Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T17:01:37.519Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Open-mindedness as a Corrective Virtue

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2020

Hassan Alsharif  and
John Symons
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper argues that open-mindedness is a corrective virtue. It serves as a corrective to the epistemic vice of confirmation bias. Specifically, open-mindedness is the epistemically virtuous disposition to resist the negative effects of confirmation bias on our ability to reason well and to evaluate evidence and arguments. As part of the defense and presentation of our account, we explore four discussions of open-mindedness in the recent literature. All four approaches have strengths and shed light on aspects of the virtue of open-mindedness. Each mentions various symptoms of confirmation bias and some explore aspects of the corrective role of open-mindedness. However, ours is the first to explicitly identify open-mindedness as a corrective virtue to the specific epistemic vice of confirmation bias. We show how the corrective account also permits a response to the concern that open-mindedness might not actually count as a virtue.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 96 , Issue 1 , January 2021 , pp. 73 - 97
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy, 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ahlstrom-Vij, Kristoffer, Epistemic paternalism: a defence (London: Palgrave, 2013).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baehr, Jason, ‘The structure of open-mindedness’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 41 (2011), 191–213.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baehr, Jason, The inquiring mind: On intellectual virtues and virtue epistemology (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).Google Scholar
Carter, Adam and Gordon, Emma, ‘Openmindedness and truth’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 44 (2014), 207–224.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, Jonathon and Pollard, Paul, ‘Debiasing by instruction: The case of belief bias’, European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 6 (1994), 263–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fantl, Jeremy, The Limitations of the Open Mind (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foot, Philippa, Virtues and vices and other essays in moral philosophy (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerace, Adam, Day, Andrew, Casey, Sharon and Mohr, Philip, ‘An exploratory investigation of the process of perspective taking in interpersonal situations’ Journal of Relationships Research, 4 (2013). doi:10.1017/jrr.2013.6CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gigerenzer, Gerd and Goldstein, Daniel G., ‘Reasoning the Fast and Frugal Way: Models of Bounded Rationality’, Psychological Review, 10 (1996) 650–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gigerenzer, Gerd, Todd, Peter, and the ABC Research Group, (eds.) Simple Heuristics that Make Us Smart (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).Google Scholar
Goldman, Alvin, ‘The unity of the epistemic virtues’ In: Fairweather, A., Zagzebski, L. (eds.) Virtue epistemology: Essays on epistemic virtue and responsibility (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) 30–48.Google Scholar
Haselton, Martie G., Nettle, Daniel and Murray, Damian R., ‘The evolution of cognitive bias’ in. Buss, David M. (ed.) The handbook of evolutionary psychology, Vol. 2 (New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2015) 968–87.Google Scholar
Hintikka, Jaakko, ‘A fallacious fallacy?’ Synthese, 140 (2004) 25–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koriat, Asher, Lichtenstein, Sarah, and Fischhoff, Baruch, ‘Reasons for confidence’ Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human learning and memory 6.2 (1980) 107.Google Scholar
Klayman, Joshua ‘Varieties of confirmation bias’, Psychology of learning and motivation. 32 (1995) 385–418.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kurtz, Richard M. and Garfield, Sol L., ‘Illusory correlation: A further exploration of Chapman's paradigm’, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 46 (1978) 1009–1015.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kwong, Jack, ‘Open-Mindedness as Engagement.’ The Southern Journal of Philosophy 54 (2016) 70–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kwong, Jack, ‘Is Open-Mindedness Conducive to Truth?’ Synthese, 194 (2017) 1613–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lilienfeld, Scott O., Ammirati, Rachel, and Kristin Landfield, ‘Giving debiasing away: Can psychological research on correcting cognitive errors promote human welfare? ’ Perspectives on psychological science 4 (2009) 390–398.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Milkman, Katherine L., Chugh, Dolly, and Bazerman, Max H., ‘How can decision making be improved?’ Perspectives on psychological science 4 (2009), 379–383.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Morewedge, Carey K., Yoon, Haewon, Scopelliti, Irene, Symborski, Carl W., Korris, James H., and Kassam, Karim S., ‘Debiasing decisions: Improved decision making with a single training intervention’ Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences 2 (2015), 129–140.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mynatt, Clifford, Doherty, Michael, and Ryan Tweney, ‘Confirmation bias in a simulated research environment: An experimental study of scientific inference’ Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 29 (1977) 85–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newstead, Stephen, Pollard, Paul, Jonathan Evans and Julie Allen. ‘The source of belief bias effects in syllogistic reasoning’ Cognition 45 (1992) 257–284.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nickerson, Raymond, ‘Confirmation bias: A ubiquitous phenomenon in many guises’ Review of general psychology, 2 (1998) 175–220.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oswald, Margit E. and Grosjean, Stefan, ‘Confirmation bias’, In Pohl, Rudigher (ed) Cognitive illusions: A handbook on fallacies and biases in thinking, judgement and memory, New York: Psychology Press (2004) 79–96Google Scholar
Pollock, John L. ‘Epistemic norms’, Synthese (1987) 61–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rendsvig, Rasmus and Symons, John, ‘Epistemic Logic’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2019 Edition), Zalta, Edward N. (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2019/entries/logic-epistemic/>..>Google Scholar
Riggs, Wayne, ‘Open-Mindedness’ Metaphilosophy, 41 (2010) 172–188.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roberts, Robert and West, Ryan, ‘Natural epistemic defects and corrective virtues’, Synthese 192 (2015), 2557–2576.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sellier, Anne-Laure, Scopelliti, Irene, and Morewedge, Carey K. ‘Debiasing training improves decision making in the field’, Psychological science 30 (2019) 1371–1379.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Symons, John, ‘Intuition and philosophical methodology’, Axiomathes 18 (2008) 67–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Symons, John, Formal Reasoning: A Guide to Critical Thinking (Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt 2017).Google Scholar
Taylor, Rebecca, ‘Open-Mindedness: An Intellectual Virtue in the Pursuit of Knowledge and Understanding’, Educational Theory, 66 (2016), 599–618.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tweney, Ryan D., Doherty, Michael E., Worner, Winifred J., Pliske, Daniel B., Mynatt, Clifford R., Gross, Kimberly A. and Arkkelin, Daniel L., ‘Strategies of rule discovery in an inference task’, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 32 (1980), 109–123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Villarroel, Constanza, Felton, Mark, and Garcia-Mila, Merce, ‘Arguing against confirmation bias: The effect of argumentative discourse goals on the use of disconfirming evidence in written argument’, International Journal of Educational Research 79 (2016) 167–179.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wason, Peter C., ‘On the failure to eliminate hypotheses in a conceptual task’ Quarterly journal of experimental psychology 12 (1960), 129–140.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zagzebski, Linda, Virtues of the mind: An inquiry into the nature of virtue and the ethical foundations of knowledge, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996).CrossRefGoogle Scholar