Your complimentary articles

You’ve read all of your complimentary articles for this month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please

If you are a subscriber please sign in to your account.

To buy or renew a subscription please visit Subscriptions.

If you are a print subscriber you can contact us to create an online account.

Articles

Assessing One’s Own Open-Mindedness

Are you open-minded? Before you answer, says William Hare, ask yourself the following ten questions...

In his excellent guide to baloney detection, published in Scientific American in 2001, Michael Shermer provides ten questions to help us distinguish between science and pseudoscience. At the conclusion, he reminds us that the method he offers is not foolproof. We assign high or low probabilities to various ideas, and there are borderland claims where we are more cautious, but in every case, Shermer comments, we need to remain open-minded and flexible given that any of our beliefs may need to be revised in the light of emerging evidence.

Suppose, however, it occurs to us to wonder if we are, in fact, open-minded. The ideal of open-mindedness requires, with respect to our beliefs, that we steer a path between empty-minded credulity and dogmatic resistance, and to remain alert to the traps and pitfalls that undermine our attempts to examine claims in a disinterested manner.

…