Gatekeeping the mind

ABSTRACT

This paper proposes that we should think of epistemic agents as having, as one of their intellectual activities, a gatekeeping task: To decide in light of various criteria which ideas they should consider and which not to consider. When this task is performed with excellence, it is conducive to the acquisition of epistemic goods such as truth and knowledge, and the reduction of falsehoods. Accordingly, it is a worthy contender for being an intellectual virtue. Although gatekeeping may strike one simply as the virtue of open-mindedness, I argue that it is not; gatekeeping does not favor a characteristic disposition to be willing to consider novel or opposing ideas. In fact, being told that an agent is excellent at gatekeeping reveals nothing about how frequently she considers or refuses to consider ideas. This paper will introduce and motivate the notion of gatekeeping, and offer some preliminary arguments in support of its candidacy as an intellectual virtue.

KEYWORDS:

• Intellectual virtues
• open-mindedness
• closed-mindedness
• narrow-mindedness

Acknowledgment

I would like to thank Luke Kwong, Catherine Rioux and the students from her graduate seminar on social and virtue epistemology at Université Laval, for their help and feedback in writing this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 It is also plausible that when an epistemic agent commits mistakes (b), (c) and (e), she is being ‘too guarded’, whereas when she commits mistakes (a) and (d), she is not being sufficiently ‘guarded’ (or on guard).

2 In this scenario, we can praise the agent for making an excellent gatekeeping decision (i.e. virtuous gatekeeping) but criticize her for not having an interest in the idea or a desire to look into it (especially when it is one in which she ought to be interested in or which she should pursue. In such a case, she may be viciously indifferent). Such a lack in interest is not the fault of the gatekeeper but some other part of the epistemic agent. Indeed, the gatekeeper's decision can be deemed excellent precisely because it is made with the awareness that the agent lacks such an interest in the idea, and that were she to consider it, she would not be able to do so adequately.

3 Following Baehr (2015), we can treat the previous section as addressing the competence, judgment, and motivational dimensions of gatekeeping.

4 A tentative conclusion that may be drawn from this discussion is that theorists may be mistaken to situate open-mindedness between the vices of gullibility and closed-mindedness. Given that consideration of an idea is distinct from its acceptance, it is perhaps more appropriate to think of there being two separate virtues corresponding to each activity. My present claim is that the virtue pertaining to the consideration of ideas is gatekeeping.

5 Variations of this objection include the following: That agents should not be open-minded about controversial ideas which they lack the expertise to assess (e.g. Levy), that our current world, filled as it is with fake news, lies, misleading claims and bullshit, is in fact epistemically hostile, and that they should not be open to any ideas that challenge their existing body of knowledge (e.g. Fantl). Although this objection against the truth-conduciveness of open-mindedness is often directed at those who construe intellectual virtues as having a success component, it can easily be modified and adapted to apply to those who do not. For instance, it can be presented as reasons as to why an epistemic agent should not think that open-mindedness is effective at attaining truth. In such a case, a truth-desiring person would not desire to be open-minded, as it would not reflect well on her intellectual character.

6 In light of the fact that gatekeeping privileges neither the opening nor the closing of the mind's gates, it should, following the vocabulary of open- and closed-mindedness, perhaps be described without the spatial qualifier, something like mindedness. In my view, such a term is too broad, and seems to suggest a general disposition to use one's mind (as opposed to being mindless). This is why I have chosen to call the virtue gatekeeping, which directs attention to the specific activity of deciding when and to what to open up the mind's gates.

7 There may be cases where virtuous open-mindedness and virtuous closed-mindedness differ in terms of their prescription as to whether or not an agent should consider an idea. As I will shortly argue, I doubt that any discernible dispositions can be extracted from these prescriptions to warrant a neat separation between virtuous open-mindedness and virtuous closed-mindedness. Given that the decision whether to open up the mind to consider certain ideas or to shut them is based on a myriad of contingent factors related to the agent's epistemic condition and environment, an insistence on any particular disposition will likely, in my view, turn out not to be conducive to the agent's epistemic goals.

8 As mentioned, virtuous open-mindedness is sometimes defended on the grounds that it prescribes an agent to consider ideas only under the right circumstances, and to do so with serious consideration. In light of the foregoing discussion, my contention is that taking this defense fully and seriously leads us to the consequence that virtuous open-mindedness amounts essentially to what I have been calling gatekeeping. This is because there are too many contingent factors to take into consideration in determining what the right circumstances are, so much so that no disposition can be discerned as distinctively open-minded in nature. This defense of virtuous open-mindedness is thus not mistaken but it does come at the cost of sacrificing what is supposedly distinct about open-mindedness. Incidentally, this observation that virtuous open-mindedness and virtuous closed-mindedness essentially boil down to mental gatekeeping can serve as an independent source to help clarify gatekeeping's nature and bolster its candidacy as an intellectual virtue. This is because some of the reasons one might have to think of open-mindedness as a candidate for virtue – its value, motivational component, affect dimension – can be extended to apply to mental gatekeeping. For example, suppose someone thinks that possessing open-mindedness as an intellectual virtue requires that the relevant intellectual activity be performed with pleasure. There is no reason to think that this claim about the affect dimension of open-mindedness cannot be applied to mental gatekeeping: To possess gatekeeping as an intellectual virtue, a person must take pleasure in minding the mind's gates (i.e. in opening and closing them in the pursuit of various epistemic goals). As another example, suppose someone thinks that open-mindedness contributes to overall personal worth or excellence because it is, say, a trait that a truth-desiring person would want to possess. Again, there is no reason why the same cannot be said about gatekeeping; indeed, if this paper's line of reasoning is correct, the person who desires truth should prefer it over open-mindedness.