On Open- and Closed-Mindedness

Are you open-minded or closed-minded? Does it matter? How do you see yourself? How do others perceive you? Is one better than the other?

(Most philosophical questions, if we dig deeply enough, become problems of epistemology, or the philosophy of knowledge. That is, they morph into a question of how we can know something, or anything, for that matter. It might sound absurd, but it is nonetheless true. We frequently believe that we know things when we really don't, and there may be cases in which we can know something, but we don't, or we reject it. These situations, along with the pervasive desire to control others, are fundamental to most relational problems. Open- and close-mindedness are especially susceptible to this epistemological black hole because, ultimately, these labels describe particular attitudes with respect to one's openness to new ideas, whether or how they can be known to be true and good, and to what degree and why someone might embrace or reject them. The difficulty posed in writing this is that, should I remain on the surface layer of the topic, then this will do very little for anyone, and have little more meaning than a common Internet meme. However, I can't simply jump from open-mindedness to the deepest questions of epistemology, as that would almost certainly lose or drown most readers, and perhaps even appear -- or be -- senseless. Consequently, my intention is to introduce the problem as it appears in daily life, then quickly dive to deeper, important questions, briefly noting the important steps along the way.)

There are many cliches floating through our culture that reference being "open-minded":

• A mind is like a parachute. It works best when open.
• How open does your mind have to be before your brain falls out?
• It is okay to open your mind. Your brain won't fall out!
• The problem with an open mind is that people will come along and try to put things into it.
• Open your mind before you open your mouth.
• There is always someone who knows something you don't know.

There are others, but they tend to be adaptations of these, or are more obscure. You've probably heard people say such things, or have seen them written here or there. People reference the above sayings (and similar) with a variety of motivations.

• They personally find it inspiring or true.
• They think you (or others in general) should be more open-minded in general.
• They think you (or others in general) should be more open-minded about something in particular.

It is interesting that, at least in the current culture, the tendency seems to be to encourage open-mindedness -- it is seen as a positive characteristic. If I describe one person as open-minded, and another as closed-minded, it is perceived that I am more positive about the former -- that he is better than the closed-minded person.

What does it mean to be Open-Minded?

Opinions vary. Some say that it has to do with not making judgments. Some say that it has to do with being willing to hear and entertain ideas that are new, different or perhaps in conflict with one's own. Sometimes it seems to be associated with not really having any clear, distinct ideas of one's own, or someone who just goes along with whatever comes along.

My wife suggested that the appearance of open-mindedness can be associated with simply placing the relationship above being or feeling right. I'm not quite sure what she was getting at. ;)

Some things are difficult to define precisely or understand in and of themselves, but make more sense to us when considered relative to their opposite or privation. So we might ask, what is the opposite of being open-minded, or what does it mean to lack open-mindedness? A person who is called closed-minded might refuse to even listen to alternative or "new" ideas. Perhaps he seems quick to reject them, and for reasons that are not clear.

Another way to begin to grasp something is to simultaneously consider extreme cases. In extremes, the open-minded person seems to not make any judgments about the rightness or wrongness, goodness or badness, of any act, idea or belief. He is equally accepting (and non-committal) about all of them. The extremely closed-minded person not only rejects (makes judgments about) ideas, but refuses to even hear or entertain them or arguments for them. Any idea not already within or approved is pre-judged to be wrong and bad. Now, there may be more to it, but this seems to indicate that one's mindedness has to do with how he makes judgments about acts, ideas and beliefs. In other words, how or on what basis do we discern the truth and goodness of a thing? On one end of the spectrum, anything foreign is pre-judged to be false/bad, often without even being given a hearing. On the other end, however, it is as if there isn't any right or wrong; all things are equivalent, all opinions are equally valid. Whether one wants to say that this represents an absence of judgment, or a kind of judgment that morality is a delusion is an interesting question, but might not make a lot of difference in application.

When it seems that a characteristic has extremes, and both extremes are negative yet there is a positive perception of a middle position, anyone with a smattering of philosophical training is going to be reminded of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. You've all read this, right? Okay, maybe not. The short story is that our word virtue is related to an idea of excellence (specifically of character), and this excellence has to do with a balancing of traits -- the trait should be neither extreme nor absent. (Do not take this idea and run too far with it. In Aristotle's ethics and the virtue-ethics tradition into which it evolved, not everything fits this privation-excess framework. Some things are always wrong -- there isn't any "happy middle." This is a concept that is so routinely misapplied that I almost hesitate to mention it.)

Courage is an easy example, and has to do with the presence of fear. The person that we think of as having the virtue of courage isn't someone who has no fear whatsoever; that guy is rash or foolish, and takes stupid risks. Such people are the annual recipients of the Darwin award. On the other hand, the person who is too fearful is considered a coward. The person we think of as courageous is the one who has fear proportional to the circumstances, but is able to control it and do the right thing anyway. he has fear, but it isn't excessive and it doesn't rule him (a dynamic that comes up frequently in ethics).

If we bring this concept of virtue being in the middle to the practice of entertaining various ideas and making judgments, then the virtuous position is not at the extremes, but somewhere in the middle. However, people rarely identify themselves at or with the extremes of these perspectives. Rather, they tend to perceive and present themselves near the middle, maybe a little to one side or the other, and say that those who differ from them are at the extremes (and are proportionally stupid). If you reject my idea, or an idea that I think is good, then you are (too) closed-minded. If you accept ideas that I think are foolish, then you are too open-minded -- your brain is falling out. And so on. Consequently, it seems hard to escape a sense of subjectivity when it comes to defining one's self or others with respect to open- or closed-mindedness. So we need to address this question of discernment and judgment.

Kinds of Judgments

When we discuss or think about an event, idea, belief or action, it seems that there are three fundamental questions. The first is to understand the thing, itself: what it is or isn't. Many (appropriately named) misunderstandings begin here, in a failure to truly understand what a thing is, and yet hastily proceed to the next two questions.

EXAMPLE: Jose is a new employee in your department. Your friend and coworker, Deborah, tells you that she thinks Jose has a problem with her. He wouldn't talk with her when she approached him during their break. "I just said hello to him, to welcome him. He mumbled something and walked off." She went on to complain about how every Mexican man she has ever known treated her that way, and she is sick of it. The implication, of course, is that Jose is racist, since he is Hispanic and Deborah is black.

Judgments about people are often made just this quickly. A few words or seconds. A glance. There are several things happening here at once (this is generally a sequential process, though we sometimes go back through it multiple times with respect to the same event for further contemplation):

1. The material event.
2. The perception of that event.
3. The interpretation of the perception (along with various assumptions).
4. Judgment regarding truth, rightness and goodness.

We can see all of these at play in Deborah's experience. There is no doubting the actual event of her interaction with Jose (though it may be retrospectively colored by her assumptions, interpretation and corresponding emotions). Anyone else witnessing the interaction saw Deborah say hello to Jose, and then him mumble something and move away. However, some might see what he did afterward, or knew him before, and know more about the overall circumstances. Their perception is going to be wider than Deborah's, which seems to encompass only a few seconds.

In any event, Deborah then interprets her perception of that event with respect to her own beliefs, values, experiences and assumptions. At some point she makes a judgement about the meaning of the event, and her judgment is that she was ignored because of their racial differences. She further judges that to be an immoral act, and Jose to be an immoral person. Needless to say, she doesn't like him, and may experience other emotional reactions.

In philosophy-speak "understanding" is often called apprehending. This is a difficult term to employ in common use because it is more commonly associated with negative things -- such a someone apprehending a bad guy, or having apprehensions -- but in our context it refers to actually perceiving and understanding a thing as it is present to us. This leads to the second question that is relevant with respect to our topic, which is the truth or rightness of the event, idea, belief or action.

Judgments have Consequences

Let us assume, for the sake of the discussion, that Deborah's perception of the event is accurate (if a little narrow). The next question is whether her interpretation of the meaning of the event is true, false, or some mix of the two. It is possible that Deborah's interpretation is correct. However, there are several other possibilities beyond Jose being racist:

• Perhaps Jose isn't racist, but sexist (the reader can have fun deciding which is worse).
• Perhaps Jose isn't uncomfortable with Deborah in particular, but is just a quiet person or otherwise socially awkward.
• Perhaps Jose is stressed about something.
• Perhaps another employee had warned him not to have any contact with Deborah.
• Perhaps Jose is married and doesn't feel comfortable interacting with other women casually.
• Perhaps Jose misunderstood what Deborah said to him, or has limited hearing.
• Perhaps Jose actually finds Deborah attractive, but is insecure and responded awkwardly to her friendly contact.

The main problem here is that Deborah has made a judgment regarding truth and morality on very limited information. And that is something we all have to be careful of. Unfortunately for Jose, Deborah is close friends with the head of the Human Resources department, which may prove to be a problem for his future career.

This is, in fact, an example of close-mindedness. That is, when we are hasty about making judgments about events and people in conformity with our own prejudices, without taking into account that we don't have all of the information, and there very well may be other explanations. This may seem a trivial matter, but careers and relationships can be destroyed over less. I've even seen people sent to prison for it.

Last year I was on a jury for the trial of a grandfather who had been accused of "inappropriately touching" two grandsons. The boys were very young, perhaps 4 and 9, if I recall. The older boy's story was contradicted by another witness's testimony, and sounded more like a weird, semi-lucid dream. The younger boy frequently slept in his grandparents' bed and claimed that, on one of these occasions, grandpa touched his genitals. It wasn't clear whether either of these events ever actually happened, were suggested by others, etc. There was no supporting evidence, and no other witnesses. The man had no record of such behavior, no record of pornography of any kind, etc. He repeatedly claimed he was innocent, voluntarily spoke with police, took a lie detector test, and so on. Having seen (and personally experienced) how children can make up stories and even deliberately lie about things that happen to them, I was hesitant to, effectively, hang a man without any kind of supporting evidence, merely on the basis of an accusation, and a fuzzy one at that.

He was originally faced with something like six different charges, and the jurors were ready to bury him on all counts until I actually wrote the charges out on the board and asked them to explain and justify how they applied. Most did not (and I learned later that we had been given distorted jury instructions, as well as distorted descriptions of the charges and applicable law).

Perhaps he did abuse those boys. Perhaps he did not. The one thing that is certain is that none of us in the jury knew with any justified certainty one way or the other. One of the things that was fascinating (and frightening) in the jury deliberation room, though, was the judgments made by the various jurors. Several said words to the effect of, "I just know he's guilty." When I asked how they knew, they responded with, "I just know." A couple argued that children don't make up accusations like that (which is demonstrably false).

The jurors were very frustrated that I would not "side" with them. In exasperation, and even with tears in her eyes, one asked what evidence I required in order to change my vote to guilty. I replied, "well, any would do."

In the end, the vote to convict was 10 to 2 on one count, and 11 to 1 on the other. I voted not guilty on both counts, not because I knew him to be innocent, but because I knew that we did not have enough evidence -- seeing as we really didn't have any -- to judge that it was true that he had done bad (especially not "beyond any reasonable doubt").

That grandfather was sentenced to many years in prison, convicted on two counts of felony sexual abuse of a minor (pedophilia). He probably will not survive the sentence given his age, health and the nature of the conviction.

Looking back, there is a sense in which I genuinely hope that he was actually guilty.

Judging and Pre-Judging

When we make judgments about events and people, it is important that we are (1) aware of the basis on which we are making those judgments (and its scope, strengths and limitations), (2) are open to contradictory information, and (3) are cognizant of absence (characterized by the phrase "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence," which means, basically, that the fact that I don't know or can't think of an alternative explanation isn't proof or evidence that there isn't one).

The certainty of my judgment regarding the truth of a matter needs to be proportional to the kind and scope of the evidence. But this is extremely difficult calculus to perform, especially once emotions get involved. The problem is captured in the phrase, we don't know what we don't know. When we experience and then interpret an event, we do so according to our own wits, which are severely limited (but often don't seem so from within their inescapable confines). Indeed, the key to being appropriately open-minded is precisely to be aware of our own limitations to know things, aware that we often don't have all of the relevant information and are sometimes wrong. It is this very self-awareness of one's limitedness that prompts a cautious openness to alternative ideas and explanations.

It may be that my apprehension and interpretation of an event is correct, it may be that someone else's is correct, or it may be that neither of us is correct -- there is some other understanding that neither of us is aware of, or perhaps rejected.

Most of our judgments are predicated upon our own experiences and the beliefs and values that have been massaged, socialized, conditioned into us. We typically assimilate new or complex ideas by relating them to something that we already understand. When we can't do so, or find it too difficult, the new idea is usually discarded. In some cases, we make conscious choices about the bases upon which we will make judgments. Depending on the topic, I've read or personally heard the following. It usually begins with the implied phrase, "I'll only believe it if...":

... it comes from the Bible (or another religious text or authority).
... it can be proven by science (or mathematics or logic).
... it can be demonstrated from history.
... it is affirmed by my feelings (though usually not said exactly that way).
... I see or experience it myself (or if a trusted person experiences it).

(For example, my last article on non-aggression prompted correspondence with a graduate student in history who basically said that he would not accept any political principle unless it could be demonstrated from history.) In all of these cases, we are looking for some kind of evidence or justification, but only from certain sources with which we feel comfortable, safe. Indeed, rather than accept, sometimes people will reject ideas because of their source. Ironically, both approaches -- whether to accept or reject something based solely on its source -- are manifestations of a very common reasoning error, a version of what is known in philosophy and the genetic fallacy.

Such reasoning accepts or rejects an idea purely (or mostly) on the basis of its genesis or origin and path. We do this all the time. We accept things as true if they are told to us by persons or sources we like and trust (even if they are wrong), and we reject things as false when they come from persons or sources we don't like or trust (even if they are right).

Such behaviors serve us well as children, when we don't have enough intelligence, experience or wisdom to discern the truth of complex matters independently. In such cases, it is natural for us to rely on the advice and judgments of those who we respect and trust. It keeps us alive, and relatively-intact, if nothing else. But that is, as I said, appropriate for children. A difficulty that we all face in maturation is whether we truly do mature in the sense of growing out of our childish dependencies, or do we simply fill the roles formerly occupied by mom and dad with other figures and institutions? For too many people, I fear that the latter is the case.

You Are Free to Believe the Truth

When presented with an idea that does not correspond to what we want or like, the appropriate response is neither automatic rejection nor acceptance, but to ask, "what if this is true," and "how can I discern the truth here?"

We can return to this question, as well as the one of discerning moral values, in a future installment. For now, I wish to conclude by sharing with you a concept presented to me many years ago by Dr. Frank Spina of Seattle Pacific University: "It doesn't matter whether an idea contradicts everything you've ever been told and believed. If it is true, you are free to believe it."

It seems obvious or self-evident when said out loud, but it is precisely what we -- and by we I mean pretty much everyone -- typically fail to do (an exception being children who have not yet been conditioned otherwise). We tend only to accept and believe those things that are congruent with what we already believe, and we tend to reject things that are contrary without giving them due consideration. In this we aren't really discerning the truth of the idea, but merely the degree to which it corresponds to our own beliefs and desires -- we are being defensive. Whether this is conditioned or innate is not clear, but it is the real difference between being open- and close-minded. That is, it appears that people -- even those who claim to be open-minded, tolerant, etc. -- are actually rather closed-minded and intolerant when it comes to anything that contradicts their personal beliefs.

Sometimes the truth about man can be uncomfortable or even painful, but it is extremely freeing to move from being focused on defending (and imposing) your personal beliefs to simply being focused on seeking and believing truth, whatever that turns out to be. It is freeing to be able to say, "I might be wrong about this, but it seems to me that...." It is freeing to be able to say, "I don't know, but perhaps we can figure it out together." When we seek truth, rather than to defend our own beliefs, matters that, beforehand, would have been very personal, emotionally-loaded and contentious, gradually become much easier to bear.