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Question of the Month

How Do You Change Someone’s Mind?

Each answer below receives a book. Apologies to the entrants not included.

It’s imperative to analyse the question before providing an answer, for the question has several possible implications. For instance, changing a person’s mind could indicate that you present sufficient evidence to alter a person’s actions, either before they are enacted or during their execution; to alter a person’s ideas which they believe to be factual; or to alter a person’s characteristics by comparing what the person thinks of themself to what society reflects of them. However, notice that each implication is rooted in humanity’s distinguishing faculty: rationality.

Let me refer back to Plato (c.427-347 BCE) and his Allegory of the Cave, where prisoners are held captive since birth and subjected to shadow puppetry and disembodied voices while unable to move any portion of their bodies.

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