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Author Topic:   Open-minded Skepticism
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 1 of 2 (755004)
04-03-2015 10:07 AM


I ran across this article, and it is nice to see other people on my wavelength:
quote:
Why Open-Mindedness Should Go Hand In Hand With Skepticism
De omnibus dubitandum est
Doubt everything
The World
Our stream of consciousness is constantly bombarded by harmful information. Propaganda, advertisement, manifestos, popular cultural values and questionable theories of what life is really about. Information that wants to do everything but inform. ...
And us
But it’s not only the external world we must look out for. We must also clean our own minds. We can do this in a multiply of ways. Some, let’s call them conservatives, propose we hold onto one perspective and look the other way when contradictory information shows up. Sure we will still have problems, but at least we can get used to that, cover it up a little, and don’t have to deal with new ones in the future. But it’s obvious that this life-denying attitude already gives up before trying.
Opposite of this close mindedness we find open mindedness, the willingness to consider new ideas. This is a good trait that keeps your eyes open and face reality as it is, not as you want it to be. And if we ever want to learn what works in life and what doesn’t, we have to keep an open mind. However, this doesn’t automatically mean we accept every new perspective as a truthful perspective. We will only consider it. We take it as an experiment. Because life itself is an ever going on experiment.
So we keep an open mind and use experimentation to test whether the information is valid or not. Experiment in the broadest possible sense: a course of action tentatively adopted without being sure of the eventual outcome. This can be both a scientific experiment (exoteric) and a personal experiment (esoteric). So, in essence, these experiments work to filter out what can be used as a truthful perspective, and what can’t. It separates the noise from the occasional valuable idea.
For example, when an advertisement for the newest deodorant enters your consciousness, you keep an open mind. You will consider the idea that this new formula will turn you into the person you always wanted to be and that it will bring you all the girls. But before you accept this as a truthful perspective, you employ either a thought and, if that is not sufficient, a practical experiment. Does the advertisement have any reason to lie? Do other people who use the product get all the girls? Is there any causal connection between deodorant and being who I want to be? If you’re not sure about all this, you can try the product yourself, and see if what it promises hold true.
Being skeptical to what it is
This skeptical attitude will prevent you from being gullible. It reduces the power outside forces have over your actions and identity. An open mind that doesn’t have this filter, will let in an awful lot of crappy ideas, since there is no way to distinguish between valid and flawed ideas. And even worse, if you take a random, societies or your perspective as the perspective, in other words, if you stop being doubtful about your own truth, you immediately stop being open-minded. You can’t consider new ideas that don’t mix with the already established truth. If you are not skeptical, you are close minded!
Reality is ambiguous
The point where most people go wrong is thinking there is only one way of gaining truth, one perspective that fits on every bit of data. But describing a painting in terms of its chemical composition can be just as truthful as describing the same information, the painting, from an artistic point of view. Since they both talk a different language, they can never make a claim about what the other is saying. You can’t falsify an inner experience with scientific evidence, nor can you falsify scientific evidence with inner experience.
Creating room to grow
Once you have an open mind and put the skeptical filters in place there is one more thing left to do: getting rid of social conditioning. Social conditioning are filters that are not necessary true, but only hold true for that society, in that time and age. But throughout history, different values, different moralities, different meanings of freedom, good and bad etc. have existed. This conditioning is what society has to do in order to survive. Because without it, there wouldn’t be any norms to follow (and thus no society). But if a certain society is too anxious to let conflicting ideas roam free, it might reject the one idea that solves its problems. It could lead to close mindedness, not being able to adapt to a new norm even if ones life was depending on it (capitalism and the ecological crisis anyone?) Needless to say, to an individual this can have a suffocating effect, because taking a societies perspective as the boundary of knowledge prevents the potential to think outside it.
Open minded skepticism -- willingness to consider the possibility of concepts that are not invalidated by objective empirical evidence, but remaining skeptical of their value until there is some validation for them.
Enjoy
Edited by RAZD, : /i

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AdminNosy
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Posts: 4754
From: Vancouver, BC, Canada
Joined: 11-11-2003


Message 2 of 2 (755035)
04-03-2015 2:49 PM


Thread Copied to Is It Science? Forum
Thread copied to the Open-minded Skepticism thread in the Is It Science? forum, this copy of the thread has been closed.

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