Abstract
Being open to persuasion can help show respect for an interlocutor. At the same time, open-mindedness about morally objectionable claims can carry moral as well as epistemic risks. Our aim in this paper is to specify when there might be duty to be open to persuasion. We distinguish two possible interpretations of openness. First, openness might refer to a kind of mental state, wherein one is willing to revise or abandon present beliefs. Second, it might refer to a deliberative practice, according to which one is willing to engage with opposing reasons. We suggest these two interpretations are conceptually and empirically distinct. Once disambiguated, we suggest that different contexts may make different forms of openness appropriate as expressions of respect.
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Notes
On failures of solidarity, see Fantl (2018: 147).
Rini (2018: 4) gives “understanding and sincere evaluation” as a sufficient way of engaging with reason.
We think this idea is implicit in how Rini describes cases in which a person has the attitude of openness. See, for example, her discussion of the case of the president looking at pictures of children (2018: 14).
Friedman imagines a case in which I have a justified belief that p, but it so happens that p is false. It seems equally true in such cases that I am not wondering about, or curious as to whether <p>.
Our own preference is to accept that inquiring entails suspending belief. Indeed, it may be telling that philosophers who regard the virtue of open-mindedness as compatible with belief maintenance don’t really have in mind the idea of being open to changing their mind. In contrast, they focus on being open to better understanding an opposing argument (Kwong 2016) or being surprised by another person (Barry 2020) or perhaps oneself (McRae 2016), rather than to being open to the prospect of being wrong about a specific belief. Such specifications of openness seem conceptually different in important ways from the idea of openness to persuasion we are centrally concerned with here.
We thank a referee for suggesting this strategy.
See also Fantl (2018: 4), for discussion.
The exception is if engaging the reasons (even if to discover the errors in another’s reasoning) just is the way open-mindedness is understood (cf. Kwong 2016: 80–81). We have nothing against this specification, and indeed we will allow in the final section that such a disposition may well be a virtue. However in this case, open-mindedness is clearly different from openness to persuasion in the sense invoked by Rini (2018).
Whether one interprets attitudinal openness – as we do – as having an interrogative attitude toward a proposition, or merely as being sensitive to evidence and free of epistemic distortions, the psychological evidence returns the same finding: engaging reasons does not predict the attitudinal virtue on either interpretation.
Our thanks to an anonymous referee for pressing us to clarify our thinking on this issue.
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Acknowledgments
For comments and discussion, we would like to thank Lisa Argyle, Jane Davis, Christopher Karpowtiz, Jessica Preece, Regina Rini, and two anonymous reviewers for Ethical Theory and Moral Practice.
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Davis, R.W., Finlayson, R. When Should we be Open to Persuasion?. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 24, 123–136 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-020-10153-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-020-10153-5