Does Open-Mindedness Mean Giving Every View Equal Weight?

Open-mindedness is often mistaken for the rule that “either side may be right, so give each half your confidence”. On that view, any unsupported objection forces a well-evidenced judgement back to neutrality. Openness would end up rewarding groundless doubt.

In Chapter II of On Liberty, John Stuart Mill defends freedom of thought and discussion. His case is not only that a suppressed opinion may be true. A mistaken view may contain part of the truth, and opposition can force us to recover our reasons rather than repeat a correct belief as a “dead dogma”. Mill is explaining why a society should not casually close the space of debate. He is not saying that every claim is equally reliable. Permission to speak and equal credibility are different things.

Contemporary virtue epistemology treats open-mindedness as one trait of a responsible inquirer. It involves taking counterevidence seriously, understanding the strongest opposing reason and revising one's judgement when the evidence changes. Yet it must work with carefulness, honesty and intellectual firmness. Without those companions, “openness” becomes a refusal to use standards at all.

Suppose engineers have on-site measurements and calculations supporting the safe reopening of a small bridge. An anonymous email then says only, “I think it will collapse.” Open-mindedness does not require assigning a fifty-fifty probability to safety. It requires asking whether the message identifies a testable crack, material batch or calculation error, and deciding what further check is proportionate to the risk. Specific information about a severe possible harm may deserve rigorous testing even from an ordinary source. Repeated conjecture should not receive the evidential weight of a complete inspection report.

My judgement is that open-mindedness is proportionate revisability: give a view attention suited to its reasons, risks and testability, while retaining a genuine capacity to change the conclusion. Refusing to listen because of a speaker's identity or one's own inconvenience is closed-minded. Refusing ever to judge until every possibility is eliminated is not openness either; it is an abandonment of judgement.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/34901/34901-h/34901-h.htm
https://iep.utm.edu/virtue-epistemology/