Open-Mindedness

What Open-Mindedness means in shared life

At the planning meeting, you have sorted response cards into “for us” and “against us.” An objection from another association explains that the event time clashes with the very service your project hopes to support. You move the card between the two piles, then put the piles away. The objection has supplied a better date.

Open-Mindedness gives…

The plan can draw on more experience than the group already contains. Disagreement becomes a source of possible correction as well as a fact to manage.

Finding the balance

A hearing is the start of assessment. Evidence, relevance and practical constraints still determine what deserves weight.

In ordinary life

An unfamiliar proposal

Summarize its strongest reason before deciding whether it helps.

A disagreement over priorities

Ask what experience makes the other concern salient rather than guessing a hostile motive.

Nearby virtues, different work

Humility

Humility recognizes your limits; Open-Mindedness makes space to consider an alternative.

Fairness

Fairness gives relevant interests due consideration when choosing among alternatives.

Recognizing a counterfeit

A counterfeit of Open-Mindedness: Endless suspension of judgment invites every view but accepts responsibility for no conclusion. Reach a decision and state what evidence would prompt reconsideration.

How to cultivate Open-Mindedness

• Separate the claim from your impression of its source.
• Ask a question whose answer could alter your view.
• Say why you accept, reject or remain uncertain about the proposal.

Try it today

Read one reasoned objection to a modest plan you favor. State its strongest relevant point in your own words, then decide whether any part should change. You need not engage with threats or give abusive messages a platform.

Questions worth returning to

• What did I learn before deciding whether I agree?
• What evidence would change my answer?

Choose your practice

The situations on these pages are illustrative. These pages offer ideas for reflection and character practice, not professional advice. Choose practices suited to your circumstances and abilities. You may adapt, pause, or skip an exercise; putting yourself or someone else at risk is not proof of virtue.

Quotations and further reading

Read these passages in their original settings through the source links.

1. They ought to live in publicity, vying with each other; and it seems to me that (the régime of tolerance once granted, and a fair field shown) the scientist has nothing to fear for his own interests from the liveliest possible state of fermentation in the religious world of his time.

   William James, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy
   Preface

   James favors open competition among different religious hypotheses under tolerance; unfamiliar views are to meet public inquiry.

2. This might have been a small matter; for who or what on earth that is good for anything is not assailed by ignorance, stupidity, or malice—and sometimes even by just objection?

   Theophrastus (fictional narrator), in George Eliot, Impressions of Theophrastus Such
   III. How We Encourage Research.

   Eliot’s satire puts a just objection beside ignorance and malice: an attack cannot be dismissed merely because it is unwelcome.

3. But does it follow that the minority should have no representatives at all?

   John Stuart Mill, Considerations on Representative Government
   Representation of All, and Representation of the Majority only.

   Being outvoted does not imply having no voice. Mill keeps deliberative representation distinct from winning the decision.

4. International peace is never coming by an increase of similarities (this is the old-fashioned crowd-philosophy); international peace is coming by the frankest and fullest kind of recognition of our differences.

   Mary Parker Follett, The New State
   XXXV the world state

   Follett argues that cooperation must recognize differences. The application here concerns hearing an objection, not promising agreement.

5. The usefulness of an opinion is itself matter of opinion: as disputable, as open to discussion, and requiring discussion as much, as the opinion itself.

   John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
   CHAPTER II. OF THE LIBERTY OF THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION.

   Mill makes even a claim of usefulness answerable to discussion; good intentions cannot settle every objection.

6. "The nobler-minded man," he remarked, "will be agreeable even when he disagrees; the small-minded man will agree and be disagreeable."

   Confucius, The Analects of Confucius
   Book Xiii;
   Chinese; English translation by William Jennings

   Confucius separates agreement from the quality of a relationship. An outside objection need not be treated as hostility merely because it differs.

7. We are complementary to each other because of our different outlooks upon life which have given us different aspects of truth.

   Rabindranath Tagore, Nationalism
   Nationalism in the West

   Tagore writes of East and West while criticizing imperial power. He still finds knowledge in a different outlook, without treating that recognition as assent to domination.

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