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Future Paths of Phenomenology

1st OPHEN Summer Meeting

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234706

Is open-mindedness conducive to truth?

Jack M. C. Kwong

pp. 1613-1626

Abstract

Open-mindedness is generally regarded as an intellectual virtue because its exercise reliably leads to truth. However, some theorists have argued that open-mindedness’s truth-conduciveness is highly contingent, pointing out that it is either not truth-conducive at all under certain scenarios or no better than dogmatism or credulity in others. Given such shaky ties to truth, it would appear that the status of open-mindedness as an intellectual virtue is in jeopardy. In this paper, I propose to defend open-mindedness against these challenges. In particular, I show that the challenges are ill-founded because they misconstrue the nature of open-mindedness and fail to consider the requisite conditions of its application. With a proper understanding of open-mindedness and of its requirements, it is clear that recourse to it is indeed truth-conducive.

Publication details

Published in:

Dutant Julien, Fassio Davide, Meylan Anne (2017) Truth & epistemic norms. Synthese 194 (5).

Pages: 1613-1626

DOI: 10.1007/s11229-015-1008-6

Full citation:

Kwong Jack M. C. (2017) „Is open-mindedness conducive to truth?“. Synthese 194 (5), 1613–1626.