We commonly consider an open mind essential to fair-minded moral, political and legal judgment. To have a closed mind is to resist the possibility of persuasion, to be dogmatic, recalcitrant, even bigoted. But what exactly is an open mind? 

According to one familiar conception, an open mind is an impartial one – free of particular interests, loyalties and preconceptions, capable of adopting the perspective of anyone anywhere.  We could call it the “prejudice-free” mind. It has stood as a prominent ideal ever since Immanuel Kant defined enlightenment as “the emancipation from prejudices generally.”

But I want to suggest that an “open mind” wholly unoccupied by preconceptions is a mistaken ideal. Not only is it unrealistic. It also overlooks the possibility that certain preconceptions can enable good judgment rather than hinder it. Consider two examples:

Take grading student papers. Some teachers and professors prefer to grade papers without knowing the names of the students who wrote them, grading “blind” because knowing the names invites prejudice.  Perhaps you’ve formed an unfavorable impression of some student – you think he’s lazy and inattentive – but you don’t want that impression to bias your grading of his paper. Blind grading, on the surface, at least, seems quite a reasonable measure. But does it lead to the fairest assessment of a paper?

One might argue that although it eliminates certain biases, it also deprives the teacher of background knowledge relevant to understanding the student’s work. Blind grading does not allow the teacher to assess a paper in the context of the student’s previous papers and contributions to the discussions in class. Without such context, it can be difficult to assess how much knowledge and insight the paper really reflects. On balance, blind grading may overcome certain biases but at the cost of preventing the grader from bringing to bear certain contexts relevant to a fair assessment of a student’s work.

___

"Certain prejudices can enable rather than hinder good judgment."
___

Our second example is selecting a jury. In the U.S., judges in most states are instructed to dismiss from jury duty anyone who has formed a prejudgment of the case, or who is likely, because of his or her background, to be predisposed to one side.  If the case concerns a rent dispute, for example, and you, as a potential juror, admit that you’ve been involved in a rent dispute yourself, the judge will likely dismiss you from duty. The attempt to eliminate prejudice from the jury in this way seems, on the face of it, a just measure. Clearly we don’t want jurors who are not open to considering the facts and changing their minds.  But do we want jurors with no prejudgments or background knowledge of any kind?