is not in fact dogmatic. The reason for the qualifier “for most of the inquiry” is that the person does at the end consider the merit of his epistemic peers’ findings.
An alternative response is to note that we can simultaneously maintain that both the person and the inquiry or the group are open-minded. For example, the characteristic psychology of open-mindedness can be instantiated by both the individual and the group.
It is important to note that these worries presuppose that open-mindedness is an intellectual virtue only if its exercise is, among other things, reliable. As such, one way to respond to them is simply to argue that its exercise need not be reliable but that it merely needs to be motivated in the right way (see, e.g., Montmarquet 1993). On such a response, this paper reveals several ways in which the properly motivated person could exercise open-mindedness by relying on other people to improve her chances of obtaining intellectual goods.
The same argument could be made for the other profiles, mutatis mutandis.
Notice that under such circumstances, the person also has the option of adopting the Deferentialist stance just noted, and not process the challenge at this point. She could return to it once she has a better grasp of the challenge or when there is some consensus among disputing experts.
I would like to thank an anonymous referee for Erkenntnis for raising this objection.
A different way of stating this point is that she makes the final assessment of the challenge vis-à-vis her beliefs by accepting the relevant expert testimony.
Two additional points should be noted. First, her decision to accept expert testimony, as opposed to making the final assessment herself without it, is itself reflective of her open-mindedness. She is well aware that were she to weigh and assess the evidence herself, she may fail to adequately settle the challenge vis-à-vis her beliefs. Out of considerations pertaining to open-mindedness, she thus chooses to appeal to experts. Second, her acceptance of expert testimony is defeasible in that were she to discover that the testimony did not reflect the intellectual tasks associated with the characteristic psychology of open-mindedness, she would reject it.
Interestingly, some of the considerations advanced by critics of open-mindedness can also be used by the open-minded person in deliberating which expert to trust. For instance, Levy argues that we should not exercise open-mindedness on controversial issues insofar it imposes on us a duty to actively seek out evidence that undermines our existing beliefs (Levy 2006). Rather, he recommends that we appeal to and trust the testimony of experts, in particular those whose moral outlook which we take to be correct. In his view, possessing the right moral beliefs increases the chances of one’s beliefs on these controversial issues of turning out true. My view is that we can incorporate Levy’s advice without accepting his injunction that we should not exercise open-mindedness. As noted, a person can decide which experts to trust out of considerations pertaining to open-mindedness. Specifically, what she is centrally concerned with is to give challenges serious consideration, and to assess them vis-à-vis her beliefs. There is no reason why an appeal to an expert’s moral outlook cannot be used by the open-minded person in determining and assessing whether the expert in question is really giving the views in question serious consideration.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Adam Estabrook and Luke Kwong for their help and advice in writing this paper. I would also like to thank the anonymous referees for Erkenntnis for their insightful comments and suggestions.
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Kwong, J.M.C. The Social Dimension of Open-Mindedness. Erkenn 88, 235–252 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-020-00348-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-020-00348-8