If I am to claim to be generally open-minded then it would seem to be important that I
am not only minded to revise my firmly held beliefs but also that I will not form beliefs
without the benefit of the appropriate sorts of evidence and/or argument.
For Gardner being generally open-minded is untenable as he would take this to be to
hold no firm beliefs at all but as Hare (1985) points out this is to make the mistake of
confusing being generally open-minded with being generally uncommitted. There are
many reasons why an individual might be generally uncommitted including the
possibility that it may reflect a person’s disinclination to engage with issues rather than
any inclination to be open-minded. It is true that there are many things about which
individuals should remain open-minded in the sense of i-iii above and hence have no
firm beliefs (or at least none based on evidence). But there is also a need for those same
individuals to be able to recognise those things about which they should have firm
beliefs while at the same time remain open-minded in the sense of iv above.
To hold no firm beliefs would be to risk unsuccessful navigation in the world and to
increase one’s vulnerability. Everyday experience suggests that some firmly held beliefs
not only protect us from harm (for example, a belief in the damage a motor vehicle can
inflict on a pedestrian) but also must be taken to be true if we are to accept that we live
in a physical and knowable world.
Two FAILURES OF OPEN-MINDEDNESS
Following Aristotle I will claim that there are two failures (vices) of open-mindedness.
One failure is easy to identify as narrow- or closed-mindedness. Often considered to be
the opposite of the open-minded individual, the narrow- or closed-minded person is one
who will come to, or hold, a firm view in spite of evidence to the contrary; it describes
someone who is closed to the possibility that she or he may be wrong. The other failure
is perhaps less obvious and might be described as a failure of the critical component of
open-mindedness; that is a tendency to form, or revise, an opinion without the benefit of
evidence or argument. Such a readiness to believe on weak or insufficient grounds is
credulousness. Thus open-mindedness can be described as a virtue lying at a mean
between closed-mindedness and credulousness.
While the traditional enemy of open-mindedness is closed-mindedness it is possible that
credulousness is a more insidious vice. The closed-minded person will turn away from
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