Intellectual Honesty

[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. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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?