epistemological virtue of open mindedness

Dewey’s How We Think and the Epistemological Virtue of Open-Mindedness.

Dewey’s definition of open-mindedness has two aspects which are jointly necessary to fully grasp the concept:

First, and possibly most importantly, being open minded means not having prejudice, partisanship, and “other such habits as close the mind and make it unwilling to consider new problems and entertain new ideas”. This part of the definition implies that open-mindedness is an epistemological attitude that both allows for new ways of tackling old problems, the consideration of handling new problems in both new and old ways. One idea opposite of open-mindedness is not only closed-mindedness (which could be characterized only accepting old answers to old problems).

But there’s another element of open-mindedness that needs to be addressed: the second natural enemy to open mindedness is empty-mindedness, which is the susceptibility of certain minds to be too quick to adopt new solutions to problems better solved by older methods, or accepting to tackle a new problem where there isn’t a problem to be solved. Dewey likens empty mindedness to an empty house, one that has a big “vacancy” sign out front and invites all comers. So being open minded, while allowing for the thorough recognition of our own fallibility, also retains to old ideas when they’re better anchored in experience, and keeps the good aspects of old ideas when possible.

A very interesting sentence is: “Self-conceit often regards it as a sign of weakness to admit that a belief to which we have once committed ourselves is wrong.” This sentence implies that admitting to your own mistakes is oftentimes a sign of a person who has more agreeable epistemological attitudes. And of course the entire article takes for granted that having better or worse epistemological attitudes is indicative of whether inquirers reach correct conclusions about the world. The quotations Dewey provides from Mill and Locke both talk about how the mind is constantly making conclusions about the world, yet there are many ways in which our conclusions can go wrong. Having an open mind allows us to both acknowledge that some (and for some, probably a lot!) of the conclusions and generalizations we’ve arrived at about the world are wrong, yet it doesn’t lead inquirers to the pitfalls of extreme skepticism either. The epistemological virtue of open mindedness allows inquirers to think critically about their own inquiry.

(Text: John Dewey, How we Think)