Open Mindedness

[Bacon Boy]

I'm a bit mixed on the issue myself.

1) If you keep an open mind, that leaves you open for all these different ideas. That can be good, but more often then not, it could be bad. I recently received an article in the mail about this issue that made some sense. (Paraphrasing):

Think of your mind being like your house. When you're close minded, your door is closed and it is extremely hard for things to get in. But when you're open minded, things that you don't want entering your mind can enter and you can't get rid of them.

2) If you're closed minded, you might not be able to discover truth. Like if I'm so set in Buddhism, then I discover the Truth (I won't say my religion, don't worry) I might not be open to learn the Truth. Also, if you're closed minded, people look down on you.

What are your thoughts?

 

[technoxmaniac]

Keep an open mind. I do.

 

[coffeebean!]

People need to keep an open mind, otherwise we'll never get anywhere.

 

[Rockman!]

I keep an open mind all the time.

 

[Rawburt]

It never hurts to keep an open mind. You don't have to accept all ideas, but you just have to consider them and possibly accept them.

 

[Bacon Boy]

It never hurts to keep an open mind. You don't have to accept all ideas, but you just have to consider them and possibly accept them.

But then what appears true could be false and you could get farther away from the truth. And in considering other ideas, you might consider wrong ones. And maybe even accept false ones.

 

[coffeebean!]

It never hurts to keep an open mind. You don't have to accept all ideas, but you just have to consider them and possibly accept them.

But then what appears true could be false and you could get farther away from the truth. And in considering other ideas, you might consider wrong ones. And maybe even accept false ones.

False ideas? Since when are ideas true or false? They're ideas. Facts are true. And then whatever you believe in is your opinion whether it's true or it's false, it wouldn't matter. It's your opinion; what you believe. >_>

 

[Bacon Boy]

It never hurts to keep an open mind. You don't have to accept all ideas, but you just have to consider them and possibly accept them.

But then what appears true could be false and you could get farther away from the truth. And in considering other ideas, you might consider wrong ones. And maybe even accept false ones.

False ideas? Since when are ideas true or false? They're ideas. Facts are true. And then whatever you believe in is your opinion whether it's true or it's false, it wouldn't matter. It's your opinion; what you believe. >_>

I mean as in if you let bad ideas into your head instead of good ones. Or letting ideas you "consider bad" into your head instead of good ones.

 

[technoxmaniac]

Read this.

It's generally acknowledged that open-mindedness is a virtue. But there is some confusion as to what it actually involves. Too often, people confuse open-mindedness with indecisiveness. They think that open-mindedness requires that one abstains from drawing conclusions; hence the absurd tendency to claim that agnosticism is the most reasonable religious stance, solely on the basis that God's existence can be neither proved nor disproved with absolute certainty. I've previously explained why such a stance is misguided. We have ample reason to disbelieve in gods and faeries, and the virtue of "open-mindedness", properly understood, shouldn't ask us to pretend otherwise.

The trait of open-mindedness is best understood as a disposition, rather than an occurrent state of mind. It's not about what beliefs you actually have, but how open you are to revising them in appropriate circumstances. It requires the true humility of self-acknowledged fallibility. It requires that our minds be open to new evidence. But this is something very different from suggesting that we should be equally accepting of nonsense as we are of sense. That's not open-mindedness; it's gullibility, or perhaps stupidity.

The virtuously open mind is not wide open, indiscriminately accepting of any and all viewpoints. Rationality must remain as a filter. We should be open to accepting good reasons of which we are currently unaware. But this doesn't require us to take recognizably bad reasons seriously. If we judge that the weight of reasons favours P over not-P, then we should (tentatively) believe that P. Open-mindedness means that we will acknowledge the possibility that new evidence could in future lead us to change our mind. But it doesn't preclude our drawing reasonable conclusions in the present.

That was found here: http://www.philosophyetc.net/2006/04/open-mindedness.html

 

[melly]

It never hurts to keep an open mind. You don't have to accept all ideas, but you just have to consider them and possibly accept them.

yes, this is very true
just put aside ideas that you don't agree on
and ones that you agree on, keep

 

[Bacon Boy]

It never hurts to keep an open mind. You don't have to accept all ideas, but you just have to consider them and possibly accept them.

yes, this is very true
just put aside ideas that you don't agree on
and ones that you agree on, keep

but sometimes you can't help it...

 

[fitzy]

It never hurts to keep an open mind. You don't have to accept all ideas, but you just have to consider them and possibly accept them.

This.