Comments on Philosophy, et cetera: Open-Mindedness

This was well written. I wished I could cite you f...

2007-04-14T05:19:04.332-04:00

This was well written. I wished I could cite you for an essay however I doubt a blog entry will suffice as an adequate reference.

I would have to agree with pdf on this one. I am ...

2007-01-06T21:33:22.240-05:00

I would have to agree with pdf on this one. I am currently in a situation that demonstrates how predicisive the "open minded" can be based on past experience, where the past experience predetermines the current situation's outcome. Therefore regardless of difference of mind between one individual and another, the preconceived notion that actions and events that seem similar are going to produce one outcome that was reached before in a similar situation. Where the one in question seemed open minded to begin with, the unseen and unprovable facts that lie within myself are disbelieved and my actions and decisions that, although completely good intentioned, are misunderstood, and preconceived to be that which they are not. Thus, my good intentions are seen to be malicious rather than taken at face value for truths. The painful reality of it is that it's very hard for a lot of people in this day and age to even have an open mind... myself included, and I readily admit to this.

I think this picture of openmindedness is too simp...

2006-05-03T19:00:47.316-04:00

I think this picture of openmindedness is too simplistic. The attitude can not be described with a single number. People are more or less openminded towards various subjects, depending on their past experience with similar subjects. This is actually an essential part of a practically functioning intelligence. We learn to give certain classes of claims more credence using certain hueristics that can often fail us. But when those heuristics get messed up, it's not always the hueristic's fault. (It is the hueristic's fault when people adopt irrational and dogmatic beliefs that they are emotionally opposed to being questioned.) Sometimes it's just that the little sampling of the universe that a particular person has gotten over the course of their life is, by chance, really unrepresentative of the wider universe.

Well, I'll have to disagree with you there. His bo...

2006-05-03T00:32:07.323-04:00

Well, I'll have to disagree with you there. His book on Aquinas is actually brilliant; as Gilson said, he captures more of Aquinas on paper in an accessible way than most academics could. The paradoxical turn takes some getting used to, but I don't think it's any more tiresome than any other sort of joke. For that is really what they are: jokes, and, what is more, in the case of Wells, the joke of one friend on another, since they were fairly good friends. Chesterton wrote his books for much the same reason everyone reads them; they're funny, a bit of intelligent buffoonery that's not afraid occasionally to make a thoughtful point. I suppose buffoonery can sometimes become tiresome; but I suppose I'm more easily entertained by buffoonery than most people. Besides, it sometimes goes well beyond mere buffoonery into something that's quite a serious point -- open mindlessness, for instance, is a good one.

Wells is certainly an easy target – he was notorio...

2006-05-02T15:12:03.653-04:00

Wells is certainly an easy target – he was notoriously gullible, having been taken in by transparent hoaxes about fairies and whatnot – but I find Chesterton's perversity tiresome. It's always the same: Modern Man, seemingly independent and enlightened but actually a chump, believes some bland, seeming truism P; but the gloriously paradoxical truth is that not-P, the exact opposite! After twenty or thirty times this gets old. Read his (short) book on Aquinas – it's maddening.

Ha, yes, very good!

2006-04-30T20:20:32.946-04:00

Ha, yes, very good!

Chesterton has a great passage criticizing H.G. We...

2006-04-30T12:12:42.786-04:00

Chesterton has a great passage criticizing H.G. Wells in which he says, "He thought that the object of opening the mind is simply opening the mind. Whereas I am incurably convinced that the object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid." I think he might also have been the one who came up with the perfect label for the sort of vice you are criticizing here: open mindlessness.