Abstract

In suppport of the idea that education should encourage open-mindedness, Hare and McLaughlin have argued that being open-minded about an issue, in a philosophically well-supported sense of ‘open-mindedness’, need not prevent one from holding a firm belief on that issue. In this paper I examine the lack of cohesion in this sense of ‘open-mindedness’, explain why I continue to be anxious about the tensions between open-mindedness and holding firm beliefs and present three further reasons for having reservations about Hare and McLaughlin's proposals.