Fußnoten

[1]

This is not, of course, to deny that we take “Open MINDedness” (as broadly practiced in the context of this collection) to be an example of “open mindedness” as a more general epistemic stance. And we are certainly proud enough of what we like to think of as our little star-collection to allow ourselves at least a few words on why we think this is the case. To begin with, many of the papers published here explore new ways of thinking, in the broadest sense, about the mind and new and innovative ways of driving research forward. In addition and perhaps most importantly, our choice of the title Open MIND reflects the idea that by introducing a two-way interaction between senior target authors and junior commentators through the review process, the commentaries and replies, we wanted to give our commentators the opportunity to enter into a discussion with more senior and prominent representatives of the field. Relatedly, the availability of the online version of the Open MIND collection to students and researchers from anywhere in the world, free of charge exemplifies theoretical and practical dimensions of what we consider to be academic open mindedness. And finally, on many levels, Open MIND was an exercise in editorial open mindedness. The authors and commentators asked to contribute to this collection were explicitly encouraged to discuss any topic they themselves thought relevant. The only restriction was that the target articles fall within the scope of the Mind Sciences. We also tried to foster a particular type of intellectual atmosphere by encouraging authors, commentators, and reviewers to be consistently constructive and charitable. Our hope was that this approach would bring out the best in our contributors in the different stages of the project. In many cases, we explicitly encouraged our authors to write in a way that would be accessible to readers from different academic backgrounds and to take different disciplinary perspectives into account. Generally, the publication of academic articles always involves a process of give and take between authors, editors, and reviewers. And we strongly felt that it would be a good indicator of the success of our collection if, at the end of the day, our authors were themselves happy and proud of their contributions. This entailed carefully calibrating our own roles as editors and in many cases leaving the final decision to our authors.

[4]

For a striking case study of two patients who experienced strong feelings of subjective certainty, including religious beliefs, during epileptic seizures, see Picard (2013). These cases are particularly interesting as these beliefs seemed entirely convincing during the seizures, even though they contradicted the patients’ longstanding convictions. It is interesting to see the connection to what earlier, we called the “ability to tolerate ambiguity”: While conceptually, “certainty” involves “knowing that one knows” (or maximal epistemic precision), on a purely formal level describing the underlying brain dynamics, epistemic precision is the inverse of variability, or the “confidence” the system places in a source of sensory information about the external world (Picard & Friston 2014). Empirical research suggests that it is the functional role of the anterior insula to signal uncertainty, the fact “that there is something we do not understand” (Picard 2013, p. 2497). The representation of uncertainty and ambiguity, in turn, causes an aversive affective state, often involving feelings of discomfort and anxiety of the type we continuously try to minimize. By contrast, direct electrical stimulation of a small area in the anterior-dorsal insula causes intense feelings of bliss (Picard et al. 2013), and it has been suggested that such blissful states, if occurring in the context of epileptic seizures, are associated with maximized coherence of the phenomenal self-model (PSM; Metzinger 2003). Subjectively, this coherence is expressed by a dramatically heightened sense of self, by an intense phenomenal experience of presence, integratedness, harmony with the world, plus intense positive affect (for five case reports, see Picard & Craig 2009). For human beings, ambiguity is not easy to tolerate, because it presents a constant threat to the coherence of our PSM, and cultivating such tolerance requires developing the functional ability to de-identify from the aversive affective states and the “epistemic anxiety” that automatically accompanies them. Tolerance of ambiguity, it seems, demands courage and a specific form of choiceless awareness.

[8]

In fact, if doubt has an evolutionary function, it might be to prohibit activity and induce rest in situations in which the benefits of physical activity are outweighed by its risks, for instance in illness. Doubt and certainty of the theoretical sort may have more distinctly bodily precursors; they may be different ways of regulating how we relate to our own bodies and gauge our own level of physical ability. Carel (2013) describes bodily certainty as involving a tacit confidence “that our bodies will continue to function in a similar fashion to the way they have functioned in the past: we expect our stomachs to digest the lunch we have just eaten, our brains to continue to process information, our eyes to continue to see, and so on” (ibid. p. 4). By contrast, bodily doubt involves a breakdown of our beliefs about our own bodily capacities, but also a disruption on the level of subjective experience. “Bodily doubt is a physical sensation of doubt and hesitation arising in one’s body. It is not solely cognitive, although it can be expressed in propositions. […] Bodily doubt not only changes the content of experience, it also pierces the normal sense of bodily control, continuity, and transparency in a way that reveals their contingency. It shows our tacit faith in our own bodies to be a complex structure that becomes visible when it is disturbed. It changes the normal experience of continuity, transparency, and trust that characterize this structure” (ibid. p. 11). Bodily doubt is often associated with physical illness and depression, and in some cases, it seems this form of experiencing our own physical vulnerability may have a protective function. But according to Carel, the analysis of bodily doubt also illuminates the extent to which we are normally guided by a tacit and unshakeable kind of bodily certainty that typically cannot be rejected or rationally justified and that forms part of our brute animal nature. If this is right, then it might also explain why even the more abstract and theoretical variants of certainty continue to be associated with health and strength on the level of subjective experience—even though this confidence can be epistemically misleading. This also fits in nicely with the claim, elaborated in footnote 4, that ambiguity threatens the perceived coherence of the phenomenal self-model, whereas certainty, on the level of subjective experience, appears to be associated with heightened self-awareness. We might now say that doubt and the tolerance of ambiguity are an acquired taste: while in their early stages, they are often associated with discomfort or even anxiety, their cultivation may also be the key to genuine peace of mind.

[9]

Clearly, this is not to say that such reports, or the data obtained from their analysis, are trustworthy with respect, for instance, to the neural underpinnings of the respective experiences, and we should not expect them to be. First-person reports, when gathered under ideal reporting conditions, are trustworthy with respect to the phenomenal character of experience only. Moreover, because this type of phenomenological information cannot be gleaned, for instance, from neuroimaging data, first-person data obtained from the analysis of experience reports necessarily complement third-person data. As dream researchers Tore Nielsen & Philippe Stenstrom (2005, p. 1289) put it, “[i]n an era of high-resolution brain imaging, similarly high-resolution reports of dream imagery may be needed”. A true science of consciousness will draw from different methodologies and different ways of measuring experience, and it will strive to integrate different types of data and different levels of description.

[10]

Again, this comes back to the classical idea of wisdom as not only knowing how to live well, but also succeeding at doing so (Ryan 2014). There is also a clear connection between open mindedness as an epistemic practice and its ethical dimension. As Russell (1912/1999, p. 116) puts it, “[t]he mind which has become accustomed to the freedom and impartiality of philosophic contemplation will preserve something of the same freedom and impartiality in the world of action and emotion. […] The impartiality which, in contemplation, is the unalloyed desire for truth, is the very same quality of mind which, in action, is justice, and in emotion is that universal love which can be given to all, and not only to those who are judged useful or admirable”. The true value of philosophy lies not just in its effects on our thoughts, but on our lives, on our actions; “it makes us citizens of the universe” (ibid., p. 116).

[12]

And new questions continuously arise. Is it, for instance, unethical to publish one’s research in scientific journals or books that are not open access and which therefore systematically exclude a large majority of students and researchers from the less affluent part of the world? If you answer affirmatively to this question, would you also say that it is unethical to consume research published in books or journals that are not open access? And do you think, in terms of civil disobedience, that it is permissible to disregard copyrights (and authors’ rights to royalties) to make such research, either your own or even that of others, openly available? This is just a small selection of the potentially difficult questions facing today’s scholars and researchers. And people are already acting upon their answers (see, for instance, Ludlow 2013).