Is it by human nature to be close-minded?

Question

...and that open-mindedness comes through experience? Or is it the other way round?

Answer 1

All animals are naturally close-minded.

Open-mindedness in the wild means extinction.

Human open-mindedness must be learned, and, like the animal world, will not occur in an environment that is strange or threatening.

Answer 2

I agree we start out life open minded. But eventually we have to take a position to be a force in the world. That is when some people narrow their scope of choices and become closed minded and others can keep some of their child like qualities and stay open minded. Closing the mind to choices help a person make quicker decisions. Which can be an advantage when the going gets tough. I think open mindedness has to be nurtured because closed mindedness is an easier path to take.

Answer 3

I think our human nature is to be open minded, look at children… They have such an imagination, and the way they see the world is so much closer to the way reality really is!! They ask the questions over and over to many people before they close their mind, and decide that this is the way it is. They conjure all sorts of amazing fantastic ideas.
Look at cavemen; they were the ones who started to ask the question “why, and how…?” If that isn’t an open mind then I don’t know what is.
We are curious by nature, how things work, why does it work like this, where did it come from, why is it here?...etc…
So how could a species be close minded in the aspects just described?
I’ll tell you how; throughout history, through habit, our environment, so many variables combine to make us close minded, in today’s time.
We get so stuck in habit and ritual that we forget all the infinite possibilities there are in the universe we live in. We close our mind because all these daily rituals do not leave much time, to just sit and contemplate all the wonderful things that we can think about.
All of this, especially our environment (today) makes us close minded. We don’t walk outside and look at the sun rising like it’s the first time we have ever seen it.
And animals (Do not forget we are animals) are not close minded, look at a dog for example: The dog is let out of the house to go outside. What does the dog do? He/She smells, and looks around, and checks everything out, especially new smells, anything he doesn’t recognize. If he/she was close minded they would not do any of that, what would be the point?
I really believe that at some point in everyone’s life, we have the choice to keep that door open (letting in the light); or slam it shut and barricade it (to be in darkness). That moment is different for everyone, but everyone has that moment sometime in their lives. Sometimes you get the opportunity to pry that door back open, which takes immense effort and will power; but those people are some of the strongest people! I have so much respect for someone who can change their lives like that!!
Unfortunately, most people choose to shut that door and stay in the dark; because in modern day society it is much easier to shut the door and never go back inside. Instead of propping the door open wide and walking (in the light) inside and go exploring!!

Answer 4

The appeal to be open-minded
All skeptics have heard this from someone at some point in a debate: “You need to be more open-minded” or “You’re too closed-minded”. This is presented as though it is actually a valid argument. In reality it just shows they have run out of arguments. They hide behind it to disguise the complete lack of any rational reason for you to accept what they are telling you. It's the last resort of someone who has nothing – if they had evidence they would obviously present it.

Even so, it can seem compelling, since calling someone closed-minded is pejorative. But it’s fallacious rhetoric: doubting something is not necessarily closed minded. In fact, the closed minded ones are the believers who insist some fantastic story is true despite a complete lack of evidence to support it. They are too closed minded to accept that their fantasy might be false.

An open mind is…

Here’s the thing. An open mind is open to all ideas, but it must be open to the possibility that the idea could be true or false. It is not closed-minded to reject claims that make no sense. If you can’t accept the possibility that an idea might be false, then you are the closed minded one. An open minded person will critically examine all claims but will not accept them if there is no reason to believe they are true or if there is reason to believe they are false. To do so would be fallacious. And credulous.

The real problem

The “have an open mind” crowd are more than just logically wrong. Their way of thinking is actually destructive to good ideas. Bad ideas should be discarded - by weeding out bad ideas the good can flourish. An earlier version of this argument would have gone, “You’re closed-minded in saying that humors don’t exist” to justify bloodletting. But by focusing uncritically on bloodletting, germ theory would never have been discovered. Germ theory was discovered by skeptical scientists who insisted on evidence, not by new-agers with open minds.

If you accept something when there is no reason to believe it is true you are just credulous. And if you will not reject something when there is no reason to believe in it then you are in freefall – you will believe in anything. This way of thinking is a complete dead end. Or to put it another way, don’t be so open minded that your brains fall out.

Answer 5

Open-mindedness comes from our sense for adventure, and experience is a subsequent effect of that. Closed-mindedness comes from fear of exploration or expansion, it denies possibility, and both fear and curiosity are human factors. The yin and the yang.

Answer 6

Not really "open-minded" and not really "close-minded". More like: "propped-open" just a little.