The Virtue of Close-Mindedness

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So where exactly do we draw this line between being open-minded and closed-minded? Is there an objective way to do it or is it a more practical wisdom kind of thing? Yeah, I think it's a very practical question. So the virtuous person who has neither too much or too little. There's no mathematical formula for that but you don't need to Take seriously every single alternative perspective that's proposed however ill-founded. The reality of the Holocaust is overwhelming Historical evidence that the Holocaust happened in just the way that we were all taught.

All of us have been wrong about things from time to time. But sometimes it was a simple, forgivable mistake, while other times we really should have been correct. Properties that systematically prevent us from being correct, and for which we can legitimately be blamed, are “intellectual vices.” Examples might include closed-mindedness, wishful thinking, overconfidence, selective attention, and so on. Quassim Cassam is a philosopher who studies knowledge in various forms, and who has recently written a book Vices of the Mind: From the Intellectual to the Political. We talk about the nature of intellectual vices, how they manifest in people and in organizations, and what we can possibly do to correct them in ourselves.

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Quassim Cassam received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Oxford University. He is currently Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick. He previously held faculty positions at Cambridge University and University College London. He has served as the president of the Aristotelian Society, and was awarded a Leadership Fellowship by the Arts and Humanities Research Council in the UK.

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