-=Dark_Angel=-, P.I.2 Apr 2005

"A race of Liars is unimaginable. How could they communicate?"

By mentally negating every proposition they receive from a fellow Liar.

"You say we should “embrace accepting false propositions.”"

No, I said we should embrace REJECTING false propositions. Read it again.

"A closed mind does not necessarily make assertions based on insufficient evidence. There may be good evidence in a person’s thinking that Negroes are an unreliable source of information, for example. He is closed minded if he rejects information from that source."

Think about what we mean by 'reject' in this case. By rejecting a proposition P, do we assert that P is false, or merely that we do not know that it is true? Consider a computer program that inputs a proposition then randomly returns true or false. It is clearly an unreliable source of information. But that's not to say it is always wrong when it asserts a given proposition to be true. Clearly our assessment of whether or not the proposition is true is independent of any answer the computer gives us. And so it is with Negroes. Suppose there is sufficient evidence to conclude that Negroes are unreliable sources of information. Therefore in interpreting a Negro's remarks, we must rely on external knowledge before drawing any conclusions.

Your definition of a closed mind seems to be: any mind that asserts that all propositions uttered by an unreliable source are false. This is clearly an example of making assertions based on insufficient evidence. It's obvious that one shouldn't do it. Unless you live on Planet Gay.