Premium
Is Open‐mindedness a Moral Virtue?
Author(s) -
Cremaldi Anna,
Kwong Jack M. C.
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
ratio
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.475
H-Index - 29
eISSN - 1467-9329
pISSN - 0034-0006
DOI - 10.1111/rati.12149
Subject(s) - virtue , epistemology , extant taxon , argument (complex analysis) , philosophy , virtue ethics , moral character , evolutionary biology , biology , biochemistry , chemistry
Abstract Is open‐mindedness a moral virtue? Surprisingly, this question has not received much attention from philosophers. In this paper, we fill this lacuna by arguing that there are good grounds for thinking that it is. In particular, we show that the extant account of open‐mindedness as a moral virtue faces an objection that appears to show that exercising the character trait may not be virtuous. To offset this objection, we argue that a much stronger argument can be made for the case that open‐mindedness is a moral virtue by appealing to the notion of moral understanding. Specifically, we provide a new rationale as to why we should exercise open‐mindedness and offer several arguments to allay the concern that doing so can at times cause us to be in an epistemically and morally weaker position.