Intellectual Honesty

Suppse one sets out to defend a conviction using all the intellectual weaponry at his disposal. Even if he provides sound logic and steers clear of inconsistency, is he not still intellectually dishonest by virtue of his intention?

I'm not looking to start a war, I am genuinely interested in hearing responses.

I think we are all guilty. I think healthy debates are good, since even if at the time people aren't too willing to change their opinion, it's more likely that they will at a later time, after their "belief defense mechanisms" are not on guard.

[Trantor]

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Suppse one sets out to defend a conviction using all the intellectual weaponry at his disposal. Even if he provides sound logic and steers clear of inconsistency, is he not still intellectually dishonest by virtue of his intention?

I'm not looking to start a war, I am genuinely interested in hearing responses.

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I really don't understand your point. How can you possibly consider what he does be considered intellectually dishonest?

Good, I purposely made this vague. His intellectual dishonesty starts with the word conviction.

I think he is saying it is dishonest because the individual has an agenda - before he begins he knows the conclusion he is trying to prove. I agree it is hard or impossible to be unbaised when you begin an inquiry in this fashion.

Of course, this is why debate is good and forums like this one are so useful. The caveat is that the participants of the debate have to be mentally flexible, and this is not usually the case.

I like to say there is a difference between an idea and a belief. An idea is something which makes sense to you but you are willing to hear other arguments. A belief is something about which you are certain, therefore if someone disagrees with you they are necessarially against you (see NotReady's opinion of Atheists in the "A question for Atheists and Chrisitans" thread).

On the contraty, if someone disagrees with your idea they can become your ally in a search for the greater truth. In general, ideas are good and beliefs are bad. If you don't keep talking to people who disagree with you the line will begin to blur.

[imported_luckyme]

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A belief is something about which you are certain, therefore if someone disagrees with you they are necessarially against you (see NotReady's opinion of Atheists in the "A question for Atheists and Chrisitans" thread).

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And the logical error ( and one reason NR appears so illogical) in such a view is the 'excluded middle". Setting up every situation as black-white, and framing it in "you're either for me or against me" is false in the huge majority of anything but the simplist of situations and sometimes even in those.

If I were NR's campaign manager I'd tell him to stop representing himself as god's spokesman on earth and face up to what atheists have been telling him in various ways .. any hostility is toward some misguided human endeavor, often done in the name of god. It's a personal psyche defense mechanism to pretend the hostility someone like NR may feel in interaction with atheists is actually directed at god... nope, it's usually directed right at the person or certainly some specific social setting the person is selling in gods name.

Right. Convictions by necessity are a cessation in reason. Usually, there is some external (psychological, cultural, etc.) motivation behind a conviction, which the debator fails to sufficiently examine. The intellectual dishonesty, therefore, is not to others, but to himself. Dishonesty is a harsh word because it is not intentional, but the conviction is still a lie of sorts: it gives the false appearance of truth.

[Trantor]

I had assumed he had arrived at his conviction by using all the intellectual weaponry at his disposal and that he had used sound logic and had steered clear of inconsistency in doing so. It seems to me arguing for his conviction in this way seems entirely proper.

Are you arguing this is no proper reason to form a conviction and argue for them?

What other criteria need to be satisfied before this is proper? Maybe you think this is can never be proper?

I don't think it is ever proper to hold a conviction you are willing to put on a pedestal and defend to the death. All I'm saying is that we should be careful with our convictions, to not buy into them completely. There should always be some doubt in your mind to keep you honest. This is essentially the idea behind Luckyme's signature, "If I thought I was wrong I would change my mind." Convictions control us, whereas if we are without convictions, we are in control.

[Darryl_P]

If he ignores powerful arguments which oppose his views and either pretends they are not there, throws up smoke screens by getting tied down on some little detail, or simply gives a quick shrug-off by calling names, invoking God or using any other show-stopper, then yes, I'd say that's being intellectually dishonest.

[chezlaw]

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Right. Convictions by necessity are a cessation in reason. Usually, there is some external (psychological, cultural, etc.) motivation behind a conviction, which the debator fails to sufficiently examine. The intellectual dishonesty, therefore, is not to others, but to himself. Dishonesty is a harsh word because it is not intentional, but the conviction is still a lie of sorts: it gives the false appearance of truth.

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I don't agree that conviction is the source of the dishonesty. For example some religous posters readily admit that their religous conviction is a matter of faith - nothing intellectually dishonest about that. The problem starts if we kid ourselves (or pretend) that our beliefs are the product of logic/evidence and then ignore logic/ evidence to the contrary.

chez

[gumpzilla]

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Convictions by necessity are a cessation in reason.

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By this definition, intellectual honesty is never possible, as you always have to stop somewhere, unless you plan to live forever. This also neglects that one can have convictions that you have differing degrees of reason for believing are true, if we are willing to accept a somewhat colloquial definition of conviction.

[sweetjazz]

eF, I think you are on to something here. I think that when we pursue something intellectually, we should be asking a question (and then openly seeking an answer) -- not looking to prove a particular answer is right for a specific question.

At the same time, we have to use our judgment in which ideas we consider and how much of our energy to exert on considering various possibilities. It would be foolish to spend time checking whether the sky is really blue because of the conventional physics explanation (which takes some time to understand) or whether physics really predicts that it is green but there's a giant sphere of blue-tinted glass surrounding earth in space. Even without knowing the relevant physics (as I suspect most of us don't), we would need a good reason to think the green sky hypothesis is plausible before we seriously considered it.

I don't think there's anything wrong with studying why the sky is blue without questioning it because of a silly reason like the one above. But at the same time, it would make sense to stop and question any part of the explanation you read, to make sure that the thought behind it is convincing. Sometimes all you can do is say: If I accept a certain principle (which all physicists do), then I can understand how the sky would appear blue. You don't have access to the experimental equipment (and you probably don't have the time anyway) to verify the principle, but that's okay.

Anyway, those are just my ramblings about how to understand things. I probably don't understand how to understand things well enough to have a good opinion though. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

PS -- If anyone is interested in why the sky is blue, I bet a great place to look would be Feynman's Lectures on Physics.

I think my main thesis is this: conviction is a strong word that implies the thinker has already come to his conclusion and is willing to probe no more. Opinion is not as strong of a word, and I realize the necessity of having opinions in any kind of debate. However, when one comes to a conviction to himself, even under the cloak of "faith," he can no longer probe any deeper. He will inevitably dodge tough questions, because it is human nature to do so. Intellectual dishonesty is precisely this; namely, the failure to continue searching for answers. To do this one needs to examine every viewpoint and take them all into consideration, IF one is call oneself a philosopher (= an intellectually honest person who searches for truth). To show how I apply this to myself, take this example. I am an atheist and I am very confident in this position. I will argue for it in a debate. However, in my mind I leave some space for flexibility. Therefore my ideal goal is not to prove myself right, but to try to prove myself wrong, in order to prevent myself from having any specious convictions.

[gumpzilla]

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Therefore my ideal goal is not to prove myself right, but to try to prove myself wrong, in order to prevent myself from having any specious convictions.

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I think you are being intellectually dishonest if you think that this resembles your (I'm not trying to single you out, I mean this generally) conduct on a regular basis.

[hmkpoker]

We need to have some sense of conclusion in order to intellectually accomplish anything. When something is sufficiently proven to us, we can take it as a given; we don't have to rethink heliocentric theory every time we blast a rocket into space. If we are to rethink something that we've already concluded, we need a good reason to do it.

If I have a PhD in economics, and I've sufficiently proven that the economy is non-zero-sum and that capitalism is a more useful structure for the majority than communism (just a for instance, I'm not trying to start a political discussion), and my hippie teenage son is whining about the evils of capitalism, should I A) try to teach him what I have proven to be corrct so that he can use it to his advantage, or B) reconsider my position?

If he actually does provide a good argument against, yes, I have to analyze it, and in the really, really rare chance that it is valid, I'll have to reconsider my own position.

BUT HE HAS TO ACTUALLY PROVIDE A GOOD ARGUMENT.

This is the ideal, it's admittedly not how I always think.

[gumpzilla]

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This is the ideal, it's admittedly not how I always think.

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I don't even think it's the ideal. To believe that nothing is true and nothing can be assumed leads to paralysis. The ability to question one's assumptions is vital, but when you have assumptions that overwhelming evidence have shown to be true, it is a waste of time to question them unless you have considerable reason to do so.

I'm not talking about scientific claims about the sky being blue or other similar types of knowledge. This pertains more to religous and philosophical --abstract-- knowledge. To believe that I really don't know what is true is the only honest belief. If paralysis is the result then so be it.

[gumpzilla]

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I'm not talking about scientific claims about the sky being blue or other similar types of knowledge. This pertains more to religous and philosophical --abstract-- knowledge.

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You should put that in your original claim, then; if you're going to rely on as nitpicky a definition of conviction as you must in order for your argument to be about something, then you should also say that your argument doesn't really apply to probably 99% of what there is in the world to have convictions about.

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To believe that I really don't know what is true is the only honest belief. If paralysis is the result then so be it.

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Really? Then why waste time on philosophy at all? What do you gain from thinking about it if you can't actually learn anything?

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You should put that in your original claim, then; if you're going to rely on as nitpicky a definition of conviction as you must in order for your argument to be about something, then you should also say that your argument doesn't really apply to probably 99% of what there is in the world to have convictions about.

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Wow, that's a surprising claim. One look at this forum reveals that many people have convictions about abstract concepts in religion and philosophy. The most heated debates are those that science cannot resolve.

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Really? Then why waste time on philosophy at all? What do you gain from thinking about it if you can't actually learn anything?

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Heh, this goes back to Socrates, the wisest man in Athens because he knew he didn't know anything. Philosophy isn't a discipline of concrete realities. I think it's best served for speculating how to live life, which is not something fact-based. It entails abstract thought. Convictions therefore are a hinderance philosophical progress.

[gumpzilla]

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One look at this forum reveals that many people have convictions about abstract concepts in religion and philosophy.

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Of course they do. Who said they didn't? What I said was that this kind of stuff is probably about 1% of what there is in the world to have convictions about. I think I'm being generous in that regard.

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Philosophy isn't a discipline of concrete realities. I think it's best served for speculating how to live life, which is not something fact-based. It entails abstract thought.

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But if one cannot come to conclusions about how to live one's life - after all, things like conclusions and facts and beliefs get in the way of our progress - then how is it helping you to do so?

Further, to turn your own argument against you, your apparent fixation on perfect open-mindedness being best is itself a conviction that you shouldn't have. I just blew my mind.

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Further, to turn your own argument against you, your apparent fixation on perfect open-mindedness being best is itself a conviction that you shouldn't have. I just blew my mind.

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Give up already /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[gumpzilla]

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Give up already /images/graemlins/smile.gif

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Seriously. If you're willing to accept this as an axiom, why not other things?

Okay, I'll play along. This isn't an axiom, it's more of an anti-axiom. It doesn't proclaim any truth, but is a guidline for how to search for truth.

[chezlaw]

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I think my main thesis is this: conviction is a strong word that implies the thinker has already come to his conclusion and is willing to probe no more. Opinion is not as strong of a word, and I realize the necessity of having opinions in any kind of debate. However, when one comes to a conviction to himself, even under the cloak of "faith," he can no longer probe any deeper. He will inevitably dodge tough questions, because it is human nature to do so. Intellectual dishonesty is precisely this; namely, the failure to continue searching for answers .

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No biggy but I disagree because I don't think the bit in bold is correct. Someone can recognise they have stopped searching for new answers about certain things.

chez

You're right, I left that one rather incomplete. Expanded definition:

Intellectual dishonesty is precisely this; namely, the failure to continue searching for the answer to a given question without exploring all the possible solutions from the perspectives available, IF a conclusion is settled upon with full knowledge that these other perspectives exist, and is believed 100% to be true, as a conviction is. However, to be truly intellectually honest means also to question oneself rigorously, so that when one comes to some sort of conclusion, one is still not satisfied until one examines the motivations for coming to this conclusion, especially psychological motivations. The intellectually honest man is keenly aware of the temptations certain ideologies have over others and he must be careful to avoid settling upon one because it suits his life better. And even when he has examined every possible angle, he must leave himself open to new perspectives and information, so that he can still change his position if it becomes reasonable to do so. Therefore, he can never have a total conviction about anything, and he will die without ever having fooled himself.

Yes, I set the bar pretty high.

[maurile]

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Good, I purposely made this vague.

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Don't you think that's intellectually dishonest?