Critical Thinking As An Ethical Value

Critical Thinking, I contend, is not, in its very core, a skill, but an ethical value. In order to recognize it as an ethical value, let us consider ‘open-mindedness’, a glaring feature of critical thinking. Is it a skill? I don’t believe it is.  Years of applying the skills of logic carry no guarantee that one would be open to ones’ deepest assumptions, biases and prejudices. Especially to one’s fears. When I was young, I had always believed that people who grow old grow in wisdom. That is not the case. They just grow older. What about children? Can they be open-minded?

The minds of children are open to learning new things. They are receptive. They are naturally inquisitive and are engaged in endless questioning. However, they are incapable of distinguishing the true from false ideas. They rely on the authority. In many circumstances, the adults are the authority. Children’s minds are ‘open’ but they are not open-minded. Because they have not yet learned to discriminate certain kinds of knowledge, they have no way of appreciating the value of open-mindedness. Open-mindedness implies that one is closed or once closed to opposing views.

In open-mindedness, there is a struggle within one’s self. This struggle is a battle that rages within one’s self. It is a battle which is decided upon whether to put aside preconceptions and beliefs about one’s self and the world in order to evaluate and, whether to accept new ideas that could replace old and perhaps, fearful or even destructive ones. These old, fearful or, destructive preconceptions are what caused us to ‘close up’ to newer and possibly better ideas. This is why children cannot be said to be open-minded (nor, closed-minded) because they have not been informed of any preconceived ideas about themselves and the world in which they live. They do not yet have a past to rely on, to lean on, to find refuge the way old people do when they have to protect themselves with the foreign, present reality. The good old days may be gone forever, but they still cling on to them.

Only a biased person, then, has the option to be open-minded. He has a door that can be opened or closed shut. So, if he has door, can he open the door? That is, can he initiate the opening? I imagine that a biased person is apprehensive and he would, he might, open the door, but ever so slightly; but he would never be able to open it wide. To do so would be disastrous for him, too dangerous for his biases would be left unprotected. For he has his biases and fears which he has to keep them concealed for fear that ‘they’ may harm him, his very raison d’etre,. It would then be safe to say that, if he ever does open the door, he would do so on his own terms. But that is not being open-minded, in the strictest sense of the word. To say it were so would be to proclaim it in bad faith.

Then, who or what can yank the door wide open? The Other Person. His very existence, his right to exist on his own terms demands that the door be opened wide. This is where being open-minded, the very essence of critical thinking, is an ethical value, a relation between oneself and the Other. To be open-minded is a response to the Other’s demand to be heard. Being open-minded is an invitation to let the Other in, thereby allowing the self to see himself for what he is, in full view of what he could be hiding from himself. True, open-mindedness invites self destruction, but it also enables the creation of the new self. Truth, though painful it may be, is liberating.