Too little
Prestige as proof
“The official denial is clear; the witness sounds confused.”
Fluent presentation settles a factual question before the original record is examined.
Fair-Mindedness
Weigh testimony by its evidence rather than the speaker's status.
An impartial disposition to give relevant interests and evidence their due.
Fair-Mindedness gives relevant evidence and interests their due without letting prestige, familiarity, fluency, or irritation decide in advance. It is the contextual name for Fairness here. The work includes asking a hesitant witness a clear question and examining an official claim closely. The eventual account may give unequal weight to their claims because the evidence is unequal.
Fair-Mindedness gives evidence a hearing beyond its packaging
A cropped screenshot races through the local group: the public building has closed. Its administrator sends a polished denial. A hesitant visitor says the east wing was locked and offers the original notice. You almost trust the smooth reply before opening the attachment. The dated notice shows what each account left out: one wing was closed, while the rest remained open. The screenshot had promoted a wing to an entire building. You check the records behind both accounts before reporting the narrower finding.
Finding the balance in Fair-Mindedness
A circulating screenshot, an official denial and a visitor’s account appear to disagree about a public building’s closure.
A fitting response
Comparable scrutiny
“What does the dated notice establish about each claim?”
The reporter tests both accounts against the same relevant evidence and explains what the crop omitted.
Pursued too far
Symmetry at any price
“Keep saying it might all be closed, even after the check.”
Equal emphasis preserves a disproved interpretation instead of explaining the evidence.
An awkward witness can be right about one part without establishing the whole circulating claim. If the notice is from another date or a different building, revise the finding; neither the polished official nor the attractive underdog gets an exemption from checking.
What Fair-Mindedness makes possible
A reader can see why a claim deserves confidence. Sources also have a better chance of being understood when polished delivery is not the entrance fee. Fair-minded reporting makes a decision accountable to reasons that can be examined.
Fair-Mindedness in ordinary life
Before forwarding a screenshot
Open its available source and look for a missing subject, date or condition before sharing the cropped claim.
The group discussion
Invite clarification of an unclear sentence before treating it as an obviously foolish claim.
Nearby virtues, different work
Justice
Justice asks what people are ethically due. Fair-Mindedness concerns the impartial weighing of relevant interests and evidence in this judgment.
Humility
Humility admits that your first impression may be limited. Fair-Mindedness prevents that impression becoming a privileged standard for one speaker.
Fair-Mindedness and its counterfeits
Automatic equal time
Automatic equal time counterfeits Fair-Mindedness by giving an unsupported allegation the standing of a checked record. Genuine fairness explains the difference in support.
Reverse snobbery
Believing the less powerful speaker automatically is reverse snobbery, a counterfeit of Fair-Mindedness. Their account deserves serious attention and appropriate verification, not a flattering exemption.
How to cultivate Fair-Mindedness
Notice whose confidence makes you stop asking questions.
Write the contested proposition in the same neutral terms before comparing accounts.
Separate difficulty expressing an experience from evidence that the experience did not occur.
Try it today
In an ordinary disagreement about a checkable public fact, name one relevant check you would accept regardless of who first made the claim. Apply it without turning the exchange into a contest of personal worth.
Questions worth returning to
- Whose manner have I mistaken for reliability?
- Could I explain the difference in weight without referring to how much I like the speakers?
Quotations and further reading
Seven selections to return to through the week. Follow a source link to read the surrounding passage.
Every prejudice, every moral perversion, dims or distorts whatever the eye looks upon.
Harriet Martineau · How to Observe: Morals and Manners · Part I, chapter II, Moral Requisites
The next sentences admit that observers cannot wait to be perfect and should identify their biases. This helps the reporter examine the prestige attached to a handout before letting it outweigh a witness’s evidence.
In a book which will not have much to say in favor of American Journalism, let this fidelity to truth, and to the memory of the blameless McGurk, have its due meed of praise.
Upton Sinclair · The Brass Check · Part I, chapter II, The Story of a Poet
Even within a polemic against the press, Sinclair acknowledges an instance he regards as accurate reporting. Fair-mindedness lets counterevidence count against the emotional direction of a larger argument.
Nor is it enough that he should hear the arguments of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations.
John Stuart Mill · On Liberty · Chapter II, Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion
Mill argues for understanding an opposing case in the form its advocates defend. The application concerns accurate representation and testing, without requiring equal weight for unsupported assertions.
The daintily clad charitable visitor who steps into the little house made untidy by the vigorous efforts of her hostess, the washerwoman, is no longer sure of her superiority to the latter;
Jane Addams · Democracy and Social Ethics · Chapter II, Charitable Effort
This opening clause reverses a judgment based on tidy appearance. The visitor begins to recognize useful work beneath the untidiness, much as a reporter must look past the polish of an official denial.
His countenance, voice, and manner, had established him at once in the possession of every virtue.
Jane Austen, narrator · Jane Austen · Pride and Prejudice · Chapter XXXVI
The narrator describes Elizabeth's former impression of Wickham, which the chapter is overturning. The irony warns against allowing a convincing manner to do the work of evidence.
We can all recall acquaintances of whose integrity of purpose we can have no doubt, but who cause much confusion as they proceed to the accomplishment of that purpose, who indeed are often insensible to their own mistakes and harsh in their judgments of other people because they are so confident of their own inner integrity.
Jane Addams · Democracy and Social Ethics · Chapter IV, Household Adjustment
Addams distinguishes sincere motives from the effects of a person's conduct. Fair-minded reporting checks what happened rather than treating either the reporter's or the subject's good intentions as sufficient evidence.
Those who had not seen anything of Dorothea usually observed that she could not have been “a nice woman,” else she would not have married either the one or the other.
George Eliot, narrator · George Eliot · Middlemarch · Finale
The irony targets judgments made by people without acquaintance with Dorothea. Their social confidence conceals their lack of knowledge, a useful warning beside the polished denial and hesitant witness.
Continue through the catalog
Practice this collection
Choose this approved collection as an optional workbook program, or select individual virtues in My Virtues.