another way, while there are legitimate restrictions on the autonomy of action of those
in captivity (that is, after all, what it means to be a prisoner) there are nevertheless limits
to those restrictions. Furthermore, restrictions to autonomy of thought and restrictions to
autonomy of the will are not usually considered to be a legitimate part of captivity.
This means that as a prisoner I would expect that certain autonomous choices remain
open to me: choices in relation to worship, exercise, sleep, having milk in my coffee
and so on are choices that I must continue to enjoy should I be required to endure any
periods of legitimate captivity. And I expect these sorts of choices to be available to
others held against their will.
However, my view in particular, that is my view about the particular conditions in
which particular persons are being held in a particular prison will be a view that
requires me to have access to certain sorts of information; information that provides
evidence on which I can say whether or not conditions in the particular case meet my
view in general of what is acceptable in holding persons against their will. Therefore it
remains possible, at least in this instance, for me to remain open-minded in the
particular without compromising my strongly held firm general belief. In addition, and
despite this separation of the general and particular, I can still remain open-minded
about my general firmly held belief in how things ought to be for those held in captivity.
It is likely that Gardner would object to this characterization of the difference between
holding a firm belief in general while being open-minded in particular in the case
illustrated above. He might claim that the example supports his own view of what it is
to be open-minded precisely because the example offers both something very specific
about which to be open-minded (that is where I have not yet come to a view) and a
firmly held belief. This is not, he might say, an example of being open-minded about a
firmly held belief. And in this he would be partly correct. Yet while it would be
tempting to think that because I hold a firm view in general I no longer have an open-
mind about that firm view this would be to confuse two aspects of open-mindedness.
And, if I have understood the literature on open-mindedness correctly, it is these two
aspects that are central to the debates between Gardner on the one hand and Hare and
McLaughlin on the other.
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