Sex Differences in Self-Perception

How to be Critically Open-Minded — A Psychological and Historical Analysis

“…It doesn't matter what the argument is about (it happens to be about the existence of free 29 will), it's the way they argue that's important. Their attitudes towards knowledge are shockingly different -and the way they are conducting this argument provides a touchstone for two contrasting thinking styles which will echo and reverberate throughout human history.…”

“…He goes on to point out that to compel someone against their conscience is to compel them to do something that they regard as sinful "for though the thing may be in itself good, yet if it do not appear to be so to my conscience, the practice thereof in me is sinful". 29 Walwyn here explicitly uses reflective perspective taking and the force of reason as part of his arguments in favour of toleration.…”

“…In 1343, because members of the same family could not hold office simultaneously and had to wait a certain interval before holding office again, the majority of men eligible to be magistrates (priorates) were commoners and less than a third of the priorate between 1343 and 1348 were patricians. 29 However, by the middle of the 15th century, social mobility in Florence went into decline. But the ideal of social mobility remained strong in Florence, and Brown argues that sometimes the ideal plays a significant role in generating openness.…”

“…Yet, as Pinker points out the evidence for a massive change in segregationist attitudes in the US -e.g., the number of people agreeing with the statement that "black and white children should go to separate schools" dropping from 70% in the 1940s to less than 10% by 1995 -shows that people can "allow their better judgments to overcome these biases". 29 In other words, critical open-minded thinking can improve moral behaviour because, even if we feel a negative moral impulse -e.g., we have an automatic racist feeling, or we feel like hitting someone in an argument -we think, when critically open-minded, that it is good to challenge our initial impulses and check what action we think is the right one.…”

“…Every nationalist is capable of the most flagrant dishonesty, but he is alsosince he is conscious of serving something bigger than himselfunshakeably certain of being in the right. 29 Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage -torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians -which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by "our" side. 30 Such thinking tendencies, said Orwell, are "part of the make-up of most of us, whether we like it or not" (p. 705), and like Popper he regards the rejection of these tendencies as a moral decision.…”