What is a fair-minded thinker?
In my research I found the following descriptions of a fair-minded person as a place to start.
“The secret of intellectually fair-minded persons is that they have chosen to put the truth above allegiance to their ego or cherished opinions”.
Virtuous Minds: Intellectual Character Development – Philip Dow – Intervarsity Press – 2013, page 49.
Richard Paul and Linda Elder state “Fair-mindedness entails a consciousness of the need to treat all viewpoints alike, without reference to one’s own feelings or selfish interest, or the feelings or selfish interests of one’s own friends, community, or nation. It implies adherence to intellectual standards (such as accuracy and logic), uninfluenced by one’s own advantage or the advantage of one’s group”.
Critical Thinking, Tools for Taking Charge of Your Learning and Your Life – Richard Paul & Linda Elder – Prentice Hall – 2001, page 5.
It seems that the next step would be that of finding truth.
Your constructive comments are welcome.
The Fair-minded Thinker
Interesting point of view. Im curious to think what type of impact this would have globally? People obviously get frustrated when it begins to affect them locally. Ill check back to see what you have to say.
Great idea for a blog.
I’ve been thinking a lot about fair-mindedness as a quality that I would like to build in myself and in our civil discourse. I am very concerned about the echo chamber effect of targeted news and how civil discourse is breaking down.
I was thinking about making a quiz: How fair minded are you? Maybe develop some questions like the following
1) when listening to news reports, do you?
a) accept without question the truth of the report
b) accept or reject the truth of the report based on whether you agree with the report
c) investigate the claims of the report to understand it better
d) seek out alternate explanations for the news
2) How much time do you spend consuming various news sources:
a) I only spend time with news sources that I agree with
b) Once in a while, I spend time with news sources from the other side
c) I check out other opinions or other sources to try to understand other opinions
d) I subscribe to news sources that I don’t agree with and I try my best to understand their point of view.
Maybe it could be one of the quizzes on Facebook? What do you think?
Thank you for taking the time to look over my blog. It seems like we share similar thinking and are heading in the same direction.
I think your suggestion for a “quiz” type of an approach could be an interesting way to engage people in this area and get them started in thinking about how they “consume” information.
For myself, the engagement part of this is the challenge.
I am spending some time in working through how to make the blog thought provoking, useful, but not so academic that readers would lose interest.