In a conversation about what happens to us when we die, a friend of mine recently asked me “what’s wrong with leaving my mind open to the possibility that my consciousness might go on after my body dies”? I found it a fascinating question. It’s interesting to me that my friend spoke specifically of leaving her mind “open” to this very pleasant and comforting possibility. She’s never mentioned leaving her mind open to any of the other infinite, yet equally valid, unpleasant “possibilities” one could imagine. Adopting such a position seems far less about having an “open mind” than about shielding a specific and deeply held wish from rational scrutiny.
In common parlance, having an “open mind” is considered a positive thing. To call someone close-minded is to accuse him of being unthinking, prejudiced, impervious to new ideas, evidence, and information. But the term “open mind” is an ambiguous one. On the one hand, it carries the connotation of objectivity and impartiality, but it is often invoked as a call for perpetual skepticism, which is incompatible with objectivity.
In Philosophy: Who Needs It, Ayn Rand wrote:
What objectivity and the study of philosophy require is not an “open mind,” but an active mind—a mind able and eagerly willing to examine ideas, but to examine them critically. An active mind does not grant equal status to truth and falsehood; it does not remain floating forever in a stagnant vacuum of neutrality and uncertainty; by assuming the responsibility of judgment, it reaches firm convictions and holds to them. Since it is able to prove its convictions, an active mind achieves an unassailable certainty in confrontations with assailants—a certainty untainted by spots of blind faith, approximation, evasion and fear.
An active mind does not grant equal status to rationally-supported conclusions and any “possibility” anyone’s imagination might produce. It knows that perpetual skepticism is at odds with rationality. So what’s wrong with admitting that there’s no evidence supporting the conclusion, but leaving your mind “open to the possibility” of consciousness after death? Well, first, to use the term “possible” to label an arbitrary claim (one with no evidence to support it) is to fly in the face of reason. The term “possible” is a point on the continuum of rational validation. If a conclusion has some (but not much) evidence in favor of it, and no facts contradict it, it can be said to be possible. One cannot manufacture valid possibilities without any evidence, however; one can only manufacture wishes and fantasies.
Second, what could leaving one’s mind open to the “possibility of consciousness after death” actually mean? It’s a position that seems indistinguishable from merely wishing for consciousness after death. If I leave my mind open to the possibility that I’m pregnant, or that I’ll be invited to the wedding of an acquaintance, or that I may decide to go to medical school, I’ll likely alter my thinking and behavior a bit (skip the glass of wine, keep the wedding date open, or opt into a pre-requisite med school class). That’s because I know these possibilities will — with further thought, research, or information –move along the continuum of rational validation to conclusions that are “probable” then “certain” or, alternately, “improbable” and then “impossible”.
But what could it mean for me to keep my mind open to the possibility that there are invisible gremlins in my closet, or that there’s a colony of wish-granting genies on an as-yet-undetected moon of Jupiter, or that people really are immortal beings? If you’re the sort who considers it rationally sound to keep your mind open to the possibility of consciousness after death, do you also keep your mind open to the possibility of every imaginable claim? Probably not. Those infinite and often mutually-exclusive flights of fancy would cancel each other out, leaving your “open-mindedness” paralyzed by uncertainty and irrationality, unable to denote anything remotely objective or impartial, and ultimately unable to influence your thoughts, behaviors, or decisions in any meaningful way. I think what people really mean when they say they’re keeping an “open mind” about life after death is that they wish for life after death (after all, nobody talks of keeping an open mind about the possibility of eternal, silent suffering after death). And they think they’ve found a way to grant their wish the status of a possibility and thus insulate it from the rational arguments of those who would dash their hopes.
Contrary to their protestations that they are only being open-minded when they insist on granting their wish the status of possibility, such a person is in fact guilty of a very common form of close-mindedness: self-serving bias. With the infinite range of the arbitrary spread before them, the person who makes a point (either explicitly or simply by omission) of considering only pleasant possibilities is using an invalid criterion, their fear and discomfort, as a basis to dismiss unpleasant ideas as untrue, or as less likely. It should be obvious where such a primrose path will lead.
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