Posted by Travis Lambert in Anti-Ignorance, Counterculture, Philosophy & Apologetics | 7 Comments
Who and What is Narrow-Minded?
Narrow-mindedness is a legitimate accusation. A person is narrow-minded whenever he fails to give any idea or evidence due consideration. For example, a person who believes that free market capitalism or ethical vegetarianism is the best and truest view without having considered competing views is closed-minded.
However, the assumption that any and every idea and piece of evidence is always worthy of consideration is false for two reasons.
First, some things are not worthy of consideration, like patently immoral choices (like rape) or patently trivial choices (like which cereal to eat for breakfast today). Also, if one can establish that one idea is not significantly different than another, one is justified in maintaining that it is not worthy of special consideration. Say, for example, that you establish that a person’s prejudice against Arabic people is racism, and that all racism is immoral; then it follows that racism towards Arabs merits no special consideration over against racism towards black people.
Second, a person might have concluded on sufficient evidence that a certain hypothesis is true, in which case it is neither reasonable nor necessary for him to continue to reconsider the same evidence. Say, for example, that a scientist has taken soil and water samples from an area in which a certain company is dumping chemical waste. After many repeated experiments, the scientist finds that the company is undoubtedly dumping harmful chemicals into the environment in excess of the legal limit. It would not do for a representative of that company to accuse that scientist of being narrow-minded simply because he has finished his analysis and come to a conclusion. Provided that the evidence is sufficient, the experiments were conducted properly, and the findings were conclusive, it is not incumbent upon the scientist to consider the same evidence again. Reason demands that the scientist come to a conclusion, whether that be that the evidence affirms or denies the hypothesis, or that the evidence is insufficient.
Illustration by Matt Francis
Nor is it even feasible to never come to a conclusion on anything. If one never came to the conclusion that any food, any medicine, or any mode of transportation was sufficiently safe and good, life would be a precarious and absurd affair indeed.
Furthermore, to demand that everyone always remain open-minded about absolutely everything is itself closed-minded, since it fails to consider the possibility that some people may have concluded on sufficient evidence that some hypothesis is true or false, and also the possibility that some things are not worthy of consideration.
Granted, important matters (such as religion, politics, ethics, etc.) require more careful consideration than trivial ones. But it does not automatically follow from the importance of any question that the answer is unknowable. Nor does it necessarily follow that there is more than one correct answer. Nor does it follow that the answer is more difficult to obtain, provided that one has avoided any cognitive biases which would have impaired his judgment. Nor does it follow from the fact that a question is difficult or controversial that a conclusion is false or the answer unknowable. Certain theories in Quantum Physics are both difficult and controversial, but it does not follow that some physicist hasn’t got it right or won’t do so in the future. And anyone who dismisses someone else’s conclusion merely because the matter is difficult or controversial does so at his peril–at the peril of being narrow-minded.
One can only accuse another person of being narrow-minded after one has established that some idea or evidence is, in fact, worthy of consideration and that that person has not, in fact, considered it.
Thus, Christians are not inherently more liable to the charge of closed-mindedness than anyone else, least of all those who narrow-mindedly assert that one must always remain open-minded about everything. If we ought to come to no conclusions, then the conclusion that we ought to come no conclusions should not be come to. It is a self-contradictory position. Thus, we can take the warning that we should always give ideas and evidence due consideration without for a moment being obliged to eternally withhold judgment. Indeed, what does “consideration” mean except thinking about whether something is true?
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I think you’re definitely right that, generally speaking, being strongly convinced that something is true does not make one narrow-minded. I also think it’s probably true that some people insist that others should “be open-minded” simply because they find themselves unable to defeat those people’s arguments or evidence and use this as a way of tacitly asserting their “right to their own opinion.” But I am wary of drawing too specific conclusions from these generalizations. We all tend to seek out evidence that confirms our prior beliefs and give credence to arguments for positions that we are already inclined to hold. So it is very easy and natural to decide that one has effectively settled some matter and no longer needs to consider arguments against one’s opinion when in fact one has not completely rationally evaluated one’s evidence to begin with. In some cases, then, I would think that even if a person has “concluded on sufficient evidence that a certain hypothesis is [probably] true,” he nevertheless ought to occasionally go back and reconsider that same evidence, because he would not be rational in being certain that he correctly evaluated it the first time (even if, by hypothesis, he in fact did).
Now, the point that we can’t do this about everything if we wish to get on with our lives is well-taken. But on important matters like morality and religion I would think reconsideration of our beliefs is rational and even necessary. There’s also always the possibility that new evidence will come to light (e.g., an argument for or against some religious or moral proposition that we have not yet considered), and it is always fallacious to dismiss new evidence against a proposition on the grounds that our old evidence supported that proposition. (I am assuming we are dealing with propositions that are only probabilistically supported by our evidence and not entailed by it.)
Analogies with scientific or perceptual beliefs are also problematic when we’re talking about religious and (controversial) moral beliefs, because while the former are largely agreed upon, at least by relevant experts, the latter are not. The fact of disagreement by people that one reasonably takes to be equally intelligent and well-informed ought to, at the very least, make one open to reconsidering one’s positions. (Whether the disagreement, as opposed to the arguments, of one’s peers ought to count directly as evidence against one’s beliefs is less obvious, but even if it ought not to, I think it certainly counts as a reason to reconsider those beliefs.)
Points well taken, Nevin. I largely agree.
One question: Who are the “relevant experts” in matters of morality?
Good question. Whether there even are such experts is not obvious. But if there either aren’t such experts or if we’re in no position to say who they are, then that seems to make the (epistemic) problem of moral disagreement even worse.
For my part, I’m amenable to the idea that there are moral experts, although I’m not sure I could say who they are. I’m pretty sure it’s not moral philosophers. My inclination is to say that moral saints are moral experts (obviously, one must exercise some moral judgment in identifying a person as a moral saint, but this doesn’t preclude one from deferring to or learning from them on more controversial matters), and that Jesus is the ultimate moral expert (that seems a pretty safe claim).
I’m with you. I think that saints, far more than philosophers, are the experts in matters of morality, and that the ultimate expert is Jesus. The giving of the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount are probably, for us, the ultimate examples of moral authority.
I wonder: How much does that commit us to the proposition that the content of morality is known to us through divine revelation rather than rational reflection? And is there a third way? Don’t passages like Romans 2:15 indicate that at least some of the content of the Moral Law is known to people by means other than divine revelation?
I don’t think those are mutually exclusive. I can learn scientific facts both by the testimony of scientific experts and by performing experiments and observations myself. I can learn mathematical truths by asking a mathematician (or a computer) or deducing them myself. The former is more reliable, often, because of our cognitive or practical limitations; in the case of morality, it is perhaps more reliable because of our cognitive and emotional biases.
Nevertheless, even if in such cases the first method is more reliable, that does not necessarily make it more valuable, all things considered. In going through a mathematical proof myself I can understand the mathematical truth in a way I can’t by just learning it via testimony. Similarly, even if we can learn some moral truths by observing moral experts, I think that rational reflection can lead us to understand those truths in a way we cannot merely by imitating a saint, and is as such worthwhile.
I should also say that I think there may be limits to how much one can learn from looking at the example of saints, because they may not have faced the same situations as we do, and there may be relevant psychological differences between us and them such that we need to do things that would not have been necessary for them (a perfect person would not need to intentionally keep himself away from temptation, for example). I suspect that the main thing we can learn from saints is what kinds of things to value (as goals, as character traits, etc.); reason may still be necessary to figure out how to balance those values.
I’m not sure the analogy between discovering mathematical and moral truths holds. In math, you start from certain self-evident principles or formulas and reason to a particular conclusion. But I think that moral truths are largely self-evident ones. If someone doesn’t believe that murder is morally wrong, what argument can you construct to persuade him? Granted, if he already accepts that murder is wrong, then you could conceivably convince him, say, that abortion is murder, and therefore wrong. But if he doesn’t believe that murder is wrong in the first place, by what process of reasoning could he change his mind?
Most moral truths seem to be self-evident, and as such are perhaps most effectively communicated through a competent authority (i.e., God), rather than comprehended by the intellect; whereas mathematical and scientific conclusions are not self-evident, but results of a process of reasoning, and as such are most effectively arrived at through reason.
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