Article: The Gospel According to Dixon #7: Are You Open to This?

[Dixon]

by Dixon Wragg
WaccoBB.net

In my previous column, I suggested that we need, more than ever, to develop our truth-seeking skills, one of the most fundamental of which is open-mindedness. No one is perfect in their open-mindedness, but we can all learn to do better.

As with so many other virtues, we tend to exaggerate our open-mindedness. We think that we are open-minded, and those who disagree with us must be closed-minded (not to mention stupid, crazy, evil…). The more closed-minded we are, the more likely we are to see ourselves as absolutely open-minded; that’s a great defense mechanism. “I’m totally open-minded. Therefore I have the truth. Therefore I don’t need to look at the possibility that I’m wrong.”

Of course, open- and closed-mindedness are traits that manifest in specific attitudes and actions. To break through our self-deception, we have to honestly assess our behavior in terms of reasonable criteria.

For instance, open-minded people:

• Acknowledge that they may be wrong about anything at any time, no matter how certain they feel, or how important a belief is to them. This is related to Intellectual Humility.
  
  
• Are likely to learn at least the basics of Critical Thinking, the better to root out their own fallacies and disabuse themselves of their illusions.
  
  
• Humbly submit themselves to rules of logic and reason that can correct their mistakes. For instance, they don’t deem their own unsystematic judgment superior to well supported scientific findings.
  
  
• Make an effort to expose themselves to opposing viewpoints and claims, including some that may be unappealing or even antithetical to their cherished beliefs, rather than just surrounding themselves with those who won’t challenge them.
  
  
• Test claims by appropriate standards of reason rather than accepting unsubstantiated claims as true. (The sort of “openness” that involves gullibly swallowing just about any claim that sounds good or assuming that all claims are equally true is not the virtue I’m referring to as open-mindedness.)

The main thrust of this essay will be to look at the signs of closed-mindedness, because while we tend to be aware of our virtues, our vices hide from us. We need to pick through our minds with a sort of metaphorical lice comb to find and purge them. I invite the reader to honestly peruse this list of attitudes and behaviors which usually signify closed-mindedness, with an eye toward improving our thinking by rooting them out.

Likely signs of closed-mindedness:

• Explicitly expressing closed-mindedness. Someone who is near and dear to me has explicitly told me that she chooses closed-mindedness, at least about her religious beliefs, because since she has the truth, about which she couldn’t possibly be wrong, open-mindedness could only lead her astray. Other examples: people saying things like “I know that [such-and-such] is true, and no one will ever convince me otherwise”, and the bumper sticker that says “God said it, I believe it, and that settles it.”
  
  
• Holding that there is no objective basis for making judgments about truth or falsity. If we hold that “Everything is just an illusion” or “Everyone has their own truth”, we’re exempting our beliefs from correction. I’ve dealt with these fallacious positions in some depth in my essay “Reality Is Real—Really!”.
  
  
• Rejection of strategies for correcting our mistakes. Critical thinking, logic, and science are essentially systems designed to correct for our fallacies and foibles. If we reject these, either explicitly, or more unconsciously by not bothering to learn about them, we’re pretty much rejecting the possibility of correction; thus we mostly stay stuck in our beliefs, whether truth or delusion. Rejecting science and rational critique implies either that we don’t believe we could be wrong, or don’t care whether our beliefs are true or illusory. Often, people will embrace, e.g., science when it supports their cherished beliefs, but not when it calls them into question. Then they’ll try to evade correction, for instance by saying that their belief is based on faith, intuition or tradition and is therefore supposedly exempt from rational critique.
  
  
• Conceiving of critique as a personal attack. Many (most?) people feel personally attacked when their beliefs, especially those most important to them, are challenged, however politely. I often hear my New Agey friends characterize challenging someone’s belief as “making them wrong”, as if an act of aggression has taken place. Many will conceive of any argument as a “pissing contest” or battle for dominance, even when that’s not the case (note that, to rationalists, the term “argument” can denote reasoned discussion rather than the closed-minded disputing it usually denotes in common usage). Challenging others’ beliefs is, in some circles, simply socially unacceptable; thus closed-mindedness is reinforced in the social context. The common social taboo against discussing religion or politics is an example.
  
  
• Seeking to “win” arguments. When you enter into discussion with those who disagree, is it your goal to remain unchanged, to “win” the argument by showing that you’re right, rather than allowing yourself to be corrected if you happen to be wrong? This ego trip is a recipe for staying stuck in our delusions (and we all have had them) rather than discovering better and better approximations of truth.
  
  
• Using various maneuvers to evade or short-circuit critique. These range from numerous logical fallacies (even by those who are smart enough to know better), to simply avoiding or terminating discussion with those who would challenge us, to diverting the focus onto tangential issues such as some niggling detail or whether we like the other discussant’s word choice or tone of voice.
  
  
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  Choosing our beliefs. It seems that most of us arrive at our beliefs by a process analogous to shopping. We stroll down the aisle of life, choosing the beliefs we like—this one because of its attractive packaging, this one because nearly everyone we know seems to like it, this one because it appeals to our emotions, this one because our parents used it and we grew up accustomed to it. Contrast this with truth-seeking, which involves using critical thinking principles to distinguish fact from fallacy, accepting that some beliefs we’d like to embrace simply aren’t true, and accommodating ourselves in some honest way to those truths we find unpleasant. If we’re seeking truth rather than constructing a system of illusions that meet our needs, we don’t get to choose our beliefs; we discover what’s true and what isn’t regardless of our preferences.
  
  
• Embracing beliefs for which we can’t articulate compelling arguments. There are far more claims that could be made than there are true ones. Therefore, in the absence of evidence that will stand up under critical scrutiny, a claim is likely to be wrong. A few of us have communication impairments, but the rest of us ought to be able to articulate good reasons for each of our beliefs, or at least find someone more articulate who can, or else drop the belief. This is not appreciated by people I’ve heard say things like “This may not be scientifically true, but I believe it anyway” and “I can’t prove it, but I know it’s true.” If we embrace a belief regardless of evidence or argument and that belief happens to be wrong, how can we be corrected?
  
  
• “Killing the messenger.” One common defense mechanism is the ad hominem attack, also known as “kill the messenger”—evading the issue under discussion by criticizing the “opposing” discussant instead. Even if the criticism is true, it’s irrelevant to the truth or falsity of the issue being discussed. I have been accused of being “in my head too much” when I mount a good argument against someone’s belief, but have never been accused of that when I mount an equally intellectual argument in favor of people’s beliefs! Also, I’m sometimes accused of closed-mindedness. I respond by saying something like “I don’t see this closed-mindedness, but I’m open to having you show it to me. Can you give me an example of something I’ve said or done that shows closed-mindedness?” Never has anyone in such situations come up with an example! It’s a great irony that one of the most common closed-minded defense mechanisms is to see the “opposing” discussant as closed-minded just for disagreeing with us. The underlying assumption seems to be something like “I know I’m right, so anyone who disagrees with me must be closed-minded.”

Not only does the ad hominem attack divert the discussion from the issue at hand, but it allows us to fallaciously invalidate the other discussants so we can ignore the good points they may make, as in: “I don’t have to listen to these jerks because they’re closed-minded / in their heads too much / infidels / just trying to make me wrong / trying to dominate me / oppressive males / ball-busting feminists / Satanically inspired / obnoxious / harsh / rude” etc. If we aspire to open-minded correctability, we must be prepared to accept unpleasant but valid arguments from people we hate, and reject pleasant claims from people we deem wonderful (including ourselves!) if they’re not well supported.

I’ve addressed closed-mindedness in general terms here; consideration of specific fallacies mostly awaits other essays in this series. Nevertheless, I encourage the reader to make good use of this list. If you do your best to see these signs in yourself, you’ll become more conscious of your real attitudes, values and behaviors, especially vis-à-vis openness and closedness. This can make us better, more honest and open-minded thinkers, and that can only be good for the world.