Too little
Narrative loyalty
The elaborate theory explains more, so it deserves to win.
Drama and personal investment shield the account from comparison.
Open-Mindedness
Consider a less dramatic explanation with the same care you give the theory that makes you feel perceptive.
Readiness to give unfamiliar reasons or perspectives a fair hearing.
Open-Mindedness gives unfamiliar reasons and perspectives a fair hearing. In ambiguous situations, it makes room for an ordinary explanation as well as a dramatic one, and for the perspective that unsettles the observer’s self-image. It does not require equal belief after evidence is weighed.
Open-Mindedness gives a fair hearing for the less dramatic account
A dramatic theory explains every odd detail on the board. A quiet participant offers a mundane possibility involving a delayed delivery and an ordinary scheduling mistake. You do not reward the quieter account for being modest; you give both accounts the same chance to meet the evidence.
Finding the balance in Open-Mindedness
A dramatic theory and a mundane explanation from an overlooked participant must face the same evidential test. The arrows are dramatic; the loose knot remains unimpressed.
A fitting response
Active consideration
State what each explanation predicts and compare those predictions with the available facts.
An alternative receives a real test without automatic assent.
Pursued too far
Permanent openness
No explanation may ever be rejected.
Receptiveness becomes refusal to let evidence decide.
Open-Mindedness governs the quality of consideration; it does not forbid a proportionate decision when the evidence becomes clear.
What Open-Mindedness makes possible
A surprising or unglamorous explanation can correct the account before suspicion recruits more private facts and more confident errors.
Open-Mindedness in ordinary life
A missed meeting
Consider a scheduling mistake alongside intentional disregard.
An unfamiliar proposal
State its strongest reason before offering the objection.
Nearby virtues, different work
Discernment
Open-Mindedness admits alternatives; Discernment evaluates their warrant.
Humility
Humility recognizes personal limits; Open-Mindedness gives the resulting alternative a real hearing.
Open-Mindedness and its counterfeits
Exoticism
Preferring the strangest account merely reverses the bias toward familiarity.
False equivalence
Hearing an option does not require ignoring strong contrary evidence.
How to cultivate Open-Mindedness
Name one ordinary and one unfamiliar alternative to the favored account.
State what evidence each explanation would lead you to expect.
Let the better-supported account prevail without mocking the discarded one.
Try it today
Take one confident low-stakes explanation and state what a plausible alternative would predict differently.
Questions worth returning to
- Which account makes me feel unusually perceptive?
- Have I given the inconvenient alternative enough detail to be testable?
Keep the practice proportionate
Open-mindedness does not require endless access, unsafe contact, or tolerance of manipulation. Consider alternatives through safe, relevant evidence.
Quotations and further reading
Seven selections to return to through the week. Follow a source link to read the surrounding passage.
But suppose that the real betrayer of your brother--Ziemianitch had a part in it too, but insignificant and quite involuntary--suppose that he was a young man, educated, an intellectual worker, thoughtful, a man your brother might have trusted lightly, perhaps, but still--suppose....
The hypothetical moves betrayal away from the convenient culprit and toward an educated young man. Its force comes from making Natalia consider a painful alternative.
Evidently, too, he wanted my help, a matter that might well have influenced my opinion on the facts, had he been other than he was.
Carruthers notices how being needed could bias his reading of Davies. Naming the incentive creates room to reassess the facts.
You have no further evidence, I suppose, than that which you have placed before us—no suggestive detail which might help us?”
Holmes asks for the small detail that might disturb the current account. Open-mindedness is active here: it searches for what the first telling omitted.
If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.
Thoreau grants the objection its strongest form before marking the point where complicity changes the answer. Alternatives are tested, not merely displayed.
The sketch might, perhaps, have been wholly omitted, without loss to the public, or detriment to the book; but, having undertaken to write it, he conceives that it could not have been done in a better or a kindlier spirit, nor, so far as his abilities availed, with a livelier effect of truth.
Nathaniel Hawthorne · The Scarlet Letter · captured passage near source unit 3
The narrator entertains the criticism of his own framing. That self-questioning reminds the reader that selection shapes every account.
Perhaps he had been Lord Alloa of the night before; perhaps not; it didn’t matter.
Hannay leaves identity unresolved because the immediate decision does not depend on settling it. Open-mindedness can preserve an alternative without chasing it.
Perhaps a maiden lady on Clapham Common is only the policeman that might have been.
G. K. Chesterton · The Man Who Was Thursday · captured passage near source unit 325
Chesterton’s comic inversion unsettles a tidy category. The joke earns its place by making the reader try another social explanation.
Continue through the catalog
Practice this collection
Choose this approved collection as an optional workbook program, or select individual virtues in My Virtues.